question stringlengths 36 90 | date stringlengths 12 18 | text_answers dict | id stringlengths 11 20 | fact_context stringlengths 174 4.76k | context stringclasses 999 values | none_context stringclasses 1 value | neg_answers listlengths 2 155 |
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Which team did Domenico Maggiora play for in Apr, 1974? | April 16, 1974 | {
"text": [
"Varese Calcio"
]
} | L2_Q1106299_P54_1 | Domenico Maggiora plays for U.C. Sampdoria from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1983.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Varese Calcio from Jan, 1974 to Jan, 1976.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Juventus FC from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
Domenico Maggiora plays for A.S. Roma from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1982.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Calcio Catania from Jan, 1984 to Jan, 1987.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Cagliari Calcio from Jan, 1983 to Jan, 1984. | Domenico MaggioraDomenico Maggiora (born 14 January 1955 in Quattordio) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player. Currently, he manages the Under-15 team of Juventus F.C..A midfielder, he played eight seasons (162 games, 3 goals) in the Italian Serie A for A.S. Varese 1910, A.S. Roma and U.C. Sampdoria.Roma fans remember him for a memorable goal he scored with a bicycle kick on 27 November 1977 in a game against Vicenza.As he stated in a 2004 interview to Il Romanista newspaper, he always regretted leaving Roma for Sampdoria in the summer of 1982 as he missed on winning the Serie A title with Roma in the 1982–83 season after playing for them for 6 years. | [
"A.S. Roma",
"Cagliari Calcio",
"Juventus FC",
"U.C. Sampdoria",
"Calcio Catania"
] | |
Which team did Domenico Maggiora play for in Jul, 1978? | July 21, 1978 | {
"text": [
"A.S. Roma"
]
} | L2_Q1106299_P54_2 | Domenico Maggiora plays for Juventus FC from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
Domenico Maggiora plays for A.S. Roma from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1982.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Varese Calcio from Jan, 1974 to Jan, 1976.
Domenico Maggiora plays for U.C. Sampdoria from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1983.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Calcio Catania from Jan, 1984 to Jan, 1987.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Cagliari Calcio from Jan, 1983 to Jan, 1984. | Domenico MaggioraDomenico Maggiora (born 14 January 1955 in Quattordio) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player. Currently, he manages the Under-15 team of Juventus F.C..A midfielder, he played eight seasons (162 games, 3 goals) in the Italian Serie A for A.S. Varese 1910, A.S. Roma and U.C. Sampdoria.Roma fans remember him for a memorable goal he scored with a bicycle kick on 27 November 1977 in a game against Vicenza.As he stated in a 2004 interview to Il Romanista newspaper, he always regretted leaving Roma for Sampdoria in the summer of 1982 as he missed on winning the Serie A title with Roma in the 1982–83 season after playing for them for 6 years. | [
"Cagliari Calcio",
"Juventus FC",
"U.C. Sampdoria",
"Calcio Catania",
"Varese Calcio"
] | |
Which team did Domenico Maggiora play for in Feb, 1982? | February 03, 1982 | {
"text": [
"U.C. Sampdoria"
]
} | L2_Q1106299_P54_3 | Domenico Maggiora plays for Varese Calcio from Jan, 1974 to Jan, 1976.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Cagliari Calcio from Jan, 1983 to Jan, 1984.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Juventus FC from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Calcio Catania from Jan, 1984 to Jan, 1987.
Domenico Maggiora plays for U.C. Sampdoria from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1983.
Domenico Maggiora plays for A.S. Roma from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1982. | Domenico MaggioraDomenico Maggiora (born 14 January 1955 in Quattordio) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player. Currently, he manages the Under-15 team of Juventus F.C..A midfielder, he played eight seasons (162 games, 3 goals) in the Italian Serie A for A.S. Varese 1910, A.S. Roma and U.C. Sampdoria.Roma fans remember him for a memorable goal he scored with a bicycle kick on 27 November 1977 in a game against Vicenza.As he stated in a 2004 interview to Il Romanista newspaper, he always regretted leaving Roma for Sampdoria in the summer of 1982 as he missed on winning the Serie A title with Roma in the 1982–83 season after playing for them for 6 years. | [
"A.S. Roma",
"Cagliari Calcio",
"Juventus FC",
"Calcio Catania",
"Varese Calcio"
] | |
Which team did Domenico Maggiora play for in Aug, 1983? | August 24, 1983 | {
"text": [
"Cagliari Calcio"
]
} | L2_Q1106299_P54_4 | Domenico Maggiora plays for A.S. Roma from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1982.
Domenico Maggiora plays for U.C. Sampdoria from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1983.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Juventus FC from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Calcio Catania from Jan, 1984 to Jan, 1987.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Varese Calcio from Jan, 1974 to Jan, 1976.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Cagliari Calcio from Jan, 1983 to Jan, 1984. | Domenico MaggioraDomenico Maggiora (born 14 January 1955 in Quattordio) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player. Currently, he manages the Under-15 team of Juventus F.C..A midfielder, he played eight seasons (162 games, 3 goals) in the Italian Serie A for A.S. Varese 1910, A.S. Roma and U.C. Sampdoria.Roma fans remember him for a memorable goal he scored with a bicycle kick on 27 November 1977 in a game against Vicenza.As he stated in a 2004 interview to Il Romanista newspaper, he always regretted leaving Roma for Sampdoria in the summer of 1982 as he missed on winning the Serie A title with Roma in the 1982–83 season after playing for them for 6 years. | [
"A.S. Roma",
"Juventus FC",
"U.C. Sampdoria",
"Calcio Catania",
"Varese Calcio"
] | |
Which team did Domenico Maggiora play for in Apr, 1986? | April 02, 1986 | {
"text": [
"Calcio Catania"
]
} | L2_Q1106299_P54_5 | Domenico Maggiora plays for Varese Calcio from Jan, 1974 to Jan, 1976.
Domenico Maggiora plays for A.S. Roma from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1982.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Juventus FC from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Calcio Catania from Jan, 1984 to Jan, 1987.
Domenico Maggiora plays for U.C. Sampdoria from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1983.
Domenico Maggiora plays for Cagliari Calcio from Jan, 1983 to Jan, 1984. | Domenico MaggioraDomenico Maggiora (born 14 January 1955 in Quattordio) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player. Currently, he manages the Under-15 team of Juventus F.C..A midfielder, he played eight seasons (162 games, 3 goals) in the Italian Serie A for A.S. Varese 1910, A.S. Roma and U.C. Sampdoria.Roma fans remember him for a memorable goal he scored with a bicycle kick on 27 November 1977 in a game against Vicenza.As he stated in a 2004 interview to Il Romanista newspaper, he always regretted leaving Roma for Sampdoria in the summer of 1982 as he missed on winning the Serie A title with Roma in the 1982–83 season after playing for them for 6 years. | [
"A.S. Roma",
"Cagliari Calcio",
"Juventus FC",
"U.C. Sampdoria",
"Varese Calcio"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Aug, 1960? | August 23, 1960 | {
"text": [
"Wilhelm Pieck"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_0 | Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Willi Stoph",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Erich Honecker",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Oct, 1968? | October 03, 1968 | {
"text": [
"Walter Ulbricht"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_1 | Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Willi Stoph",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Erich Honecker",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Apr, 1974? | April 07, 1974 | {
"text": [
"Willi Stoph"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_2 | Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Erich Honecker",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in May, 1980? | May 09, 1980 | {
"text": [
"Erich Honecker"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_3 | Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960.
Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Willi Stoph",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Nov, 1989? | November 14, 1989 | {
"text": [
"Egon Krenz"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_4 | Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960.
Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Willi Stoph",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Erich Honecker"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Feb, 1990? | February 26, 1990 | {
"text": [
"Manfred Gerlach"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_5 | Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl",
"Willi Stoph",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Erich Honecker",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Who was the head of state of German Democratic Republic in Aug, 1990? | August 19, 1990 | {
"text": [
"Sabine Bergmann-Pohl"
]
} | L2_Q16957_P35_6 | Manfred Gerlach is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Dec, 1989 to Apr, 1990.
Sabine Bergmann-Pohl is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Apr, 1990 to Oct, 1990.
Walter Ulbricht is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Sep, 1960 to Aug, 1973.
Willi Stoph is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1973 to Oct, 1976.
Egon Krenz is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1989 to Dec, 1989.
Wilhelm Pieck is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1949 to Sep, 1960.
Erich Honecker is the head of the state of German Democratic Republic from Oct, 1976 to Oct, 1989. | East GermanyEast Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; , , DDR, ), was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, the period when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.The GDR was established in the Soviet zone while the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly referred to as "West Germany", was established in the three western zones. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948 and the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), although other parties nominally participated in its alliance organization, the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools.The economy was centrally planned and increasingly state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people and weakened the state economically. The government fortified its western borders and built the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines. Those captured spent large amounts of time imprisoned for attempting to escape.In 1989, numerous social, economic and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable ones being the peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, a free and fair election was held and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR dissolved itself and reunified with West Germany on 3 October 1990, becoming a fully sovereign state in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted by the Federal Republic after reunification for offenses committed during the Cold War.Geographically, the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, which was also administered as the state's "de facto" capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989.The official name was "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to "DDR" (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like "Ostzone" (Eastern Zone), "Sowjetische Besatzungszone" (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to "SBZ") and "sogenannte DDR" or "so-called GDR".The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as "Pankow" (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in East Germany was referred to as Karlshorst). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media.When used by West Germans, (West Germany) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term "Westdeutschland" to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt.Explaining the internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forcesSoviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other.The GDR always was constrained by the example of richer West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes implemented by the communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and in transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, and in the political thrust of the educational system and of the media. On the other hand, the new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally.At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union) agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones, and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones.The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalised them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained the ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 (the Russian Federation continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the stated purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany.As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949), the GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the "Stalin Note") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. There have been several debates about whether Germany missed a real chance for reunification in 1952.In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED, headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while the SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death.The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set a primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism. It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds.In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ"Sowjetische Besatzungszone") comprised the five states ("Länder") of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone .Yet, seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 194812 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin.On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (—DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government.On 7 October 1949 the SED established the (German Democratic RepublicGDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the (People's Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed. (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the Inner German Border, and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.In 1971 the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had Ulbricht removed; Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants".Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by Communist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East German sovereignty.In the early 1970s, the ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a "de facto" government within a single German nation and a "de jure" state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR "de jure" as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only the "de facto" and "de jure" government, but also the sole "de jure" legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations "de jure" in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973;Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972.From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization.Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders.The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in the following weeks.Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz.The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the "Volkskammer" rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West.On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the "Volkskammer" on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR, and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt.There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–61, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–85 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–90 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany.The ruling political party in East Germany was the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out.The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of the West. As in other Soviet-bloc countries, non-communist political parties were allowed. Nevertheless, every political party in the GDR was forced to join the National Front of Democratic Germany, a broad coalition of parties and mass political organisations, including:The member parties were almost completely subservient to the SED and had to accept its "leading role" as a condition of their existence. However, the parties did have representation in the Volkskammer and received some posts in the government.The Volkskammer also included representatives from the "mass organisations" like the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" or "FDJ"), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. There was also a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany, with seats in the Volkskammer.Important non-parliamentary mass organisations in East German society included the German Gymnastics and Sports Association ("Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund" or "DTSB"), and People's Solidarity ("Volkssolidarität"), an organisation for the elderly. Another society of note was the Society for German-Soviet Friendship.After the fall of Communism, the SED was renamed the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS) which continued for a decade after reunification before merging with the West German WASG to form the Left Party ("Die Linke"). The Left Party continues to be a political force in many parts of Germany, albeit drastically less powerful than the SED.The East German population declined by three million people throughout its forty-one year history, from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990; of the 1948 population, some 4 million were deported from the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, which made the home of millions of Germans part of Poland and the Soviet Union. This was a stark contrast from Poland, which increased during that time; from 24 million in 1950 (a little more than East Germany) to 38 million (more than twice of East Germany's population). This was primarily a result of emigration—about one quarter of East Germans left the country before the Berlin Wall was completed in 1961, and after that time, East Germany had very low birth rates, except for a recovery in the 1980s when the birth rate in East Germany was considerably higher than in West Germany.Until 1952, East Germany comprised the capital, East Berlin (though legally it was not fully part of the GDR's territory), and the five German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in 1947 renamed Mecklenburg), Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony, their post-war territorial demarcations approximating the pre-war German demarcations of the Middle German "Länder" (states) and "Provinzen" (provinces of Prussia). The western parts of two provinces, Pomerania and Lower Silesia, the remainder of which were annexed by Poland, remained in the GDR and were attached to Mecklenburg and Saxony, respectively.The East German Administrative Reform of 1952 established 14 "Bezirke" (districts) and "de facto" disestablished the five "Länder". The new "Bezirke", named after their district centres, were as follows: (i) Rostock, (ii) Neubrandenburg, and (iii) Schwerin created from the "Land" (state) of Mecklenburg; (iv) Potsdam, (v) Frankfurt (Oder), and (vii) Cottbus from Brandenburg; (vi) Magdeburg and (viii) Halle from Saxony-Anhalt; (ix) Leipzig, (xi) Dresden, and (xii) Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz until 1953 and again from 1990) from Saxony; and (x) Erfurt, (xiii) Gera, and (xiv) Suhl from Thuringia.East Berlin was made the country's 15th "Bezirk" in 1961 but retained special legal status until 1968, when the residents approved the new (draft) constitution. Despite the city as a whole being legally under the control of the Allied Control Council, and diplomatic objections of the Allied governments, the GDR administered the "Bezirk" of Berlin as part of its territory.The government of East Germany had control over a large number of military and paramilitary organisations through various ministries. Chief among these was the Ministry of National Defence. Because of East Germany's proximity to the West during the Cold War (1945–92), its military forces were among the most advanced of the Warsaw Pact. Defining what was a military force and what was not is a matter of some dispute.The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was the largest military organisation in East Germany. It was formed in 1956 from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), the military units of the regular police (Volkspolizei), when East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. From its creation, it was controlled by the Ministry of National Defence (East Germany). It was an all-volunteer force until an eighteen-month conscription period was introduced in 1962. It was regarded by NATO officers as the best military in the Warsaw Pact.The NVA consisted of the following branches:The border troops of the Eastern sector were originally organised as a police force, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei, similar to the Bundesgrenzschutz in West Germany. It was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People's Army. In 1973, it was separated from the NVA, but it remained under the same ministry. At its peak, it numbered approximately 47,000 men.After the NVA was separated from the Volkspolizei in 1956, the Ministry of the Interior maintained its own public order barracked reserve, known as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (VPB). These units were, like the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, equipped as motorised infantry, and they numbered between 12,000 and 15,000 men.The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) included the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, which was mainly involved with facilities security and plain clothes events security. They were the only part of the feared Stasi that was visible to the public, and so were very unpopular within the population. The Stasi numbered around 90,000 men, the Guards Regiment around 11,000–12,000 men.The "Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse" (combat groups of the working class) numbered around 400,000 for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a "party Army". All KdA directives and decisions were made by the ZK's "Politbüro". They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation.Every man was required to serve eighteen months of compulsory military service; for the medically unqualified and conscientious objector, there were the "Baueinheiten" (construction units) or the Volkshygienedienst (people's sanitation service) both established in 1964, two years after the introduction of conscription, in response to political pressure by the national Lutheran Protestant Church upon the GDR's government. In the 1970s, East German leaders acknowledged that former construction soldiers and sanitation service soldiers were at a disadvantage when they rejoined the civilian sphere.After receiving wider international diplomatic recognition in 1972–73, the GDR began active cooperation with Third World socialist governments and national liberation movements. While the USSR was in control of the overall strategy and Cuban armed forces were involved in the actual combat (mostly in the People's Republic of Angola and socialist Ethiopia), the GDR provided experts for military hardware maintenance and personnel training, and oversaw creation of secret security agencies based on its own Stasi model.Already in the 1960s contacts were established with Angola's MPLA, Mozambique's FRELIMO and the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. In the 1970s official cooperation was established with other self-proclaimed socialist governments and people's republics: People's Republic of the Congo, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Somali Democratic Republic, Libya, and the People's Republic of Benin.The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1979 friendship treaties were signed with Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.It was estimated that altogether, 2,000–4,000 DDR military and security experts were dispatched to Africa. In addition, representatives from African and Arab countries and liberation movements underwent military training in the GDR.East Germany pursued an anti-Zionist policy; Jeffrey Herf argues that East Germany was waging an undeclared war on Israel. According to Herf, "the Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc's antagonism toward Israel." While East Germany saw itself as an "anti-fascist state", it regarded Israel as a "fascist state" and East Germany strongly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its armed struggle against Israel. In 1974, the GDR government recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO declared the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 during the First Intifada, and the GDR recognized the state prior to reunification. After becoming a member of the UN, East Germany "made excellent use of the UN to wage political warfare against Israel [and was] an enthusiastic, high-profile, and vigorous member" of the anti-Israeli majority of the General Assembly.The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the Second World War; the loss of so many young soldiers, the disruption of business and transportation, the allied bombing campaigns that decimated cities, and reparations owed to the USSR. The Red Army dismantled and transported to Russia the infrastructure and industrial plants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the early 1950s, the reparations were paid in agricultural and industrial products; and Lower Silesia, with its coal mines and Szczecin, an important natural port, were given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with Potsdam Agreement.The socialist centrally planned economy of the German Democratic Republic was like that of the USSR. In 1950, the GDR joined the COMECON trade bloc. In 1985, collective (state) enterprises earned 96.7% of the net national income. To ensure stable prices for goods and services, the state paid 80% of basic supply costs. The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars) (this is based on an unreal official exchange rate). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made the East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until reunification in 1990.Notable East German exports were photographic cameras, under the Praktica brand; automobiles under the Trabant, Wartburg, and the IFA brands; hunting rifles, sextants, typewriters and wristwatches.Until the 1960s, East Germans endured shortages of basic foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee. East Germans with friends or relatives in the West (or with any access to a hard currency) and the necessary Staatsbank foreign currency account could afford Western products and export-quality East German products via Intershop. Consumer goods also were available, by post, from the Danish Jauerfood, and Genex companies.The government used money and prices as political devices, providing highly subsidised prices for a wide range of basic goods and services, in what was known as "the second pay packet". At the production level, artificial prices made for a system of semi-barter and resource hoarding. For the consumer, it led to the substitution of GDR money with time, barter, and hard currencies. The socialist economy became steadily more dependent on financial infusions from hard-currency loans from West Germany. East Germans, meanwhile, came to see their soft currency as worthless relative to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Economic issues would also persist in the east of Germany after the reunification of the west and the east. According to the federal office of political education (23 June 2009) 'In 1991 alone, 153 billion Deutschmarks had to be transferred to eastern Germany to secure incomes, support businesses and improve infrastructure... by 1999 the total had amounted to 1.634 trillion Marks net... The sums were so large that public debt in Germany more than doubled.'Many western commentators have maintained that loyalty to the SED was a primary criterion for getting a good job, and that professionalism was secondary to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.Beginning in 1963 with a series of secret international agreements, East Germany recruited workers from Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique, Angola and North Vietnam. They numbered more than 100,000 by 1989. Many, such as future politician Zeca Schall (who emigrated from Angola in 1988 as a contract worker) stayed in Germany after the Wende.Religion became contested ground in the GDR, with the governing Communists promoting state atheism, although some people remained loyal to Christian communities. In 1957 the State authorities established a State Secretariat for Church Affairs to handle the government's contact with churches and with religious groups; the SED remained officially atheist.In 1950, 85% of the GDR citizens were Protestants, while 10% were Catholics. In 1961, the renowned philosophical theologian Paul Tillich claimed that the Protestant population in East Germany had the most admirable Church in Protestantism, because the Communists there had not been able to win a spiritual victory over them. By 1989, membership in the Christian churches dropped significantly. Protestants constituted 25% of the population, Catholics 5%. The share of people who considered themselves non-religious rose from 5% in 1950 to 70% in 1989.When it first came to power, the Communist party asserted the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and sought Christian participation in the building of socialism. At first, the promotion of Marxist-Leninist atheism received little official attention. In the mid-1950s, as the Cold War heated up, atheism became a topic of major interest for the state, in both domestic and foreign contexts. University chairs and departments devoted to the study of scientific atheism were founded and much literature (scholarly and popular) on the subject was produced. This activity subsided in the late 1960s amid perceptions that it had started to become counterproductive. Official and scholarly attention to atheism renewed beginning in 1973, though this time with more emphasis on scholarship and on the training of cadres than on propaganda. Throughout, the attention paid to atheism in East Germany was never intended to jeopardise the cooperation that was desired from those East Germans who were religious.East Germany, historically, was majority Protestant (primarily Lutheran) from the early stages of the Protestant Reformation onwards. In 1948, freed from the influence of the Nazi-oriented German Christians, Lutheran, Reformed and United churches from most parts of Germany came together as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Conference of Eisenach ("Kirchenversammlung von Eisenach").In 1969 the regional Protestant churches in East Germany and East Berlin broke away from the EKD and formed the "" (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the Moravian "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". In June 1991, following the German reunification, the BEK churches again merged with the EKD ones.Between 1956 and 1971 the leadership of the East German Lutheran churches gradually changed its relations with the state from hostility to cooperation. From the founding of the GDR in 1949, the Socialist Unity Party sought to weaken the influence of the church on the rising generation. The church adopted an attitude of confrontation and distance toward the state. Around 1956 this began to develop into a more neutral stance accommodating conditional loyalty. The government was no longer regarded as illegitimate; instead, the church leaders started viewing the authorities as installed by God and, therefore, deserving of obedience by Christians. But on matters where the state demanded something which the churches felt was not in accordance with the will of God, the churches reserved their right to say no. There were both structural and intentional causes behind this development. Structural causes included the hardening of Cold War tensions in Europe in the mid-1950s, which made it clear that the East German state was not temporary. The loss of church members also made it clear to the leaders of the church that they had to come into some kind of dialogue with the state. The intentions behind the change of attitude varied from a traditional liberal Lutheran acceptance of secular power to a positive attitude toward socialist ideas.Manfred Stolpe became a lawyer for the Brandenburg Protestant Church in 1959 before taking up a position at church headquarters in Berlin. In 1969 he helped found the "Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR" (BEK), where he negotiated with the government while at the same time working within the institutions of this Protestant body. He won the regional elections for the Brandenburg state assembly at the head of the SPD list in 1990. Stolpe remained in the Brandenburg government until he joined the federal government in 2002.Apart from the Protestant state churches () united in the EKD/BEK and the Catholic Church there was a number of smaller Protestant bodies, including Protestant Free Churches () united in the and the , as well as the Free Lutheran Church, the Old Lutheran Church and Federation of the Reformed Churches in the German Democratic Republic. The Moravian Church also had its presence as the "Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine". There were also other Protestants such as Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites and Quakers.The smaller Catholic Church in eastern Germany had a fully functioning episcopal hierarchy in full accord with the Vatican. During the early postwar years, tensions were high. The Catholic Church as a whole (and particularly the bishops) resisted both the East German state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state allowed the bishops to lodge protests, which they did on issues such as abortion.After 1945, the Church did fairly well in integrating Catholic exiles from lands to the east (which mostly became part of Poland) and in adjusting its institutional structures to meet the needs of a church within an officially atheist society. This meant an increasingly hierarchical church structure, whereas in the area of religious education, press, and youth organisations, a system of temporary staff was developed, one that took into account the special situation of Caritas, a Catholic charity organisation. By 1950, therefore, there existed a Catholic subsociety that was well adjusted to prevailing specific conditions and capable of maintaining Catholic identity.With a generational change in the episcopacy taking place in the early 1980s, the state hoped for better relations with the new bishops, but the new bishops instead began holding unauthorised mass meetings, promoting international ties in discussions with theologians abroad, and hosting ecumenical conferences. The new bishops became less politically oriented and more involved in pastoral care and attention to spiritual concerns. The government responded by limiting international contacts for bishops.List of apostolic administrators:East Germany's culture was strongly influenced by communist thought and was marked by an attempt to define itself in opposition to the west, particularly West Germany and the United States. Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state's commitment to Communism was a hollow and cynical tool, Machiavellian in nature, but this assertion has been challenged by studies that have found that the East German leadership was genuinely committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, Pence and Betts argue, the majority of East Germans over time increasingly regarded the state's ideals to be hollow, though there was also a substantial number of East Germans who regarded their culture as having a healthier, more authentic mentality than that of West Germany.GDR culture and politics were limited by the harsh censorship.The Puhdys and Karat were some of the most popular mainstream bands in East Germany. Like most mainstream acts, they were members of the SED, appeared in state-run popular youth magazines such as "Neues Leben" and "Magazin". Other popular rock bands were , City, Silly and Pankow. Most of these artists recorded on the state-owned AMIGA label. All were required to open live performances and albums with the East German national anthem.Schlager, which was very popular in the west, also gained a foothold early on in East Germany, and numerous musicians, such as , , and gained national fame. From 1962 to 1976, an international schlager festival was held in Rostock, garnering participants from between 18 and 22 countries each year. The city of Dresden held a similar international festival for schlager musicians from 1971 until shortly before reunification. There was a national schlager contest hosted yearly in Magdeburg from 1966 to 1971 as well.Bands and singers from other Communist countries were popular, e.g. Czerwone Gitary from Poland known as the "Rote Gitarren". Czech Karel Gott, the Golden Voice from Prague, was beloved in both German states. Hungarian band Omega performed in both German states, and Yugoslavian band Korni Grupa toured East Germany in the 1970s.West German television and radio could be received in many parts of the East. The Western influence led to the formation of more "underground" groups with a decisively western-oriented sound. A few of these bands – the so-called Die anderen Bands ("the other bands") – were Die Skeptiker, and Feeling B. Additionally, hip hop culture reached the ears of the East German youth. With videos such as "Beat Street" and "Wild Style", young East Germans were able to develop a hip hop culture of their own. East Germans accepted hip hop as more than just a music form. The entire street culture surrounding rap entered the region and became an outlet for oppressed youth.The government of the GDR was invested in both promoting the tradition of German classical music, and in supporting composers to write new works in that tradition. Notable East German composers include Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Ernst Hermann Meyer, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Kurt Schwaen.The birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Eisenach, was rendered as a museum about him, featuring more than three hundred instruments, which, in 1980, received some 70,000 visitors. In Leipzig, the Bach archive contains his compositions and correspondence and recordings of his music.Governmental support of classical music maintained some fifty symphony orchestras, such as Gewandhausorchester and Thomanerchor in Leipzig; Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden; and Berliner Sinfonie Orchester and Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Kurt Masur was their prominent conductor.East German theatre was originally dominated by Bertolt Brecht, who brought back many artists out of exile and reopened the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" with his Berliner Ensemble. Alternatively, other influences tried to establish a "Working Class Theatre", played for the working class by the working class.After Brecht's death, conflicts began to arise between his family (around Helene Weigel) and other artists about Brecht's legacy, including Slatan Dudow, Erwin Geschonneck, Erwin Strittmatter, Peter Hacks, Benno Besson, Peter Palitzsch and Ekkehard Schall.In the 1950s, the Swiss director Benno Besson with the Deutsches Theater successfully toured Europe and Asia including Japan with "The Dragon" by Evgeny Schwarz. In the 1960s, he became the Intendant of the Volksbühne often working with Heiner Müller.In the 1970s, a parallel theatre scene sprung up, creating theatre "outside of Berlin" in which artists played at provincial theatres. For example, Peter Sodann founded the Neues Theater in Halle/Saale and Frank Castorf at the theater Anklam.Theatre and cabaret had high status in the GDR, which allowed it to be very proactive. This often brought it into confrontation with the state. Benno Besson once said, "In contrast to artists in the west, they took us seriously, we had a bearing."The Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin is the last major building erected by the GDR, making it an exceptional architectural testimony to how Germany overcame its former division. Here, Berlin's great revue tradition lives on, today bringing viewers state-of-the-art shows.Important theatres include the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Volksbühne.The prolific cinema of East Germany was headed by the DEFA, "Deutsche Film AG", which was subdivided in different local groups, for example "Gruppe Berlin", "Gruppe Babelsberg" or "Gruppe Johannisthal", where the local teams shot and produced films. The East German industry became known worldwide for its productions, especially children's movies ("Das kalte Herz", film versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and modern productions such as "Das Schulgespenst"). Frank Beyer's "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar), about the Holocaust, and "Fünf Patronenhülsen" (Five Cartridges), about resistance against fascism, became internationally famous.Films about daily life, such as "Die Legende von Paul und Paula", by Heiner Carow, and "Solo Sunny", directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, were very popular. The film industry was remarkable for its production of "Ostern", or Western-like movies. Amerindians in these films often took the role of displaced people who fight for their rights, in contrast to the North American westerns of the time, where they were often either not mentioned at all or are portrayed as the villains. Yugoslavs were often cast as Native Americans because of the small number of Native Americans in Europe. Gojko Mitić was well known in these roles, often playing the righteous, kindhearted and charming chief ("Die Söhne der großen Bärin" directed by Josef Mach). He became an honorary Sioux chief when he visited the United States in the 1990s, and the television crew accompanying him showed the tribe one of his movies. American actor and singer Dean Reed, an expatriate who lived in East Germany, also starred in several films. These films were part of the phenomenon of Europe producing alternative films about the colonization of the Americas.Cinemas in the GDR also showed foreign films. Czechoslovak and Polish productions were more common, but certain western movies were shown, though the numbers of these were limited because it cost foreign exchange to buy the licences. Further, films representing or glorifying what the state viewed as capitalist ideology were not bought. Comedies enjoyed great popularity, such as the Danish "Olsen Gang" or movies with the French comedian Louis de Funès.Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, several films depicting life in the GDR have been critically acclaimed. Some of the most notable were "Good Bye Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "Das Leben der Anderen" (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (won the Academy Award for best Film in a Foreign Language) in 2006, and "Alles auf Zucker!" (Go for Zucker) by Dani Levi. Each film is heavily infused with cultural nuances unique to life in the GDR.East Germany was very successful in the sports of cycling, weight-lifting, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, boxing, ice skating, and winter sports. The success is largely attributed to doping under the direction of Manfred Höppner, a sports doctor, described as the architect of East Germany's state-sponsored drug program.Anabolic steroids were the most detected doping substances in IOC-accredited laboratories for many years. The development and implementation of a state-supported sports doping program helped East Germany, with its small population, to become a world leader in sport during the 1970s and 1980s, winning a large number of Olympic and world gold medals and records. Another factor for success was the furtherance system for young people in the GDR. Sports teachers at school were encouraged to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10. For older pupils it was possible to attend grammar schools with a focus on sports (for example sailing, football and swimming). This policy was also used for talented pupils with regard to music or mathematics.Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which it was possible to get international fame. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included 2 teams each. Football was the most popular sport. Club football teams such as Dynamo Dresden, 1. FC Magdeburg, FC Carl Zeiss Jena, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo had successes in European competition. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team.The East and the West also competed via sport; GDR athletes dominated several Olympic sports. Of special interest was the only football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, a first-round match during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which the East won 1–0; but West Germany, the host, went on to win the World Cup.Television and radio in East Germany were state-run industries; the "Rundfunk der DDR" was the official radio broadcasting organisation from 1952 until unification. The organization was based in the "Funkhaus Nalepastraße" in East Berlin. "Deutscher Fernsehfunk" (DFF), from 1972 to 1990 known as "Fernsehen der DDR" or DDR-FS, was the state television broadcaster from 1952. Reception of Western broadcasts was widespread.By the mid-1980s, East Germany possessed a well-developed communications system. There were approximately 3.6 million telephones in usage (21.8 for every 100 inhabitants), and 16,476 Telex stations. Both of these networks were run by the Deutsche Post der DDR (East German Post Office). East Germany was assigned telephone country code +37; in 1991, several months after reunification, East German telephone exchanges were incorporated into country code +49.An unusual feature of the telephone network was that, in most cases, direct distance dialing for long-distance calls was not possible. Although area codes were assigned to all major towns and cities, they were only used for switching international calls. Instead, each location had its own list of dialing codes with shorter codes for local calls and longer codes for long-distance calls. After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised.In 1976 East Germany inaugurated the operation of a ground-based radio station at Fürstenwalde for the purpose of relaying and receiving communications from Soviet satellites and to serve as a participant in the international telecommunications organization established by the Soviet government, Intersputnik.Almost all East German highways, railroads, sewage systems and public buildings were in a state of disrepair at the time of reunification, as little was done to maintain infrastructure during the Communist era. West German taxpayers have had to pour more than $2 trillion into the East, to make up for the region's neglect and malaise and bring it up to a minimal standard.The Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant closely avoided a Chernobyl-scale meltdown in 1976. All East German nuclear power plants had to be shut down after reunification, because they did not meet Western safety standards.German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of most recent scholarship:Many East Germans initially regarded the dissolution of the GDR positively, but this reaction partly turned sour. West Germans often acted as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost" in unification, leading many East Germans ("Ossis") to resent West Germans ("Wessis"). In 2004, Ascher Barnstone wrote, "East Germans resent the wealth possessed by West Germans; West Germans see the East Germans as lazy opportunists who want something for nothing. East Germans find 'Wessis' arrogant and pushy, West Germans think the 'Ossis' are lazy good-for-nothings."In addition, many East German women found the west more appealing, and left the region never to return, leaving behind an underclass of poorly educated and jobless men.As of 2014, the vast majority of residents in the former GDR prefer to live in a unified Germany. However, a feeling of nostalgia persists among some, termed "Ostalgie" (a blend of "east" and "nostalgia"). This was depicted in the Wolfgang Becker film "Goodbye Lenin!". According to Klaus Schroeder, a historian and political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, some of the original residents of the GDR "still feel they don't belong or that they're strangers in unified Germany" as life in the GDR was "just more manageable". He warns German society should watch out in case Ostalgie results in a distortion and romanticization of the past.The divide between the East and the West can be seen in contemporary German elections. The left-wing Die Linke party (which has roots in the SED) continues to have a stronghold and often wins a plurality in the East, such as in the German State of Thuringia where it remains the most popular party. This is in stark distinction from the West where the more centrist parties such as the CDU/CSU and SPD dominate. | [
"Willi Stoph",
"Manfred Gerlach",
"Walter Ulbricht",
"Wilhelm Pieck",
"Erich Honecker",
"Egon Krenz"
] | |
Which employer did Maximilian Herzberger work for in Feb, 1925? | February 21, 1925 | {
"text": [
"Leitz"
]
} | L2_Q19414005_P108_0 | Maximilian Herzberger works for Eastman Kodak from Jan, 1935 to Jan, 1965.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Carl Zeiss AG from Jan, 1927 to Jan, 1934.
Maximilian Herzberger works for ETH Zürich from Jan, 1965 to Jan, 1968.
Maximilian Herzberger works for University of New Orleans from Jan, 1968 to Jan, 1978.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Leitz from Jan, 1925 to Jan, 1927. | Maximilian HerzbergerMaximilian Jacob Herzberger (7 or 17 Mar 1899, Berlin, Germany — 9 Apr 1982, New Orleans, United States) was a German-American mathematician and physicist, known for his development of the superachromat lens.Maximilian Herzberger was the son of Leopold Herzberger (born 7 Mar 1870, Krefeld — died in Rochester (NY)) and Sonja/Sofia Behrendt/Berendt/Berends (22 Mar 1876, Petersburg (Germany) — 28 Jan 1945, Florence); he had a sister Olga (24 Sep 1897, Berlin — 2 Aug 1922, Berlin). The family was Jewish.He studied mathematics and physics at the Berlin University, where Albert Einstein was one of his professors, and later became a friend and advisor.In 1923, Herzberger finished his Ph.D. thesis "Ueber Systeme hyperkomplexer Grössen" under Ludwig Bieberbach and Issai Schur at the philosophical faculty.In 1925, he married Edith Kaufmann (10 Oct 1901, Stuttgart — 16 Feb 2001, Carlsbad (California) or New Orleans);they had three children, born in Jena, viz. Ruth (born 1928), Ursula Bellugi (1931), and Hans (6 Aug 1932, spouse of Radhika Herzberger).No later than Sep 1930, he was assistant of Hans Boegehold, the chief of calculation office at Carl Zeiss Jena.In 1934, the Nazis deprived him from his professorship at Jena University and his contract with Zeiss. He emigrated with his family to Rochester (NY),where he became head of Eastman Kodak's optical research laboratories, arranged by Einstein.In 1940, he and his family became U.S. citizens.In 1945, he got the Cressy Morrison Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.In 1954 he finished the development of the superachromat as the ultimately well-corrected lens for Kodak.In 1962, he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America.In 1965, he retired from his position at Kodak, and helped building a graduate institute for optics in Switzerland,until in 1968 he followed invitation of the University of New Orleans to teach at their Physics Department.He held patents for an ""apochromatic telescope objective having three air spaced components"", and a ""superachromatic objective"". | [
"University of New Orleans",
"Eastman Kodak",
"ETH Zürich",
"Carl Zeiss AG"
] | |
Which employer did Maximilian Herzberger work for in Nov, 1928? | November 06, 1928 | {
"text": [
"Carl Zeiss AG"
]
} | L2_Q19414005_P108_1 | Maximilian Herzberger works for Eastman Kodak from Jan, 1935 to Jan, 1965.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Carl Zeiss AG from Jan, 1927 to Jan, 1934.
Maximilian Herzberger works for ETH Zürich from Jan, 1965 to Jan, 1968.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Leitz from Jan, 1925 to Jan, 1927.
Maximilian Herzberger works for University of New Orleans from Jan, 1968 to Jan, 1978. | Maximilian HerzbergerMaximilian Jacob Herzberger (7 or 17 Mar 1899, Berlin, Germany — 9 Apr 1982, New Orleans, United States) was a German-American mathematician and physicist, known for his development of the superachromat lens.Maximilian Herzberger was the son of Leopold Herzberger (born 7 Mar 1870, Krefeld — died in Rochester (NY)) and Sonja/Sofia Behrendt/Berendt/Berends (22 Mar 1876, Petersburg (Germany) — 28 Jan 1945, Florence); he had a sister Olga (24 Sep 1897, Berlin — 2 Aug 1922, Berlin). The family was Jewish.He studied mathematics and physics at the Berlin University, where Albert Einstein was one of his professors, and later became a friend and advisor.In 1923, Herzberger finished his Ph.D. thesis "Ueber Systeme hyperkomplexer Grössen" under Ludwig Bieberbach and Issai Schur at the philosophical faculty.In 1925, he married Edith Kaufmann (10 Oct 1901, Stuttgart — 16 Feb 2001, Carlsbad (California) or New Orleans);they had three children, born in Jena, viz. Ruth (born 1928), Ursula Bellugi (1931), and Hans (6 Aug 1932, spouse of Radhika Herzberger).No later than Sep 1930, he was assistant of Hans Boegehold, the chief of calculation office at Carl Zeiss Jena.In 1934, the Nazis deprived him from his professorship at Jena University and his contract with Zeiss. He emigrated with his family to Rochester (NY),where he became head of Eastman Kodak's optical research laboratories, arranged by Einstein.In 1940, he and his family became U.S. citizens.In 1945, he got the Cressy Morrison Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.In 1954 he finished the development of the superachromat as the ultimately well-corrected lens for Kodak.In 1962, he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America.In 1965, he retired from his position at Kodak, and helped building a graduate institute for optics in Switzerland,until in 1968 he followed invitation of the University of New Orleans to teach at their Physics Department.He held patents for an ""apochromatic telescope objective having three air spaced components"", and a ""superachromatic objective"". | [
"University of New Orleans",
"Eastman Kodak",
"Leitz",
"ETH Zürich"
] | |
Which employer did Maximilian Herzberger work for in Aug, 1946? | August 25, 1946 | {
"text": [
"Eastman Kodak"
]
} | L2_Q19414005_P108_2 | Maximilian Herzberger works for Leitz from Jan, 1925 to Jan, 1927.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Eastman Kodak from Jan, 1935 to Jan, 1965.
Maximilian Herzberger works for University of New Orleans from Jan, 1968 to Jan, 1978.
Maximilian Herzberger works for ETH Zürich from Jan, 1965 to Jan, 1968.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Carl Zeiss AG from Jan, 1927 to Jan, 1934. | Maximilian HerzbergerMaximilian Jacob Herzberger (7 or 17 Mar 1899, Berlin, Germany — 9 Apr 1982, New Orleans, United States) was a German-American mathematician and physicist, known for his development of the superachromat lens.Maximilian Herzberger was the son of Leopold Herzberger (born 7 Mar 1870, Krefeld — died in Rochester (NY)) and Sonja/Sofia Behrendt/Berendt/Berends (22 Mar 1876, Petersburg (Germany) — 28 Jan 1945, Florence); he had a sister Olga (24 Sep 1897, Berlin — 2 Aug 1922, Berlin). The family was Jewish.He studied mathematics and physics at the Berlin University, where Albert Einstein was one of his professors, and later became a friend and advisor.In 1923, Herzberger finished his Ph.D. thesis "Ueber Systeme hyperkomplexer Grössen" under Ludwig Bieberbach and Issai Schur at the philosophical faculty.In 1925, he married Edith Kaufmann (10 Oct 1901, Stuttgart — 16 Feb 2001, Carlsbad (California) or New Orleans);they had three children, born in Jena, viz. Ruth (born 1928), Ursula Bellugi (1931), and Hans (6 Aug 1932, spouse of Radhika Herzberger).No later than Sep 1930, he was assistant of Hans Boegehold, the chief of calculation office at Carl Zeiss Jena.In 1934, the Nazis deprived him from his professorship at Jena University and his contract with Zeiss. He emigrated with his family to Rochester (NY),where he became head of Eastman Kodak's optical research laboratories, arranged by Einstein.In 1940, he and his family became U.S. citizens.In 1945, he got the Cressy Morrison Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.In 1954 he finished the development of the superachromat as the ultimately well-corrected lens for Kodak.In 1962, he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America.In 1965, he retired from his position at Kodak, and helped building a graduate institute for optics in Switzerland,until in 1968 he followed invitation of the University of New Orleans to teach at their Physics Department.He held patents for an ""apochromatic telescope objective having three air spaced components"", and a ""superachromatic objective"". | [
"University of New Orleans",
"Leitz",
"ETH Zürich",
"Carl Zeiss AG"
] | |
Which employer did Maximilian Herzberger work for in Jan, 1967? | January 18, 1967 | {
"text": [
"ETH Zürich"
]
} | L2_Q19414005_P108_3 | Maximilian Herzberger works for University of New Orleans from Jan, 1968 to Jan, 1978.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Leitz from Jan, 1925 to Jan, 1927.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Carl Zeiss AG from Jan, 1927 to Jan, 1934.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Eastman Kodak from Jan, 1935 to Jan, 1965.
Maximilian Herzberger works for ETH Zürich from Jan, 1965 to Jan, 1968. | Maximilian HerzbergerMaximilian Jacob Herzberger (7 or 17 Mar 1899, Berlin, Germany — 9 Apr 1982, New Orleans, United States) was a German-American mathematician and physicist, known for his development of the superachromat lens.Maximilian Herzberger was the son of Leopold Herzberger (born 7 Mar 1870, Krefeld — died in Rochester (NY)) and Sonja/Sofia Behrendt/Berendt/Berends (22 Mar 1876, Petersburg (Germany) — 28 Jan 1945, Florence); he had a sister Olga (24 Sep 1897, Berlin — 2 Aug 1922, Berlin). The family was Jewish.He studied mathematics and physics at the Berlin University, where Albert Einstein was one of his professors, and later became a friend and advisor.In 1923, Herzberger finished his Ph.D. thesis "Ueber Systeme hyperkomplexer Grössen" under Ludwig Bieberbach and Issai Schur at the philosophical faculty.In 1925, he married Edith Kaufmann (10 Oct 1901, Stuttgart — 16 Feb 2001, Carlsbad (California) or New Orleans);they had three children, born in Jena, viz. Ruth (born 1928), Ursula Bellugi (1931), and Hans (6 Aug 1932, spouse of Radhika Herzberger).No later than Sep 1930, he was assistant of Hans Boegehold, the chief of calculation office at Carl Zeiss Jena.In 1934, the Nazis deprived him from his professorship at Jena University and his contract with Zeiss. He emigrated with his family to Rochester (NY),where he became head of Eastman Kodak's optical research laboratories, arranged by Einstein.In 1940, he and his family became U.S. citizens.In 1945, he got the Cressy Morrison Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.In 1954 he finished the development of the superachromat as the ultimately well-corrected lens for Kodak.In 1962, he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America.In 1965, he retired from his position at Kodak, and helped building a graduate institute for optics in Switzerland,until in 1968 he followed invitation of the University of New Orleans to teach at their Physics Department.He held patents for an ""apochromatic telescope objective having three air spaced components"", and a ""superachromatic objective"". | [
"University of New Orleans",
"Eastman Kodak",
"Leitz",
"Carl Zeiss AG"
] | |
Which employer did Maximilian Herzberger work for in Oct, 1975? | October 28, 1975 | {
"text": [
"University of New Orleans"
]
} | L2_Q19414005_P108_4 | Maximilian Herzberger works for ETH Zürich from Jan, 1965 to Jan, 1968.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Eastman Kodak from Jan, 1935 to Jan, 1965.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Carl Zeiss AG from Jan, 1927 to Jan, 1934.
Maximilian Herzberger works for University of New Orleans from Jan, 1968 to Jan, 1978.
Maximilian Herzberger works for Leitz from Jan, 1925 to Jan, 1927. | Maximilian HerzbergerMaximilian Jacob Herzberger (7 or 17 Mar 1899, Berlin, Germany — 9 Apr 1982, New Orleans, United States) was a German-American mathematician and physicist, known for his development of the superachromat lens.Maximilian Herzberger was the son of Leopold Herzberger (born 7 Mar 1870, Krefeld — died in Rochester (NY)) and Sonja/Sofia Behrendt/Berendt/Berends (22 Mar 1876, Petersburg (Germany) — 28 Jan 1945, Florence); he had a sister Olga (24 Sep 1897, Berlin — 2 Aug 1922, Berlin). The family was Jewish.He studied mathematics and physics at the Berlin University, where Albert Einstein was one of his professors, and later became a friend and advisor.In 1923, Herzberger finished his Ph.D. thesis "Ueber Systeme hyperkomplexer Grössen" under Ludwig Bieberbach and Issai Schur at the philosophical faculty.In 1925, he married Edith Kaufmann (10 Oct 1901, Stuttgart — 16 Feb 2001, Carlsbad (California) or New Orleans);they had three children, born in Jena, viz. Ruth (born 1928), Ursula Bellugi (1931), and Hans (6 Aug 1932, spouse of Radhika Herzberger).No later than Sep 1930, he was assistant of Hans Boegehold, the chief of calculation office at Carl Zeiss Jena.In 1934, the Nazis deprived him from his professorship at Jena University and his contract with Zeiss. He emigrated with his family to Rochester (NY),where he became head of Eastman Kodak's optical research laboratories, arranged by Einstein.In 1940, he and his family became U.S. citizens.In 1945, he got the Cressy Morrison Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.In 1954 he finished the development of the superachromat as the ultimately well-corrected lens for Kodak.In 1962, he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America.In 1965, he retired from his position at Kodak, and helped building a graduate institute for optics in Switzerland,until in 1968 he followed invitation of the University of New Orleans to teach at their Physics Department.He held patents for an ""apochromatic telescope objective having three air spaced components"", and a ""superachromatic objective"". | [
"Eastman Kodak",
"Leitz",
"ETH Zürich",
"Carl Zeiss AG"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Nov, 1901? | November 06, 1901 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_0 | Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Oct, 1906? | October 13, 1906 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_1 | Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Apr, 1910? | April 15, 1910 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_2 | Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Mar, 1919? | March 23, 1919 | {
"text": [
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Lord Privy Seal"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_3 | Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Jul, 1915? | July 16, 1915 | {
"text": [
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_4 | Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Oct, 1914? | October 21, 1914 | {
"text": [
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_5 | Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Jan, 1918? | January 24, 1918 | {
"text": [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the House of Commons"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_6 | Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Feb, 1918? | February 23, 1918 | {
"text": [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the House of Commons"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_7 | Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Jul, 1921? | July 05, 1921 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_8 | Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Aug, 1920? | August 21, 1920 | {
"text": [
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Lord Privy Seal"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_9 | Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Oct, 1922? | October 28, 1922 | {
"text": [
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_10 | Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which position did Bonar Law hold in Jan, 1923? | January 17, 1923 | {
"text": [
"Prime Minister of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom"
]
} | L2_Q166663_P39_11 | Bonar Law holds the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer from Dec, 1916 to Jan, 1919.
Bonar Law holds the position of Lord Privy Seal from Jan, 1919 to Apr, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1922 to May, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Jan, 1910 to Nov, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom from May, 1906 to Jan, 1910.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom from Nov, 1922 to Oct, 1923.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Conservative Party from Jan, 1911 to Jan, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Dec, 1916 to Mar, 1921.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom from Dec, 1918 to Oct, 1922.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Oct, 1900 to Jan, 1906.
Bonar Law holds the position of Leader of the Opposition from Nov, 1911 to May, 1915.
Bonar Law holds the position of Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom from Mar, 1911 to Nov, 1918. | Bonar LawAndrew Bonar Law (; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923.Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province), the first British prime minister to be born outside the British Isles. He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rather than risk a draw splitting the party.As Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Law focused his attentions in favour of tariff reform and against Irish Home Rule. His campaigning helped turn Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three-year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War, with much argument over the status of the six counties in Ulster which would later become Northern Ireland, four of which were predominantly Protestant.Law first held Cabinet office as Secretary of State for the Colonies in H. H. Asquith's Coalition Government (May 1915 – December 1916). Upon Asquith's fall from power he declined to form a government, instead serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Lloyd George's Coalition Government. He resigned on grounds of ill health in early-1921. In October 1922, with Lloyd George's Coalition having become unpopular with the Conservatives, he wrote a letter to the press giving only lukewarm support to the Government's actions over Chanak. After Conservative MPs voted to end the Coalition, he again became party leader and, this time, prime minister. Bonar Law won a clear majority at the 1922 general election, and his brief premiership saw negotiation with the United States over Britain's war loans. Seriously ill with throat cancer, Law resigned in May 1923, and died later that year. He was the third shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office), and is sometimes called "The Unknown Prime Minister".He was born on 16 September 1858 in Kingston (now Rexton), New Brunswick, to Eliza Kidston Law and the Reverend James Law, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland with Scottish and Irish (mainly Ulster Scots) ancestry. At the time of his birth, New Brunswick was still a separate colony, as the Canadian confederation did not occur until 1867.His mother originally wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired, but as his older brother was already called Robert, he was instead named after Andrew Bonar, a biographer of M'Cheyne. Throughout his life he was always called Bonar (rhyming with honour) by his family and close friends, never Andrew. He originally signed his name as A.B. Law, changing to A. Bonar Law in his thirties, and he was referred to as Bonar Law by the public as well.James Law was the minister for several isolated townships, and had to travel between them by horse, boat and on foot. To supplement the family income, he bought a small farm on the Richibucto River, which Bonar helped tend along with his brothers Robert, William and John, and his sister Mary. Studying at the local village school, Law did well at his studies, and it is here that he was first noted for his excellent memory. After Eliza Law died in 1861, her sister Janet travelled to New Brunswick from her home in Scotland to look after the Law children. When James Law remarried in 1870, his new wife took over Janet's duties, and Janet decided to return home to Scotland. She suggested that Bonar Law should go with her, as the Kidston family were wealthier and better connected than the Laws, and Bonar would have a more privileged upbringing. Both James and Bonar accepted this, and Bonar left with Janet, never to return to Kingston.Law went to live at Janet's house in Helensburgh, near Glasgow. Her brothers Charles, Richard and William were partners in the family merchant bank Kidston & Sons, and as only one of them had married (and produced no heir) it was generally accepted that Law would inherit the firm, or at least play a role in its management when he was older. Immediately upon arriving from Kingston, Law began attending Gilbertfield House School, a preparatory school in Hamilton. In 1873, aged fourteen, he transferred to the High School of Glasgow, where with his good memory he showed a talent for languages, excelling in Greek, German and French. During this period, he first began to play chess – he would carry a board on the train between Helensburgh and Glasgow, challenging other commuters to matches. He eventually became a very good amateur player, and competed with internationally renowned chess masters. Despite his good academic record, it became obvious at Glasgow that he was better suited to business than to university, and when he was sixteen, Law left school to become a clerk at Kidston & Sons.At Kidston & Sons, Law received a nominal salary, on the understanding that he would gain a "commercial education" from working there that would serve him well as a businessman. In 1885 the Kidston brothers decided to retire, and agreed to merge the firm with the Clydesdale Bank.The merger would have left Law without a job and with poor career-prospects, but the retiring brothers found him a job with William Jacks, an iron merchant who had started pursuing a parliamentary career. The Kidston brothers lent Law the money to buy a partnership in Jacks' firm, and with Jacks himself no longer playing an active part in the company, Law effectively became the managing partner. Working long hours (and insisting that his employees did likewise), Law turned the firm into one of the most profitable iron merchants in the Glaswegian and Scottish markets.During this period Law became a "self-improver"; despite his lack of formal university education he sought to test his intellect, attending lectures given at Glasgow University and joining the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, which adhered as closely as possible to the layout of the real Parliament of the United Kingdom and undoubtedly helped Law hone the skills that served him so well in the political arena.By the time he was thirty Law had established himself as a successful businessman, and had time to devote to more leisurely pursuits. He remained an avid chess player, whom Andrew Harley called "a strong player, touching first-class amateur level, which he had attained by practice at the Glasgow Club in earlier days". Law also worked with the Parliamentary Debating Association and took up golf, tennis and walking. In 1888 he moved out of the Kidston household and set up his own home at Seabank, with his sister Mary (who had earlier come over from Canada) acting as the housekeeper.In 1890, Law met Annie Pitcairn Robley, the 24-year-old daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, Harrington Robley. They quickly fell in love, and married on 24 March 1891. Little is known of Law's wife, as most of her letters have been lost. It is known that she was much liked in both Glasgow and London, and that her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried. The couple had six children: James Kidston (1893–1917), Isabel Harrington (1895–1969), Charles John (1897–1917), Harrington (1899–1958), Richard Kidston (1901–1980), and Catherine Edith (1905–1992).The second son, Charlie, who was a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. The eldest son, James, who was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917, and the deaths made Law even more melancholy and depressed than before. The youngest son, Richard, later served as a Conservative MP and minister. Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes (in the early years of World War I she had been engaged for a time to the Australian war correspondent Keith Murdoch) and Catherine married, firstly, Kent Colwell and, much later, in 1961, The 1st Baron Archibald.In 1897, Law was asked to become the Conservative Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Glasgow Bridgeton. Soon after he was offered another seat, this one in Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, which he took instead of Glasgow Bridgeton. Blackfriars was not a seat with high prospects attached; a working-class area, it had returned Liberal Party MPs since it was created in 1884, and the incumbent, Andrew Provand, was highly popular. Although the election was not due until 1902, the events of the Second Boer War forced the Conservative government to call a general election in 1900, later known as the khaki election. The campaign was unpleasant for both sides, with anti- and pro-war campaigners fighting vociferously, but Law distinguished himself with his oratory and wit. When the results came in on 4 October, Law was returned to Parliament with a majority of 1,000, overturning Provand's majority of 381. He immediately ended his active work at Jacks and Company (although he retained his directorship) and moved to London.Law initially became frustrated with the slow speed of Parliament compared to the rapid pace of the Glasgow iron market, and Austen Chamberlain recalled him saying to Chamberlain that "it was very well for men who, like myself had been able to enter the House of Commons young to adapt to a Parliamentary career, but if he had known what the House of Commons was he would never had entered at this stage". He soon learnt to be patient, however, and on 18 February 1901 made his maiden speech. Replying to anti-Boer War MPs including David Lloyd George, Law used his excellent memory to quote sections of Hansard back to the opposition which contained their previous speeches supporting and commending the policies they now denounced. Although lasting only fifteen minutes and not a crowd- or press-pleaser like the maiden speeches of F.E. Smith or Winston Churchill, it attracted the attention of the Conservative Party leaders.Law's chance to make his mark came with the issue of tariff reform. To cover the costs of the Second Boer War, Lord Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Michael Hicks Beach) suggested introducing import taxes or tariffs on foreign metal, flour and grain coming into Britain. Such tariffs had previously existed in Britain, but the last of these had been abolished in the 1870s because of the free trade movement. A duty was now introduced on imported corn. The issue became "explosive", dividing the British political world, and continued even after Salisbury retired and was replaced as prime minister by his nephew, Arthur Balfour.Law took advantage of this, making his first major speech on 22 April 1902, in which he argued that while he felt a general tariff was unnecessary, an imperial customs union (which would put tariffs on items from outside the British Empire, instead of on every nation but Britain) was a good idea, particularly since other nations such as (Germany) and the United States had increasingly high tariffs. Using his business experience, he made a "plausible case" that there was no proof that tariffs led to increases in the cost of living, as the Liberals had argued. Again his memory came into good use – when William Harcourt accused Law of misquoting him, Law was able to precisely give the place in Hansard where Harcourt's speech was to be found.As a result of Law's proven experience in business matters and his skill as an economic spokesman for the government, Balfour offered him the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he formed his government, which Law accepted, and he was formally appointed on 11 August 1902.As Parliamentary Secretary his job was to assist the President of the Board of Trade, Gerald Balfour. At the time the tariff reform controversy was brewing, led by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, an ardent tariff reformer who "declared war" on free trade, and who persuaded the Cabinet that the Empire should be exempted from the new corn duty. After returning from a speaking tour of South Africa in 1903, Chamberlain found that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (C.T. Ritchie) had instead abolished Hicks Beach's corn duty altogether in his budget. Angered by this, Chamberlain spoke at the Birmingham Town Hall on 15 May without the government's permission, arguing for an Empire-wide system of tariffs which would protect Imperial economies, forge the British Empire into one political entity and allow them to compete with other world powers.The speech and its ideas split the Conservative Party and its coalition ally the Liberal Unionist Party into two wings – the Free Fooders, who supported free trade, and the Tariff Reformers, who supported Chamberlain's tariff reforms. Law was a dedicated Tariff Reformer, but whereas Chamberlain dreamed of a new golden age for Britain, Law focused on more mundane and practical goals, such as a reduction in unemployment. L.S. Amery said that to Law, the tariff reform programme was "a question of trade figures and not national and Imperial policy of expansion and consolidation of which trade was merely the economic factor". Keith Laybourn attributes Law's interest in tariff reform not only to the sound business practice that it represented but also that because of his place of birth "he was attracted by the Imperial tariff preference arrangements advocated by Joseph Chamberlain". Law's constituents in Blackfriars were not overly enthusiastic about tariff reform – Glasgow was a poor area at the time that had benefited from free trade.In parliament, Law worked exceedingly hard at pushing for tariff reform, regularly speaking in the House of Commons and defeating legendary debaters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dilke and H. H. Asquith, former home secretary and later prime minister. His speeches at the time were known for their clarity and common sense; Sir Ian Malcolm said that he made "the involved seem intelligible", and L.S. Amery said his arguments were "like the hammering of a skilled riveter, every blow hitting the nail on the head". Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned as prime minister in December 1905, allowing the Liberals to form a government.The new prime minister, the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman, immediately dissolved Parliament. Despite strong campaigning and a visit by Arthur Balfour, Law lost his seat in the ensuing general election. In total the Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists lost 245 seats, leaving them with only 157 members of parliament, the majority of them tariff reformers. Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament. The retirement of Frederick Rutherfoord Harris, MP for the safe Conservative seat of Dulwich, offered him a chance. Law was returned to Parliament in the ensuing by-election, increasing the Conservative majority to 1,279.The party was struck a blow in July 1906, when two days after a celebration of his seventieth birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. He was succeeded as leader of the tariff reformers by his son Austen Chamberlain, who despite previous experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer and enthusiasm for tariff reform was not as skilled a speaker as Law. As a result, Law joined Balfour's Shadow Cabinet as the principal spokesman for tariff reform. The death of Law's wife on 31 October 1909 led him to work even harder, treating his political career not only as a job but as a coping strategy for his loneliness.Campbell-Bannerman resigned as prime minister in April 1908 and was replaced by H. H. Asquith. In 1909, he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced the People's Budget, which sought through increased direct and indirect taxes to redistribute wealth and fund social reform programmes. By parliamentary convention financial and budget bills are not challenged by the House of Lords, but in this case the predominantly Conservative Lords rejected the bill on 30 April, setting off a constitutional crisis.The Liberals called a general election for January 1910, and Law spent most of the preceding months campaigning up and down the country for other Conservative candidates and MPs, sure that his Dulwich seat was safe. He obtained an increased majority of 2,418. The overall result was more confused: the Conservatives gained 116 seats, bringing their total to 273, but this was still less than the Liberal caucus, and produced a hung parliament, as neither had a majority of the seats (the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Labour Party and the All-for-Ireland League took more than 120 seats in total). The Liberals remained in office with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Budget passed through the House of Commons a second time, and – as it now had an electoral mandate – was then approved by the House of Lords without a division.However, the crisis over the Budget had highlighted a long-standing constitutional question: should the House of Lords be able to overturn bills passed by the House of Commons? The Liberal government introduced a bill in February 1910 which would prevent the House of Lords vetoing finance bills, and would force them to pass any bill which had been passed by the Commons in three sessions of Parliament.This was immediately opposed by the Unionists, and both parties spent the next several months in a running battle over the bill. The Conservatives were led by Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, who headed the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while Law spent the time concentrating on the continuing problem of tariff reform. The lack of progress had convinced some senior Conservatives that it would be a good idea to scrap tariff reform altogether. Law disagreed, successfully arguing that tariff reform "was the first constructive work of the [Conservative Party]" and that to scrap it would "split the Party from top to bottom".With this success, Law returned to the constitutional crisis surrounding the House of Lords. The death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910 prompted the leaders of the major political parties to meet secretly in a "Truce of God" to discuss the Lords. The meetings were kept almost entirely secret: apart from the party representatives, the only people aware were F.E. Smith, J.L. Garvin, Edward Carson and Law. The group met about twenty times at Buckingham Palace between June and November 1910, with the Conservatives represented by Arthur Balfour, Lord Cawdor, Lord Lansdowne and Austen Chamberlain. The proposal presented at the conference by David Lloyd George was a coalition government with members of both major parties in the Cabinet and a programme involving Home Rule, Poor Law reforms, imperial reorganisation and possibly tariff reforms. The Home Rule proposal would have made the United Kingdom a federation, with "Home Rule All Round" for Scotland, Ireland, and England & Wales. In the end the plans fell through: Balfour told Lloyd George on 2 November that the proposal would not work, and the conference was dissolved a few days later.With the failure to establish a political consensus after the January 1910 general election, the Liberals called a second general election in December. The Conservative leadership decided that a good test of the popularity of the tariff reform programme would be to have a prominent tariff reformer stand for election in a disputed seat. They considered Law a prime candidate, and after debating it for a month he guardedly agreed, enthusiastic about the idea but worried about the effect of a defeat on the Party. Law was selected as the candidate for Manchester North West, and became drawn into party debates about how strong a tariff reform policy should be put in their manifesto. Law personally felt that duties on foodstuffs should be excluded, something agreed to by Alexander Acland-Hood, Edward Carson and others at a meeting of the Constitutional Club on 8 November 1910, but they failed to reach a consensus and the idea of including or excluding food duties continued to be something that divided the party.During the constitutional talks the Conservatives had demanded that, if the Lords' veto were removed, Irish Home Rule should only be permitted if approved by a UK-wide referendum. In response Lord Crewe, Liberal Leader in the Lords, had suggested sarcastically that tariff reform – a policy of questionable popularity because of the likelihood of increased prices on imported food – should also be submitted to a referendum. Arthur Balfour now announced to a crowd of 10,000 at the Royal Albert Hall that after the coming election, a Conservative Government would indeed submit tariff reform to a referendum, something he described as "Bonar Law's proposal" or the "Referendum Pledge". The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the dozens of Conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to "pass the buck" and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party. While Law had written a letter to Balfour suggesting that a referendum would attract wealthy Conservatives, he said that "declaration would do no good with [the working class] and might damp enthusiasm of best workers".Parliament was dissolved on 28 November, with the election to take place and polling to end by 19 December. The Conservative and Liberal parties were equal in strength, and with the continued support of the Irish Nationalists the Liberal Party remained in government. Law called his campaign in Manchester North West the hardest of his career; his opponent, George Kemp, was a war hero who had fought in the Second Boer War and a former Conservative who had joined the Liberal party because of his disagreement with tariff reform.In the end Law narrowly lost, with 5,114 votes to Kemp's 5,559, but the election turned him into a "genuine [Conservative] hero", and he later said that the defeat did "more for him in the party than a hundred victories". In 1911, with the Conservative Party unable to afford him being out of Parliament, Law was elected in a by-election for the safe Conservative seat of Bootle. In his brief absence the Liberal suggestions for the reform of the House of Lords were passed as the Parliament Act 1911, ending that particular dispute.On the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, Law was appointed as a Privy Councillor on the recommendation of the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Arthur Balfour. This was evidence of his seniority and importance within the Conservative Party. Balfour had become increasingly unpopular as Leader of the Conservative Party since the 1906 general election; tariff reformers saw his leadership as the reason for their electoral losses, and the "free fooders" had been alienated by Balfour's attempts to tame the zeal of the tariff reform faction. Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.The defeat on the House of Lords issue turned a wing of the Conservative Party led by Henry Page Croft and his Reveille Movement, against Balfour. Leo Maxse began a Balfour Must Go campaign in his newspaper, the "National Review", and by July 1911 Balfour was contemplating resignation. Law himself had no problem with Balfour's leadership, and along with Edward Carson attempted to regain support for him. By November 1911 it was accepted that Balfour was likely to resign, with the main competitors for the leadership being Law, Carson, Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain. When the elections began, Long and Chamberlain were the frontrunners; Chamberlain commanded the support of many tariff reformers, and Long that of the Irish Unionists. Carson immediately announced that he would not stand, and Law eventually announced that he would run for Leader, the day before Balfour resigned on 7 November.At the beginning of the election Law held the support of no more than 40 of the 270 members of parliament; the remaining 230 were divided between Long and Chamberlain. Although Long believed he had the most MPs, his support was largely amongst backbenchers, and most of the whips and frontbenchers preferred Chamberlain.With Long and Chamberlain almost neck-and-neck they called a meeting on 9 November to discuss the possibility of a deadlock. Chamberlain suggested that he would withdraw if this became a strong possibility, assuming Long did the same. Long, now concerned that his weak health would not allow him to survive the stress of party leadership, agreed. Both withdrew on 10 November, and on 13 November 232 MPs assembled at the Carlton Club, and Law was nominated as leader by Long and Chamberlain. With the unanimous support of the MPs, Law became Leader of the Conservative Party despite never having sat in Cabinet. Law's biographer, Robert Blake, wrote that he was an unusual choice to lead the Conservatives as a Presbyterian Canadian-Scots businessman had just become the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles"As leader, Law first "rejuvenated the party machine", selecting newer, younger and more popular whips and secretaries, elevating F.E. Smith and Lord Robert Cecil to the Shadow Cabinet and using his business acumen to reorganise the party, resulting in better relations with the press and local branches, along with the raising of a £671,000 "war chest" for the next general election: almost double that available at the previous one.On 12 February 1912, he finally unified the two Unionist parties (Conservatives and Liberal Unionists) into the awkwardly named National Unionist Association of Conservative and Liberal-Unionist Organisations. From then on all were referred to as "Unionists" until the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, after which they became Conservatives again (though the name "Unionist" continued in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland).In Parliament, Law introduced the so-called "new style" of speaking, with harsh, accusatory rhetoric, which dominates British politics to this day. This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his "masterly witticisms", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure. Law did not particularly enjoy his tougher manner, and at the State Opening of Parliament in February 1912 apologised directly to Asquith for his coming speech, saying, "I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand." Law's "warrior king" figure helped unify the divided Conservatives into a single body, with him as the leader.During his early time as Conservative leader, the party's social policy was the most complicated and difficult to agree. In his opening speech as leader he said that the party would be one of principle, and would not be reactionary, instead sticking to their guns and holding firm policies. Despite this he left women's suffrage alone, leaving the party unwhipped and saying that "the less part we take in this question the better". In terms of social reform (legislation to improve the conditions of the poor and working classes) Law was similarly unenthusiastic, believing that the area was a Liberal one, in which they could not successfully compete. His response to a request by Lord Balcarres for a social programme was simply "As the [Liberal Party] refuse to formulate their policy in advance we should be equally absolved". His refusal to get drawn in may have actually strengthened his hold over Conservative MPs, many of whom were similarly uninterested in social reform.In his first public speech as leader at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 January 1912 he listed his three biggest concerns: an attack on the Liberal government for failing to submit Home Rule to a referendum; tariff reform; and the Conservative refusal to let the Ulster Unionists be "trampled upon" by an unfair Home Rule bill. Both tariff reform and Ulster dominated his political work, with Austen Chamberlain saying that Law "once said to me that he cared intensely for only two things: Tariff Reform and Ulster; all the rest was only part of the game".After further review with members of his party, Law changed his initial beliefs on tariff reform and accepted the full package, including duties on foodstuffs. On 29 February 1912 the entire Conservative parliamentary body (i.e. both MPs and peers) met at Lansdowne House, with Lord Lansdowne chairing. Lansdowne argued that although the electorate might prefer the Conservative Party if they dropped food duties from their tariff reform plan, it would open them to accusations of bad faith and "poltroonery". Law endorsed Lansdowne's argument, pointing out that any attempt to avoid food duties would cause an internal party struggle and could only aid the Liberals, and that Canada, the most economically important colony and a major exporter of foodstuffs, would never agree to tariffs without British support of food duties.Lord Salisbury, who opposed food duties, wrote to Law several weeks later suggesting they separate foodstuffs from tariff reform for the referendum. If the electorate liked food duties, they would vote for the entire package; if not, they did not have to. Law replied arguing that it would be impossible to do so effectively, and that with the increasing costs of defence and social programmes it would be impossible to raise the necessary capital except by comprehensive tariff reform. He argued that a failure to offer the entire tariff reform package would split the Conservative Party down the middle, offending the tariff reform faction, and that if such a split took place "I could not possibly continue as leader".Law postponed withdrawing the tariff reform "Referendum Pledge" because of the visit of Robert Borden, the newly elected Conservative prime minister of Canada, to London planned for July 1912. Meeting with Borden on his arrival, Law got him to agree to make a statement about the necessity of Imperial tariff reform, promising reciprocal agreements and saying that failure by London to agree tariff reform would result in an "irresistible pressure" for Canada to make a treaty with another nation, most obviously the United States.Law decided that the November party conference was the perfect time to announce the withdrawal of the Referendum Pledge, and that Lord Lansdowne should do it, because he had been leader in the House of Lords when the pledge was made and because of his relatively low profile during the original tariff reform dispute. When the conference opened the British political world was febrile; on 12 November the opposition had narrowly defeated the government on an amendment to the Home Rule Bill, and the next evening, amidst hysterical shouting from the opposition, Asquith attempted to introduce a motion reversing the previous vote. As the MPs filed out at the end of the day Winston Churchill began taunting the opposition, and in his anger Ronald McNeil hurled a copy of "Standing Orders of the House" at Churchill, hitting him on the head. Law refused to condemn the events, and it seems apparent that while he had played no part in organising them they "had" been planned by the party Whips. As party leader, he was most likely aware of the plans even if he did not actively participate.The conference was opened on 14 November 1912 by Lord Farquhar, who immediately introduced Lord Lansdowne. Lansdowne revoked the Referendum Pledge, saying that as the government had failed to submit Home Rule to a referendum, the offer that tariff reform would also be submitted was null and void. Lansdowne promised that when the Unionists took office they would "do so with a free hand to deal with tariffs as they saw fit". Law then rose to speak, and in line with his agreement to let Lansdowne speak for tariff reform mentioned it only briefly when he said "I concur in every word which has fallen from Lord Lansdowne". He instead promised a reversal of several Liberal policies when the Unionists came to power, including the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, land taxes and Irish Home Rule. The crowd "cheered themselves hoarse" at Law's speech.However, the reaction from the party outside the conference hall was not a positive one. Law had not consulted the local constituency branches about his plan, and several important constituency leaders led by Archibald Salvidge and Lord Derby planned for a meeting of the Lancashire party, the centre of discontent, on 21 December. Law was preoccupied with the problem of Irish Home Rule and was unable to give the discontent his full attention. He continued to believe that his approach to the problem of tariff reform was the correct one, and wrote to John Strachey on 16 November saying that "it was a case of a choice of two evils, and all that one could do was to take the lesser of the two, and that I am sure we have done". Speaking to Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Austen Chamberlain and Lord Balcarres in December after two weeks of receiving negative letters from party members about the change, Law outlined that he would not be averse to a return to the previous policy considering the negative feelings from the party, but felt that this would require the resignation of both himself and Lansdowne.Law again wrote to Strachey saying that he continued to feel this policy was the correct one, and only regretted that the issue was splitting the party at a time when unity was needed to fight the Home Rule problem. At the meeting of the Lancashire party the group under Derby condemned Law's actions and called for a three-week party recess before deciding what to do about the repeal of the Referendum Pledge. This was an obvious ultimatum to Law, giving him a three-week period to change his mind. Law believed that Derby was "unprincipled and treacherous", particularly since he then circulated a questionnaire among Lancashire party members with leading questions such as "do you think the abandonment of the referendum will do harm?" Law met the Lancashire party on 2 January 1913 and ordered that they must replace any food tariff based resolutions with a vote of confidence in him as a leader, and that any alternative would result in his resignation.After a chance meeting at which Edward Carson learnt of Law and Lansdowne's acceptance of possible resignation, he was spurred to ask Edward Goulding to beg Law and Lansdowne to compromise over the policy and remain as leaders. The compromise, known as the January Memorial, was agreed by Carson, James Craig, Law and Lansdowne at Law's house between 6–8 January 1913, affirming the support of the signatories for Law and his policies, and noting that his resignation was not wanted.Within two days 231 of the 280 Conservative MPs had signed it; 27 frontbenchers had not been invited, neither had five who were not in London, seven who were ill, the Speaker and a few others who could not be found – only eight MPs actively refused to sign. Law's official response took the form of an open letter published on 13 January 1913, in which Law offered a compromise that food duties would not be placed before Parliament to vote on until after a second, approving election took place.The January and December elections in 1910 destroyed the large Liberal majority, meaning they relied on the Irish Nationalists to maintain a government. As a result, they were forced to consider Home Rule, and with the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which replaced the Lords' veto with a two-year power of delay on most issues, the Conservative Party became aware that unless they could dissolve Parliament or sabotage the Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, it would most likely become law by 1914.As the child of an Ulster family who had spent much time in the area (his father had moved back there several years after Law moved to Scotland), Law believed the gap between Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism could never be crossed. Despite this he said little about Home Rule until the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, calling it the "Home Rule in Disguise Act" and saying it was an attempt to change parliamentary procedures so as to allow Home Rule "through the back door".After the act's passage, he made a speech in the Commons saying if the Liberals wished to pass a Home Rule Bill they should submit it to the electorate by calling a general election. His elevation to the leadership of the Conservative Party allowed him a platform to voice his opinion to the public, and his speeches (culminating with the January 1912 speech at the Royal Albert Hall) were centred on Home Rule as much as they were around tariff reform. In contrast to Balfour's "milk and water" opposition to Home Rule, Law presented a "fire and blood" opposition to Home Rule that at times seemed to suggest that he was willing to contemplate a civil war to stop Home Rule. Law stated he would not stop "from any action...we think necessary to defeat one of the most ignoble conspiracies...ever formed against the liberties of free-born men." As the Conservative Party was badly divided by the tariff issue, Law had decided to make opposition for Home Rule his signature issue as the best way of unifying the Conservative Party. Right form the start, Law presented his anti-Home Rule stance more in terms of protecting Protestant majority Ulster from being ruled by a Parliament in Dublin that would be dominated by Catholics than in terms of preserving the Union, much to the chagrin of many Unionists.Law was supported by Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionists. Although Law sympathised with the Ulster Unionists politically he did not agree with the religious intolerance shown to Catholics. The passions unleashed by the Home Rule debate frequently threatened to get out of hand. In January 1912, when Winston Churchill planned to deliver a speech in favour of Home Rule in at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) threatened to use violence if necessary to stop Churchill from speaking. The legal scholar A. V. Dicey, himself an opponent of Home Rule, wrote in a letter to Law that the threats of violence were "the worst mistake" that undermined "the whole moral strength" of the Unionist movement. But as Carson admitted in a letter to Law, the situation in Belfast was beyond his control as many UUC members were also members of the Loyal Orange Order, and the prospect of Churchill's visit to Belfast had angered so many of his followers that he felt he had to threaten violence as the best possible way of stopping the planned speech instead of leaving it to his followers who might otherwise riot. As it was, Churchill agreed to cancel his speech in response to warnings that the police would not be able to guarantee his security. Besides for his concerns about the violence, Dicey was also worried about the way in which Law was more interested about stopping Home Rule from being imposed on Ulster, instead of all of Ireland, which seemed to imply he was willing to accept the partition of Ireland. Many Irish Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by Law, who seemed to care only about Ulster.The 1912 session of Parliament opened on 14 February with a stated intent by the Liberal Party in the King's Speech to introduce a new Home Rule Bill. The bill was to be introduced on 11 April, and four days before that Law travelled to Ulster for a tour of the area. The pinnacle of this was a meeting on 9 April in the grounds of the Royal Agricultural Society near Balmoral (an area of Belfast), attended by seventy Unionist MPs, the Primate of All Ireland and topped by "perhaps the largest Union Jack ever made" – 48 feet by 25 feet on a flagpole 90 feet high.At the meeting both Law and Carson swore to the crowd that "never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule". However, the Parliament Act and the government majority made such a victory against the Bill unlikely unless the government could be brought down or Parliament dissolved. A second problem was that not all Unionists opposed Home Rule to the same degree; some hardcore Unionists would oppose any attempt at Home Rule, others thought it inevitable that the Bill would pass and were simply trying to get the best deal possible for Ulster. The spectre of civil war was also raised – the Ulstermen began to form paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteers, and there was a strong possibility that if it came to fighting the British Army would have to be sent in to support the underfunded and understaffed Royal Irish Constabulary.The argument of Law and the Unionists between 1912 and 1914 was based on three complaints. Firstly, Ulster would never accept forced Home Rule, and made up a quarter of Ireland; if the Liberals wanted to force this issue, military force would be the only way. Law thundered that "Do you plan to hurl the full majesty and power of the law, supported on the bayonets of the British Army, against a million Ulstermen marching under the Union Flag and singing 'God Save The King'? Would the Army hold? Would the British people – would the Crown – stand for such a slaughter?". A second complaint was that the government had so far refused to submit it to a general election, as Law had been suggesting since 1910. Law warned that "you will not carry this Bill without submitting it to the people of this country, and, if you make the attempt, you will succeed only in breaking our Parliamentary machine". The third complaint was that the Liberals had still not honoured the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, which promised "to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis". The Unionist argument was that the Liberals were trying to make a massive constitutional change while the constitution was suspended. In May 1912, Law was told by the Conservative whip Lord Balcarres that outside of Ireland "the electors are apathetic" about Home Rule, suggesting that he should de-emphasis the topic.In July 1912 Asquith travelled to Dublin (the first sitting prime minister to do so in over a century) to make a speech, ridiculing Unionist demands for a referendum on the issue via an election and calling their campaign "purely destructive in its objects, anarchic and chaotic in its methods". In response the Unionists had a meeting on 27 July at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, one of Asquith's ministers. More than 13,000 people attended, including over 40 peers. In Law's speech he said "I said so to [the Liberals] and I say so now, with the full sense of the responsibility which attaches to my position, that if the attempt be made under present conditions, I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go, in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people". Law added that if Asquith continued with the Home Rule bill, the government would be "lighting the fires of civil war". This speech was more known and criticised than any others; it implied both he and the British people would support the Ulstermen in anything, including armed rebellion.Despite the conflict and fierce resistance, the Bill continued its passage through Parliament. It moved to its second reading on 9 June, and the Committee stage on 11 June, where it became fraught in controversy after a young Liberal named Thomas Agar-Robartes proposed an amendment excluding four of the Ulster counties (Londonderry, Down, Antrim & Armagh) from the Irish Parliament. This put Law in a delicate situation, since he had previously said that he would support a system allowing each county to remain "outside the Irish Parliament", at the same time saying that he would not support any amendment that didn't have Ulster's full co-operation. If he accepted the amendment, he would be seen as abandoning the Irish Unionists, but on the other hand if the amendment was carried it might disrupt the government by causing a split between the Liberals and Irish Nationalists, bringing down the government and thus forcing an election.If Unionists wished to win the ensuing election they would have to show they were willing to compromise. In the end the amendment failed, but with the Liberal majority reduced by 40, and when a compromise amendment was proposed by another Liberal MP the government Whips were forced to trawl for votes. Law saw this as a victory, as it highlighted the split in the government. Edward Carson tabled another amendment on 1 January 1913 which would exclude all nine Ulster counties, more to test government resolve than anything else. While it failed, it allowed the Unionists to portray themselves as the party of compromise and the Liberals as stubborn and recalcitrant.The Unionists in Ulster were committed to independence from any Irish Home Rule. They secretly authorised a Commission of Five to write a constitution for "a provisional Government of Ulster... to come into operation on the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until Ulster shall again resume unimpaired citizenship in the United Kingdom".On 28 September 1912, Carson led 237,638 of his followers in signing a Solemn League and Covenant saying that Ulster would refuse to recognise the authority of any Parliament of Ireland arising from Home Rule. The "Ulster Covenant" as the Solemn League and Covenant was popularly called recalled the National Covenant signed by the Scots in 1638 to resist King Charles I who was viewed by Scots Presbyterians as a crypto-Catholic, and was widely seen as a sectarian document that promoted a "Protestant crusade". The Conservative MP Alfred Cripps wrote in a letter to Law that English Catholics like himself were opposed to Home Rule, but he was troubled by the way that Law seemed to be using the issue as "an occasion to attack their religion." In his reply of 7 October 1912, Law wrote he was opposed to religious bigotry and claimed that as far he could tell that no "responsible" Unionist leader in Ireland had attacked the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil had in the summer of 1912 given anti-Home Rule speeches in Ireland where he shouted "To Hell with the Pope!", and was not censured by Law. When Parliament resumed in October after the summer recess, the Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons. As expected, the House of Lords rejected it 326 to 69, and under the provisions of the Parliament Act it could only be passed if it was passed twice more by the Commons in successive Parliaments. In December 1912, the chairmen of the Conservative Party, Arthur Steel-Maitland, wrote to Law that the Home Rule issue did not command much attention in England, and asked that he move away from the topic which he asserted was damaging the image of the Conservatives.The end of 1912 saw the end of a year of political struggle for Law. As well as the problem of Home Rule, there were internal party struggles; supporters of the Church of England or military reform lambasted Law for not paying attention to their causes, and tariff reformers argued with him over his previous compromise on food duties. Despite this, most Conservatives realised that as a fighting leader, Law could not be bettered. The results of by-elections throughout 1913 continued to favour them, but progress on the Home Rule Bill was less encouraging; on 7 July it was again passed by the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords on 15 July. In response, the UUC created a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to fight against the British government if necessary to stop Home Rule. The Conservative peer, Lord Hythe, wrote to Law to suggest the Conservatives needed to present a constructive alternative to Home Rule and he had the "duty to tell these Ulstermen" that there was no need for the UVF. Another Tory peer, Lord Sailsbury, wrote to Law that as much as he was opposed to Home Rule that: "I cannot support political lawlessness and I shall either disenfranchise myself or vote Liberal...rather than encourage armed resistance in Ulster." Lord Balcarres wrote to Law that much of the Conservative caucus were "deeply confused and uncertain" and the "policies of reckless defiance" were unpopular with the party membership in England. Balcarres wrote he was "...much alarmed lest some sporadicoutbreak by Orangemen should...alienate English sympathies." Lord Lansdowne advised Law to be "extremely careful in our relations with Carson and his friends" and find a way of stopping F. E. Smith’s "habit of expressing rather violent sentiments in the guise of messages from the Unionist party." Balfour wrote to Law that he had "much misgiving upon the general loosening of the ordinary ties of social obligation...I do most strongly feel that nothing can be more demoralising to a society than that some of its...most loyal members should deliberately organise themselves for the purpose of offering...armed resistance to persons...representing lawful authority."During the debate on the Home Rule bill, Carson submitted an amendment that would exclude the 9 counties of Ulster from the jurisdiction of the proposed Parliament that would govern from Dublin, which was defeated by the Liberal MPs. However, Carson's amendment which would lead to the partition of Ireland caused much alarm with Irish Unionists outside of Ulster and led many to write letters from Law seeking assurances that he would not abandon them for the sake of saving Ulster from Home Rule. Carson told Law that he favoured a compromise under which Home Rule would be granted to southern Ireland, but not Ulster, and at the same time some sort of home rule be granted to Wales and Scotland as well. Law himself in a letter to a friend stated that the British public was "so sick of the whole Irish question" that the majority would probably agree to a compromise of a Home Rule for Ireland sans Ulster.Parliament rose for the summer recess on 15 August, and Law and the Unionists spent the summer trying to convince the King to voice an opinion on the issue. Their first suggestion was that he should withhold the Royal Assent on it, something that horrified Law's constitutional law adviser A.V. Dicey. The second was more reasonable – they argued that the Liberals had put the King in an impossible position by asking him to ratify a bill that would infuriate half of the population. His only option was to write a memo to Asquith saying this and requesting that the problem of home rule be put to the electorate via a general election. After thinking on this, the King agreed, and handed a note to Asquith on 11 August requesting either an election or an all-party conference.Asquith responded with two notes, the first countering the Unionist claim that it would be acceptable for the King to dismiss Parliament or withhold assent of the Bill to force an election, and the second arguing that a Home Rule election would not prove anything, since a Unionist victory would only be due to other problems and scandals and would not assure supporters of the current government that Home Rule was truly opposed.King George pressed for a compromise, summoning various political leaders to Balmoral Castle individually for talks. Law arrived on 13 September and again pointed out to the king his belief that if the Government continued to refuse an election fought over Home Rule and instead forced it on Ulster, the Ulstermen would not accept it and any attempts to enforce it would not be obeyed by the British Army.By early October the King was pressuring the British political world for an all-party conference. Fending this off, Law instead met with senior party members to discuss developments. Law, Balfour, Smith and Long discussed the matter, all except Long favouring a compromise with the Liberals. Long represented the anti-Home Rule elements in Southern Ireland, and from this moment onwards Southern and Northern attitudes towards Home Rule began to diverge. Law then met with Edward Carson, and afterwards expressed the opinion that "the men of Ulster do desire a settlement on the basis of leaving Ulster out, and Carson thinks such an arrangement could be carried out without any serious attack from the Unionists in the South".On 8 October Asquith wrote to Law suggesting an informal meeting of the two party leaders, which Law accepted. The two met at Cherkley Court, the home of Law's ally Sir Max Aitken MP (later Lord Beaverbrook), on 14 October. The meeting lasted an hour, and Law told Asquith that he would continue to try to have Parliament dissolved, and that in any ensuing election the Unionists would accept the result even if it went against them. Law later expressed his fear to Lansdowne that Asquith would persuade the Irish Nationalists to accept Home Rule with the exclusion of four Ulster counties with Protestant/unionist majorities. Carson would not accept this, requiring six of nine ulster counties to be excluded (i.e., four with unionist majorities plus two majority nationalist, leaving the three Ulster counties with large nationalist majorities, leading to an overall unionist majority in the six); such a move might split the Unionists. Law knew that Asquith was unlikely to consent to a general election, since he would almost certainly lose it, and that any attempt to pass the Home Rule Bill "without reference to the electorate" would lead to civil disturbance. As such, Asquith was stuck "between a rock and a hard place" and was sure to negotiate.Asquith and Law met for a second private meeting on 6 November, at which Asquith raised three possibilities. The first, suggested by Sir Edward Grey, consisted of "Home Rule within Home Rule" – Home Rule covering Ulster, but with partial autonomy for Ulster. The second was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for a number of years before becoming part of it, and the third was that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule for as long as it liked, with the opportunity of joining when it wished. Law made it clear to Asquith that the first two options were unacceptable, but the third might be accepted in some circles.The leaders then discussed the geographical definition of the area to be excluded from Home Rule; Ulster formally consists of nine counties, of which only four had a clear unionist majority, three a clear nationalist majority and two a small nationalist majority – however, overall a practical problem was that the nine counties of Ulster were majority nationalist. Carson always referred to nine counties of Ulster, but Law told Asquith that if an appropriate settlement could be made with a smaller number, Carson "would see his people and probably, though I could not give any promise to that effect, try to induce them to accept it".The third meeting was on 10 December and Law, raging because Asquith had not yet presented a concrete way to exclude Ulster, made little progress. Law brushed aside Asquith's suggestions and insisted that only the exclusion of Ulster was worth considering. He later wrote that "My feeling, however, is that Asquith has no hope whatsoever of making such an arrangement and that his present idea is simply to let things drift in the meantime.. I do not understand why he took the trouble of seeing me at all. The only explanation I can give is that I think he is in a funk about the whole position and thought that meeting me might keep the thing open at least".With the failure of these talks, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 he returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule". The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L.S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak. By the middle of the summer Long claimed more than 2,000,000 people had signed the Covenant.Law's critics, including George Dangerfield, condemned his actions in assuring the Ulster Unionists of Conservative Party support in their armed resistance to Home Rule, as unconstitutional, verging on promoting a civil war. Law's supporters argued that he was acting constitutionally by forcing the Liberal government into calling the election it had been avoiding, to obtain a mandate for their reforms.Law was not directly involved in the British Covenant campaign as he was focusing on a practical way to defeat the Home Rule Bill. His first attempt was via the Army (Annual) Act, something that "violated a basic and ancient principle of the constitution". Every year since the Glorious Revolution, the Act had fixed the maximum number of soldiers in the British Army; rejecting it would technically make the British Army an illegal institution.Lord Selborne had written to Law in 1912 to point out that vetoing or significantly amending the Act in the House of Lords would force the government to resign, and such a course of action was also suggested by others in 1913–14. Law believed that subjecting Ulstermen to a Dublin-based government they did not recognise was itself constitutionally damaging, and that amending the Army (Annual) Act to prevent the use of force in Ulster (he never suggested vetoing it) would not violate the constitution any more than the actions the government had already undertaken.By 12 March he had established that, should the Home Rule Bill be passed under the Parliament Act 1911, the Army (Annual) Act should be amended in the Lords to stipulate that the Army could not "be used in Ulster to prevent or interfere with any step which may thereafter be taken in Ulster to organise resistance to the enforcement of the Home Rule Act in Ulster nor to suppress any such resistance until and unless the present Parliament has been dissolved and a period of three months shall have lapsed after the meeting of a new Parliament". The Shadow Cabinet consulted legal experts, who agreed wholeheartedly with Law's suggestion. Although several members expressed dissent, the Shadow Cabinet decided "provisionally to agree to amendment of army act. but to leave details and decisions as to the moment of acting to Lansdowne and Law". In the end no amendment to the Army Act was offered, though; many backbenchers and party loyalists became agitated by the scheme and wrote to him that it was unacceptable – Ian Malcolm, a fanatical Ulster supporter, told Law that amending the Army Act would drive him out of the Party.On 30 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Law met with Asquith and agreed to temporarily suspend the issue of Home Rule to avoid domestic discontent during wartime. By the following day both leaders had convinced their parties to agree to this move. On 3 August, Law promised openly in Commons that his Conservative Party would give "unhesitating support' to the government's war policy. On 4 August, Germany rejected British demands for a withdrawal from Belgium, and Britain declared war.Over the coming months, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative whips worked out a truce suspending confrontational politics until either 1 January 1915 or until the end of the War. On 4 August both Asquith and Law made speeches together at the Middlesex Guildhall, and uncomfortably socialised with each other's parties. On 6 August, the Conservatives learnt that Asquith planned to put the Home Rule Bill on the statute books; Law wrote an angry letter to Asquith, the response of which was that Asquith could either pass the bill immediately, suspending it for the duration of the conflict, or make it law with a six-month delay and with a three-year exclusion for Ulster. Law responded with a speech in the Commons, saying that "the Government have treated us abominably... but we are in the middle of a great struggle. Until that struggle [is] over, so far as we are concerned, in everything connected with it there would be no parties, there would openly be a nation. In regard to this debate I have made protest as well as I could, but when I have finished we shall take no further part in the discussion". The entire Party then left the Commons silently, and although a strong protest (Asquith later admitted that "it was unique in my or I think anybody's experience") the bill was still passed, although with a suspension for the duration of the War.The Conservatives soon began to get annoyed that they were unable to criticise the Government, and took this into Parliament; rather than criticising policy, they would attack individual ministers, including the Lord Chancellor (who they considered "far too enamoured of German culture") and the Home Secretary, who was "too tender to aliens". By Christmas 1914 they were anxious about the war; it was not, in their opinion, going well, and yet they were restricted to serving on committees and making recruitment speeches. At about the same time, Law and David Lloyd George met to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. Law was supportive of the idea in some ways, seeing it as a probability that "a coalition government would come in time".The crisis which forced a coalition was twofold; first the Shell Crisis of 1915, and then the resignation of Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord. The Shell Crisis was a shortage of artillery shells on the Western Front. It indicated a failure to fully organise British industry. Asquith tried to ward off the criticism the day before the debate, praising his government's efforts and saying that "I do not believe that any army has ever either entered upon a campaign or been maintained during a campaign with better or more adequate equipment". The Conservatives, whose sources of information included officers such as Sir John French, were not put off, and instead became furious.Over the next few days the Conservative backbenchers threatened to break the truce and mount an attack on the government over the munitions situation. Law forced them to back down on 12 May, but on the 14th an article appeared in "The Times" blaming the British failure at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on the lack of munitions. This again stirred up the backbenchers, who were only just kept in line. The Shadow Cabinet took a similar line; things could not go on as they were. The crisis was only halted with the resignation of Lord Fisher. Fisher had opposed Winston Churchill over the Gallipoli Campaign, and felt that he could not continue in government if the two would be in conflict. Law knew that this would push the Conservative back bench over the edge, and met with David Lloyd George on 17 May to discuss Fisher's resignation. Lloyd George decided that "the only way to preserve a united front was to arrange for more complete cooperation between parties in the direction of the War". Lloyd George reported the meeting to Asquith, who agreed that a coalition was inescapable. He and Law agreed to form a coalition government.Law's next job, therefore, was to assist the Liberal Party in creating a new government. In their discussions on 17 May, both Law and Lloyd George had agreed that Lord Kitchener should not remain in the War Office, and removing him became top priority. Unfortunately the press began a campaign supporting Kitchener on 21 May, and the popular feeling that this raised convinced Law, Lloyd George and Asquith that Kitchener could not be removed. To keep him and at the same time remove the munitions supply from his grasp to prevent a repeat of the "shells crisis" the Ministry of Munitions was created, with Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.Law eventually accepted the post of Colonial Secretary, an unimportant post in wartime; Asquith had made it clear that he would not allow a Conservative minister to head the Exchequer, and that with Kitchener (whom he considered a Conservative) in the War Office, he would not allow another Conservative to hold a similarly important position. Fearing for the integrity of the coalition, Law accepted this position. Outside of Law's position, other Conservatives also gained positions in the new administration; Arthur Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain became Secretary of State for India and Edward Carson became Attorney General.During Law's time as Colonial Secretary, the three main issues were the question of manpower for the British Army, the crisis in Ireland and the Dardanelles Campaign. Dardanelles took priority, as seen by Asquith's restructuring of his War Council into a Dardanelles Committee. Members included Kitchener, Law, Churchill, Lloyd George and Lansdowne, with the make-up divided between political parties to defuse tension and provide criticism of policy. The main discussion was on the possibility of reinforcing the forces already landed, something Law disagreed with. With Asquith and the Army in support, however, he felt that he was ill-equipped to combat the proposal. Five more divisions were landed, but faced heavy casualties for little gain. As a result, Law led a strong resistance to the idea at the next Committee meeting on 18 August. The idea only avoided being scrapped thanks to the French promise to send forces in early September, and the arguing became an immense strain on the government.Law entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in May 1915, his first Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party Leader Asquith in December 1916, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.While chancellor, he raised the stamp duty on cheques from one penny to twopence in 1918. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between the two leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.At war's end, Law gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.By 1921–22 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand and Newfoundland, and not Canada, Australia or South Africa; Law wrote to "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world".At a meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won from the Liberals by a Conservative, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and Law took both jobs on 23 October 1922.Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which Birkenhead contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852–1855 – an analogy much used at the time.Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquhar. Bonar Law found Farquhar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.One of the questions which taxed Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the US, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels.On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 20 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey where later his ashes were interred. His estate was probated at £35,736 (approximately £ as of 2021).Bonar Law was the shortest-serving prime minister of the 20th century. He is often referred to as "the unknown prime minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sir Steven Runciman is reported to have said that he had known all British prime ministers in his lifetime, except Bonar Law, "whom nobody knew".A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada, is named Bonarlaw after the British prime minister. It had been known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview". The Bonar Law Memorial High School in Bonar Law's birthplace, Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada, is also named in his honour. | [
"Chancellor of the Exchequer",
"Leader of the House of Commons",
"Member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Leader of the Opposition",
"Leader of the Conservative Party",
"Lord Privy Seal",
"Member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom"
] | |
Which employer did James Rodger Fleming work for in Jan, 1973? | January 01, 1973 | {
"text": [
"University of Washington",
"National Center for Atmospheric Research"
]
} | L2_Q29998687_P108_0 | James Rodger Fleming works for University of Washington from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
James Rodger Fleming works for American Meteorological Society from Jan, 1986 to Jan, 1988.
James Rodger Fleming works for Princeton University from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1985.
James Rodger Fleming works for National Center for Atmospheric Research from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1973.
James Rodger Fleming works for Colby College from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 2021. | James Rodger FlemingJames Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College, and author of the book "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control".Fleming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is regarded as an expert for climate engineering, and critical of technological fixes to address global warming.Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship during his time as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Sourced per his homepage at Colby College. | [
"American Meteorological Society",
"Colby College",
"Princeton University",
"American Meteorological Society",
"Colby College",
"Princeton University"
] | |
Which employer did James Rodger Fleming work for in Mar, 1973? | March 28, 1973 | {
"text": [
"University of Washington"
]
} | L2_Q29998687_P108_1 | James Rodger Fleming works for Colby College from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 2021.
James Rodger Fleming works for American Meteorological Society from Jan, 1986 to Jan, 1988.
James Rodger Fleming works for University of Washington from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
James Rodger Fleming works for Princeton University from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1985.
James Rodger Fleming works for National Center for Atmospheric Research from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1973. | James Rodger FlemingJames Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College, and author of the book "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control".Fleming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is regarded as an expert for climate engineering, and critical of technological fixes to address global warming.Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship during his time as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Sourced per his homepage at Colby College. | [
"American Meteorological Society",
"Colby College",
"National Center for Atmospheric Research",
"Princeton University"
] | |
Which employer did James Rodger Fleming work for in May, 1982? | May 15, 1982 | {
"text": [
"Princeton University"
]
} | L2_Q29998687_P108_2 | James Rodger Fleming works for American Meteorological Society from Jan, 1986 to Jan, 1988.
James Rodger Fleming works for Princeton University from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1985.
James Rodger Fleming works for National Center for Atmospheric Research from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1973.
James Rodger Fleming works for University of Washington from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
James Rodger Fleming works for Colby College from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 2021. | James Rodger FlemingJames Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College, and author of the book "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control".Fleming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is regarded as an expert for climate engineering, and critical of technological fixes to address global warming.Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship during his time as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Sourced per his homepage at Colby College. | [
"American Meteorological Society",
"Colby College",
"National Center for Atmospheric Research",
"University of Washington"
] | |
Which employer did James Rodger Fleming work for in Mar, 1987? | March 04, 1987 | {
"text": [
"American Meteorological Society"
]
} | L2_Q29998687_P108_3 | James Rodger Fleming works for Princeton University from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1985.
James Rodger Fleming works for University of Washington from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974.
James Rodger Fleming works for National Center for Atmospheric Research from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1973.
James Rodger Fleming works for Colby College from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 2021.
James Rodger Fleming works for American Meteorological Society from Jan, 1986 to Jan, 1988. | James Rodger FlemingJames Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College, and author of the book "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control".Fleming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is regarded as an expert for climate engineering, and critical of technological fixes to address global warming.Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship during his time as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Sourced per his homepage at Colby College. | [
"University of Washington",
"Colby College",
"National Center for Atmospheric Research",
"Princeton University"
] | |
Which employer did James Rodger Fleming work for in Nov, 1989? | November 19, 1989 | {
"text": [
"Colby College"
]
} | L2_Q29998687_P108_4 | James Rodger Fleming works for Princeton University from Jan, 1982 to Jan, 1985.
James Rodger Fleming works for American Meteorological Society from Jan, 1986 to Jan, 1988.
James Rodger Fleming works for National Center for Atmospheric Research from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1973.
James Rodger Fleming works for Colby College from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 2021.
James Rodger Fleming works for University of Washington from Jan, 1973 to Jan, 1974. | James Rodger FlemingJames Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College, and author of the book "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control".Fleming is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is regarded as an expert for climate engineering, and critical of technological fixes to address global warming.Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History and the AAAS Roger Revelle Fellowship in Global Stewardship during his time as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Sourced per his homepage at Colby College. | [
"American Meteorological Society",
"National Center for Atmospheric Research",
"University of Washington",
"Princeton University"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in May, 2001? | May 09, 2001 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Minister for Social Justice"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_0 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Oct, 2001? | October 26, 2001 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Minister for Social Justice"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_1 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Dec, 2004? | December 21, 2004 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_2 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Feb, 2011? | February 20, 2011 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_3 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Jul, 2012? | July 11, 2012 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_4 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Dec, 2014? | December 03, 2014 | {
"text": [
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_5 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Dec, 2016? | December 23, 2016 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_6 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which position did Jackie Baillie hold in Jun, 2022? | June 02, 2022 | {
"text": [
"Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q544729_P39_7 | Jackie Baillie holds the position of Minister for Social Justice from Oct, 2000 to Nov, 2001.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament from May, 2007 to Mar, 2011.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament from May, 1999 to Mar, 2003.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament from May, 2016 to May, 2021.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 6th Scottish Parliament from May, 2021 to Dec, 2022.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament from May, 2011 to Mar, 2016.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament from May, 2003 to Apr, 2007.
Jackie Baillie holds the position of Leader of the Opposition (Scotland) from Oct, 2014 to Dec, 2014. | Jackie BaillieJacqueline Marie Baillie (' Barnes; born 15 January 1964) is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour since 2020. She has been Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Dumbarton constituency since 1999. She also served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017 and again in 2021.Born in British Hong Kong, Baillie was educated at St Anne's School, Windermere before studying at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. After working in local government, she was elected at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and served in the Scottish Executive as Minister for Social Justice under Henry McLeish. In December 2014, she was appointed as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Constitution and Economy; later Economy, Jobs and Fair Work.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and acting leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as Scottish Labour leader in 2017. She was sacked by Leonard as economy spokesperson in October 2018, who also replaced her in the role. After she was elected Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Leonard reappointed Baillie to his Shadow Cabinet as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance in April 2020. She again served as acting Scottish Labour leader for six weeks following Leonard's resignation in January 2021.Baillie was born on 15 January 1964 in British Hong Kong to Sophie and Frank Barnes. Her mother is Scottish and her father Portuguese. After education at the private St Anne's School, Windermere in the Lake District, she studied at Cumbernauld College and the University of Strathclyde. She went on to work as a resource centre manager at Strathkelvin District Council and a community economic development manager at East Dunbartonshire Council.Baillie was chair of Scottish Labour in 1997. She was first elected at the inaugural election for the Scottish Parliament in May 1999. A member of the Scottish Executive, she served as Minister for Social Justice when Henry McLeish was First Minister of Scotland, during which time she was involved with the Homelessness Task Force. She was re-elected in 2003 and became a member of the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee and Public Petitions Committee.In December 2007, Baillie defended Labour leader Wendy Alexander on "Newsnight Scotland", during the controversy regarding alleged illegal donations to Alexander's leadership campaign.In 2009, Baillie successfully brought into being an act of the Scottish Parliament, with the unanimous support of all MSPs, to allow for greater protection of disabled parking spaces.Baillie has opposed minimum pricing of alcohol, being unconvinced about the overall benefits. In 2010, she stated it would not be the best way of tackling the country's alcohol-related problems but instead backed a tax-based alternative amongst other measures. The legislation was passed setting a minimum unit pricing floor price for a unit of alcohol of 50 pence per unit.Baillie held the position of Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Health in the Shadow Cabinet of Iain Gray, retaining the post in December 2011 following the election of Johann Lamont as Gray's successor. When Lamont announced a major shakeup of the Labour frontbench team on 28 June 2013, Baillie was moved from Health to Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Social Justice and Welfare.On 27 March 2014, Baillie stood in for Johann Lamont at First Minister's Questions while Lamont was attending the funeral of veteran Labour politician Tony Benn. She also stood in at FMQs following Lamont's resignation as Labour leader in October 2014. Baillie ruled herself out of standing in the leadership election that followed Lamont's departure, stating that she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader.As a backbench MSP, Baillie campaigned for a public inquiry into a lethal outbreak of "Clostridium difficile colitis" at the Vale of Leven Hospital in her constituency. The inquiry into the outbreak cost £10 million, while the families were offered £1 million, something which prompted Baillie to plead Health Secretary Shona Robison for greater compensation for those affected, during a session of the Scottish Parliament in November 2014.In December 2017, Baillie was reduced to tears when raising the concern of fire safety following the deaths of two men in the Cameron House Hotel Fire.After Kezia Dugdale resigned as Scottish Labour leader in August 2017 and interim leader Alex Rowley was suspended, Baillie served as acting leader until Richard Leonard was elected as the new leader following the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. Baillie continued to serve as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work until October 2018 when she was sacked by Leonard, who also replaced her in the role.In January 2020, Baillie announced that she would be standing as a candidate for the post of Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. On 3 April, it was announced she had won the contest by 10,311 votes to Matt Kerr's 7,528 votes. After she was elected, Leonard reappointed her to his frontbench as Scottish Labour Spokesperson for Finance. She served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since after the resignation of Leonard on 14 January 2021 and served until the election of Anas Sarwar as leader.On 1 March 2021, Baillie was moved from shadowing Finance to Health, Social Care and Equalities.Between 2020 and 2021, Baillie was a member of Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints that concluded that the Scottish Government's handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond was "seriously flawed". As a committee member, Baillie quizzed both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, asking the latter: "You have described these errors as catastrophic. That's a strong word, tell me why then nobody has resigned? Nobody has taken responsibility of this, because at the heart of this two women have been let down." Former BBC journalist Andrew Neil said of Baillie's questioning, "As a professional interviewer... there were many times when I thought Jackie Baillie was the only one that knew the questions to ask."On 19 March 2021, the findings of the committee were pre-emptively leaked to the media by an MSP. Baillie backed an inquiry into the leak and said: “The leaks against the women were particularly bad, because they had the bravery to come forward to speak to the committee. It was entirely inappropriate that that information was leaked to the public domain.”Ballie was re-elected in May 2021 with an increased majority of 1,483, with Dumbarton becoming the only seat to have voted Labour in the entirety the devolved era. After her victory, she told her constituents: "You want a recovery, not a referendum. You want us to prioritise your jobs, the economy, the NHS. You want us to make sure that our kids at school have all the opportunities they deserve. I pledge to you that I will do that in this next parliament."Baillie married Stephen Baillie in 1982. She lives in Dumbarton with her daughter. During her time as MSP, she studied for a Master of Science degree in Local Economic Development at the University of Glasgow. | [
"Member of the 2nd Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 4th Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 5th Scottish Parliament",
"Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)",
"Minister for Social Justice",
"Member of the 1st Scottish Parliament",
"Member of the 3rd Scottish Parliament"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Jan, 2008? | January 01, 2008 | {
"text": [
"FC Sportist Svoge"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_0 | Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Bansko",
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"FC Vihren Sandanski",
"PFC Slavia Sofia"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Jan, 2009? | January 01, 2009 | {
"text": [
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"FC Vihren Sandanski"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_1 | Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"FC Bansko",
"PFC Slavia Sofia",
"FC Sportist Svoge",
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"FC Bansko",
"PFC Slavia Sofia",
"FC Sportist Svoge"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Jun, 2009? | June 01, 2009 | {
"text": [
"FC Vihren Sandanski"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_2 | Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Bansko",
"FC Sportist Svoge",
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"PFC Slavia Sofia"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Mar, 2011? | March 18, 2011 | {
"text": [
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_3 | Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Bansko",
"FC Sportist Svoge",
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"FC Vihren Sandanski",
"PFC Slavia Sofia"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Oct, 2013? | October 18, 2013 | {
"text": [
"FC Bansko"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_4 | Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Sportist Svoge",
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"FC Vihren Sandanski",
"PFC Slavia Sofia"
] | |
Which team did Martin Stankev play for in Jan, 2015? | January 30, 2015 | {
"text": [
"PFC Slavia Sofia"
]
} | L2_Q10543310_P54_5 | Martin Stankev plays for PFC Slavia Sofia from Jan, 2015 to Dec, 2022.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2012.
Martin Stankev plays for PFC Marek Dupnitsa from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2009.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Bansko from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Vihren Sandanski from Jan, 2009 to Jan, 2011.
Martin Stankev plays for FC Sportist Svoge from Jan, 2008 to Jan, 2008. | Martin StankevMartin Stankev (Bulgarian: Мартин Станкев; born 29 July 1989) is a Bulgarian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sportist Svoge.Stankev joined Etar at the beginning of the 2017–18 season but was released shortly afterwards. | [
"FC Bansko",
"FC Sportist Svoge",
"FC Etar 1924 Veliko Tarnovo",
"PFC Marek Dupnitsa",
"FC Vihren Sandanski"
] | |
Which team did Brayan Perea play for in Apr, 2011? | April 20, 2011 | {
"text": [
"Deportivo Cali"
]
} | L2_Q2805499_P54_0 | Brayan Perea plays for A.C. Perugia Calcio from Jan, 2014 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for S.S. Lazio from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for Colombia U20 soccer team from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Brayan Perea plays for ES Troyes AC from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2016.
Brayan Perea plays for Deportivo Cali from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2013. | Brayan PereaBrayan Andrés Perea Vargas (born 25 February 1993), nicknamed "El Coco," is a Colombian footballer who plays as a forward for Club Atlético Temperley.Perea began his career playing for the youth ranks of Deportivo Cali. He made his first team debut on 10 September 2011 against Boyacá Chicó. He entered the field in the 77th minute, substituting Cesar Amaya. In 2011, he failed to score a goal, having only made 7 appearances, most of them requiring him to get subbed on. He made his presence more noticeable in 2012, scoring 5 goals but still unable to make a mark in the first team. Due to an impressive campaign with Colombia at the 2013 South American Youth Championship, Perea was guaranteed a spot in the starting eleven almost every game. Perea would score 5 more goals for his home club in 2013 before signing with Serie A club Lazio.On 11 February 2013, it was announced that Perea signed a 5-year deal with Italian side Lazio for a fee of €2.5 million. He was handed the number 34 upon his arrival. He made his debut on 25 September, coming off the bench in a 3–1 win against Catania. Making his Europa League debut, Perea assisted 2 crucial goals in a 3–3 draw against Trabzonspor.Perea scored his first goal for "Le Aquile" on 20 October, in a 2–1 loss to Atalanta. He scored his first Europa League goal against Legia in a 0–2 away victory.Perea spent the following campaigns out on loan, representing Perugia, Troyes AC and CD Lugo.He was released from his Lazio contract by mutual consent on 28 December 2018.On 27 January 2019 it was confirmed, that Perea had joined Independiente Santa Fe.Argentine club Club Atlético Temperley confirmed on 5 February 2020, that Perea had joined the club on a deal until June 2021.Perea represented the Colombia U-20 at the 2013 South American Youth Championship. He scored a goal in the tournament against Argentina in the last match of the group stages. Eventually, Colombia won the championship and qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Included in the squad to dispute the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Perea made 4 appearances coming off the bench before Colombia's elimination in the round of 16. | [
"Colombia U20 soccer team",
"S.S. Lazio",
"A.C. Perugia Calcio",
"ES Troyes AC"
] | |
Which team did Brayan Perea play for in Feb, 2013? | February 06, 2013 | {
"text": [
"Colombia U20 soccer team"
]
} | L2_Q2805499_P54_1 | Brayan Perea plays for S.S. Lazio from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for Colombia U20 soccer team from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014.
Brayan Perea plays for A.C. Perugia Calcio from Jan, 2014 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for Deportivo Cali from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2013.
Brayan Perea plays for ES Troyes AC from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2016. | Brayan PereaBrayan Andrés Perea Vargas (born 25 February 1993), nicknamed "El Coco," is a Colombian footballer who plays as a forward for Club Atlético Temperley.Perea began his career playing for the youth ranks of Deportivo Cali. He made his first team debut on 10 September 2011 against Boyacá Chicó. He entered the field in the 77th minute, substituting Cesar Amaya. In 2011, he failed to score a goal, having only made 7 appearances, most of them requiring him to get subbed on. He made his presence more noticeable in 2012, scoring 5 goals but still unable to make a mark in the first team. Due to an impressive campaign with Colombia at the 2013 South American Youth Championship, Perea was guaranteed a spot in the starting eleven almost every game. Perea would score 5 more goals for his home club in 2013 before signing with Serie A club Lazio.On 11 February 2013, it was announced that Perea signed a 5-year deal with Italian side Lazio for a fee of €2.5 million. He was handed the number 34 upon his arrival. He made his debut on 25 September, coming off the bench in a 3–1 win against Catania. Making his Europa League debut, Perea assisted 2 crucial goals in a 3–3 draw against Trabzonspor.Perea scored his first goal for "Le Aquile" on 20 October, in a 2–1 loss to Atalanta. He scored his first Europa League goal against Legia in a 0–2 away victory.Perea spent the following campaigns out on loan, representing Perugia, Troyes AC and CD Lugo.He was released from his Lazio contract by mutual consent on 28 December 2018.On 27 January 2019 it was confirmed, that Perea had joined Independiente Santa Fe.Argentine club Club Atlético Temperley confirmed on 5 February 2020, that Perea had joined the club on a deal until June 2021.Perea represented the Colombia U-20 at the 2013 South American Youth Championship. He scored a goal in the tournament against Argentina in the last match of the group stages. Eventually, Colombia won the championship and qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Included in the squad to dispute the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Perea made 4 appearances coming off the bench before Colombia's elimination in the round of 16. | [
"S.S. Lazio",
"Deportivo Cali",
"A.C. Perugia Calcio",
"ES Troyes AC"
] | |
Which team did Brayan Perea play for in Nov, 2014? | November 10, 2014 | {
"text": [
"A.C. Perugia Calcio"
]
} | L2_Q2805499_P54_2 | Brayan Perea plays for Deportivo Cali from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2013.
Brayan Perea plays for A.C. Perugia Calcio from Jan, 2014 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for S.S. Lazio from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for ES Troyes AC from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2016.
Brayan Perea plays for Colombia U20 soccer team from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014. | Brayan PereaBrayan Andrés Perea Vargas (born 25 February 1993), nicknamed "El Coco," is a Colombian footballer who plays as a forward for Club Atlético Temperley.Perea began his career playing for the youth ranks of Deportivo Cali. He made his first team debut on 10 September 2011 against Boyacá Chicó. He entered the field in the 77th minute, substituting Cesar Amaya. In 2011, he failed to score a goal, having only made 7 appearances, most of them requiring him to get subbed on. He made his presence more noticeable in 2012, scoring 5 goals but still unable to make a mark in the first team. Due to an impressive campaign with Colombia at the 2013 South American Youth Championship, Perea was guaranteed a spot in the starting eleven almost every game. Perea would score 5 more goals for his home club in 2013 before signing with Serie A club Lazio.On 11 February 2013, it was announced that Perea signed a 5-year deal with Italian side Lazio for a fee of €2.5 million. He was handed the number 34 upon his arrival. He made his debut on 25 September, coming off the bench in a 3–1 win against Catania. Making his Europa League debut, Perea assisted 2 crucial goals in a 3–3 draw against Trabzonspor.Perea scored his first goal for "Le Aquile" on 20 October, in a 2–1 loss to Atalanta. He scored his first Europa League goal against Legia in a 0–2 away victory.Perea spent the following campaigns out on loan, representing Perugia, Troyes AC and CD Lugo.He was released from his Lazio contract by mutual consent on 28 December 2018.On 27 January 2019 it was confirmed, that Perea had joined Independiente Santa Fe.Argentine club Club Atlético Temperley confirmed on 5 February 2020, that Perea had joined the club on a deal until June 2021.Perea represented the Colombia U-20 at the 2013 South American Youth Championship. He scored a goal in the tournament against Argentina in the last match of the group stages. Eventually, Colombia won the championship and qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Included in the squad to dispute the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Perea made 4 appearances coming off the bench before Colombia's elimination in the round of 16. | [
"S.S. Lazio",
"Deportivo Cali",
"Colombia U20 soccer team",
"ES Troyes AC"
] | |
Which team did Brayan Perea play for in Jun, 2015? | June 23, 2015 | {
"text": [
"ES Troyes AC"
]
} | L2_Q2805499_P54_3 | Brayan Perea plays for Deportivo Cali from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2013.
Brayan Perea plays for ES Troyes AC from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2016.
Brayan Perea plays for S.S. Lazio from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for A.C. Perugia Calcio from Jan, 2014 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for Colombia U20 soccer team from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014. | Brayan PereaBrayan Andrés Perea Vargas (born 25 February 1993), nicknamed "El Coco," is a Colombian footballer who plays as a forward for Club Atlético Temperley.Perea began his career playing for the youth ranks of Deportivo Cali. He made his first team debut on 10 September 2011 against Boyacá Chicó. He entered the field in the 77th minute, substituting Cesar Amaya. In 2011, he failed to score a goal, having only made 7 appearances, most of them requiring him to get subbed on. He made his presence more noticeable in 2012, scoring 5 goals but still unable to make a mark in the first team. Due to an impressive campaign with Colombia at the 2013 South American Youth Championship, Perea was guaranteed a spot in the starting eleven almost every game. Perea would score 5 more goals for his home club in 2013 before signing with Serie A club Lazio.On 11 February 2013, it was announced that Perea signed a 5-year deal with Italian side Lazio for a fee of €2.5 million. He was handed the number 34 upon his arrival. He made his debut on 25 September, coming off the bench in a 3–1 win against Catania. Making his Europa League debut, Perea assisted 2 crucial goals in a 3–3 draw against Trabzonspor.Perea scored his first goal for "Le Aquile" on 20 October, in a 2–1 loss to Atalanta. He scored his first Europa League goal against Legia in a 0–2 away victory.Perea spent the following campaigns out on loan, representing Perugia, Troyes AC and CD Lugo.He was released from his Lazio contract by mutual consent on 28 December 2018.On 27 January 2019 it was confirmed, that Perea had joined Independiente Santa Fe.Argentine club Club Atlético Temperley confirmed on 5 February 2020, that Perea had joined the club on a deal until June 2021.Perea represented the Colombia U-20 at the 2013 South American Youth Championship. He scored a goal in the tournament against Argentina in the last match of the group stages. Eventually, Colombia won the championship and qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Included in the squad to dispute the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Perea made 4 appearances coming off the bench before Colombia's elimination in the round of 16. | [
"Colombia U20 soccer team",
"S.S. Lazio",
"Deportivo Cali",
"A.C. Perugia Calcio"
] | |
Which team did Brayan Perea play for in Jan, 2015? | January 01, 2015 | {
"text": [
"ES Troyes AC",
"S.S. Lazio",
"A.C. Perugia Calcio"
]
} | L2_Q2805499_P54_4 | Brayan Perea plays for A.C. Perugia Calcio from Jan, 2014 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for S.S. Lazio from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2015.
Brayan Perea plays for ES Troyes AC from Jan, 2015 to Jan, 2016.
Brayan Perea plays for Deportivo Cali from Jan, 2011 to Jan, 2013.
Brayan Perea plays for Colombia U20 soccer team from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2014. | Brayan PereaBrayan Andrés Perea Vargas (born 25 February 1993), nicknamed "El Coco," is a Colombian footballer who plays as a forward for Club Atlético Temperley.Perea began his career playing for the youth ranks of Deportivo Cali. He made his first team debut on 10 September 2011 against Boyacá Chicó. He entered the field in the 77th minute, substituting Cesar Amaya. In 2011, he failed to score a goal, having only made 7 appearances, most of them requiring him to get subbed on. He made his presence more noticeable in 2012, scoring 5 goals but still unable to make a mark in the first team. Due to an impressive campaign with Colombia at the 2013 South American Youth Championship, Perea was guaranteed a spot in the starting eleven almost every game. Perea would score 5 more goals for his home club in 2013 before signing with Serie A club Lazio.On 11 February 2013, it was announced that Perea signed a 5-year deal with Italian side Lazio for a fee of €2.5 million. He was handed the number 34 upon his arrival. He made his debut on 25 September, coming off the bench in a 3–1 win against Catania. Making his Europa League debut, Perea assisted 2 crucial goals in a 3–3 draw against Trabzonspor.Perea scored his first goal for "Le Aquile" on 20 October, in a 2–1 loss to Atalanta. He scored his first Europa League goal against Legia in a 0–2 away victory.Perea spent the following campaigns out on loan, representing Perugia, Troyes AC and CD Lugo.He was released from his Lazio contract by mutual consent on 28 December 2018.On 27 January 2019 it was confirmed, that Perea had joined Independiente Santa Fe.Argentine club Club Atlético Temperley confirmed on 5 February 2020, that Perea had joined the club on a deal until June 2021.Perea represented the Colombia U-20 at the 2013 South American Youth Championship. He scored a goal in the tournament against Argentina in the last match of the group stages. Eventually, Colombia won the championship and qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Included in the squad to dispute the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Perea made 4 appearances coming off the bench before Colombia's elimination in the round of 16. | [
"Deportivo Cali",
"Colombia U20 soccer team",
"Deportivo Cali",
"Colombia U20 soccer team",
"Deportivo Cali",
"Colombia U20 soccer team"
] | |
Who was the head coach of the team Club Brugge K.V. in Jun, 2015? | June 09, 2015 | {
"text": [
"Michel Preud'homme"
]
} | L2_Q190916_P286_0 | Ivan Leko is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2017 to Jan, 2019.
Philippe Clement is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2019 to Jan, 2022.
Michel Preud'homme is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2017.
Alfred Schreuder is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2022 to May, 2022.
Carl Hoefkens is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2022 to Dec, 2022. | Club Brugge KVOne of the most decorated clubs in Belgian football, the club have been crowned Belgian league champions 17 times, second only to major rivals Anderlecht, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge, with whom they contest the Bruges derby.Throughout its long history, Club Brugge has enjoyed much European football success, reaching two European finals and two European semi-finals. Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far, losing to Liverpool in the final of the 1978 season. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup Final to the same opponents. Club Brugge holds the European record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Europa League (20), the record number of Belgian Cups (11), and the record number of Belgian Super Cups (15).In 1890, students from the Catholic school Broeders Xaverianen and the neutral school Koninklijk Atheneum joined together to form the Brugsche Football Club. The former students christened the club's founding by establishing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). A year later on 13 November 1891, the club was re-created under Brugsche FC, and this is now seen as the official foundation of the current Club Brugge. In 1892, an official board was installed at the club to oversee all operations and team decisions. In 1895, the national athletics sports union was founded, predecessor of the later national football association, under the name UBSSA (Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques); Brugsche FC was a founding member of the UBSSSA and as such took part in the first league campaign organized in Belgian football during the 1895–96 season. Financial difficulties the following year forced the club to leave the UBSSA and soon after, Football Club Brugeois were formed by breakaway club members. The two sides were reunited in 1897 under the French name of Football Club Brugeois; they did not take on the Flemish title Club Brugge until 1972.In 1914, FC Brugeois reached their first Belgian Cup final, but lost 2–1 to Union SG. Six years later, the club claimed their first trophy, by winning the Belgian First Division during the 1919–20 season. They celebrated by changing their title to Royal FC Brugeois – with their regal status now reflected in their modern prefix KV, standing for Koninklijke Vereniging (royal club). Only eight years later though, the club was relegated to the Belgian Second Division for the first time in their history following a relegation play-off. Further lean times followed the relegation in 1928, as they spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the second division of Belgian football.Following the 1958–59 season, the club earned promotion back to the First Division and have not been relegated since. The club were able to add to their trophy cabinet in 1968, winning the first of their record 11 Belgian Cup titles for the first time after defeating Beerschot A.C. 7–6 in a penalty-shootout after a 1–1 draw.The club enjoyed their most success under legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel as he led the club to three straight league championships from 1975–76 to 1977–78 and a Belgian Cup victory in 1976–77. Happel also guided Club Brugge to their first European final, reaching the 1976 UEFA Cup Final. Over the two-legged final against English giants Liverpool, Club Brugge fell 3–4 on aggregate. Two years later, Brugge again met Liverpool in a European final, this time in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley, becoming the first Belgian club to reach the final of the competition. Brugge fell to a lone second-half goal from Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool won their second European Cup and third European trophy in succession. Following the cup final loss to Liverpool, Happel left Club Brugge and would lead Netherlands later that summer to the final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup.On 25 November 1992, Brugge player Daniel Amokachi became the first goal scorer in the Champions League. He scored in a 1–0 win over CSKA Moscow.The club don a black and blue home kit as has been traditional through their history. Away from home they wear a red strip. The club's current kit supplier is Macron.The club's original home in the Sint-Andries district of Bruges was known as the Rattenplein (rats' stadium) since it was owned by the local fox terrier club, who used it for another imported English pastime: rat baiting. This non-UEFA affiliated 'sport' involved getting dogs to chase and kill rats. In 1911, the team moved to a new ground, called De Klokke (after a nearby pub), which was renamed the Albert Dyserynckstadion after the sudden death of Club Brugge chairman Albert Dyserynck.Their current stadium, since 1975, was rebranded in honour of local butcher and revolutionary Jan Breydel in 1998. Breydel led a rising against the city's French overlords in the 1300s. The venue – which Club Brugge share with local rivals Cercle Brugge – was previously named the Olympiastadion.In November 2016, the club broke ground on a new training complex at Westkapelle, including four training pitches and an additional training centre for the senior squad plus the U21 and U19 teams; all in addition to the already available sports complex Molenhoek.Since 2007, Club Brugge has been working on developing a new stadium. Since then, there have been a number of proposed locations, but the project never really took off due to problems with ground availability and endangered species of bats. However, when a new city council and mayor were sworn into office in the city of Bruges, the project went through a rebirth. Instead of moving out of the current Jan Breydelstadium, the site on which this stadium is built will be completely reconstructed into a park with a brand new stadium next to where the current stadium is situated. Although this project has been criticised by some, it's the furthest the club has come with a project. The club, the city and the Flemish government aim have a functioning stadium by 2023, which will hold up to 40,116 spectators.Some of the fans are part of 62 supporter clubs in Belgium, which have more than 10,000 members. The "Supportersfederatie Club Brugge KV", founded in 1967, is recognized as the official supporters club of Club Brugge. The federation is made up of 60 recognized supporters' clubs and has an elected board to steer the operation in the right direction.In tribute to the fans, often dubbed the twelfth man in football, Club Brugge no longer assigns the number 12 to players. Club Brugge also has a TV show, CLUBtv, on the Telenet network since 21 July 2006. This twice weekly show features exclusive interviews with players, coaches and managers.The official mascot of Club Bruges is a bear, symbol of the city of Bruges. The history of the bear is related to a legend of the first Count of Flanders, Baldwin I of Flanders, who had fought and defeated a bear in his youth. Since the end of 2000, a second mascot, always a bear, travels along the edge of the field during home games for fans to call and encourage both their favorites. These two bears are called Belle and Bene. In 2010, a third bear named Bibi, made its appearance. He is described as the child of the first two mascots, and is oriented towards the young supporters.Like many historic clubs, Club Brugge contests rivalries with other Belgian clubs, whether at local (Cercle Brugge) or regional level (Ghent and Antwerp) or nationally competitive (Anderlecht and Standard Liège).At regional level, Club Brugge has maintained rivalry with Ghent, a team in the neighboring province. The successes achieved by the club in the early 1970s, combined with very poor season performances by Ghent in the same period, attracted many fans. Since the late 1990s, Gent again played a somewhat more leading role in Belgium, and matches between the two clubs were often spectacles. The game between the two teams is called "De Slag om Vlaanderen" or translated "The Battle of Flanders", this is because both teams have been the best teams in Flanders over the last 20 years.The rivalry between Club Brugge and Anderlecht has developed since the 1970s. At that time, the Brussels-based club and Club Brugge won most trophies between them, leaving little room for other Belgian teams. Matches between these two teams were often contested for the title of champion of Belgium. Three Belgian Cup finals were played between the two clubs (with Anderlecht winning once and Club Brugge twice), and they played seven Belgian Supercups (Club Bruges won five). A match between these two sides is often called 'The Hate Game'. They are arguably the most heated fixtures in Belgian football together with clashes between the other two members of the Big Three - Anderlecht and Standard Liège.The Bruges Derby is seen as one of the most important games of the season for a lot of fans from both teams. Every season, the game attracts a huge deal of fans which results in huge choreographies on both sides. Tifos, flags and banners made specifically for this confrontation and accompanied by flares and smoke bombs aren't a rare sight in and around the stadium. The winner of this derby is crowned "de Ploeg van Brugge""," which translates to "the team of Bruges". It has become a tradition for the winning side to plant a flag with the club's crest or colours on the center spot after the game.The rivalry between the oldest clubs in Flanders and Belgium, is one that dates back to the 1900s. In 1908, due to Bruges supporters attacking Antwerp players after they had lost 2-1 to what we'll later call Club Brugge, one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in Europe came to be. Confrontations between the two sides bring a lot of fighting and havoc to the stadium and the surrounding neighbourhoods. This hatred has reached new highs ever since Antwerp gained promotion back to the first division. 12 – The 12th man (reserved for the club supporters)23 – François Sterchele, striker (2007–08). "Posthumous; Sterchele died in a single-person car accident on 8 May 2008." | [
"Carl Hoefkens",
"Ivan Leko",
"Alfred Schreuder",
"Philippe Clement"
] | |
Who was the head coach of the team Club Brugge K.V. in Aug, 2017? | August 16, 2017 | {
"text": [
"Ivan Leko"
]
} | L2_Q190916_P286_1 | Carl Hoefkens is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2022 to Dec, 2022.
Ivan Leko is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2017 to Jan, 2019.
Philippe Clement is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2019 to Jan, 2022.
Alfred Schreuder is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2022 to May, 2022.
Michel Preud'homme is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2017. | Club Brugge KVOne of the most decorated clubs in Belgian football, the club have been crowned Belgian league champions 17 times, second only to major rivals Anderlecht, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge, with whom they contest the Bruges derby.Throughout its long history, Club Brugge has enjoyed much European football success, reaching two European finals and two European semi-finals. Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far, losing to Liverpool in the final of the 1978 season. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup Final to the same opponents. Club Brugge holds the European record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Europa League (20), the record number of Belgian Cups (11), and the record number of Belgian Super Cups (15).In 1890, students from the Catholic school Broeders Xaverianen and the neutral school Koninklijk Atheneum joined together to form the Brugsche Football Club. The former students christened the club's founding by establishing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). A year later on 13 November 1891, the club was re-created under Brugsche FC, and this is now seen as the official foundation of the current Club Brugge. In 1892, an official board was installed at the club to oversee all operations and team decisions. In 1895, the national athletics sports union was founded, predecessor of the later national football association, under the name UBSSA (Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques); Brugsche FC was a founding member of the UBSSSA and as such took part in the first league campaign organized in Belgian football during the 1895–96 season. Financial difficulties the following year forced the club to leave the UBSSA and soon after, Football Club Brugeois were formed by breakaway club members. The two sides were reunited in 1897 under the French name of Football Club Brugeois; they did not take on the Flemish title Club Brugge until 1972.In 1914, FC Brugeois reached their first Belgian Cup final, but lost 2–1 to Union SG. Six years later, the club claimed their first trophy, by winning the Belgian First Division during the 1919–20 season. They celebrated by changing their title to Royal FC Brugeois – with their regal status now reflected in their modern prefix KV, standing for Koninklijke Vereniging (royal club). Only eight years later though, the club was relegated to the Belgian Second Division for the first time in their history following a relegation play-off. Further lean times followed the relegation in 1928, as they spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the second division of Belgian football.Following the 1958–59 season, the club earned promotion back to the First Division and have not been relegated since. The club were able to add to their trophy cabinet in 1968, winning the first of their record 11 Belgian Cup titles for the first time after defeating Beerschot A.C. 7–6 in a penalty-shootout after a 1–1 draw.The club enjoyed their most success under legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel as he led the club to three straight league championships from 1975–76 to 1977–78 and a Belgian Cup victory in 1976–77. Happel also guided Club Brugge to their first European final, reaching the 1976 UEFA Cup Final. Over the two-legged final against English giants Liverpool, Club Brugge fell 3–4 on aggregate. Two years later, Brugge again met Liverpool in a European final, this time in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley, becoming the first Belgian club to reach the final of the competition. Brugge fell to a lone second-half goal from Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool won their second European Cup and third European trophy in succession. Following the cup final loss to Liverpool, Happel left Club Brugge and would lead Netherlands later that summer to the final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup.On 25 November 1992, Brugge player Daniel Amokachi became the first goal scorer in the Champions League. He scored in a 1–0 win over CSKA Moscow.The club don a black and blue home kit as has been traditional through their history. Away from home they wear a red strip. The club's current kit supplier is Macron.The club's original home in the Sint-Andries district of Bruges was known as the Rattenplein (rats' stadium) since it was owned by the local fox terrier club, who used it for another imported English pastime: rat baiting. This non-UEFA affiliated 'sport' involved getting dogs to chase and kill rats. In 1911, the team moved to a new ground, called De Klokke (after a nearby pub), which was renamed the Albert Dyserynckstadion after the sudden death of Club Brugge chairman Albert Dyserynck.Their current stadium, since 1975, was rebranded in honour of local butcher and revolutionary Jan Breydel in 1998. Breydel led a rising against the city's French overlords in the 1300s. The venue – which Club Brugge share with local rivals Cercle Brugge – was previously named the Olympiastadion.In November 2016, the club broke ground on a new training complex at Westkapelle, including four training pitches and an additional training centre for the senior squad plus the U21 and U19 teams; all in addition to the already available sports complex Molenhoek.Since 2007, Club Brugge has been working on developing a new stadium. Since then, there have been a number of proposed locations, but the project never really took off due to problems with ground availability and endangered species of bats. However, when a new city council and mayor were sworn into office in the city of Bruges, the project went through a rebirth. Instead of moving out of the current Jan Breydelstadium, the site on which this stadium is built will be completely reconstructed into a park with a brand new stadium next to where the current stadium is situated. Although this project has been criticised by some, it's the furthest the club has come with a project. The club, the city and the Flemish government aim have a functioning stadium by 2023, which will hold up to 40,116 spectators.Some of the fans are part of 62 supporter clubs in Belgium, which have more than 10,000 members. The "Supportersfederatie Club Brugge KV", founded in 1967, is recognized as the official supporters club of Club Brugge. The federation is made up of 60 recognized supporters' clubs and has an elected board to steer the operation in the right direction.In tribute to the fans, often dubbed the twelfth man in football, Club Brugge no longer assigns the number 12 to players. Club Brugge also has a TV show, CLUBtv, on the Telenet network since 21 July 2006. This twice weekly show features exclusive interviews with players, coaches and managers.The official mascot of Club Bruges is a bear, symbol of the city of Bruges. The history of the bear is related to a legend of the first Count of Flanders, Baldwin I of Flanders, who had fought and defeated a bear in his youth. Since the end of 2000, a second mascot, always a bear, travels along the edge of the field during home games for fans to call and encourage both their favorites. These two bears are called Belle and Bene. In 2010, a third bear named Bibi, made its appearance. He is described as the child of the first two mascots, and is oriented towards the young supporters.Like many historic clubs, Club Brugge contests rivalries with other Belgian clubs, whether at local (Cercle Brugge) or regional level (Ghent and Antwerp) or nationally competitive (Anderlecht and Standard Liège).At regional level, Club Brugge has maintained rivalry with Ghent, a team in the neighboring province. The successes achieved by the club in the early 1970s, combined with very poor season performances by Ghent in the same period, attracted many fans. Since the late 1990s, Gent again played a somewhat more leading role in Belgium, and matches between the two clubs were often spectacles. The game between the two teams is called "De Slag om Vlaanderen" or translated "The Battle of Flanders", this is because both teams have been the best teams in Flanders over the last 20 years.The rivalry between Club Brugge and Anderlecht has developed since the 1970s. At that time, the Brussels-based club and Club Brugge won most trophies between them, leaving little room for other Belgian teams. Matches between these two teams were often contested for the title of champion of Belgium. Three Belgian Cup finals were played between the two clubs (with Anderlecht winning once and Club Brugge twice), and they played seven Belgian Supercups (Club Bruges won five). A match between these two sides is often called 'The Hate Game'. They are arguably the most heated fixtures in Belgian football together with clashes between the other two members of the Big Three - Anderlecht and Standard Liège.The Bruges Derby is seen as one of the most important games of the season for a lot of fans from both teams. Every season, the game attracts a huge deal of fans which results in huge choreographies on both sides. Tifos, flags and banners made specifically for this confrontation and accompanied by flares and smoke bombs aren't a rare sight in and around the stadium. The winner of this derby is crowned "de Ploeg van Brugge""," which translates to "the team of Bruges". It has become a tradition for the winning side to plant a flag with the club's crest or colours on the center spot after the game.The rivalry between the oldest clubs in Flanders and Belgium, is one that dates back to the 1900s. In 1908, due to Bruges supporters attacking Antwerp players after they had lost 2-1 to what we'll later call Club Brugge, one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in Europe came to be. Confrontations between the two sides bring a lot of fighting and havoc to the stadium and the surrounding neighbourhoods. This hatred has reached new highs ever since Antwerp gained promotion back to the first division. 12 – The 12th man (reserved for the club supporters)23 – François Sterchele, striker (2007–08). "Posthumous; Sterchele died in a single-person car accident on 8 May 2008." | [
"Carl Hoefkens",
"Michel Preud'homme",
"Alfred Schreuder",
"Philippe Clement"
] | |
Who was the head coach of the team Club Brugge K.V. in Oct, 2020? | October 03, 2020 | {
"text": [
"Philippe Clement"
]
} | L2_Q190916_P286_2 | Alfred Schreuder is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2022 to May, 2022.
Ivan Leko is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2017 to Jan, 2019.
Carl Hoefkens is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2022 to Dec, 2022.
Philippe Clement is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2019 to Jan, 2022.
Michel Preud'homme is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2017. | Club Brugge KVOne of the most decorated clubs in Belgian football, the club have been crowned Belgian league champions 17 times, second only to major rivals Anderlecht, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge, with whom they contest the Bruges derby.Throughout its long history, Club Brugge has enjoyed much European football success, reaching two European finals and two European semi-finals. Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far, losing to Liverpool in the final of the 1978 season. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup Final to the same opponents. Club Brugge holds the European record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Europa League (20), the record number of Belgian Cups (11), and the record number of Belgian Super Cups (15).In 1890, students from the Catholic school Broeders Xaverianen and the neutral school Koninklijk Atheneum joined together to form the Brugsche Football Club. The former students christened the club's founding by establishing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). A year later on 13 November 1891, the club was re-created under Brugsche FC, and this is now seen as the official foundation of the current Club Brugge. In 1892, an official board was installed at the club to oversee all operations and team decisions. In 1895, the national athletics sports union was founded, predecessor of the later national football association, under the name UBSSA (Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques); Brugsche FC was a founding member of the UBSSSA and as such took part in the first league campaign organized in Belgian football during the 1895–96 season. Financial difficulties the following year forced the club to leave the UBSSA and soon after, Football Club Brugeois were formed by breakaway club members. The two sides were reunited in 1897 under the French name of Football Club Brugeois; they did not take on the Flemish title Club Brugge until 1972.In 1914, FC Brugeois reached their first Belgian Cup final, but lost 2–1 to Union SG. Six years later, the club claimed their first trophy, by winning the Belgian First Division during the 1919–20 season. They celebrated by changing their title to Royal FC Brugeois – with their regal status now reflected in their modern prefix KV, standing for Koninklijke Vereniging (royal club). Only eight years later though, the club was relegated to the Belgian Second Division for the first time in their history following a relegation play-off. Further lean times followed the relegation in 1928, as they spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the second division of Belgian football.Following the 1958–59 season, the club earned promotion back to the First Division and have not been relegated since. The club were able to add to their trophy cabinet in 1968, winning the first of their record 11 Belgian Cup titles for the first time after defeating Beerschot A.C. 7–6 in a penalty-shootout after a 1–1 draw.The club enjoyed their most success under legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel as he led the club to three straight league championships from 1975–76 to 1977–78 and a Belgian Cup victory in 1976–77. Happel also guided Club Brugge to their first European final, reaching the 1976 UEFA Cup Final. Over the two-legged final against English giants Liverpool, Club Brugge fell 3–4 on aggregate. Two years later, Brugge again met Liverpool in a European final, this time in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley, becoming the first Belgian club to reach the final of the competition. Brugge fell to a lone second-half goal from Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool won their second European Cup and third European trophy in succession. Following the cup final loss to Liverpool, Happel left Club Brugge and would lead Netherlands later that summer to the final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup.On 25 November 1992, Brugge player Daniel Amokachi became the first goal scorer in the Champions League. He scored in a 1–0 win over CSKA Moscow.The club don a black and blue home kit as has been traditional through their history. Away from home they wear a red strip. The club's current kit supplier is Macron.The club's original home in the Sint-Andries district of Bruges was known as the Rattenplein (rats' stadium) since it was owned by the local fox terrier club, who used it for another imported English pastime: rat baiting. This non-UEFA affiliated 'sport' involved getting dogs to chase and kill rats. In 1911, the team moved to a new ground, called De Klokke (after a nearby pub), which was renamed the Albert Dyserynckstadion after the sudden death of Club Brugge chairman Albert Dyserynck.Their current stadium, since 1975, was rebranded in honour of local butcher and revolutionary Jan Breydel in 1998. Breydel led a rising against the city's French overlords in the 1300s. The venue – which Club Brugge share with local rivals Cercle Brugge – was previously named the Olympiastadion.In November 2016, the club broke ground on a new training complex at Westkapelle, including four training pitches and an additional training centre for the senior squad plus the U21 and U19 teams; all in addition to the already available sports complex Molenhoek.Since 2007, Club Brugge has been working on developing a new stadium. Since then, there have been a number of proposed locations, but the project never really took off due to problems with ground availability and endangered species of bats. However, when a new city council and mayor were sworn into office in the city of Bruges, the project went through a rebirth. Instead of moving out of the current Jan Breydelstadium, the site on which this stadium is built will be completely reconstructed into a park with a brand new stadium next to where the current stadium is situated. Although this project has been criticised by some, it's the furthest the club has come with a project. The club, the city and the Flemish government aim have a functioning stadium by 2023, which will hold up to 40,116 spectators.Some of the fans are part of 62 supporter clubs in Belgium, which have more than 10,000 members. The "Supportersfederatie Club Brugge KV", founded in 1967, is recognized as the official supporters club of Club Brugge. The federation is made up of 60 recognized supporters' clubs and has an elected board to steer the operation in the right direction.In tribute to the fans, often dubbed the twelfth man in football, Club Brugge no longer assigns the number 12 to players. Club Brugge also has a TV show, CLUBtv, on the Telenet network since 21 July 2006. This twice weekly show features exclusive interviews with players, coaches and managers.The official mascot of Club Bruges is a bear, symbol of the city of Bruges. The history of the bear is related to a legend of the first Count of Flanders, Baldwin I of Flanders, who had fought and defeated a bear in his youth. Since the end of 2000, a second mascot, always a bear, travels along the edge of the field during home games for fans to call and encourage both their favorites. These two bears are called Belle and Bene. In 2010, a third bear named Bibi, made its appearance. He is described as the child of the first two mascots, and is oriented towards the young supporters.Like many historic clubs, Club Brugge contests rivalries with other Belgian clubs, whether at local (Cercle Brugge) or regional level (Ghent and Antwerp) or nationally competitive (Anderlecht and Standard Liège).At regional level, Club Brugge has maintained rivalry with Ghent, a team in the neighboring province. The successes achieved by the club in the early 1970s, combined with very poor season performances by Ghent in the same period, attracted many fans. Since the late 1990s, Gent again played a somewhat more leading role in Belgium, and matches between the two clubs were often spectacles. The game between the two teams is called "De Slag om Vlaanderen" or translated "The Battle of Flanders", this is because both teams have been the best teams in Flanders over the last 20 years.The rivalry between Club Brugge and Anderlecht has developed since the 1970s. At that time, the Brussels-based club and Club Brugge won most trophies between them, leaving little room for other Belgian teams. Matches between these two teams were often contested for the title of champion of Belgium. Three Belgian Cup finals were played between the two clubs (with Anderlecht winning once and Club Brugge twice), and they played seven Belgian Supercups (Club Bruges won five). A match between these two sides is often called 'The Hate Game'. They are arguably the most heated fixtures in Belgian football together with clashes between the other two members of the Big Three - Anderlecht and Standard Liège.The Bruges Derby is seen as one of the most important games of the season for a lot of fans from both teams. Every season, the game attracts a huge deal of fans which results in huge choreographies on both sides. Tifos, flags and banners made specifically for this confrontation and accompanied by flares and smoke bombs aren't a rare sight in and around the stadium. The winner of this derby is crowned "de Ploeg van Brugge""," which translates to "the team of Bruges". It has become a tradition for the winning side to plant a flag with the club's crest or colours on the center spot after the game.The rivalry between the oldest clubs in Flanders and Belgium, is one that dates back to the 1900s. In 1908, due to Bruges supporters attacking Antwerp players after they had lost 2-1 to what we'll later call Club Brugge, one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in Europe came to be. Confrontations between the two sides bring a lot of fighting and havoc to the stadium and the surrounding neighbourhoods. This hatred has reached new highs ever since Antwerp gained promotion back to the first division. 12 – The 12th man (reserved for the club supporters)23 – François Sterchele, striker (2007–08). "Posthumous; Sterchele died in a single-person car accident on 8 May 2008." | [
"Carl Hoefkens",
"Michel Preud'homme",
"Ivan Leko",
"Alfred Schreuder"
] | |
Who was the head coach of the team Club Brugge K.V. in Feb, 2022? | February 21, 2022 | {
"text": [
"Alfred Schreuder"
]
} | L2_Q190916_P286_3 | Philippe Clement is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2019 to Jan, 2022.
Alfred Schreuder is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2022 to May, 2022.
Michel Preud'homme is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2017.
Carl Hoefkens is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2022 to Dec, 2022.
Ivan Leko is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2017 to Jan, 2019. | Club Brugge KVOne of the most decorated clubs in Belgian football, the club have been crowned Belgian league champions 17 times, second only to major rivals Anderlecht, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge, with whom they contest the Bruges derby.Throughout its long history, Club Brugge has enjoyed much European football success, reaching two European finals and two European semi-finals. Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far, losing to Liverpool in the final of the 1978 season. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup Final to the same opponents. Club Brugge holds the European record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Europa League (20), the record number of Belgian Cups (11), and the record number of Belgian Super Cups (15).In 1890, students from the Catholic school Broeders Xaverianen and the neutral school Koninklijk Atheneum joined together to form the Brugsche Football Club. The former students christened the club's founding by establishing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). A year later on 13 November 1891, the club was re-created under Brugsche FC, and this is now seen as the official foundation of the current Club Brugge. In 1892, an official board was installed at the club to oversee all operations and team decisions. In 1895, the national athletics sports union was founded, predecessor of the later national football association, under the name UBSSA (Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques); Brugsche FC was a founding member of the UBSSSA and as such took part in the first league campaign organized in Belgian football during the 1895–96 season. Financial difficulties the following year forced the club to leave the UBSSA and soon after, Football Club Brugeois were formed by breakaway club members. The two sides were reunited in 1897 under the French name of Football Club Brugeois; they did not take on the Flemish title Club Brugge until 1972.In 1914, FC Brugeois reached their first Belgian Cup final, but lost 2–1 to Union SG. Six years later, the club claimed their first trophy, by winning the Belgian First Division during the 1919–20 season. They celebrated by changing their title to Royal FC Brugeois – with their regal status now reflected in their modern prefix KV, standing for Koninklijke Vereniging (royal club). Only eight years later though, the club was relegated to the Belgian Second Division for the first time in their history following a relegation play-off. Further lean times followed the relegation in 1928, as they spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the second division of Belgian football.Following the 1958–59 season, the club earned promotion back to the First Division and have not been relegated since. The club were able to add to their trophy cabinet in 1968, winning the first of their record 11 Belgian Cup titles for the first time after defeating Beerschot A.C. 7–6 in a penalty-shootout after a 1–1 draw.The club enjoyed their most success under legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel as he led the club to three straight league championships from 1975–76 to 1977–78 and a Belgian Cup victory in 1976–77. Happel also guided Club Brugge to their first European final, reaching the 1976 UEFA Cup Final. Over the two-legged final against English giants Liverpool, Club Brugge fell 3–4 on aggregate. Two years later, Brugge again met Liverpool in a European final, this time in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley, becoming the first Belgian club to reach the final of the competition. Brugge fell to a lone second-half goal from Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool won their second European Cup and third European trophy in succession. Following the cup final loss to Liverpool, Happel left Club Brugge and would lead Netherlands later that summer to the final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup.On 25 November 1992, Brugge player Daniel Amokachi became the first goal scorer in the Champions League. He scored in a 1–0 win over CSKA Moscow.The club don a black and blue home kit as has been traditional through their history. Away from home they wear a red strip. The club's current kit supplier is Macron.The club's original home in the Sint-Andries district of Bruges was known as the Rattenplein (rats' stadium) since it was owned by the local fox terrier club, who used it for another imported English pastime: rat baiting. This non-UEFA affiliated 'sport' involved getting dogs to chase and kill rats. In 1911, the team moved to a new ground, called De Klokke (after a nearby pub), which was renamed the Albert Dyserynckstadion after the sudden death of Club Brugge chairman Albert Dyserynck.Their current stadium, since 1975, was rebranded in honour of local butcher and revolutionary Jan Breydel in 1998. Breydel led a rising against the city's French overlords in the 1300s. The venue – which Club Brugge share with local rivals Cercle Brugge – was previously named the Olympiastadion.In November 2016, the club broke ground on a new training complex at Westkapelle, including four training pitches and an additional training centre for the senior squad plus the U21 and U19 teams; all in addition to the already available sports complex Molenhoek.Since 2007, Club Brugge has been working on developing a new stadium. Since then, there have been a number of proposed locations, but the project never really took off due to problems with ground availability and endangered species of bats. However, when a new city council and mayor were sworn into office in the city of Bruges, the project went through a rebirth. Instead of moving out of the current Jan Breydelstadium, the site on which this stadium is built will be completely reconstructed into a park with a brand new stadium next to where the current stadium is situated. Although this project has been criticised by some, it's the furthest the club has come with a project. The club, the city and the Flemish government aim have a functioning stadium by 2023, which will hold up to 40,116 spectators.Some of the fans are part of 62 supporter clubs in Belgium, which have more than 10,000 members. The "Supportersfederatie Club Brugge KV", founded in 1967, is recognized as the official supporters club of Club Brugge. The federation is made up of 60 recognized supporters' clubs and has an elected board to steer the operation in the right direction.In tribute to the fans, often dubbed the twelfth man in football, Club Brugge no longer assigns the number 12 to players. Club Brugge also has a TV show, CLUBtv, on the Telenet network since 21 July 2006. This twice weekly show features exclusive interviews with players, coaches and managers.The official mascot of Club Bruges is a bear, symbol of the city of Bruges. The history of the bear is related to a legend of the first Count of Flanders, Baldwin I of Flanders, who had fought and defeated a bear in his youth. Since the end of 2000, a second mascot, always a bear, travels along the edge of the field during home games for fans to call and encourage both their favorites. These two bears are called Belle and Bene. In 2010, a third bear named Bibi, made its appearance. He is described as the child of the first two mascots, and is oriented towards the young supporters.Like many historic clubs, Club Brugge contests rivalries with other Belgian clubs, whether at local (Cercle Brugge) or regional level (Ghent and Antwerp) or nationally competitive (Anderlecht and Standard Liège).At regional level, Club Brugge has maintained rivalry with Ghent, a team in the neighboring province. The successes achieved by the club in the early 1970s, combined with very poor season performances by Ghent in the same period, attracted many fans. Since the late 1990s, Gent again played a somewhat more leading role in Belgium, and matches between the two clubs were often spectacles. The game between the two teams is called "De Slag om Vlaanderen" or translated "The Battle of Flanders", this is because both teams have been the best teams in Flanders over the last 20 years.The rivalry between Club Brugge and Anderlecht has developed since the 1970s. At that time, the Brussels-based club and Club Brugge won most trophies between them, leaving little room for other Belgian teams. Matches between these two teams were often contested for the title of champion of Belgium. Three Belgian Cup finals were played between the two clubs (with Anderlecht winning once and Club Brugge twice), and they played seven Belgian Supercups (Club Bruges won five). A match between these two sides is often called 'The Hate Game'. They are arguably the most heated fixtures in Belgian football together with clashes between the other two members of the Big Three - Anderlecht and Standard Liège.The Bruges Derby is seen as one of the most important games of the season for a lot of fans from both teams. Every season, the game attracts a huge deal of fans which results in huge choreographies on both sides. Tifos, flags and banners made specifically for this confrontation and accompanied by flares and smoke bombs aren't a rare sight in and around the stadium. The winner of this derby is crowned "de Ploeg van Brugge""," which translates to "the team of Bruges". It has become a tradition for the winning side to plant a flag with the club's crest or colours on the center spot after the game.The rivalry between the oldest clubs in Flanders and Belgium, is one that dates back to the 1900s. In 1908, due to Bruges supporters attacking Antwerp players after they had lost 2-1 to what we'll later call Club Brugge, one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in Europe came to be. Confrontations between the two sides bring a lot of fighting and havoc to the stadium and the surrounding neighbourhoods. This hatred has reached new highs ever since Antwerp gained promotion back to the first division. 12 – The 12th man (reserved for the club supporters)23 – François Sterchele, striker (2007–08). "Posthumous; Sterchele died in a single-person car accident on 8 May 2008." | [
"Carl Hoefkens",
"Michel Preud'homme",
"Ivan Leko",
"Philippe Clement"
] | |
Who was the head coach of the team Club Brugge K.V. in Dec, 2022? | December 24, 2022 | {
"text": [
"Carl Hoefkens"
]
} | L2_Q190916_P286_4 | Philippe Clement is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2019 to Jan, 2022.
Alfred Schreuder is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2022 to May, 2022.
Carl Hoefkens is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from May, 2022 to Dec, 2022.
Ivan Leko is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2017 to Jan, 2019.
Michel Preud'homme is the head coach of Club Brugge K.V. from Jan, 2013 to Jan, 2017. | Club Brugge KVOne of the most decorated clubs in Belgian football, the club have been crowned Belgian league champions 17 times, second only to major rivals Anderlecht, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge, with whom they contest the Bruges derby.Throughout its long history, Club Brugge has enjoyed much European football success, reaching two European finals and two European semi-finals. Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far, losing to Liverpool in the final of the 1978 season. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup Final to the same opponents. Club Brugge holds the European record number of consecutive participations in the UEFA Europa League (20), the record number of Belgian Cups (11), and the record number of Belgian Super Cups (15).In 1890, students from the Catholic school Broeders Xaverianen and the neutral school Koninklijk Atheneum joined together to form the Brugsche Football Club. The former students christened the club's founding by establishing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). A year later on 13 November 1891, the club was re-created under Brugsche FC, and this is now seen as the official foundation of the current Club Brugge. In 1892, an official board was installed at the club to oversee all operations and team decisions. In 1895, the national athletics sports union was founded, predecessor of the later national football association, under the name UBSSA (Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques); Brugsche FC was a founding member of the UBSSSA and as such took part in the first league campaign organized in Belgian football during the 1895–96 season. Financial difficulties the following year forced the club to leave the UBSSA and soon after, Football Club Brugeois were formed by breakaway club members. The two sides were reunited in 1897 under the French name of Football Club Brugeois; they did not take on the Flemish title Club Brugge until 1972.In 1914, FC Brugeois reached their first Belgian Cup final, but lost 2–1 to Union SG. Six years later, the club claimed their first trophy, by winning the Belgian First Division during the 1919–20 season. They celebrated by changing their title to Royal FC Brugeois – with their regal status now reflected in their modern prefix KV, standing for Koninklijke Vereniging (royal club). Only eight years later though, the club was relegated to the Belgian Second Division for the first time in their history following a relegation play-off. Further lean times followed the relegation in 1928, as they spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the second division of Belgian football.Following the 1958–59 season, the club earned promotion back to the First Division and have not been relegated since. The club were able to add to their trophy cabinet in 1968, winning the first of their record 11 Belgian Cup titles for the first time after defeating Beerschot A.C. 7–6 in a penalty-shootout after a 1–1 draw.The club enjoyed their most success under legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel as he led the club to three straight league championships from 1975–76 to 1977–78 and a Belgian Cup victory in 1976–77. Happel also guided Club Brugge to their first European final, reaching the 1976 UEFA Cup Final. Over the two-legged final against English giants Liverpool, Club Brugge fell 3–4 on aggregate. Two years later, Brugge again met Liverpool in a European final, this time in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley, becoming the first Belgian club to reach the final of the competition. Brugge fell to a lone second-half goal from Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool won their second European Cup and third European trophy in succession. Following the cup final loss to Liverpool, Happel left Club Brugge and would lead Netherlands later that summer to the final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup.On 25 November 1992, Brugge player Daniel Amokachi became the first goal scorer in the Champions League. He scored in a 1–0 win over CSKA Moscow.The club don a black and blue home kit as has been traditional through their history. Away from home they wear a red strip. The club's current kit supplier is Macron.The club's original home in the Sint-Andries district of Bruges was known as the Rattenplein (rats' stadium) since it was owned by the local fox terrier club, who used it for another imported English pastime: rat baiting. This non-UEFA affiliated 'sport' involved getting dogs to chase and kill rats. In 1911, the team moved to a new ground, called De Klokke (after a nearby pub), which was renamed the Albert Dyserynckstadion after the sudden death of Club Brugge chairman Albert Dyserynck.Their current stadium, since 1975, was rebranded in honour of local butcher and revolutionary Jan Breydel in 1998. Breydel led a rising against the city's French overlords in the 1300s. The venue – which Club Brugge share with local rivals Cercle Brugge – was previously named the Olympiastadion.In November 2016, the club broke ground on a new training complex at Westkapelle, including four training pitches and an additional training centre for the senior squad plus the U21 and U19 teams; all in addition to the already available sports complex Molenhoek.Since 2007, Club Brugge has been working on developing a new stadium. Since then, there have been a number of proposed locations, but the project never really took off due to problems with ground availability and endangered species of bats. However, when a new city council and mayor were sworn into office in the city of Bruges, the project went through a rebirth. Instead of moving out of the current Jan Breydelstadium, the site on which this stadium is built will be completely reconstructed into a park with a brand new stadium next to where the current stadium is situated. Although this project has been criticised by some, it's the furthest the club has come with a project. The club, the city and the Flemish government aim have a functioning stadium by 2023, which will hold up to 40,116 spectators.Some of the fans are part of 62 supporter clubs in Belgium, which have more than 10,000 members. The "Supportersfederatie Club Brugge KV", founded in 1967, is recognized as the official supporters club of Club Brugge. The federation is made up of 60 recognized supporters' clubs and has an elected board to steer the operation in the right direction.In tribute to the fans, often dubbed the twelfth man in football, Club Brugge no longer assigns the number 12 to players. Club Brugge also has a TV show, CLUBtv, on the Telenet network since 21 July 2006. This twice weekly show features exclusive interviews with players, coaches and managers.The official mascot of Club Bruges is a bear, symbol of the city of Bruges. The history of the bear is related to a legend of the first Count of Flanders, Baldwin I of Flanders, who had fought and defeated a bear in his youth. Since the end of 2000, a second mascot, always a bear, travels along the edge of the field during home games for fans to call and encourage both their favorites. These two bears are called Belle and Bene. In 2010, a third bear named Bibi, made its appearance. He is described as the child of the first two mascots, and is oriented towards the young supporters.Like many historic clubs, Club Brugge contests rivalries with other Belgian clubs, whether at local (Cercle Brugge) or regional level (Ghent and Antwerp) or nationally competitive (Anderlecht and Standard Liège).At regional level, Club Brugge has maintained rivalry with Ghent, a team in the neighboring province. The successes achieved by the club in the early 1970s, combined with very poor season performances by Ghent in the same period, attracted many fans. Since the late 1990s, Gent again played a somewhat more leading role in Belgium, and matches between the two clubs were often spectacles. The game between the two teams is called "De Slag om Vlaanderen" or translated "The Battle of Flanders", this is because both teams have been the best teams in Flanders over the last 20 years.The rivalry between Club Brugge and Anderlecht has developed since the 1970s. At that time, the Brussels-based club and Club Brugge won most trophies between them, leaving little room for other Belgian teams. Matches between these two teams were often contested for the title of champion of Belgium. Three Belgian Cup finals were played between the two clubs (with Anderlecht winning once and Club Brugge twice), and they played seven Belgian Supercups (Club Bruges won five). A match between these two sides is often called 'The Hate Game'. They are arguably the most heated fixtures in Belgian football together with clashes between the other two members of the Big Three - Anderlecht and Standard Liège.The Bruges Derby is seen as one of the most important games of the season for a lot of fans from both teams. Every season, the game attracts a huge deal of fans which results in huge choreographies on both sides. Tifos, flags and banners made specifically for this confrontation and accompanied by flares and smoke bombs aren't a rare sight in and around the stadium. The winner of this derby is crowned "de Ploeg van Brugge""," which translates to "the team of Bruges". It has become a tradition for the winning side to plant a flag with the club's crest or colours on the center spot after the game.The rivalry between the oldest clubs in Flanders and Belgium, is one that dates back to the 1900s. In 1908, due to Bruges supporters attacking Antwerp players after they had lost 2-1 to what we'll later call Club Brugge, one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in Europe came to be. Confrontations between the two sides bring a lot of fighting and havoc to the stadium and the surrounding neighbourhoods. This hatred has reached new highs ever since Antwerp gained promotion back to the first division. 12 – The 12th man (reserved for the club supporters)23 – François Sterchele, striker (2007–08). "Posthumous; Sterchele died in a single-person car accident on 8 May 2008." | [
"Michel Preud'homme",
"Ivan Leko",
"Alfred Schreuder",
"Philippe Clement"
] | |
Which position did Vito Lattanzio hold in May, 1977? | May 15, 1977 | {
"text": [
"Italian Minister of Defence"
]
} | L2_Q503677_P39_0 | Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Transports from Sep, 1977 to Mar, 1978.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Defence from Jul, 1976 to Sep, 1977.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of minister of foreign trade from Apr, 1991 to Jun, 1992.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic from Jul, 1983 to Jul, 1987. | Vittorio LattanzioVittorio (Vito) Lattanzio (October 31, 1926, – October 31, 2010) was an Italian Christian Democrat politician and physician.Lattanzio was born October 31, 1926 in Bari, Italy. He would get a degree in medicine and begin working as a physician before entering politics, where he would become a prominent member of the Christian Democrats; making a name for himself in the field of foreign policy.He would first take the national stage by becoming the Undersecretary of Defence in the Andreotti II Cabinet.Lattanzio served as Minister of Defence (1976–1977) in the Andreotti III Cabinet. He would face harsh criticism for his role as Minister of Defense after convicted Nazi Herbert Kappler escaped from Italian custody in 1977 to find sanctuary in West Germany. He would ultimately resign from this position due to the scandal but go on to take different cabinet level positions.Following the kidnapping and death of fellow Apulia native Aldo Moro, Lattanzio effectively inherited the 'Apulian electoral fortune.'He would go on to serve the cabinets of Prime Ministers Andreotti (1976–1978, 1989–1992) and De Mita (1988–89) as Minister of Transport, then Minister of Civil Protection, and lastly as Minister of Foreign Trade. While serving as Minister of Civil protection he would be criticized for inefficient handling of the department during the 1990 Augusta Earthquake. Lattanzio would actively participate in increasing trade with China while Minister of Foreign Trade. He also served in the Chamber of Deputies of Italy in Legislature III, Legislature IV, Legislature V, Legislature VI, Legislature VII, Legislature VIII, Legislature IX and Legislature X.Lattanzio would be placed under house arrest while being investigated on allegations of corruption and illicit party financing.He died in his hometown of Bari on his 84th birthday, and was survived by his daughter. | [
"minister of foreign trade",
"member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic",
"Italian Minister of Transports"
] | |
Which position did Vito Lattanzio hold in Feb, 1978? | February 02, 1978 | {
"text": [
"Italian Minister of Transports"
]
} | L2_Q503677_P39_1 | Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Transports from Sep, 1977 to Mar, 1978.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Defence from Jul, 1976 to Sep, 1977.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic from Jul, 1983 to Jul, 1987.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of minister of foreign trade from Apr, 1991 to Jun, 1992. | Vittorio LattanzioVittorio (Vito) Lattanzio (October 31, 1926, – October 31, 2010) was an Italian Christian Democrat politician and physician.Lattanzio was born October 31, 1926 in Bari, Italy. He would get a degree in medicine and begin working as a physician before entering politics, where he would become a prominent member of the Christian Democrats; making a name for himself in the field of foreign policy.He would first take the national stage by becoming the Undersecretary of Defence in the Andreotti II Cabinet.Lattanzio served as Minister of Defence (1976–1977) in the Andreotti III Cabinet. He would face harsh criticism for his role as Minister of Defense after convicted Nazi Herbert Kappler escaped from Italian custody in 1977 to find sanctuary in West Germany. He would ultimately resign from this position due to the scandal but go on to take different cabinet level positions.Following the kidnapping and death of fellow Apulia native Aldo Moro, Lattanzio effectively inherited the 'Apulian electoral fortune.'He would go on to serve the cabinets of Prime Ministers Andreotti (1976–1978, 1989–1992) and De Mita (1988–89) as Minister of Transport, then Minister of Civil Protection, and lastly as Minister of Foreign Trade. While serving as Minister of Civil protection he would be criticized for inefficient handling of the department during the 1990 Augusta Earthquake. Lattanzio would actively participate in increasing trade with China while Minister of Foreign Trade. He also served in the Chamber of Deputies of Italy in Legislature III, Legislature IV, Legislature V, Legislature VI, Legislature VII, Legislature VIII, Legislature IX and Legislature X.Lattanzio would be placed under house arrest while being investigated on allegations of corruption and illicit party financing.He died in his hometown of Bari on his 84th birthday, and was survived by his daughter. | [
"Italian Minister of Defence",
"minister of foreign trade",
"member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic"
] | |
Which position did Vito Lattanzio hold in Apr, 1985? | April 03, 1985 | {
"text": [
"member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic"
]
} | L2_Q503677_P39_2 | Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Defence from Jul, 1976 to Sep, 1977.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of minister of foreign trade from Apr, 1991 to Jun, 1992.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Transports from Sep, 1977 to Mar, 1978.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic from Jul, 1983 to Jul, 1987. | Vittorio LattanzioVittorio (Vito) Lattanzio (October 31, 1926, – October 31, 2010) was an Italian Christian Democrat politician and physician.Lattanzio was born October 31, 1926 in Bari, Italy. He would get a degree in medicine and begin working as a physician before entering politics, where he would become a prominent member of the Christian Democrats; making a name for himself in the field of foreign policy.He would first take the national stage by becoming the Undersecretary of Defence in the Andreotti II Cabinet.Lattanzio served as Minister of Defence (1976–1977) in the Andreotti III Cabinet. He would face harsh criticism for his role as Minister of Defense after convicted Nazi Herbert Kappler escaped from Italian custody in 1977 to find sanctuary in West Germany. He would ultimately resign from this position due to the scandal but go on to take different cabinet level positions.Following the kidnapping and death of fellow Apulia native Aldo Moro, Lattanzio effectively inherited the 'Apulian electoral fortune.'He would go on to serve the cabinets of Prime Ministers Andreotti (1976–1978, 1989–1992) and De Mita (1988–89) as Minister of Transport, then Minister of Civil Protection, and lastly as Minister of Foreign Trade. While serving as Minister of Civil protection he would be criticized for inefficient handling of the department during the 1990 Augusta Earthquake. Lattanzio would actively participate in increasing trade with China while Minister of Foreign Trade. He also served in the Chamber of Deputies of Italy in Legislature III, Legislature IV, Legislature V, Legislature VI, Legislature VII, Legislature VIII, Legislature IX and Legislature X.Lattanzio would be placed under house arrest while being investigated on allegations of corruption and illicit party financing.He died in his hometown of Bari on his 84th birthday, and was survived by his daughter. | [
"Italian Minister of Defence",
"minister of foreign trade",
"Italian Minister of Transports"
] | |
Which position did Vito Lattanzio hold in Jan, 1992? | January 12, 1992 | {
"text": [
"minister of foreign trade"
]
} | L2_Q503677_P39_3 | Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Transports from Sep, 1977 to Mar, 1978.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of Italian Minister of Defence from Jul, 1976 to Sep, 1977.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic from Jul, 1983 to Jul, 1987.
Vito Lattanzio holds the position of minister of foreign trade from Apr, 1991 to Jun, 1992. | Vittorio LattanzioVittorio (Vito) Lattanzio (October 31, 1926, – October 31, 2010) was an Italian Christian Democrat politician and physician.Lattanzio was born October 31, 1926 in Bari, Italy. He would get a degree in medicine and begin working as a physician before entering politics, where he would become a prominent member of the Christian Democrats; making a name for himself in the field of foreign policy.He would first take the national stage by becoming the Undersecretary of Defence in the Andreotti II Cabinet.Lattanzio served as Minister of Defence (1976–1977) in the Andreotti III Cabinet. He would face harsh criticism for his role as Minister of Defense after convicted Nazi Herbert Kappler escaped from Italian custody in 1977 to find sanctuary in West Germany. He would ultimately resign from this position due to the scandal but go on to take different cabinet level positions.Following the kidnapping and death of fellow Apulia native Aldo Moro, Lattanzio effectively inherited the 'Apulian electoral fortune.'He would go on to serve the cabinets of Prime Ministers Andreotti (1976–1978, 1989–1992) and De Mita (1988–89) as Minister of Transport, then Minister of Civil Protection, and lastly as Minister of Foreign Trade. While serving as Minister of Civil protection he would be criticized for inefficient handling of the department during the 1990 Augusta Earthquake. Lattanzio would actively participate in increasing trade with China while Minister of Foreign Trade. He also served in the Chamber of Deputies of Italy in Legislature III, Legislature IV, Legislature V, Legislature VI, Legislature VII, Legislature VIII, Legislature IX and Legislature X.Lattanzio would be placed under house arrest while being investigated on allegations of corruption and illicit party financing.He died in his hometown of Bari on his 84th birthday, and was survived by his daughter. | [
"Italian Minister of Defence",
"member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic",
"Italian Minister of Transports"
] | |
Who was the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica in Jan, 1998? | January 07, 1998 | {
"text": [
"Mariangelo Foggiato"
]
} | L2_Q2251671_P488_0 | Alessio Morosin is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2007.
Fabrizio Comencini is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2000 to Jan, 2004.
Gian Pietro Piotto is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2009 to Dec, 2022.
Mariangelo Foggiato is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1998 to Jan, 1999.
Donato Manfroi is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1999 to Jan, 2000. | Liga Veneta RepubblicaLiga Veneta Repubblica ("Łiga Vèneta Republica", Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto.The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.The LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta (LV), the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007.In 2000 the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators (all LV defectors).In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of Lega Nord (LN), a federation of regional parties. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.Subsequently, seven out of eight members of LV–LN's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left the LN, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in the LN were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name "Veneti d'Europa" (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from the LN.In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of the LN, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), "Raixe Venete", Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). In July 2014 the coalition was transformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named Independence We Veneto (INV), a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of the LV–LN. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.In May 2017 Comencini and other INV leaders were briefly members of Great North (GN), a liberal and federalist party.Sometime in 2018 Comencini stepped down as secretary, being replaced by Gianluigi Sette and becoming president instead.In the 2019 local elections the LVR stood with its own lists in San Bonifacio, Negrar and Arzignano.For the 2020 regional election the party entered in alliance with the LV for the first time since the 1998 split. In the election the LV sponsors three lists, its own, Luca Zaia's personal list and the "Venetian Autonomy List", whose logo is the LVR's one with minor modifications, especially "List" instead of "Liga" and the "Autonomy" banner in the lower part, along with LVR's acronym. The LVR obtained 2.4% of the vote, electing Tomas Piccinini to the Regional Council.The electoral results of the party in Veneto in the regional and general elections for the Senate since 1999 are shown in the chart below. | [
"Gian Pietro Piotto",
"Donato Manfroi",
"Fabrizio Comencini",
"Alessio Morosin"
] | |
Who was the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica in May, 1999? | May 13, 1999 | {
"text": [
"Donato Manfroi"
]
} | L2_Q2251671_P488_1 | Donato Manfroi is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1999 to Jan, 2000.
Gian Pietro Piotto is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2009 to Dec, 2022.
Mariangelo Foggiato is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1998 to Jan, 1999.
Alessio Morosin is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2007.
Fabrizio Comencini is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2000 to Jan, 2004. | Liga Veneta RepubblicaLiga Veneta Repubblica ("Łiga Vèneta Republica", Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto.The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.The LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta (LV), the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007.In 2000 the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators (all LV defectors).In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of Lega Nord (LN), a federation of regional parties. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.Subsequently, seven out of eight members of LV–LN's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left the LN, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in the LN were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name "Veneti d'Europa" (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from the LN.In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of the LN, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), "Raixe Venete", Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). In July 2014 the coalition was transformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named Independence We Veneto (INV), a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of the LV–LN. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.In May 2017 Comencini and other INV leaders were briefly members of Great North (GN), a liberal and federalist party.Sometime in 2018 Comencini stepped down as secretary, being replaced by Gianluigi Sette and becoming president instead.In the 2019 local elections the LVR stood with its own lists in San Bonifacio, Negrar and Arzignano.For the 2020 regional election the party entered in alliance with the LV for the first time since the 1998 split. In the election the LV sponsors three lists, its own, Luca Zaia's personal list and the "Venetian Autonomy List", whose logo is the LVR's one with minor modifications, especially "List" instead of "Liga" and the "Autonomy" banner in the lower part, along with LVR's acronym. The LVR obtained 2.4% of the vote, electing Tomas Piccinini to the Regional Council.The electoral results of the party in Veneto in the regional and general elections for the Senate since 1999 are shown in the chart below. | [
"Mariangelo Foggiato",
"Gian Pietro Piotto",
"Fabrizio Comencini",
"Alessio Morosin"
] | |
Who was the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica in Jul, 2001? | July 26, 2001 | {
"text": [
"Fabrizio Comencini"
]
} | L2_Q2251671_P488_2 | Donato Manfroi is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1999 to Jan, 2000.
Alessio Morosin is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2007.
Gian Pietro Piotto is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2009 to Dec, 2022.
Mariangelo Foggiato is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1998 to Jan, 1999.
Fabrizio Comencini is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2000 to Jan, 2004. | Liga Veneta RepubblicaLiga Veneta Repubblica ("Łiga Vèneta Republica", Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto.The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.The LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta (LV), the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007.In 2000 the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators (all LV defectors).In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of Lega Nord (LN), a federation of regional parties. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.Subsequently, seven out of eight members of LV–LN's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left the LN, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in the LN were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name "Veneti d'Europa" (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from the LN.In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of the LN, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), "Raixe Venete", Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). In July 2014 the coalition was transformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named Independence We Veneto (INV), a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of the LV–LN. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.In May 2017 Comencini and other INV leaders were briefly members of Great North (GN), a liberal and federalist party.Sometime in 2018 Comencini stepped down as secretary, being replaced by Gianluigi Sette and becoming president instead.In the 2019 local elections the LVR stood with its own lists in San Bonifacio, Negrar and Arzignano.For the 2020 regional election the party entered in alliance with the LV for the first time since the 1998 split. In the election the LV sponsors three lists, its own, Luca Zaia's personal list and the "Venetian Autonomy List", whose logo is the LVR's one with minor modifications, especially "List" instead of "Liga" and the "Autonomy" banner in the lower part, along with LVR's acronym. The LVR obtained 2.4% of the vote, electing Tomas Piccinini to the Regional Council.The electoral results of the party in Veneto in the regional and general elections for the Senate since 1999 are shown in the chart below. | [
"Mariangelo Foggiato",
"Gian Pietro Piotto",
"Donato Manfroi",
"Alessio Morosin"
] | |
Who was the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica in Dec, 2004? | December 09, 2004 | {
"text": [
"Alessio Morosin"
]
} | L2_Q2251671_P488_3 | Alessio Morosin is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2007.
Mariangelo Foggiato is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1998 to Jan, 1999.
Fabrizio Comencini is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2000 to Jan, 2004.
Gian Pietro Piotto is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2009 to Dec, 2022.
Donato Manfroi is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1999 to Jan, 2000. | Liga Veneta RepubblicaLiga Veneta Repubblica ("Łiga Vèneta Republica", Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto.The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.The LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta (LV), the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007.In 2000 the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators (all LV defectors).In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of Lega Nord (LN), a federation of regional parties. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.Subsequently, seven out of eight members of LV–LN's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left the LN, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in the LN were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name "Veneti d'Europa" (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from the LN.In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of the LN, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), "Raixe Venete", Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). In July 2014 the coalition was transformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named Independence We Veneto (INV), a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of the LV–LN. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.In May 2017 Comencini and other INV leaders were briefly members of Great North (GN), a liberal and federalist party.Sometime in 2018 Comencini stepped down as secretary, being replaced by Gianluigi Sette and becoming president instead.In the 2019 local elections the LVR stood with its own lists in San Bonifacio, Negrar and Arzignano.For the 2020 regional election the party entered in alliance with the LV for the first time since the 1998 split. In the election the LV sponsors three lists, its own, Luca Zaia's personal list and the "Venetian Autonomy List", whose logo is the LVR's one with minor modifications, especially "List" instead of "Liga" and the "Autonomy" banner in the lower part, along with LVR's acronym. The LVR obtained 2.4% of the vote, electing Tomas Piccinini to the Regional Council.The electoral results of the party in Veneto in the regional and general elections for the Senate since 1999 are shown in the chart below. | [
"Mariangelo Foggiato",
"Gian Pietro Piotto",
"Donato Manfroi",
"Fabrizio Comencini"
] | |
Who was the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica in Mar, 2018? | March 26, 2018 | {
"text": [
"Gian Pietro Piotto"
]
} | L2_Q2251671_P488_4 | Mariangelo Foggiato is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1998 to Jan, 1999.
Donato Manfroi is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 1999 to Jan, 2000.
Fabrizio Comencini is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2000 to Jan, 2004.
Alessio Morosin is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2007.
Gian Pietro Piotto is the chair of Liga Veneta Repubblica from Jan, 2009 to Dec, 2022. | Liga Veneta RepubblicaLiga Veneta Repubblica ("Łiga Vèneta Republica", Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto.The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.The LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta (LV), the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007.In 2000 the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators (all LV defectors).In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta (LV) since 1994, tried to lead the party out of Lega Nord (LN), a federation of regional parties. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of the LV.Subsequently, seven out of eight members of LV–LN's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of the LV. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left the LN, joined the party for a while. Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and separatist wing of the LV, while the people who remained in the LN were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms coalition in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan, with whom Comencini signed a pact in August 1999.Despite the entity of the split among elects, most voters of the LV remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election the LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than the LV, which gained a disappointing 10.7% though, and far less than expected. However, the LVR had some local strongholds: San Bonifacio (20.9% over LV's 7.0% in 1998), Schio (11.8% over 11.1% in 1999), Arcole (44.1% over 6.0% in 1999), Camisano Vicentino (21.6% over 5.9% in 1999), Creazzo (15.5% over 14.7% in 1999), Chiuppano (34.8% and elected mayor in 1999), Monticello Conte Otto (14.6% over 7.2% in 1999), Resana (24.6% over 7.8% in 1999), Spresiano (62.2% over 9.1% and elected mayor in 1999) and Torri di Quartesolo (15.8% in 1999).For the 2000 regional election the LV entered an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded the LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the LV (12.0%). The name "Veneti d'Europa" (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as the LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from the LN.In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Comencini national president. In 2001 general election Bepin Segato, a separatist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of the LN, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.In 2003 Beggiato replaced Vido as national secretary in a time when the party was not represented in the institutions and was shrinking in popular support. In 2004 Beggiato tried to lead the party into North-East Project (PNE), even if PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV members to join not as a party but as individuals. Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant giving up the party's identity. After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Beggiato, Foggiato and Munaretto switched to PNE, while Comencini was elected national secretary and Morosin national president.During this time, the party did occasionally better than the LV in local elections. This was the case of Cittadella in 2002 (14.9% over 5.5%) and San Bonifacio in 2004 (17.8% over 4.7%): in both cases, LFV candidates, Massimo Bitonci and Silvano Polo respectively, were elected mayors in run-offs. Bitonci, who re-joined the LV, was re-elected in 2007, while Polo did not stand for re-election and the LFV supported the defeated centre-left candidate.In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for president, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza the LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while the LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of the LV, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.In October 2008 the LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing." However, in the 2009 provincial and municipal election the LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties, the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV. This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate. In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. The LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of LVR's strongholds, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big share of the votes (1.6%) the LVR gained in 2005.In the 2013 general election the LVR obtained 0.7% of the vote regionally, 1.2% in its stronghold of Vicenza.In July 2013 the LVR joined Let Veneto Decide, a loose cross-party committee for a referendum on Veneto's independence (see Venetian nationalism#Recent developments), along with Stefano Valdegamberi (the regional councillor who presented bill 342/2013 on the referendum), Venetian Independence (IV, the party which had envisioned the campaign), Veneto State (VS), "Raixe Venete", Veneto First, other Venetist groups and individuals.In March 2014 the party was a founding member of United for Independent Veneto, a more structured federation of Venetist and separatist parties, including also VS, Independent Venetians (VI) and Valdegamberi's Popular Future (FP). In July 2014 the coalition was transformed into "We Independent Veneto" (NVI), after the entry of other parties, notably including North-East Project and Chiavegato for Independence.After the exit of Chiavegato and his group from the alliance and their alignment with Alessio Morosin's IV, the remaining parties of NVI formed a joint list for the 2015 regional election named Independence We Veneto (INV), a sort of re-edition of 2010's North-East Union, but with a separatist platform and in support of Luca Zaia, incumbent President of Veneto and candidate of the LV–LN. In the election, the list won 2.7% of the vote (0.2% more than IV) and Antonio Guadagnini of VS was elected regional councillor in the provincial constituency of Vicenza.In May 2017 Comencini and other INV leaders were briefly members of Great North (GN), a liberal and federalist party.Sometime in 2018 Comencini stepped down as secretary, being replaced by Gianluigi Sette and becoming president instead.In the 2019 local elections the LVR stood with its own lists in San Bonifacio, Negrar and Arzignano.For the 2020 regional election the party entered in alliance with the LV for the first time since the 1998 split. In the election the LV sponsors three lists, its own, Luca Zaia's personal list and the "Venetian Autonomy List", whose logo is the LVR's one with minor modifications, especially "List" instead of "Liga" and the "Autonomy" banner in the lower part, along with LVR's acronym. The LVR obtained 2.4% of the vote, electing Tomas Piccinini to the Regional Council.The electoral results of the party in Veneto in the regional and general elections for the Senate since 1999 are shown in the chart below. | [
"Mariangelo Foggiato",
"Donato Manfroi",
"Fabrizio Comencini",
"Alessio Morosin"
] | |
Which position did Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello hold in Jul, 1865? | July 07, 1865 | {
"text": [
"municipal councillor of The Hague"
]
} | L2_Q592540_P39_0 | Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from Sep, 1871 to Nov, 1877.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of municipal councillor of The Hague from Sep, 1859 to Sep, 1865.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the Senate of the Netherlands from May, 1888 to Sep, 1893.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879. | Jan Kappeyne van de CoppelloJoannes "Jan" Kappeyne van de Coppello (2 October 1822 – 28 July 1895) was a Dutch liberal politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1877 to 1879.After attending the public primary school Outercourt in The Hague, Kappeyne was home schooled by his father, who was rector of the gymnasium of The Hague and taught Greek, as secondary education. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a prominent Protestant-Christian politician, became his guardian after the death of his father in 1840. In that year he began to study Roman and contemporary law at Leiden University. In 1845 he became lawyer in The Hague. In 1860 Kappeyne was elected to the city council of the city, as a liberal.In 1862 Kappeyne was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives as a liberal for The Hague. He was elected on a 'Puttian' ticket. Fransen van de Putte, who was a minister at the time, wanted to steer a more conservative colonial course. In the 1866 elections he was defeated by the conservative François de Casembroot.In 1871 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a liberal for Haarlem, defeating the conservative Willem van Golstein. In the 1875 elections he defeat the conservative M.J. van Lennep. He became the leader of the liberals in 1876. In parliament he was known for his comical amendments.In 1877 Kappeneye was "formateur" of a liberal cabinet. Kappeyne became Ministers of the Interior and gave up his seat in parliament. He was appointed chairperson of the council of ministers, an office equivalent to today's Prime Minister of the Netherlands, formally temporarily, but he was the political leader of the cabinet. As minister he enacted important laws, such as a new law on primary education. This law put higher demands on the quality of school buildings and the wages and education of teachers. This raised the financial burdens of primary schools, but only public schools received state subsidies. This effectively eliminated religious schools which, without subsidies, were unable to sustain the financial burdens. This led to staunch opposition as part of the school struggle from Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic members of parliament, and a citizens' petition. Kappeyene however did not change his mind.On 10 June 1879 the law on the channels which he proposed was rejected by parliament. Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him, but William III refused. On 2 July, Kappeyne asked the King to allow a constitutional revision, William III refused, and Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him again, and William III finally dismissed Kappeyne. Behind the fall of the Kappeyne cabinet lay a conflict between the factions of the progressive liberals and the more moderate liberals.In 1879, Kappeyne returned to his lawyer's office in The Hague. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in parliament in the 1880, 1883 and 1884 elections. In 1880 he was defeated in the district of Amsterdam by the liberal Johan George Gleichman, in 1883 in Amsterdam by the liberal conservative Adriaan Gildemeester, and in 1884 by the liberal Jacob Duyvis. He remained lawyer until his death in 1895. In this period he refused a request by Leiden University to become honorary professor of law.In 1888 Kappeyne was elected into the Senate as a liberal for North Holland. In the Senate, Kappeyne took a more conservative course as he had previously done and remained a backbencher. | [
"member of the Senate of the Netherlands",
"Prime Minister of the Netherlands",
"Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations",
"member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands"
] | |
Which position did Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello hold in Aug, 1873? | August 07, 1873 | {
"text": [
"member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands"
]
} | L2_Q592540_P39_1 | Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the Senate of the Netherlands from May, 1888 to Sep, 1893.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from Sep, 1871 to Nov, 1877.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of municipal councillor of The Hague from Sep, 1859 to Sep, 1865.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879. | Jan Kappeyne van de CoppelloJoannes "Jan" Kappeyne van de Coppello (2 October 1822 – 28 July 1895) was a Dutch liberal politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1877 to 1879.After attending the public primary school Outercourt in The Hague, Kappeyne was home schooled by his father, who was rector of the gymnasium of The Hague and taught Greek, as secondary education. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a prominent Protestant-Christian politician, became his guardian after the death of his father in 1840. In that year he began to study Roman and contemporary law at Leiden University. In 1845 he became lawyer in The Hague. In 1860 Kappeyne was elected to the city council of the city, as a liberal.In 1862 Kappeyne was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives as a liberal for The Hague. He was elected on a 'Puttian' ticket. Fransen van de Putte, who was a minister at the time, wanted to steer a more conservative colonial course. In the 1866 elections he was defeated by the conservative François de Casembroot.In 1871 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a liberal for Haarlem, defeating the conservative Willem van Golstein. In the 1875 elections he defeat the conservative M.J. van Lennep. He became the leader of the liberals in 1876. In parliament he was known for his comical amendments.In 1877 Kappeneye was "formateur" of a liberal cabinet. Kappeyne became Ministers of the Interior and gave up his seat in parliament. He was appointed chairperson of the council of ministers, an office equivalent to today's Prime Minister of the Netherlands, formally temporarily, but he was the political leader of the cabinet. As minister he enacted important laws, such as a new law on primary education. This law put higher demands on the quality of school buildings and the wages and education of teachers. This raised the financial burdens of primary schools, but only public schools received state subsidies. This effectively eliminated religious schools which, without subsidies, were unable to sustain the financial burdens. This led to staunch opposition as part of the school struggle from Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic members of parliament, and a citizens' petition. Kappeyene however did not change his mind.On 10 June 1879 the law on the channels which he proposed was rejected by parliament. Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him, but William III refused. On 2 July, Kappeyne asked the King to allow a constitutional revision, William III refused, and Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him again, and William III finally dismissed Kappeyne. Behind the fall of the Kappeyne cabinet lay a conflict between the factions of the progressive liberals and the more moderate liberals.In 1879, Kappeyne returned to his lawyer's office in The Hague. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in parliament in the 1880, 1883 and 1884 elections. In 1880 he was defeated in the district of Amsterdam by the liberal Johan George Gleichman, in 1883 in Amsterdam by the liberal conservative Adriaan Gildemeester, and in 1884 by the liberal Jacob Duyvis. He remained lawyer until his death in 1895. In this period he refused a request by Leiden University to become honorary professor of law.In 1888 Kappeyne was elected into the Senate as a liberal for North Holland. In the Senate, Kappeyne took a more conservative course as he had previously done and remained a backbencher. | [
"member of the Senate of the Netherlands",
"Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations",
"municipal councillor of The Hague",
"Prime Minister of the Netherlands"
] | |
Which position did Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello hold in Sep, 1878? | September 01, 1878 | {
"text": [
"Prime Minister of the Netherlands",
"Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations"
]
} | L2_Q592540_P39_2 | Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the Senate of the Netherlands from May, 1888 to Sep, 1893.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from Sep, 1871 to Nov, 1877.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of municipal councillor of The Hague from Sep, 1859 to Sep, 1865. | Jan Kappeyne van de CoppelloJoannes "Jan" Kappeyne van de Coppello (2 October 1822 – 28 July 1895) was a Dutch liberal politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1877 to 1879.After attending the public primary school Outercourt in The Hague, Kappeyne was home schooled by his father, who was rector of the gymnasium of The Hague and taught Greek, as secondary education. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a prominent Protestant-Christian politician, became his guardian after the death of his father in 1840. In that year he began to study Roman and contemporary law at Leiden University. In 1845 he became lawyer in The Hague. In 1860 Kappeyne was elected to the city council of the city, as a liberal.In 1862 Kappeyne was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives as a liberal for The Hague. He was elected on a 'Puttian' ticket. Fransen van de Putte, who was a minister at the time, wanted to steer a more conservative colonial course. In the 1866 elections he was defeated by the conservative François de Casembroot.In 1871 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a liberal for Haarlem, defeating the conservative Willem van Golstein. In the 1875 elections he defeat the conservative M.J. van Lennep. He became the leader of the liberals in 1876. In parliament he was known for his comical amendments.In 1877 Kappeneye was "formateur" of a liberal cabinet. Kappeyne became Ministers of the Interior and gave up his seat in parliament. He was appointed chairperson of the council of ministers, an office equivalent to today's Prime Minister of the Netherlands, formally temporarily, but he was the political leader of the cabinet. As minister he enacted important laws, such as a new law on primary education. This law put higher demands on the quality of school buildings and the wages and education of teachers. This raised the financial burdens of primary schools, but only public schools received state subsidies. This effectively eliminated religious schools which, without subsidies, were unable to sustain the financial burdens. This led to staunch opposition as part of the school struggle from Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic members of parliament, and a citizens' petition. Kappeyene however did not change his mind.On 10 June 1879 the law on the channels which he proposed was rejected by parliament. Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him, but William III refused. On 2 July, Kappeyne asked the King to allow a constitutional revision, William III refused, and Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him again, and William III finally dismissed Kappeyne. Behind the fall of the Kappeyne cabinet lay a conflict between the factions of the progressive liberals and the more moderate liberals.In 1879, Kappeyne returned to his lawyer's office in The Hague. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in parliament in the 1880, 1883 and 1884 elections. In 1880 he was defeated in the district of Amsterdam by the liberal Johan George Gleichman, in 1883 in Amsterdam by the liberal conservative Adriaan Gildemeester, and in 1884 by the liberal Jacob Duyvis. He remained lawyer until his death in 1895. In this period he refused a request by Leiden University to become honorary professor of law.In 1888 Kappeyne was elected into the Senate as a liberal for North Holland. In the Senate, Kappeyne took a more conservative course as he had previously done and remained a backbencher. | [
"member of the Senate of the Netherlands",
"municipal councillor of The Hague",
"member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands"
] | |
Which position did Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello hold in Apr, 1878? | April 28, 1878 | {
"text": [
"Prime Minister of the Netherlands",
"Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations"
]
} | L2_Q592540_P39_3 | Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of municipal councillor of The Hague from Sep, 1859 to Sep, 1865.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from Sep, 1871 to Nov, 1877.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the Senate of the Netherlands from May, 1888 to Sep, 1893. | Jan Kappeyne van de CoppelloJoannes "Jan" Kappeyne van de Coppello (2 October 1822 – 28 July 1895) was a Dutch liberal politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1877 to 1879.After attending the public primary school Outercourt in The Hague, Kappeyne was home schooled by his father, who was rector of the gymnasium of The Hague and taught Greek, as secondary education. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a prominent Protestant-Christian politician, became his guardian after the death of his father in 1840. In that year he began to study Roman and contemporary law at Leiden University. In 1845 he became lawyer in The Hague. In 1860 Kappeyne was elected to the city council of the city, as a liberal.In 1862 Kappeyne was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives as a liberal for The Hague. He was elected on a 'Puttian' ticket. Fransen van de Putte, who was a minister at the time, wanted to steer a more conservative colonial course. In the 1866 elections he was defeated by the conservative François de Casembroot.In 1871 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a liberal for Haarlem, defeating the conservative Willem van Golstein. In the 1875 elections he defeat the conservative M.J. van Lennep. He became the leader of the liberals in 1876. In parliament he was known for his comical amendments.In 1877 Kappeneye was "formateur" of a liberal cabinet. Kappeyne became Ministers of the Interior and gave up his seat in parliament. He was appointed chairperson of the council of ministers, an office equivalent to today's Prime Minister of the Netherlands, formally temporarily, but he was the political leader of the cabinet. As minister he enacted important laws, such as a new law on primary education. This law put higher demands on the quality of school buildings and the wages and education of teachers. This raised the financial burdens of primary schools, but only public schools received state subsidies. This effectively eliminated religious schools which, without subsidies, were unable to sustain the financial burdens. This led to staunch opposition as part of the school struggle from Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic members of parliament, and a citizens' petition. Kappeyene however did not change his mind.On 10 June 1879 the law on the channels which he proposed was rejected by parliament. Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him, but William III refused. On 2 July, Kappeyne asked the King to allow a constitutional revision, William III refused, and Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him again, and William III finally dismissed Kappeyne. Behind the fall of the Kappeyne cabinet lay a conflict between the factions of the progressive liberals and the more moderate liberals.In 1879, Kappeyne returned to his lawyer's office in The Hague. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in parliament in the 1880, 1883 and 1884 elections. In 1880 he was defeated in the district of Amsterdam by the liberal Johan George Gleichman, in 1883 in Amsterdam by the liberal conservative Adriaan Gildemeester, and in 1884 by the liberal Jacob Duyvis. He remained lawyer until his death in 1895. In this period he refused a request by Leiden University to become honorary professor of law.In 1888 Kappeyne was elected into the Senate as a liberal for North Holland. In the Senate, Kappeyne took a more conservative course as he had previously done and remained a backbencher. | [
"member of the Senate of the Netherlands",
"municipal councillor of The Hague",
"member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands"
] | |
Which position did Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello hold in Aug, 1892? | August 13, 1892 | {
"text": [
"member of the Senate of the Netherlands"
]
} | L2_Q592540_P39_4 | Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from Nov, 1877 to Aug, 1879.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the Senate of the Netherlands from May, 1888 to Sep, 1893.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of municipal councillor of The Hague from Sep, 1859 to Sep, 1865.
Jan Kappeyne van de Coppello holds the position of member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from Sep, 1871 to Nov, 1877. | Jan Kappeyne van de CoppelloJoannes "Jan" Kappeyne van de Coppello (2 October 1822 – 28 July 1895) was a Dutch liberal politician who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1877 to 1879.After attending the public primary school Outercourt in The Hague, Kappeyne was home schooled by his father, who was rector of the gymnasium of The Hague and taught Greek, as secondary education. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a prominent Protestant-Christian politician, became his guardian after the death of his father in 1840. In that year he began to study Roman and contemporary law at Leiden University. In 1845 he became lawyer in The Hague. In 1860 Kappeyne was elected to the city council of the city, as a liberal.In 1862 Kappeyne was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives as a liberal for The Hague. He was elected on a 'Puttian' ticket. Fransen van de Putte, who was a minister at the time, wanted to steer a more conservative colonial course. In the 1866 elections he was defeated by the conservative François de Casembroot.In 1871 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a liberal for Haarlem, defeating the conservative Willem van Golstein. In the 1875 elections he defeat the conservative M.J. van Lennep. He became the leader of the liberals in 1876. In parliament he was known for his comical amendments.In 1877 Kappeneye was "formateur" of a liberal cabinet. Kappeyne became Ministers of the Interior and gave up his seat in parliament. He was appointed chairperson of the council of ministers, an office equivalent to today's Prime Minister of the Netherlands, formally temporarily, but he was the political leader of the cabinet. As minister he enacted important laws, such as a new law on primary education. This law put higher demands on the quality of school buildings and the wages and education of teachers. This raised the financial burdens of primary schools, but only public schools received state subsidies. This effectively eliminated religious schools which, without subsidies, were unable to sustain the financial burdens. This led to staunch opposition as part of the school struggle from Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic members of parliament, and a citizens' petition. Kappeyene however did not change his mind.On 10 June 1879 the law on the channels which he proposed was rejected by parliament. Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him, but William III refused. On 2 July, Kappeyne asked the King to allow a constitutional revision, William III refused, and Kappeyne asked the King to dismiss him again, and William III finally dismissed Kappeyne. Behind the fall of the Kappeyne cabinet lay a conflict between the factions of the progressive liberals and the more moderate liberals.In 1879, Kappeyne returned to his lawyer's office in The Hague. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain a seat in parliament in the 1880, 1883 and 1884 elections. In 1880 he was defeated in the district of Amsterdam by the liberal Johan George Gleichman, in 1883 in Amsterdam by the liberal conservative Adriaan Gildemeester, and in 1884 by the liberal Jacob Duyvis. He remained lawyer until his death in 1895. In this period he refused a request by Leiden University to become honorary professor of law.In 1888 Kappeyne was elected into the Senate as a liberal for North Holland. In the Senate, Kappeyne took a more conservative course as he had previously done and remained a backbencher. | [
"municipal councillor of The Hague",
"Prime Minister of the Netherlands",
"Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations",
"member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands"
] | |
Which employer did Mitchell Feigenbaum work for in Aug, 1971? | August 20, 1971 | {
"text": [
"Cornell University"
]
} | L2_Q354659_P108_0 | Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Cornell University from Jan, 1970 to Jan, 1972.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Virginia Tech from Jan, 1972 to Jan, 1974.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for The Rockefeller University from Jan, 1987 to Jan, 2019. | Mitchell FeigenbaumMitchell Jay Feigenbaum (December 19, 1944 – June 30, 2019) was an American mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants.Feigenbaum was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish emigrants from Poland and Ukraine. He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School, in Brooklyn, New York, and the City College of New York. In 1964 he began his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Enrolling for graduate study in electrical engineering, he changed his area to physics. He completed his doctorate in 1970 for a thesis on dispersion relations, under the supervision of Professor Francis E. Low.After short positions at Cornell University (1970–1972) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1972–1974), he was offered a longer-term post at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to study turbulence in fluids. Although a complete theory of turbulent fluids remains to be established, his research led him to study chaotic maps.In 1983, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; and in 1986, alongside Rockefeller University colleague Albert Libchaber, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics "for his pioneering theoretical studies demonstrating the universal character of non-linear systems, which has made possible the systematic study of chaos". He was a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He was Toyota Professor at Rockefeller University from 1986 until his death.Some mathematical mappings involving a single linear parameter exhibit the apparently random behavior known as chaos when the parameter lies within certain ranges. As the parameter is increased towards this region, the mapping undergoes bifurcations at precise values of the parameter. At first there is one stable point, then bifurcating to an oscillation between two values, then bifurcating again to oscillate between four values and so on. In 1975, Dr. Feigenbaum, using the small HP-65 calculator he had been issued, discovered that the ratio of the difference between the values at which such successive period-doubling bifurcations occur tends to a constant of around 4.6692... He was able to provide a mathematical argument of that fact, and he then showed that the same behavior, with the same mathematical constant, would occur within a wide class of mathematical functions, prior to the onset of chaos.This universal result enabled mathematicians to take their first steps to unraveling the apparently intractable "random" behavior of chaotic systems. The "ratio of convergence" measured in this study is now known as the first Feigenbaum constant.The logistic map is a prominent example of the mappings that Feigenbaum studied in his noted 1978 article: "Quantitative Universality for a Class of Nonlinear Transformations".Feigenbaum's other contributions include the development of important new fractal methods in cartography, starting when he was hired by Hammond to develop techniques to allow computers to assist in drawing maps. The introduction to the "Hammond Atlas" (1992) states:Using fractal geometry to describe natural forms such as coastlines, mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum developed software capable of reconfiguring coastlines, borders, and mountain ranges to fit a multitude of map scales and projections. Dr. Feigenbaum also created a new computerized type placement program which places thousands of map labels in minutes, a task that previously required days of tedious labor.In another practical application of his work, he founded Numerix with Michael Goodkin in 1996. The company's initial product was a software algorithm that dramatically reduced the time required for Monte Carlo pricing of exotic financial derivatives and structured products. Numerix remains one of the leading software providers to financial market participants.The press release made on the occasion of his receiving the Wolf Prize summed up his works:The impact of Feigenbaum's discoveries has been phenomenal. It has spanned new fields of theoretical and experimental mathematics ... It is hard to think of any other development in recent theoretical science that has had so broad an impact over so wide a range of fields, spanning both the very pure and the very applied. | [
"Virginia Tech",
"The Rockefeller University"
] | |
Which employer did Mitchell Feigenbaum work for in Jun, 1972? | June 18, 1972 | {
"text": [
"Virginia Tech"
]
} | L2_Q354659_P108_1 | Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Cornell University from Jan, 1970 to Jan, 1972.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for The Rockefeller University from Jan, 1987 to Jan, 2019.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Virginia Tech from Jan, 1972 to Jan, 1974. | Mitchell FeigenbaumMitchell Jay Feigenbaum (December 19, 1944 – June 30, 2019) was an American mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants.Feigenbaum was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish emigrants from Poland and Ukraine. He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School, in Brooklyn, New York, and the City College of New York. In 1964 he began his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Enrolling for graduate study in electrical engineering, he changed his area to physics. He completed his doctorate in 1970 for a thesis on dispersion relations, under the supervision of Professor Francis E. Low.After short positions at Cornell University (1970–1972) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1972–1974), he was offered a longer-term post at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to study turbulence in fluids. Although a complete theory of turbulent fluids remains to be established, his research led him to study chaotic maps.In 1983, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; and in 1986, alongside Rockefeller University colleague Albert Libchaber, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics "for his pioneering theoretical studies demonstrating the universal character of non-linear systems, which has made possible the systematic study of chaos". He was a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He was Toyota Professor at Rockefeller University from 1986 until his death.Some mathematical mappings involving a single linear parameter exhibit the apparently random behavior known as chaos when the parameter lies within certain ranges. As the parameter is increased towards this region, the mapping undergoes bifurcations at precise values of the parameter. At first there is one stable point, then bifurcating to an oscillation between two values, then bifurcating again to oscillate between four values and so on. In 1975, Dr. Feigenbaum, using the small HP-65 calculator he had been issued, discovered that the ratio of the difference between the values at which such successive period-doubling bifurcations occur tends to a constant of around 4.6692... He was able to provide a mathematical argument of that fact, and he then showed that the same behavior, with the same mathematical constant, would occur within a wide class of mathematical functions, prior to the onset of chaos.This universal result enabled mathematicians to take their first steps to unraveling the apparently intractable "random" behavior of chaotic systems. The "ratio of convergence" measured in this study is now known as the first Feigenbaum constant.The logistic map is a prominent example of the mappings that Feigenbaum studied in his noted 1978 article: "Quantitative Universality for a Class of Nonlinear Transformations".Feigenbaum's other contributions include the development of important new fractal methods in cartography, starting when he was hired by Hammond to develop techniques to allow computers to assist in drawing maps. The introduction to the "Hammond Atlas" (1992) states:Using fractal geometry to describe natural forms such as coastlines, mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum developed software capable of reconfiguring coastlines, borders, and mountain ranges to fit a multitude of map scales and projections. Dr. Feigenbaum also created a new computerized type placement program which places thousands of map labels in minutes, a task that previously required days of tedious labor.In another practical application of his work, he founded Numerix with Michael Goodkin in 1996. The company's initial product was a software algorithm that dramatically reduced the time required for Monte Carlo pricing of exotic financial derivatives and structured products. Numerix remains one of the leading software providers to financial market participants.The press release made on the occasion of his receiving the Wolf Prize summed up his works:The impact of Feigenbaum's discoveries has been phenomenal. It has spanned new fields of theoretical and experimental mathematics ... It is hard to think of any other development in recent theoretical science that has had so broad an impact over so wide a range of fields, spanning both the very pure and the very applied. | [
"Cornell University",
"The Rockefeller University"
] | |
Which employer did Mitchell Feigenbaum work for in Mar, 2002? | March 09, 2002 | {
"text": [
"The Rockefeller University"
]
} | L2_Q354659_P108_2 | Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Virginia Tech from Jan, 1972 to Jan, 1974.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for The Rockefeller University from Jan, 1987 to Jan, 2019.
Mitchell Feigenbaum works for Cornell University from Jan, 1970 to Jan, 1972. | Mitchell FeigenbaumMitchell Jay Feigenbaum (December 19, 1944 – June 30, 2019) was an American mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants.Feigenbaum was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish emigrants from Poland and Ukraine. He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School, in Brooklyn, New York, and the City College of New York. In 1964 he began his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Enrolling for graduate study in electrical engineering, he changed his area to physics. He completed his doctorate in 1970 for a thesis on dispersion relations, under the supervision of Professor Francis E. Low.After short positions at Cornell University (1970–1972) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1972–1974), he was offered a longer-term post at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to study turbulence in fluids. Although a complete theory of turbulent fluids remains to be established, his research led him to study chaotic maps.In 1983, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; and in 1986, alongside Rockefeller University colleague Albert Libchaber, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics "for his pioneering theoretical studies demonstrating the universal character of non-linear systems, which has made possible the systematic study of chaos". He was a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He was Toyota Professor at Rockefeller University from 1986 until his death.Some mathematical mappings involving a single linear parameter exhibit the apparently random behavior known as chaos when the parameter lies within certain ranges. As the parameter is increased towards this region, the mapping undergoes bifurcations at precise values of the parameter. At first there is one stable point, then bifurcating to an oscillation between two values, then bifurcating again to oscillate between four values and so on. In 1975, Dr. Feigenbaum, using the small HP-65 calculator he had been issued, discovered that the ratio of the difference between the values at which such successive period-doubling bifurcations occur tends to a constant of around 4.6692... He was able to provide a mathematical argument of that fact, and he then showed that the same behavior, with the same mathematical constant, would occur within a wide class of mathematical functions, prior to the onset of chaos.This universal result enabled mathematicians to take their first steps to unraveling the apparently intractable "random" behavior of chaotic systems. The "ratio of convergence" measured in this study is now known as the first Feigenbaum constant.The logistic map is a prominent example of the mappings that Feigenbaum studied in his noted 1978 article: "Quantitative Universality for a Class of Nonlinear Transformations".Feigenbaum's other contributions include the development of important new fractal methods in cartography, starting when he was hired by Hammond to develop techniques to allow computers to assist in drawing maps. The introduction to the "Hammond Atlas" (1992) states:Using fractal geometry to describe natural forms such as coastlines, mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum developed software capable of reconfiguring coastlines, borders, and mountain ranges to fit a multitude of map scales and projections. Dr. Feigenbaum also created a new computerized type placement program which places thousands of map labels in minutes, a task that previously required days of tedious labor.In another practical application of his work, he founded Numerix with Michael Goodkin in 1996. The company's initial product was a software algorithm that dramatically reduced the time required for Monte Carlo pricing of exotic financial derivatives and structured products. Numerix remains one of the leading software providers to financial market participants.The press release made on the occasion of his receiving the Wolf Prize summed up his works:The impact of Feigenbaum's discoveries has been phenomenal. It has spanned new fields of theoretical and experimental mathematics ... It is hard to think of any other development in recent theoretical science that has had so broad an impact over so wide a range of fields, spanning both the very pure and the very applied. | [
"Virginia Tech",
"Cornell University"
] | |
Where was Lam Yi Young educated in May, 1989? | May 23, 1989 | {
"text": [
"Victoria Junior College"
]
} | L2_Q23762053_P69_0 | Lam Yi Young attended University of Cambridge from Jan, 1991 to Jan, 1994.
Lam Yi Young attended Victoria Junior College from Jan, 1989 to Jan, 1990.
Lam Yi Young attended John F. Kennedy School of Government from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2005. | Lam Yi YoungLam Yi Young (; born 1972) is the Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and former Senior Civil Servant. He is also the former Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).Lam studied at the University of Cambridge from 1991–1994 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Engineering, now holding a Master of Arts (Cambridge) in Engineering.Lam later studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 2004–2005 and graduated with a Master of Public Administration.Lam spent 24 years in the Singapore Civil Service from 1996–2020 and served various positions in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the MPA and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). This included 11 years in Senior Public Sector Leadership positions from 2009–2020, including as Chief Executive of the MPA, Deputy Secretary (Policy) in the MOE, as well as Deputy Secretary (Future Economy) and later Deputy Secretary (Industry) in the MTI.Lam served as Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore from May 2009–December 2013.During his tenure at MPA, Lam was involved in the commissioning of the new Port Operations Control Centre (POCC) at Changi Naval Base and the decommissioning of the POCC at Tanjong Pagar Complex. Lam was also involved in the formation of various maritime initiatives related to education and decreasing environmental impacts of shipping, including witnessing signings of the Singapore Maritime Green Pledge which was first launched in 2011. He was involved in the formation of the Singapore Maritime Institute and the opening of the Singapore Maritime Gallery in 2012. He also signed Memorandums of Understanding to launch and support various educational and research and development programmes in the fields of maritime and clean energy.Lam held his keynote address "Towards a Sustainable Maritime Singapore" at the World Maritime Day Symposium in 2013 on Singapore's approach to, experience with, and commitment to, sustainable maritime development.On 1 January 2021, Lam succeeded Ho Meng Kit to become the CEO of SBF. He previously served as the deputy CEO after joining SBF in July 2020.Lam is the vice-president of the Global Compact Network Singapore and a board member of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority. | [
"University of Cambridge",
"John F. Kennedy School of Government"
] | |
Where was Lam Yi Young educated in Dec, 1993? | December 10, 1993 | {
"text": [
"University of Cambridge"
]
} | L2_Q23762053_P69_1 | Lam Yi Young attended University of Cambridge from Jan, 1991 to Jan, 1994.
Lam Yi Young attended John F. Kennedy School of Government from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2005.
Lam Yi Young attended Victoria Junior College from Jan, 1989 to Jan, 1990. | Lam Yi YoungLam Yi Young (; born 1972) is the Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and former Senior Civil Servant. He is also the former Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).Lam studied at the University of Cambridge from 1991–1994 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Engineering, now holding a Master of Arts (Cambridge) in Engineering.Lam later studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 2004–2005 and graduated with a Master of Public Administration.Lam spent 24 years in the Singapore Civil Service from 1996–2020 and served various positions in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the MPA and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). This included 11 years in Senior Public Sector Leadership positions from 2009–2020, including as Chief Executive of the MPA, Deputy Secretary (Policy) in the MOE, as well as Deputy Secretary (Future Economy) and later Deputy Secretary (Industry) in the MTI.Lam served as Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore from May 2009–December 2013.During his tenure at MPA, Lam was involved in the commissioning of the new Port Operations Control Centre (POCC) at Changi Naval Base and the decommissioning of the POCC at Tanjong Pagar Complex. Lam was also involved in the formation of various maritime initiatives related to education and decreasing environmental impacts of shipping, including witnessing signings of the Singapore Maritime Green Pledge which was first launched in 2011. He was involved in the formation of the Singapore Maritime Institute and the opening of the Singapore Maritime Gallery in 2012. He also signed Memorandums of Understanding to launch and support various educational and research and development programmes in the fields of maritime and clean energy.Lam held his keynote address "Towards a Sustainable Maritime Singapore" at the World Maritime Day Symposium in 2013 on Singapore's approach to, experience with, and commitment to, sustainable maritime development.On 1 January 2021, Lam succeeded Ho Meng Kit to become the CEO of SBF. He previously served as the deputy CEO after joining SBF in July 2020.Lam is the vice-president of the Global Compact Network Singapore and a board member of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority. | [
"Victoria Junior College",
"John F. Kennedy School of Government"
] | |
Where was Lam Yi Young educated in Aug, 2004? | August 28, 2004 | {
"text": [
"John F. Kennedy School of Government"
]
} | L2_Q23762053_P69_2 | Lam Yi Young attended University of Cambridge from Jan, 1991 to Jan, 1994.
Lam Yi Young attended Victoria Junior College from Jan, 1989 to Jan, 1990.
Lam Yi Young attended John F. Kennedy School of Government from Jan, 2004 to Jan, 2005. | Lam Yi YoungLam Yi Young (; born 1972) is the Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and former Senior Civil Servant. He is also the former Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).Lam studied at the University of Cambridge from 1991–1994 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Engineering, now holding a Master of Arts (Cambridge) in Engineering.Lam later studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 2004–2005 and graduated with a Master of Public Administration.Lam spent 24 years in the Singapore Civil Service from 1996–2020 and served various positions in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the MPA and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). This included 11 years in Senior Public Sector Leadership positions from 2009–2020, including as Chief Executive of the MPA, Deputy Secretary (Policy) in the MOE, as well as Deputy Secretary (Future Economy) and later Deputy Secretary (Industry) in the MTI.Lam served as Chief Executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore from May 2009–December 2013.During his tenure at MPA, Lam was involved in the commissioning of the new Port Operations Control Centre (POCC) at Changi Naval Base and the decommissioning of the POCC at Tanjong Pagar Complex. Lam was also involved in the formation of various maritime initiatives related to education and decreasing environmental impacts of shipping, including witnessing signings of the Singapore Maritime Green Pledge which was first launched in 2011. He was involved in the formation of the Singapore Maritime Institute and the opening of the Singapore Maritime Gallery in 2012. He also signed Memorandums of Understanding to launch and support various educational and research and development programmes in the fields of maritime and clean energy.Lam held his keynote address "Towards a Sustainable Maritime Singapore" at the World Maritime Day Symposium in 2013 on Singapore's approach to, experience with, and commitment to, sustainable maritime development.On 1 January 2021, Lam succeeded Ho Meng Kit to become the CEO of SBF. He previously served as the deputy CEO after joining SBF in July 2020.Lam is the vice-president of the Global Compact Network Singapore and a board member of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority. | [
"Victoria Junior College",
"University of Cambridge"
] | |
Where was Caroline Aigle educated in Jun, 1991? | June 06, 1991 | {
"text": [
"Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr"
]
} | L2_Q2939953_P69_0 | Caroline Aigle attended Prytanée National Militaire from Jan, 1992 to Jan, 1994.
Caroline Aigle attended École polytechnique from Jan, 1994 to Jan, 1997.
Caroline Aigle attended School of the Air from Jan, 1997 to Jan, 1998.
Caroline Aigle attended Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 1992. | Caroline AigleCommandant Caroline Aigle () (12 September 1974 – 21 August 2007) was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the "Médaille de l'Aéronautique" (Aeronautics Medal).Born in Montauban, Aigle spent her early years in Africa, where her father served as a military physician. After reaching her fourteenth birthday, she matriculated at the Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr (Saint-Cyr Military High School), remaining for the three-year period from the second term until graduation. She subsequently proceeded to Prytanée Militaire, an advanced military high school, and then to the military academy wing of the prestigious École Polytechnique, France's foremost school of engineering. During her first year (1994–95), she fulfilled the requirements of her military duty while stationed with the 13th Battalion of the elite mountain infantry, the Chasseurs Alpins. She served her final year before graduation from the Polytechnique (1996–97) in the École de l'Air, the French Air Force's officer candidate school.After graduating from the Polytechnique, Aigle chose to join the French Air Force. On 28 May 1999, she became the first woman to receive the Air Force's coveted fighter pilot wings. She was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the "Côte-d'Or" in 2000, and promoted to the rank of Commandant (roughly equivalent to Major) in 2005. Among the top candidates, she was also on the verge of being selected as an astronaut for the European Space Agency. By the time of her sudden death three weeks before her 33rd birthday (the cancer, a melanoma, had been diagnosed only a month earlier), she had accumulated a total of 1600 hours of flight time.Aigle was a keen athlete and represented the Air Force in inter-service sports competitions. She was the 1997 French military champion in triathlon, followed by the 1997 triathlon world championship in military team competition. Still competing in 1999, she and her team won the triathlon world military vice-championship. She was also a skydiver and free-fall parachutist.Aigle was pregnant when she was first diagnosed with rapidly progressing cancer, and refused to undergo an abortion despite the increased difficulty in cancer treatment options. Her son Gabriel was delivered by caesarean section, five-and-a half months into term, fifteen days before her death on 21 August 2007. She and her husband already had one other child.On 2 October 2007, President Sarkozy posthumously awarded her the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).Aigle was married to Christophe "Douky" Deketelaere (born 27 September 1964), a former Air Force fighter pilot and deputy leader of the Breitling Jet Team. They had two sons, Marc and Gabriel. | [
"Prytanée National Militaire",
"School of the Air",
"École polytechnique"
] | |
Where was Caroline Aigle educated in Aug, 1993? | August 20, 1993 | {
"text": [
"Prytanée National Militaire"
]
} | L2_Q2939953_P69_1 | Caroline Aigle attended Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 1992.
Caroline Aigle attended School of the Air from Jan, 1997 to Jan, 1998.
Caroline Aigle attended Prytanée National Militaire from Jan, 1992 to Jan, 1994.
Caroline Aigle attended École polytechnique from Jan, 1994 to Jan, 1997. | Caroline AigleCommandant Caroline Aigle () (12 September 1974 – 21 August 2007) was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the "Médaille de l'Aéronautique" (Aeronautics Medal).Born in Montauban, Aigle spent her early years in Africa, where her father served as a military physician. After reaching her fourteenth birthday, she matriculated at the Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr (Saint-Cyr Military High School), remaining for the three-year period from the second term until graduation. She subsequently proceeded to Prytanée Militaire, an advanced military high school, and then to the military academy wing of the prestigious École Polytechnique, France's foremost school of engineering. During her first year (1994–95), she fulfilled the requirements of her military duty while stationed with the 13th Battalion of the elite mountain infantry, the Chasseurs Alpins. She served her final year before graduation from the Polytechnique (1996–97) in the École de l'Air, the French Air Force's officer candidate school.After graduating from the Polytechnique, Aigle chose to join the French Air Force. On 28 May 1999, she became the first woman to receive the Air Force's coveted fighter pilot wings. She was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the "Côte-d'Or" in 2000, and promoted to the rank of Commandant (roughly equivalent to Major) in 2005. Among the top candidates, she was also on the verge of being selected as an astronaut for the European Space Agency. By the time of her sudden death three weeks before her 33rd birthday (the cancer, a melanoma, had been diagnosed only a month earlier), she had accumulated a total of 1600 hours of flight time.Aigle was a keen athlete and represented the Air Force in inter-service sports competitions. She was the 1997 French military champion in triathlon, followed by the 1997 triathlon world championship in military team competition. Still competing in 1999, she and her team won the triathlon world military vice-championship. She was also a skydiver and free-fall parachutist.Aigle was pregnant when she was first diagnosed with rapidly progressing cancer, and refused to undergo an abortion despite the increased difficulty in cancer treatment options. Her son Gabriel was delivered by caesarean section, five-and-a half months into term, fifteen days before her death on 21 August 2007. She and her husband already had one other child.On 2 October 2007, President Sarkozy posthumously awarded her the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).Aigle was married to Christophe "Douky" Deketelaere (born 27 September 1964), a former Air Force fighter pilot and deputy leader of the Breitling Jet Team. They had two sons, Marc and Gabriel. | [
"Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr",
"School of the Air",
"École polytechnique"
] | |
Where was Caroline Aigle educated in Sep, 1996? | September 02, 1996 | {
"text": [
"École polytechnique"
]
} | L2_Q2939953_P69_2 | Caroline Aigle attended Prytanée National Militaire from Jan, 1992 to Jan, 1994.
Caroline Aigle attended Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 1992.
Caroline Aigle attended École polytechnique from Jan, 1994 to Jan, 1997.
Caroline Aigle attended School of the Air from Jan, 1997 to Jan, 1998. | Caroline AigleCommandant Caroline Aigle () (12 September 1974 – 21 August 2007) was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the "Médaille de l'Aéronautique" (Aeronautics Medal).Born in Montauban, Aigle spent her early years in Africa, where her father served as a military physician. After reaching her fourteenth birthday, she matriculated at the Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr (Saint-Cyr Military High School), remaining for the three-year period from the second term until graduation. She subsequently proceeded to Prytanée Militaire, an advanced military high school, and then to the military academy wing of the prestigious École Polytechnique, France's foremost school of engineering. During her first year (1994–95), she fulfilled the requirements of her military duty while stationed with the 13th Battalion of the elite mountain infantry, the Chasseurs Alpins. She served her final year before graduation from the Polytechnique (1996–97) in the École de l'Air, the French Air Force's officer candidate school.After graduating from the Polytechnique, Aigle chose to join the French Air Force. On 28 May 1999, she became the first woman to receive the Air Force's coveted fighter pilot wings. She was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the "Côte-d'Or" in 2000, and promoted to the rank of Commandant (roughly equivalent to Major) in 2005. Among the top candidates, she was also on the verge of being selected as an astronaut for the European Space Agency. By the time of her sudden death three weeks before her 33rd birthday (the cancer, a melanoma, had been diagnosed only a month earlier), she had accumulated a total of 1600 hours of flight time.Aigle was a keen athlete and represented the Air Force in inter-service sports competitions. She was the 1997 French military champion in triathlon, followed by the 1997 triathlon world championship in military team competition. Still competing in 1999, she and her team won the triathlon world military vice-championship. She was also a skydiver and free-fall parachutist.Aigle was pregnant when she was first diagnosed with rapidly progressing cancer, and refused to undergo an abortion despite the increased difficulty in cancer treatment options. Her son Gabriel was delivered by caesarean section, five-and-a half months into term, fifteen days before her death on 21 August 2007. She and her husband already had one other child.On 2 October 2007, President Sarkozy posthumously awarded her the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).Aigle was married to Christophe "Douky" Deketelaere (born 27 September 1964), a former Air Force fighter pilot and deputy leader of the Breitling Jet Team. They had two sons, Marc and Gabriel. | [
"Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr",
"Prytanée National Militaire",
"School of the Air"
] | |
Where was Caroline Aigle educated in Apr, 1997? | April 02, 1997 | {
"text": [
"School of the Air"
]
} | L2_Q2939953_P69_3 | Caroline Aigle attended School of the Air from Jan, 1997 to Jan, 1998.
Caroline Aigle attended École polytechnique from Jan, 1994 to Jan, 1997.
Caroline Aigle attended Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr from Jan, 1988 to Jan, 1992.
Caroline Aigle attended Prytanée National Militaire from Jan, 1992 to Jan, 1994. | Caroline AigleCommandant Caroline Aigle () (12 September 1974 – 21 August 2007) was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the "Médaille de l'Aéronautique" (Aeronautics Medal).Born in Montauban, Aigle spent her early years in Africa, where her father served as a military physician. After reaching her fourteenth birthday, she matriculated at the Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr (Saint-Cyr Military High School), remaining for the three-year period from the second term until graduation. She subsequently proceeded to Prytanée Militaire, an advanced military high school, and then to the military academy wing of the prestigious École Polytechnique, France's foremost school of engineering. During her first year (1994–95), she fulfilled the requirements of her military duty while stationed with the 13th Battalion of the elite mountain infantry, the Chasseurs Alpins. She served her final year before graduation from the Polytechnique (1996–97) in the École de l'Air, the French Air Force's officer candidate school.After graduating from the Polytechnique, Aigle chose to join the French Air Force. On 28 May 1999, she became the first woman to receive the Air Force's coveted fighter pilot wings. She was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the "Côte-d'Or" in 2000, and promoted to the rank of Commandant (roughly equivalent to Major) in 2005. Among the top candidates, she was also on the verge of being selected as an astronaut for the European Space Agency. By the time of her sudden death three weeks before her 33rd birthday (the cancer, a melanoma, had been diagnosed only a month earlier), she had accumulated a total of 1600 hours of flight time.Aigle was a keen athlete and represented the Air Force in inter-service sports competitions. She was the 1997 French military champion in triathlon, followed by the 1997 triathlon world championship in military team competition. Still competing in 1999, she and her team won the triathlon world military vice-championship. She was also a skydiver and free-fall parachutist.Aigle was pregnant when she was first diagnosed with rapidly progressing cancer, and refused to undergo an abortion despite the increased difficulty in cancer treatment options. Her son Gabriel was delivered by caesarean section, five-and-a half months into term, fifteen days before her death on 21 August 2007. She and her husband already had one other child.On 2 October 2007, President Sarkozy posthumously awarded her the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).Aigle was married to Christophe "Douky" Deketelaere (born 27 September 1964), a former Air Force fighter pilot and deputy leader of the Breitling Jet Team. They had two sons, Marc and Gabriel. | [
"Lycée militaire de Saint-Cyr",
"Prytanée National Militaire",
"École polytechnique"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Oct, 1973? | October 10, 1973 | {
"text": [
"Zhou Enlai"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_0 | Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Li Keqiang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Li Peng",
"Hua Guofeng"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Nov, 1979? | November 25, 1979 | {
"text": [
"Hua Guofeng"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_1 | Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Li Keqiang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Li Peng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Feb, 1984? | February 07, 1984 | {
"text": [
"Zhao Ziyang"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_2 | Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Li Keqiang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Li Peng",
"Hua Guofeng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in May, 1990? | May 07, 1990 | {
"text": [
"Li Peng"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_3 | Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980.
Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Li Keqiang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Hua Guofeng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Nov, 2000? | November 16, 2000 | {
"text": [
"Zhu Rongji"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_4 | Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Li Keqiang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Li Peng",
"Hua Guofeng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Apr, 2006? | April 04, 2006 | {
"text": [
"Wen Jiabao"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_5 | Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Li Keqiang",
"Li Peng",
"Hua Guofeng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of People's Republic of China in Sep, 2014? | September 08, 2014 | {
"text": [
"Li Keqiang"
]
} | L2_Q148_P6_6 | Zhu Rongji is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 1998 to Mar, 2003.
Wen Jiabao is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2003 to Mar, 2013.
Li Peng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Nov, 1987 to Mar, 1998.
Hua Guofeng is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Feb, 1976 to Sep, 1980.
Zhao Ziyang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Sep, 1980 to Nov, 1987.
Li Keqiang is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Mar, 2013 to Dec, 2022.
Zhou Enlai is the head of the government of People's Republic of China from Oct, 1949 to Jan, 1976. | ChinaChina (), officially the People's Republic of China (";" PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi), it is the world's third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements. The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa. The Qing Empire, China's last dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism. The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. China was invaded by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971.China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic. The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and is a member of the BRICS, the G8+5, the G20, the APEC, and the East Asia Summit. It ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, government transparency, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests.After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014. China is the world's fastest-growing major economy, the second-wealthiest nation in the world, and the world's largest manufacturer and exporter. The nation has the world's largest standing army — the People's Liberation Army — the second-largest defense budget and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state. China has been characterized as a potential superpower due to its large economy and powerful military.The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period in time. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word "Chīna", used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian "Chīn" (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit "Cīna" (). "Cīna" was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the "Mahābhārata" (5th century BCE) and the "Laws of Manu" (2nd century BCE). In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources. The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary". Alternative suggestions include the names for Yelang and the Jing or Chu state.The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and "" ("state"), a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was then applied to the area around Luoyi (present-day Luoyang) during the Eastern Zhou and then to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing. It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name "Zhongguo" is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as the Mainland when distinguishing the ROC from the PRC.Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a "Homo erectus" who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of "Homo sapiens" (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other in the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang Empire retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.The 13th century brought the Mongol conquest of China. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty; the Yuan conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury.In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to crack down on anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the "Haijin" ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation. In the mid-19th century, the dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms. The Party loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open-market environment. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement.Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and penal system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019.China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the Eurasian Steppe which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the Steppe route – the ancestor of the terrestrial Silk Road(s).The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the Turpan Depression.China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people. According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of rice, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major biogeographic realms: the Palearctic and the Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia. The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure, from the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher montane stands of juniper and yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China. China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. China is the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, and has been ranked as the 13th largest in emissions per capita. The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects. By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world. China also has the largest power capacity of installed solar photovoltaics system and wind power system in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest, as is renewable energy in China.The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia, and is the third or fourth largest by total area. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", to according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, and the CIA World Factbook.China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations and extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The Chinese constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states explicitly aiming to build communism. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "consultative democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.Since 2018, the main body of the Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." The 2018 amendments constitutionalized the "de facto" one-party state status of China, wherein the General Secretary (party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. The electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. Another eight political parties, have representatives in the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). China supports the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism", but critics describe the elected National People's Congress as a "rubber stamp" body.China is a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator. The President is the titular head of state, elected by the National People's Congress. The Premier is the head of government, presiding over the State Council composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's paramount leader. The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's "de facto" top decision-making body.In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation". Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 survey.The People's Republic of China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four municipalities—collectively referred to as "mainland China"—as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.China considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which rejects the PRC's claim. Conversely, the ROC claims sovereignty over all divisions governed by the PRC.The PRC has diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous state with limited recognition. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011.Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy may have led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran. China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council.China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market.By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion. China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union. China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China policy as one of its most important diplomatic principles.China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2020, China currently has a disputed land border with only India and Bhutan.China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Scarborough Shoal.China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, surveillance of personal technology, and a social credit system as a means of social control of persons living in China. The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Chinese Communist Party believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling Communist Party are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, are routinely used to prevent collective action. By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave. The Social Credit System, now being piloted in a number of Chinese cities, is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis technology.A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and NGOs have criticized China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation. At least one million members of China's Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to the U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs.Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, which fall under the heading Laogai ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai.In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provided evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has the second-biggest military reserve force, only behind North Korea. The PLA consists of the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF), and the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average. However, many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%.China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.China has a large informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity. In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export.As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013. According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030. Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest. In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion. In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies, and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency, and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one fourth of the world total. Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week. China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later to Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers. By the 17th century, Europe and the Western world surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars to this day.After repeated military defeats by the European colonial powers and Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development. According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism". According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016. Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021. China ranks 14th on the Global Innovation Index and is the only middle-income economy, the only emerging country, and the only newly industrialized country in the top 30. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and also has 2 (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 4th spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any country.The Chinese space program is one of the world's most active. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , twelve Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, China launched the first quantum science satellite in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the world's largest bullet train network, the most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China. Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018. The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS.Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage.Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution. According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981. China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019. From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6.According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population. However, these scholars have been challenged. Their own counterfactual model of fertility decline without such restrictions implies that China averted more than 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, a number which may reach one billion by 2060 given all the lost descendants of births averted during the era of fertility restrictions, with one-child restrictions accounting for the great bulk of that reduction.The policy, along with traditional preference for boys, may have contributed to an imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls. The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population. However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population.China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the "Zhonghua Minzu". The largest of these nationalities are the ethnic Chinese or "Han", who constitute more than 90% of the totalpopulation. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), theUnited States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).There are as many as 292 living languages in China. The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which contains Mandarin (spoken by 70% of the population), and other varieties of Chinese language: Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Wu (including Shanghainese and Suzhounese), Min (including Fuzhounese, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan and Hakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of the Tai-Kadai family, Miao and Yao of the Hmong–Mien family, and Wa of the Austroasiatic family. Across northeastern and northwestern China, local ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu, Mongolian and several Turkic languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an Indo-European language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland, speak Austronesian languages.Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds. Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang and various other languages are also regionally recognized throughout the country.Chinese characters have been used as the written script for the Sinitic languages for thousands of years. They allow speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese varieties to communicate with each other through writing. In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China. Chinese characters are romanized using the Pinyin system. Tibetan uses an alphabet based on an Indic script. Uyghur is most commonly written in Persian alphabet-based Uyghur Arabic alphabet. The Mongolian script used in China and the Manchu script are both derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Zhuang uses both an official Latin alphabet script and a traditional Chinese character script.China has urbanized significantly in recent decades. The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019. It is estimated that China's urban population will reach one billion by 2030, potentially equivalent to one-eighth of the world population.China has over 160 cities with a population of over one million, including the 10 megacities(cities with a population of over 10 million) of Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Harbin, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. Shanghai is China's most populous urban area while Chongqing is its largest city proper. By 2025, it is estimated that the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years. In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education. This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level.In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education., 96% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later. In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance. Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas.As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). China is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in the whole Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.The National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with its counterparts in the local commissions, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatized, and experienced a significant rise in quality. In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion. By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage. In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications., the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand. Both have improved significantly since the 1950s. Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution, hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China.The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019. Despite this, there is no convincing scientific evidence on the virus's origin, and further studies are being carried out around the world on a possible origin for the virus. The Chinese government has been criticized for its handling of the epidemic and accused of concealing the extent of the outbreak before it became an international pandemic.The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Religious affairs and issues in the country are overseen by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations that lack official approval can be subject to state persecution.Over the millennia, Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religious movements. The "three teachings", including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (Chinese Buddhism), historically have a significant role in shaping Chinese culture, enriching a theological and spiritual framework which harks back to the early Shang and Zhou dynasty. Chinese popular or folk religion, which is framed by the three teachings and other traditions, consists in allegiance to the "shen" (), a character that signifies the "energies of generation", who can be deities of the environment or ancestral principles of human groups, concepts of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Among the most popular cults are those of Mazu (goddess of the seas), Huangdi (one of the two divine patriarchs of the Chinese race), Guandi (god of war and business), Caishen (god of prosperity and richness), Pangu and many others. China is home to many of the world's tallest religious statues, including the tallest of all, the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan.Clear data on religious affiliation in China is difficult to gather due to varying definitions of "religion" and the unorganized, diffusive nature of Chinese religious traditions. Scholars note that in China there is no clear boundary between three teachings religions and local folk religious practice. A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and humanistic religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being. According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including Taoists and folk salvationism. In addition to Han people's local religious practices, there are also various ethnic minority groups in China who maintain their traditional autochthone religions. The various folk religions today comprise 2–3% of the population, while Confucianism as a religious self-identification is common within the intellectual class. Significant faiths specifically connected to certain ethnic groups include Tibetan Buddhism and the Islamic religion of the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other peoples in Northwest China.Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious imperial examinations, which have their origins in the Han dynasty. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy, poetry and painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. Chinese culture has long emphasized a sense of deep history and a largely inward-looking national perspective. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today.The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as "regressive and harmful" or "vestiges of feudalism". Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Access to foreign media remains heavily restricted.Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.China received 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010, and in 2012 was the third-most-visited country in the world. It also experiences an enormous volume of domestic tourism; an estimated 740 million Chinese holidaymakers travelled within the country in October 2012. China hosts the world's largest number of World Heritage Sites (55), and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world (first in the Asia-Pacific). It is forecast by Euromonitor International that China will become the world's most popular destination for tourists by 2030.Chinese literature is based on the literature of the Zhou dynasty. Concepts covered within the Chinese classic texts present a wide range of thoughts and subjects including calendar, military, astrology, herbology, geography and many others. Some of the most important early texts include the "I Ching" and the "Shujing" within the Four Books and Five Classics which served as the Confucian authoritative books for the state-sponsored curriculum in dynastic era. Inherited from the "Classic of Poetry", classical Chinese poetry developed to its floruit during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai and Du Fu opened the forking ways for the poetic circles through romanticism and realism respectively. Chinese historiography began with the "Shiji", the overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, which set a vast stage for Chinese fictions along with Chinese mythology and folklore. Pushed by a burgeoning citizen class in the Ming dynasty, Chinese classical fiction rose to a boom of the historical, town and gods and demons fictions as represented by the Four Great Classical Novels which include "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Along with the wuxia fictions of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, it remains an enduring source of popular culture in the East Asian cultural sphere.In the wake of the New Culture Movement after the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese literature embarked on a new era with written vernacular Chinese for ordinary citizens. Hu Shih and Lu Xun were pioneers in modern literature. Various literary genres, such as misty poetry, scar literature, young adult fiction and the xungen literature, which is influenced by magic realism, emerged following the Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history and geographical variety, in which the most influential are known as the "Eight Major Cuisines", including Sichuan, Cantonese, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang cuisines. All of them are featured by the precise skills of shaping, heating, and flavoring. Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients, as well as food therapy that is emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine. Generally, China's staple food is rice in the south, wheat-based breads and noodles in the north. The diet of the common people in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved for special occasions. The bean products, such as tofu and soy milk, remain as a popular source of protein. Pork is now the most popular meat in China, accounting for about three-fourths of the country's total meat consumption. While pork dominates the meat market, there is also the vegetarian Buddhist cuisine and the pork-free Chinese Islamic cuisine. Southern cuisine, due to the area's proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry northern China. Numerous offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the nations that play host to the Chinese diaspora.Chinese music covers a highly diverse range of music from traditional music to modern music. Chinese music dates back before the pre-imperial times. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were traditionally grouped into eight categories known as "bayin" (八音). Traditional Chinese opera is a form of musical theatre in China originating thousands of years and has regional style forms such as Beijing opera and Cantonese opera. Chinese pop (C-Pop) includes mandopop and cantopop. Chinese rap, Chinese hip hop and Hong Kong hip hop have become popular in contemporary times.Cinema was first introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, "Dingjun Mountain," was released in 1905. China has the largest number of movie screens in the world since 2016, China became the largest cinema market in the world in 2020. The top 3 highest-grossing films in China currently are "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)", Ne Zha" (2019), and "The Wandering Earth" (2019).Hanfu is the historical clothing of the Han people in China. The qipao or cheongsam is a popular Chinese female dress. The hanfu movement has been popular in contemporary times and seeks to revitalize Hanfu clothing.China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that archery ("shèjiàn") was practiced during the Western Zhou dynasty. Swordplay ("jiànshù") and cuju, a sport loosely related to association football date back to China's early dynasties as well.Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture, with morning exercises such as qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan widely practiced, and commercial gyms and private fitness clubs are gaining popularity across the country. Basketball is currently the most popular spectator sport in China. The Chinese Basketball Association and the American National Basketball Association have a huge following among the people, with native or ethnic Chinese players such as Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian held in high esteem. China's professional football league, now known as Chinese Super League, was established in 1994, it is the largest football market in Asia. Other popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming and snooker. Board games such as go (known as "wéiqí" in Chinese), xiangqi, mahjong, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level. In addition, China is home to a huge number of cyclists, with an estimated 470 million bicycles . Many more traditional sports, such as dragon boat racing, Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are also popular.China has participated in the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where its athletes received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China also won the most medals of any nation at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold medals. In 2011, Shenzhen in Guangdong, China hosted the 2011 Summer Universiade. China hosted the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing; the first country to host both regular and Youth Olympics. Beijing and its nearby city Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will also collaboratively host the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will make Beijing the first city in the world to hold both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. | [
"Zhu Rongji",
"Zhao Ziyang",
"Wen Jiabao",
"Li Peng",
"Hua Guofeng",
"Zhou Enlai"
] | |
Who was the head of Stevns Municipality in Mar, 2010? | March 30, 2010 | {
"text": [
"Poul Arne Nielsen"
]
} | L2_Q503153_P6_0 | Poul Arne Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2007 to Dec, 2013.
Mogens Haugaard Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2014 to Dec, 2017.
Anette Mortensen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2018 to Dec, 2021. | Stevns MunicipalityStevns is a municipality (Danish, "kommune") in Region Sjælland on the southeast coast of the island of Zealand ("Sjælland") in south Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 22,782 (1 January 2019). The municipality covers most of Stevns Peninsula.The third largest town and the site of its municipal council is the town of Hårlev.On 1 January 2007 Stevns municipality, as the result of "Kommunalreformen" ("The Municipal Reform" of 2007), merged with Vallø municipality to form an enlarged Stevns municipality.The ten largest locations in the municipality are:The town of Store Heddinge came into existence during the 13th century, and Saint Katharina Church ("Sct. Katharina kirke") is also from that time. The town received privileged status as a merchant town in 1441. A Latin preparatory school was founded in the town in 1620, but was closed down in 1739.Stevns' municipal council consists of 19 members, elected every four years.Below are the municipal councils elected since the Municipal Reform of 2007.The area is known for its white chalk cliffs, which are quite rare in Denmark. Stevns Klint (Stevns' Cliffs), a popular tourist attraction, is one of these. The old town church by the small village of Højerup collapsed partially over the cliffs in 1928 due to erosion.The cliffs at Højerup are also the place where the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez measured the highest level of iridium in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer, which led them to propose their hypothesis that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by an impact of a large asteroid 66 million years ago.By 2014 Stevns Klint was listed on UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites in Northern Europe.In 2008 the Cold War Museum Stevns Fortress opened to the public. It features a large exhibition of military equipment and a 1.5-hour guided tour in the large underground system of the fortress. The underground system of the fortress features of tunnels, living quarters, command centers, hospital and even a chapel. And in addition two ammunition depots for its two cannons. The tunnels are below surface excavated in the chalk of Stevns. This top secret fortress was built in 1953 and remained operational until 2000.Stevns is also home to Elverhøj (Elves' Hill), while not much of an attraction, it is famous for the fairy tale The Elf Mound by H.C. Andersen and the Danish national play Elves' Hill, both of which in Danish share the name "Elverhøj". | [
"Mogens Haugaard Nielsen",
"Anette Mortensen"
] | |
Who was the head of Stevns Municipality in Nov, 2016? | November 24, 2016 | {
"text": [
"Mogens Haugaard Nielsen"
]
} | L2_Q503153_P6_1 | Poul Arne Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2007 to Dec, 2013.
Anette Mortensen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2018 to Dec, 2021.
Mogens Haugaard Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2014 to Dec, 2017. | Stevns MunicipalityStevns is a municipality (Danish, "kommune") in Region Sjælland on the southeast coast of the island of Zealand ("Sjælland") in south Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 22,782 (1 January 2019). The municipality covers most of Stevns Peninsula.The third largest town and the site of its municipal council is the town of Hårlev.On 1 January 2007 Stevns municipality, as the result of "Kommunalreformen" ("The Municipal Reform" of 2007), merged with Vallø municipality to form an enlarged Stevns municipality.The ten largest locations in the municipality are:The town of Store Heddinge came into existence during the 13th century, and Saint Katharina Church ("Sct. Katharina kirke") is also from that time. The town received privileged status as a merchant town in 1441. A Latin preparatory school was founded in the town in 1620, but was closed down in 1739.Stevns' municipal council consists of 19 members, elected every four years.Below are the municipal councils elected since the Municipal Reform of 2007.The area is known for its white chalk cliffs, which are quite rare in Denmark. Stevns Klint (Stevns' Cliffs), a popular tourist attraction, is one of these. The old town church by the small village of Højerup collapsed partially over the cliffs in 1928 due to erosion.The cliffs at Højerup are also the place where the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez measured the highest level of iridium in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer, which led them to propose their hypothesis that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by an impact of a large asteroid 66 million years ago.By 2014 Stevns Klint was listed on UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites in Northern Europe.In 2008 the Cold War Museum Stevns Fortress opened to the public. It features a large exhibition of military equipment and a 1.5-hour guided tour in the large underground system of the fortress. The underground system of the fortress features of tunnels, living quarters, command centers, hospital and even a chapel. And in addition two ammunition depots for its two cannons. The tunnels are below surface excavated in the chalk of Stevns. This top secret fortress was built in 1953 and remained operational until 2000.Stevns is also home to Elverhøj (Elves' Hill), while not much of an attraction, it is famous for the fairy tale The Elf Mound by H.C. Andersen and the Danish national play Elves' Hill, both of which in Danish share the name "Elverhøj". | [
"Anette Mortensen",
"Poul Arne Nielsen"
] | |
Who was the head of Stevns Municipality in Aug, 2020? | August 26, 2020 | {
"text": [
"Anette Mortensen"
]
} | L2_Q503153_P6_2 | Anette Mortensen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2018 to Dec, 2021.
Poul Arne Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2007 to Dec, 2013.
Mogens Haugaard Nielsen is the head of the government of Stevns Municipality from Jan, 2014 to Dec, 2017. | Stevns MunicipalityStevns is a municipality (Danish, "kommune") in Region Sjælland on the southeast coast of the island of Zealand ("Sjælland") in south Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 22,782 (1 January 2019). The municipality covers most of Stevns Peninsula.The third largest town and the site of its municipal council is the town of Hårlev.On 1 January 2007 Stevns municipality, as the result of "Kommunalreformen" ("The Municipal Reform" of 2007), merged with Vallø municipality to form an enlarged Stevns municipality.The ten largest locations in the municipality are:The town of Store Heddinge came into existence during the 13th century, and Saint Katharina Church ("Sct. Katharina kirke") is also from that time. The town received privileged status as a merchant town in 1441. A Latin preparatory school was founded in the town in 1620, but was closed down in 1739.Stevns' municipal council consists of 19 members, elected every four years.Below are the municipal councils elected since the Municipal Reform of 2007.The area is known for its white chalk cliffs, which are quite rare in Denmark. Stevns Klint (Stevns' Cliffs), a popular tourist attraction, is one of these. The old town church by the small village of Højerup collapsed partially over the cliffs in 1928 due to erosion.The cliffs at Højerup are also the place where the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez measured the highest level of iridium in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer, which led them to propose their hypothesis that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by an impact of a large asteroid 66 million years ago.By 2014 Stevns Klint was listed on UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites in Northern Europe.In 2008 the Cold War Museum Stevns Fortress opened to the public. It features a large exhibition of military equipment and a 1.5-hour guided tour in the large underground system of the fortress. The underground system of the fortress features of tunnels, living quarters, command centers, hospital and even a chapel. And in addition two ammunition depots for its two cannons. The tunnels are below surface excavated in the chalk of Stevns. This top secret fortress was built in 1953 and remained operational until 2000.Stevns is also home to Elverhøj (Elves' Hill), while not much of an attraction, it is famous for the fairy tale The Elf Mound by H.C. Andersen and the Danish national play Elves' Hill, both of which in Danish share the name "Elverhøj". | [
"Mogens Haugaard Nielsen",
"Poul Arne Nielsen"
] | |
Which employer did Michael H. Jameson work for in Nov, 1951? | November 06, 1951 | {
"text": [
"University of Missouri"
]
} | L2_Q6830865_P108_0 | Michael H. Jameson works for Stanford University from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1990.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Pennsylvania from Jan, 1954 to Jan, 1976.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Missouri from Jan, 1950 to Jan, 1953. | Michael H. JamesonMichael Hamilton Jameson (London 15 October 1924 – 18 August 2004) was a classicist. At the time of his death he was Crossett Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Stanford University.His father, Raymond D. Jameson, professor of Western literature at the University of Peking, and mother, Rose Perel Jameson, were visiting London at the time of his birth. He spent his childhood in Beijing and with his mother in London, received his A.B. in Greek at the University of Chicago in 1942, aged seventeen, served in the U.S. Navy as a Japanese translator, 1943–46, then married Virginia Broyles. He received his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1949, with a dissertation on "The Offering at Meals: Its Place in Greek Sacrifice". A Fulbright Fellowship in 1949 supported him at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he hiked the Peloponnesos with his new wife and gained an intimate knowledge of inscriptions. After a brief stint at the University of Minnesota, he accepted a Ford Fellowship at the Institute for Social Anthropology at Oxford University. On his return to the United States, be began his long association with the University of Pennsylvania (1954–76).Though a spirit of perfectionism inhibited his production of an overarching book, in some sixty articles he explored the setting of Greek religion in its specific locality and time, thus focusing on unravelling the details of cult and ritual sacrifice; he did a great deal of work on epigraphy and its relations with literature and history, and he explored Greek sites, especially at the partly drowned port city of Halieis (Porto Cheli), which he began excavating in 1962, and in the Argolid, where he galvanized a broad ecological study, 1979–83, that was the first examination of the paleoecology of ancient Greece, resulting in the publication of M. H. Jameson, Tjeerd Van Andel and C. N. Runnels, "A Greek Countryside: The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day" (Stanford University Press) 1994.His single most dramatic discovery was the copy of the Decree of Themistocles, mobilizing early preparations for the Battle of Salamis (470 BCE), which he recognized in a "kapheneion" (a Greek café) in Troezen and copied in a squeeze. The discovery, which adjusted the historian's view drawn from Thucydides, elicited an extensive literature, including four articles by Jameson, setting the text in its historical context.He received numerous awards and visiting fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966–67, and inspired a generation of scholars through his teaching. He died of cancer.Jameson contributed popular articles to encyclopedias: "Greek Mythology" in N. Kramer, "The Mythologies of the Ancient World" 1961, and "Mythology, Classical" in "Collier's Encyclopedia" 17 (1995:115-17).His articles are widely scattered. | [
"University of Pennsylvania",
"Stanford University"
] | |
Which employer did Michael H. Jameson work for in Mar, 1959? | March 30, 1959 | {
"text": [
"University of Pennsylvania"
]
} | L2_Q6830865_P108_1 | Michael H. Jameson works for Stanford University from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1990.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Pennsylvania from Jan, 1954 to Jan, 1976.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Missouri from Jan, 1950 to Jan, 1953. | Michael H. JamesonMichael Hamilton Jameson (London 15 October 1924 – 18 August 2004) was a classicist. At the time of his death he was Crossett Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Stanford University.His father, Raymond D. Jameson, professor of Western literature at the University of Peking, and mother, Rose Perel Jameson, were visiting London at the time of his birth. He spent his childhood in Beijing and with his mother in London, received his A.B. in Greek at the University of Chicago in 1942, aged seventeen, served in the U.S. Navy as a Japanese translator, 1943–46, then married Virginia Broyles. He received his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1949, with a dissertation on "The Offering at Meals: Its Place in Greek Sacrifice". A Fulbright Fellowship in 1949 supported him at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he hiked the Peloponnesos with his new wife and gained an intimate knowledge of inscriptions. After a brief stint at the University of Minnesota, he accepted a Ford Fellowship at the Institute for Social Anthropology at Oxford University. On his return to the United States, be began his long association with the University of Pennsylvania (1954–76).Though a spirit of perfectionism inhibited his production of an overarching book, in some sixty articles he explored the setting of Greek religion in its specific locality and time, thus focusing on unravelling the details of cult and ritual sacrifice; he did a great deal of work on epigraphy and its relations with literature and history, and he explored Greek sites, especially at the partly drowned port city of Halieis (Porto Cheli), which he began excavating in 1962, and in the Argolid, where he galvanized a broad ecological study, 1979–83, that was the first examination of the paleoecology of ancient Greece, resulting in the publication of M. H. Jameson, Tjeerd Van Andel and C. N. Runnels, "A Greek Countryside: The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day" (Stanford University Press) 1994.His single most dramatic discovery was the copy of the Decree of Themistocles, mobilizing early preparations for the Battle of Salamis (470 BCE), which he recognized in a "kapheneion" (a Greek café) in Troezen and copied in a squeeze. The discovery, which adjusted the historian's view drawn from Thucydides, elicited an extensive literature, including four articles by Jameson, setting the text in its historical context.He received numerous awards and visiting fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966–67, and inspired a generation of scholars through his teaching. He died of cancer.Jameson contributed popular articles to encyclopedias: "Greek Mythology" in N. Kramer, "The Mythologies of the Ancient World" 1961, and "Mythology, Classical" in "Collier's Encyclopedia" 17 (1995:115-17).His articles are widely scattered. | [
"University of Missouri",
"Stanford University"
] | |
Which employer did Michael H. Jameson work for in Nov, 1983? | November 21, 1983 | {
"text": [
"Stanford University"
]
} | L2_Q6830865_P108_2 | Michael H. Jameson works for Stanford University from Jan, 1976 to Jan, 1990.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Pennsylvania from Jan, 1954 to Jan, 1976.
Michael H. Jameson works for University of Missouri from Jan, 1950 to Jan, 1953. | Michael H. JamesonMichael Hamilton Jameson (London 15 October 1924 – 18 August 2004) was a classicist. At the time of his death he was Crossett Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Stanford University.His father, Raymond D. Jameson, professor of Western literature at the University of Peking, and mother, Rose Perel Jameson, were visiting London at the time of his birth. He spent his childhood in Beijing and with his mother in London, received his A.B. in Greek at the University of Chicago in 1942, aged seventeen, served in the U.S. Navy as a Japanese translator, 1943–46, then married Virginia Broyles. He received his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1949, with a dissertation on "The Offering at Meals: Its Place in Greek Sacrifice". A Fulbright Fellowship in 1949 supported him at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he hiked the Peloponnesos with his new wife and gained an intimate knowledge of inscriptions. After a brief stint at the University of Minnesota, he accepted a Ford Fellowship at the Institute for Social Anthropology at Oxford University. On his return to the United States, be began his long association with the University of Pennsylvania (1954–76).Though a spirit of perfectionism inhibited his production of an overarching book, in some sixty articles he explored the setting of Greek religion in its specific locality and time, thus focusing on unravelling the details of cult and ritual sacrifice; he did a great deal of work on epigraphy and its relations with literature and history, and he explored Greek sites, especially at the partly drowned port city of Halieis (Porto Cheli), which he began excavating in 1962, and in the Argolid, where he galvanized a broad ecological study, 1979–83, that was the first examination of the paleoecology of ancient Greece, resulting in the publication of M. H. Jameson, Tjeerd Van Andel and C. N. Runnels, "A Greek Countryside: The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day" (Stanford University Press) 1994.His single most dramatic discovery was the copy of the Decree of Themistocles, mobilizing early preparations for the Battle of Salamis (470 BCE), which he recognized in a "kapheneion" (a Greek café) in Troezen and copied in a squeeze. The discovery, which adjusted the historian's view drawn from Thucydides, elicited an extensive literature, including four articles by Jameson, setting the text in its historical context.He received numerous awards and visiting fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966–67, and inspired a generation of scholars through his teaching. He died of cancer.Jameson contributed popular articles to encyclopedias: "Greek Mythology" in N. Kramer, "The Mythologies of the Ancient World" 1961, and "Mythology, Classical" in "Collier's Encyclopedia" 17 (1995:115-17).His articles are widely scattered. | [
"University of Missouri",
"University of Pennsylvania"
] | |
Which position did Stavros Kostopoulos hold in May, 1941? | May 01, 1941 | {
"text": [
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament"
]
} | L2_Q16512517_P39_0 | Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Greek Minister of the Interior from Nov, 1963 to Dec, 1963.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Supplies from May, 1948 to Nov, 1948.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister without portfolio of Greece from Aug, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Member of the Hellenic Parliament from Jan, 1928 to Jan, 1946.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Economy of Greece from Sep, 1950 to Mar, 1951.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece from Apr, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece from Feb, 1964 to Jul, 1965.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for National Defence of Greece from Aug, 1965 to Dec, 1966.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of the National Economy of Greece from Jan, 1947 to Feb, 1947.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Coordination of Greece from Mar, 1950 to Apr, 1950. | Stavros KostopoulosStavros Kostopoulos (, 14 September 1900 – 23 June 1968) was a Greek banker and politician.He was born in Kalamata and he was the son of the banker Ioannis Kostopoulos. He attended the 1st Gymnasium in Kalamata. He studied law at the University of Athens and Political Sciences at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate degree. He dealt with the banking industry, in which the family already had developed significant activity.He was a member (1937-1951) and President (1951-1953) of the board of the Commercial Credit Bank. In 1951, he took over the direction of the National Bank of Greece, a position he held until 1953, when he was replaced by Kostis Iliaskos because of his disagreement on the merger of the Athens Bank with the National Bank.In 1928, he was elected for the first time member of the parliament (MP) representing Messenia and was reelected in several elections until 1936. In the elections of 1946, he was reelected for the Liberal Party, gathering 2.491 votes. Overall, he was elected eleven times as MP. Having already come into conflict with Andreas Papandreou, during the Apostasia of 1965, he was among the first members of the Centre Union to leave the party and became Minister of National Defence in the Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas government.He was also Minister of Finance in the governments of Sophoklis Venizelos (August, September & November 1950), Minister of National Economy (1932 & 1947) in the governments of Eleftherios Venizelos and Dimitrios Maximos, Foreign Minister (1964-1965) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister without Portfolio in the government of Sofoklis Venizelos, Interior Minister (1963) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister of Defence (1965-1966) in the governments of Novas, Ilias Tsirimokos and Stefanos Stefanopoulos, Minister of Merchant Marine (1950) in the government of Plastiras, Minister of Supply and Distribution (1948) in Themistoklis Sofoulis’ government and Coordinating Minister (1950) again under Sophoklis Venizelos.He died on June 23, 1968 in Athens, aged 67. | [
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece",
"Minister of Coordination of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Supplies",
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece"
] | |
Which position did Stavros Kostopoulos hold in Jan, 1947? | January 30, 1947 | {
"text": [
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece"
]
} | L2_Q16512517_P39_1 | Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Member of the Hellenic Parliament from Jan, 1928 to Jan, 1946.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Coordination of Greece from Mar, 1950 to Apr, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece from Feb, 1964 to Jul, 1965.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece from Apr, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister without portfolio of Greece from Aug, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Economy of Greece from Sep, 1950 to Mar, 1951.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Supplies from May, 1948 to Nov, 1948.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Greek Minister of the Interior from Nov, 1963 to Dec, 1963.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for National Defence of Greece from Aug, 1965 to Dec, 1966.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of the National Economy of Greece from Jan, 1947 to Feb, 1947. | Stavros KostopoulosStavros Kostopoulos (, 14 September 1900 – 23 June 1968) was a Greek banker and politician.He was born in Kalamata and he was the son of the banker Ioannis Kostopoulos. He attended the 1st Gymnasium in Kalamata. He studied law at the University of Athens and Political Sciences at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate degree. He dealt with the banking industry, in which the family already had developed significant activity.He was a member (1937-1951) and President (1951-1953) of the board of the Commercial Credit Bank. In 1951, he took over the direction of the National Bank of Greece, a position he held until 1953, when he was replaced by Kostis Iliaskos because of his disagreement on the merger of the Athens Bank with the National Bank.In 1928, he was elected for the first time member of the parliament (MP) representing Messenia and was reelected in several elections until 1936. In the elections of 1946, he was reelected for the Liberal Party, gathering 2.491 votes. Overall, he was elected eleven times as MP. Having already come into conflict with Andreas Papandreou, during the Apostasia of 1965, he was among the first members of the Centre Union to leave the party and became Minister of National Defence in the Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas government.He was also Minister of Finance in the governments of Sophoklis Venizelos (August, September & November 1950), Minister of National Economy (1932 & 1947) in the governments of Eleftherios Venizelos and Dimitrios Maximos, Foreign Minister (1964-1965) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister without Portfolio in the government of Sofoklis Venizelos, Interior Minister (1963) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister of Defence (1965-1966) in the governments of Novas, Ilias Tsirimokos and Stefanos Stefanopoulos, Minister of Merchant Marine (1950) in the government of Plastiras, Minister of Supply and Distribution (1948) in Themistoklis Sofoulis’ government and Coordinating Minister (1950) again under Sophoklis Venizelos.He died on June 23, 1968 in Athens, aged 67. | [
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament",
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of Coordination of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Supplies",
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece"
] | |
Which position did Stavros Kostopoulos hold in Aug, 1948? | August 16, 1948 | {
"text": [
"Minister of Supplies"
]
} | L2_Q16512517_P39_2 | Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece from Feb, 1964 to Jul, 1965.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister without portfolio of Greece from Aug, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Greek Minister of the Interior from Nov, 1963 to Dec, 1963.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece from Apr, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of the National Economy of Greece from Jan, 1947 to Feb, 1947.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Coordination of Greece from Mar, 1950 to Apr, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Economy of Greece from Sep, 1950 to Mar, 1951.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Member of the Hellenic Parliament from Jan, 1928 to Jan, 1946.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Supplies from May, 1948 to Nov, 1948.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for National Defence of Greece from Aug, 1965 to Dec, 1966. | Stavros KostopoulosStavros Kostopoulos (, 14 September 1900 – 23 June 1968) was a Greek banker and politician.He was born in Kalamata and he was the son of the banker Ioannis Kostopoulos. He attended the 1st Gymnasium in Kalamata. He studied law at the University of Athens and Political Sciences at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate degree. He dealt with the banking industry, in which the family already had developed significant activity.He was a member (1937-1951) and President (1951-1953) of the board of the Commercial Credit Bank. In 1951, he took over the direction of the National Bank of Greece, a position he held until 1953, when he was replaced by Kostis Iliaskos because of his disagreement on the merger of the Athens Bank with the National Bank.In 1928, he was elected for the first time member of the parliament (MP) representing Messenia and was reelected in several elections until 1936. In the elections of 1946, he was reelected for the Liberal Party, gathering 2.491 votes. Overall, he was elected eleven times as MP. Having already come into conflict with Andreas Papandreou, during the Apostasia of 1965, he was among the first members of the Centre Union to leave the party and became Minister of National Defence in the Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas government.He was also Minister of Finance in the governments of Sophoklis Venizelos (August, September & November 1950), Minister of National Economy (1932 & 1947) in the governments of Eleftherios Venizelos and Dimitrios Maximos, Foreign Minister (1964-1965) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister without Portfolio in the government of Sofoklis Venizelos, Interior Minister (1963) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister of Defence (1965-1966) in the governments of Novas, Ilias Tsirimokos and Stefanos Stefanopoulos, Minister of Merchant Marine (1950) in the government of Plastiras, Minister of Supply and Distribution (1948) in Themistoklis Sofoulis’ government and Coordinating Minister (1950) again under Sophoklis Venizelos.He died on June 23, 1968 in Athens, aged 67. | [
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament",
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece",
"Minister of Coordination of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece"
] | |
Which position did Stavros Kostopoulos hold in Apr, 1950? | April 07, 1950 | {
"text": [
"Minister of Coordination of Greece",
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece"
]
} | L2_Q16512517_P39_3 | Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Greek Minister of the Interior from Nov, 1963 to Dec, 1963.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Coordination of Greece from Mar, 1950 to Apr, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Supplies from May, 1948 to Nov, 1948.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Member of the Hellenic Parliament from Jan, 1928 to Jan, 1946.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister without portfolio of Greece from Aug, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece from Feb, 1964 to Jul, 1965.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece from Apr, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of the National Economy of Greece from Jan, 1947 to Feb, 1947.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Economy of Greece from Sep, 1950 to Mar, 1951.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for National Defence of Greece from Aug, 1965 to Dec, 1966. | Stavros KostopoulosStavros Kostopoulos (, 14 September 1900 – 23 June 1968) was a Greek banker and politician.He was born in Kalamata and he was the son of the banker Ioannis Kostopoulos. He attended the 1st Gymnasium in Kalamata. He studied law at the University of Athens and Political Sciences at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate degree. He dealt with the banking industry, in which the family already had developed significant activity.He was a member (1937-1951) and President (1951-1953) of the board of the Commercial Credit Bank. In 1951, he took over the direction of the National Bank of Greece, a position he held until 1953, when he was replaced by Kostis Iliaskos because of his disagreement on the merger of the Athens Bank with the National Bank.In 1928, he was elected for the first time member of the parliament (MP) representing Messenia and was reelected in several elections until 1936. In the elections of 1946, he was reelected for the Liberal Party, gathering 2.491 votes. Overall, he was elected eleven times as MP. Having already come into conflict with Andreas Papandreou, during the Apostasia of 1965, he was among the first members of the Centre Union to leave the party and became Minister of National Defence in the Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas government.He was also Minister of Finance in the governments of Sophoklis Venizelos (August, September & November 1950), Minister of National Economy (1932 & 1947) in the governments of Eleftherios Venizelos and Dimitrios Maximos, Foreign Minister (1964-1965) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister without Portfolio in the government of Sofoklis Venizelos, Interior Minister (1963) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister of Defence (1965-1966) in the governments of Novas, Ilias Tsirimokos and Stefanos Stefanopoulos, Minister of Merchant Marine (1950) in the government of Plastiras, Minister of Supply and Distribution (1948) in Themistoklis Sofoulis’ government and Coordinating Minister (1950) again under Sophoklis Venizelos.He died on June 23, 1968 in Athens, aged 67. | [
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament",
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Supplies",
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece",
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament",
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Supplies",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece"
] | |
Which position did Stavros Kostopoulos hold in Aug, 1950? | August 02, 1950 | {
"text": [
"Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece"
]
} | L2_Q16512517_P39_4 | Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece from Feb, 1964 to Jul, 1965.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister for National Defence of Greece from Aug, 1965 to Dec, 1966.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Commercial Marine of Greece from Apr, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Supplies from May, 1948 to Nov, 1948.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Greek Minister of the Interior from Nov, 1963 to Dec, 1963.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Member of the Hellenic Parliament from Jan, 1928 to Jan, 1946.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister without portfolio of Greece from Aug, 1950 to Sep, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of the National Economy of Greece from Jan, 1947 to Feb, 1947.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Coordination of Greece from Mar, 1950 to Apr, 1950.
Stavros Kostopoulos holds the position of Minister of Economy of Greece from Sep, 1950 to Mar, 1951. | Stavros KostopoulosStavros Kostopoulos (, 14 September 1900 – 23 June 1968) was a Greek banker and politician.He was born in Kalamata and he was the son of the banker Ioannis Kostopoulos. He attended the 1st Gymnasium in Kalamata. He studied law at the University of Athens and Political Sciences at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate degree. He dealt with the banking industry, in which the family already had developed significant activity.He was a member (1937-1951) and President (1951-1953) of the board of the Commercial Credit Bank. In 1951, he took over the direction of the National Bank of Greece, a position he held until 1953, when he was replaced by Kostis Iliaskos because of his disagreement on the merger of the Athens Bank with the National Bank.In 1928, he was elected for the first time member of the parliament (MP) representing Messenia and was reelected in several elections until 1936. In the elections of 1946, he was reelected for the Liberal Party, gathering 2.491 votes. Overall, he was elected eleven times as MP. Having already come into conflict with Andreas Papandreou, during the Apostasia of 1965, he was among the first members of the Centre Union to leave the party and became Minister of National Defence in the Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas government.He was also Minister of Finance in the governments of Sophoklis Venizelos (August, September & November 1950), Minister of National Economy (1932 & 1947) in the governments of Eleftherios Venizelos and Dimitrios Maximos, Foreign Minister (1964-1965) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister without Portfolio in the government of Sofoklis Venizelos, Interior Minister (1963) in the government of Georgios Papandreou, Minister of Defence (1965-1966) in the governments of Novas, Ilias Tsirimokos and Stefanos Stefanopoulos, Minister of Merchant Marine (1950) in the government of Plastiras, Minister of Supply and Distribution (1948) in Themistoklis Sofoulis’ government and Coordinating Minister (1950) again under Sophoklis Venizelos.He died on June 23, 1968 in Athens, aged 67. | [
"Member of the Hellenic Parliament",
"Minister for National Defence of Greece",
"Minister of the National Economy of Greece",
"Minister of Coordination of Greece",
"Minister without portfolio of Greece",
"Minister of Supplies",
"Greek Minister of the Interior",
"Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece",
"Minister of Economy of Greece"
] |
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