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Irreducible complexity
Irreducible complexity (IC) involves the idea that certain biological systems cannot have evolved by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection, because no less complex system would function. Irreducible complexity has become central to the creationist concept of intelligent design, but the scientific community, which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience, rejects the concept of irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments used by intelligent-design proponents, alongside specified complexity.
Creation science presented the theological argument from design with assertions that evolution could not explain complex molecular mechanisms, and in 1993 Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, presented these arguments in a revised version of the school textbook "Of Pandas and People". In his 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box" he called this concept "irreducible complexity" and said it made evolution through natural selection of random mutations impossible. This was based on the mistaken assumption that evolution relies on improvement of existing functions, ignoring how complex adaptations originate from changes in function, and disregarding published research. Evolutionary biologists have published rebuttals showing how systems discussed by Behe can evolve, and examples documented through comparative genomics show that complex molecular systems are formed by the addition of components as revealed by different temporal origins of their proteins.
In the 2005 "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District" trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."
Michael Behe defined irreducible complexity in natural selection in his book "Darwin's Black Box":
... a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
A second definition given by Behe (his "evolutionary definition") is as follows:
An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.
Intelligent design advocate William A. Dembski gives this definition:
A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system.
The argument from irreducible complexity is a descendant of the teleological argument for God (the argument from design or from complexity). This states that because certain things in nature appear very complicated, they must have been designed. William Paley famously argued, in his 1802 watchmaker analogy, that complexity in nature implies a God for the same reason that the existence of a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker. This argument has a long history, and one can trace it back at least as far as Cicero's "De Natura Deorum" ii.34, written in 45 BC.
Galen (1st and 2nd centuries AD) wrote about the large number of parts of the body and their relationships, which observation was cited as evidence for creation. The idea that the interdependence between parts would have implications for the origins of living things was raised by writers starting with Pierre Gassendi in the mid-17th century and by John Wilkins (1614-1672), who wrote (citing Galen), "Now to imagine, that all these things, according to their several kinds, could be brought into this regular frame and order, to which such an infinite number of Intentions are required, without the contrivance of some wise Agent, must needs be irrational in the highest degree."
In the late 17th-century, Thomas Burnet referred to "a multitude of pieces aptly joyn'd" to argue against the eternity of life. In the early 18th century, Nicolas Malebranche wrote "An organized body contains an infinity of parts that mutually depend upon one another in relation to particular ends, all of which must be actually formed in order to work as a whole", arguing in favor of preformation, rather than epigenesis, of the individual; and a similar argument about the origins of the individual was made by other 18th-century students of natural history. In his 1790 book, "The Critique of Judgment", Kant is said by Guyer to argue that "we cannot conceive how a whole that comes into being only gradually from its parts can nevertheless be the cause of the properties of those parts".
Chapter XV of Paley's "Natural Theology" discusses at length what he called "relations" of parts of living things as an indication of their design.
Georges Cuvier applied his principle of the "correlation of parts" to describe an animal from fragmentary remains. For Cuvier, this related to another principle of his, the "conditions of existence", which excluded the possibility of transmutation of species.
While he did not originate the term, Charles Darwin identified the argument as a possible way to falsify a prediction of the theory of evolution at the outset. In "The Origin of Species" (1859), he wrote, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case." Darwin's theory of evolution challenges the teleological argument by postulating an alternative explanation to that of an intelligent designer—namely, evolution by natural selection. By showing how simple unintelligent forces can ratchet up designs of extraordinary complexity without invoking outside design, Darwin showed that an intelligent designer was not the necessary conclusion to draw from complexity in nature. The argument from irreducible complexity attempts to demonstrate that certain biological features cannot be purely the product of Darwinian evolution.
In the late 19th century, in a dispute between supporters of the adequacy of natural selection and those who held for inheritance of acquired characteristics, one of the arguments made repeatedly by Herbert Spencer, and followed by others, depended on what Spencer referred to as "co-adaptation" of "co-operative" parts, as in: "We come now to Professor Weismann's endeavour to disprove my second thesis — that it is impossible to explain by natural selection alone the co-adaptation of co-operative parts. It is thirty years since this was set forth in "The Principles of Biology." In §166, I instanced the enormous horns of the extinct Irish elk, and contended that in this and in kindred cases, where for the efficient use of some one enlarged part many other parts have to be simultaneously enlarged, it is out of the question to suppose that they can have all spontaneously varied in the required proportions." Darwin responded to Spencer's objections in chapter XXV of "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" (1868). The history of this concept in the dispute has been characterized: "An older and more religious tradition of idealist thinkers were committed to the explanation of complex adaptive contrivances by intelligent design. ... Another line of thinkers, unified by the recurrent publications of Herbert Spencer, also saw co-adaptation as a composed, irreducible whole, but sought to explain it by the inheritance of acquired characteristics."
St. George Jackson Mivart raised the objection to natural selection that "Complex and simultaneous co-ordinations … until so far developed as to effect the requisite junctions, are useless" which "amounts to the concept of "irreducible complexity" as defined by … Michael Behe".
Hermann Muller, in the early 20th century, discussed a concept similar to irreducible complexity. However, far from seeing this as a problem for evolution, he described the "interlocking" of biological features as a consequence to be expected of evolution, which would lead to irreversibility of some evolutionary changes. He wrote, "Being thus finally woven, as it were, into the most intimate fabric of the organism, the once novel character can no longer be withdrawn with impunity, and may have become vitally necessary."
In 1974 the young Earth creationist Henry M. Morris introduced a similar concept in his book "Scientific Creationism", in which he wrote; "This issue can actually be attacked quantitatively, using simple principles of mathematical probability. The problem is simply whether a complex system, in which many components function unitedly together, and in which each component is uniquely necessary to the efficient functioning of the whole, could ever arise by random processes."
In 1975 Thomas H. Frazzetta published a book-length study of a concept similar to irreducible complexity, explained by gradual, step-wise, non-teleological evolution. Frazzetta wrote: "A complex adaptation is one constructed of "several" components that must blend together operationally to make the adaptation "work". It is analogous to a machine whose performance depends upon careful cooperation among its parts. In the case of the machine, no single part can greatly be altered without changing the performance of the entire machine." The machine that he chose as an analog is the Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage, and one biological system given extended description was the jaw apparatus of a python. The conclusion of this investigation, rather than that evolution of a complex adaptation was impossible, "awed by the adaptations of living things, to be stunned by their complexity and suitability", was "to accept the inescapable but not humiliating fact that much of mankind can be seen in a tree or a lizard."
In 1981, Ariel Roth, in defense of the creation-science position in the trial "McLean v. Arkansas", said of "complex integrated structures": "This system would not be functional until all the parts were there ... How did these parts survive during evolution ...?"
In 1985 Cairns-Smith wrote of "interlocking": "How can a complex collaboration between components evolve in small steps?" and used the analogy of the scaffolding called centering - used to build an arch then removed afterwards: "Surely there was 'scaffolding'. Before the multitudinous components of present biochemistry could come to lean together "they had to lean on something else."" However, neither Muller or Cairns-Smith claimed their ideas as evidence of something supernatural.
An essay in support of creationism published in 1994 referred to bacterial flagella as showing "multiple, integrated components", where "nothing about them works unless every one of their complexly fashioned and integrated components are in place". The author asked the reader to "imagine the effects of natural selection on those organisms that fortuitously evolved the flagella ... without the concommitant control mechanisms".
An early concept of irreducibly complex systems comes from Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), an Austrian biologist. He believed that complex systems must be examined as complete, irreducible systems in order to fully understand how they work. He extended his work on biological complexity into a general theory of systems in a book titled "General Systems Theory".
After James Watson and Francis Crick published the structure of DNA in the early 1950s, General Systems Theory lost many of its adherents in the physical and biological sciences.
However, systems theory remained popular in the social sciences long after its demise in the physical and biological sciences.
Michael Behe developed his ideas on the concept around 1992, in the early days of the 'wedge movement', and first presented his ideas about "irreducible complexity" in June 1993 when the "Johnson-Behe cadre of scholars" met at Pajaro Dunes in California. He set out his ideas in the second edition of "Of Pandas and People" published in 1993, extensively revising Chapter 6 "Biochemical Similarities" with new sections on the complex mechanism of blood clotting and on the origin of proteins.
He first used the term "irreducible complexity" in his 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box", to refer to certain complex biochemical cellular systems. He posits that evolutionary mechanisms cannot explain the development of such "irreducibly complex" systems. Notably, Behe credits philosopher William Paley for the original concept (alone among the predecessors) and suggests that his application of the concept to biological systems is entirely original.
Intelligent design advocates argue that irreducibly complex systems must have been deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence.
In 2001, Michael Behe wrote: "[T]here is an asymmetry between my current definition of irreducible complexity and the task facing natural selection. I hope to repair this defect in future work." Behe specifically explained that the "current definition puts the focus on removing a part from an already functioning system", but the "difficult task facing Darwinian evolution, however, would not be to remove parts from sophisticated pre-existing systems; it would be to bring together components to make a new system in the first place". In the 2005 "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District" trial, Behe testified under oath that he "did not judge [the asymmetry] serious enough to [have revised the book] yet."
Behe additionally testified that the presence of irreducible complexity in organisms would not rule out the involvement of evolutionary mechanisms in the development of organic life. He further testified that he knew of no earlier "peer reviewed articles in scientific journals discussing the intelligent design of the blood clotting cascade," but that there were "probably a large number of peer reviewed articles in science journals that demonstrate that the blood clotting system is indeed a purposeful arrangement of parts of great complexity and sophistication." (The judge ruled that "intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature".)
According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur without specific design or intent. The environment "selects" the variants that have the highest fitness, which are then passed on to the next generation of organisms. Change occurs by the gradual operation of natural forces over time, perhaps slowly, perhaps more quickly (see punctuated equilibrium). This process is able to adapt complex structures from simpler beginnings, or convert complex structures from one function to another (see spandrel). Most intelligent design advocates accept that evolution occurs through mutation and natural selection at the "micro level", such as changing the relative frequency of various beak lengths in finches, but assert that it cannot account for irreducible complexity, because none of the parts of an irreducible system would be functional or advantageous until the entire system is in place.
Behe uses the mousetrap as an illustrative example of this concept. A mousetrap consists of five interacting pieces: the base, the catch, the spring, the hammer, and the hold-down bar. All of these must be in place for the mousetrap to work, as the removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap. Likewise, he asserts that biological systems require multiple parts working together in order to function. Intelligent design advocates claim that natural selection could not create from scratch those systems for which science is currently unable to find a viable evolutionary pathway of successive, slight modifications, because the selectable function is only present when all parts are assembled.
In his 2008 book "Only A Theory", biologist Kenneth R. Miller challenges Behe's claim that the mousetrap is irreducibly complex. Miller observes that various subsets of the five components can be devised to form cooperative units, ones that have different functions from the mousetrap and so, in biological terms, could form functional spandrels before being adapted to the new function of catching mice. In an example taken from his high school experience, Miller recalls that one of his classmates...struck upon the brilliant idea of using an old, broken mousetrap as a spitball catapult, and it worked brilliantly... It had worked perfectly as something other than a mousetrap... my rowdy friend had pulled a couple of parts --probably the hold-down bar and catch-- off the trap to make it easier to conceal and more effective as a catapult... [leaving] the base, the spring, and the hammer. Not much of a mousetrap, but a helluva spitball launcher... I realized why [Behe's] mousetrap analogy had bothered me. It was wrong. The mousetrap is not irreducibly complex after all.
Other systems identified by Miller that include mousetrap components include the following:
The point of the reduction is that - in biology - most or all of the components were already at hand, by the time it became necessary to build a mousetrap. As such, it required far fewer steps to develop a mousetrap than to design all the components from scratch.
Thus, the development of the mousetrap, said to consist of five different parts which had no function on their own, has been reduced to one step: the assembly from parts that are already present, performing other functions.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that anything less than the complete form of such a system or organ would not work at all, or would in fact be a "detriment" to the organism, and would therefore never survive the process of natural selection. Although they accept that some complex systems and organs "can" be explained by evolution, they claim that organs and biological features which are "irreducibly complex" cannot be explained by current models, and that an intelligent designer must have created life or guided its evolution. Accordingly, the debate on irreducible complexity concerns two questions: whether irreducible complexity can be found in nature, and what significance it would have if it did exist in nature.
Behe's original examples of irreducibly complex mechanisms included the bacterial flagellum of "E. coli", the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.
Behe argues that organs and biological features which are irreducibly complex cannot be wholly explained by current models of evolution. In explicating his definition of "irreducible complexity" he notes that:
An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.
Irreducible complexity is not an argument that evolution does not occur, but rather an argument that it is "incomplete". In the last chapter of "Darwin's Black Box", Behe goes on to explain his view that irreducible complexity is evidence for intelligent design. Mainstream critics, however, argue that irreducible complexity, as defined by Behe, can be generated by known evolutionary mechanisms. Behe's claim that no scientific literature adequately modeled the origins of biochemical systems through evolutionary mechanisms has been challenged by TalkOrigins. The judge in the "Dover" trial wrote "By defining irreducible complexity in the way that he has, Professor Behe attempts to exclude the phenomenon of exaptation by definitional fiat, ignoring as he does so abundant evidence which refutes his argument. Notably, the NAS has rejected Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity..."
Behe and others have suggested a number of biological features that they believed to be irreducibly complex.
The process of blood clotting or coagulation cascade in vertebrates is a complex biological pathway which is given as an example of apparent irreducible complexity.
The irreducible complexity argument assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially. However, in evolution, something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary. Natural selection can lead to complex biochemical systems being built up from simpler systems, or to existing functional systems being recombined as a new system with a different function. For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the clotting cascade (Factor XII, also called Hageman factor) was later found to be absent in whales, demonstrating that it is not essential for a clotting system. Many purportedly irreducible structures can be found in other organisms as much simpler systems that utilize fewer parts. These systems, in turn, may have had even simpler precursors that are now extinct. Behe has responded to critics of his clotting cascade arguments by suggesting that homology is evidence for evolution, but not for natural selection.
The "improbability argument" also misrepresents natural selection. It is correct to say that a set of simultaneous mutations that form a complex protein structure is so unlikely as to be unfeasible, but that is not what Darwin advocated. His explanation is based on small accumulated changes that take place without a final goal. Each step must be advantageous in its own right, although biologists may not yet understand the reason behind all of them—for example, jawless fish accomplish blood clotting with just six proteins instead of the full ten.
The eye is an example of a supposedly irreducibly complex structure, due to its many elaborate and interlocking parts, seemingly all dependent upon one another. It is frequently cited by intelligent design and creationism advocates as an example of irreducible complexity. Behe used the "development of the eye problem" as evidence for intelligent design in "Darwin's Black Box". Although Behe acknowledged that the evolution of the larger anatomical features of the eye have been well-explained, he pointed out that the complexity of the minute biochemical reactions required at a molecular level for light sensitivity still defies explanation. Creationist Jonathan Sarfati has described the eye as evolutionary biologists' "greatest challenge as an example of superb 'irreducible complexity' in God's creation", specifically pointing to the supposed "vast complexity" required for transparency.
In an often misquoted passage from "On the Origin of Species", Charles Darwin appears to acknowledge the eye's development as a difficulty for his theory. However, the quote in context shows that Darwin actually had a very good understanding of the evolution of the eye (see fallacy of quoting out of context). He notes that "to suppose that the eye ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree". Yet this observation was merely a rhetorical device for Darwin. He goes on to explain that if gradual evolution of the eye could be shown to be possible, "the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection ... can hardly be considered real". He then proceeded to roughly map out a likely course for evolution using examples of gradually more complex eyes of various species.
Since Darwin's day, the eye's ancestry has become much better understood. Although learning about the construction of ancient eyes through fossil evidence is problematic due to the soft tissues leaving no imprint or remains, genetic and comparative anatomical evidence has increasingly supported the idea of a common ancestry for all eyes.
Current evidence does suggest possible evolutionary lineages for the origins of the anatomical features of the eye. One likely chain of development is that the eyes originated as simple patches of photoreceptor cells that could detect the presence or absence of light, but not its direction. When, via random mutation across the population, the photosensitive cells happened to have developed on a small depression, it endowed the organism with a better sense of the light's source. This small change gave the organism an advantage over those without the mutation. This genetic trait would then be "selected for" as those with the trait would have an increased chance of survival, and therefore progeny, over those without the trait. Individuals with deeper depressions would be able to discern changes in light over a wider field than those individuals with shallower depressions. As ever deeper depressions were advantageous to the organism, gradually, this depression would become a pit into which light would strike certain cells depending on its angle. The organism slowly gained increasingly precise visual information. And again, this gradual process continued as individuals having a slightly shrunken aperture of the eye had an advantage over those without the mutation as an aperture increases how collimated the light is at any one specific group of photoreceptors. As this trait developed, the eye became effectively a pinhole camera which allowed the organism to dimly make out shapes—the nautilus is a modern example of an animal with such an eye. Finally, via this same selection process, a protective layer of transparent cells over the aperture was differentiated into a crude lens, and the interior of the eye was filled with humours to assist in focusing images. In this way, eyes are recognized by modern biologists as actually a relatively unambiguous and simple structure to evolve, and many of the major developments of the eye's evolution are believed to have taken place over only a few million years, during the Cambrian explosion. Behe asserts that this is only an explanation of the gross anatomical steps, however, and not an explanation of the changes in discrete biochemical systems that would have needed to take place.
Behe maintains that the complexity of light sensitivity at the molecular level and the minute biochemical reactions required for those first "simple patches of photoreceptor[s]" still defies explanation, and that the proposed series of infinitesimal steps to get from patches of photoreceptors to a fully functional eye would actually be considered great, complex leaps in evolution if viewed on the molecular scale. Other intelligent design proponents claim that the evolution of the entire visual system would be difficult rather than the eye alone.
The flagella of certain bacteria constitute a molecular motor requiring the interaction of about 40 different protein parts. Behe presents this as a prime example of an irreducibly complex structure defined as "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning", and argues that since "an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional", it could not have evolved gradually through natural selection.
Reducible complexity. In contrast to Behe's claims, many proteins can be deleted or mutated and the flagellum still works, even though sometimes at reduced efficiency. In fact, the composition of flagella is surprisingly diverse across bacteria with many proteins only found in some species but not others. Hence the flagellar apparatus is clearly very flexible in evolutionary terms and perfectly able to lose or gain protein components. Further studies have shown that, contrary to claims of "irreducible complexity", flagella and related protein transport mechanisms show evidence of evolution through Darwinian processes, providing case studies in how complex systems can evolve from simpler components. Multiple processes were involved in the evolution of the flagellum, including horizontal gene transfer.
Evolution from type three secretion systems. Scientists regard this argument as having been disproved in the light of research dating back to 1996 as well as more recent findings. They point out that the basal body of the flagella has been found to be similar to the Type III secretion system (TTSS), a needle-like structure that pathogenic germs such as "Salmonella" and "Yersinia pestis" use to inject toxins into living eucaryote cells. The needle's base has ten elements in common with the flagellum, but it is missing forty of the proteins that make a flagellum work. The TTSS system negates Behe's claim that taking away any one of the flagellum's parts would prevent the system from functioning. On this basis, Kenneth Miller notes that, "The parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex system actually have functions of their own." Studies have also shown that similar parts of the flagellum in different bacterial species can have different functions despite showing evidence of common descent, and that certain parts of the flagellum can be removed without completely eliminating its functionality.
Dembski has argued that phylogenetically, the TTSS is found in a narrow range of bacteria which makes it seem to him to be a late innovation, whereas flagella are widespread throughout many bacterial groups, and he argues that it was an early innovation. Against Dembski's argument, different flagella use completely different mechanisms, and publications show a plausible path in which bacterial flagella could have evolved from a secretion system.
The cilium construction of axoneme microtubules movement by the sliding of dynein protein was cited by Behe as an example of irreducible complexity. He further said that the advances in knowledge in the subsequent 10 years had shown that the complexity of intraflagellar transport for two hundred components cilium and many other cellular structures is substantially greater than was known earlier.
The bombardier beetle is able to defend itself by directing a spray of hot fluid at an attacker. The mechanism involves a system for mixing hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide, which react violently to attain a temperature near boiling point, and in some species a nozzle which allows the spray to be directed accurately in any direction.
The unique combination of features of the bombardier beetle's defense mechanism—strongly exothermic reactions, boiling-hot fluids, and explosive release—have been claimed by creationists and proponents of intelligent design to be examples of irreducible complexity. Biologists such as the taxonomist Mark Isaak note however that step-by-step evolution of the mechanism could readily have occurred. In particular, quinones are precursors to sclerotin, used to harden the skeleton of many insects, while peroxide is a common by-product of metabolism.
Like intelligent design, the concept it seeks to support, irreducible complexity has failed to gain any notable acceptance within the scientific community.
Researchers have proposed potentially viable evolutionary pathways for allegedly irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the immune system and the flagellum - the three examples Behe proposed. John H. McDonald even showed his example of a mousetrap to be reducible. If irreducible complexity is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution, it should not be possible to conceive of such pathways.
Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin, both of East Tennessee State University, have shown that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular systems actually exhibit is "redundant complexity"—a kind of complexity that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because of his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions, resulting in his taking snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures, and processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in which those features are naturally embedded. They also criticized his over-reliance of overly simplistic metaphors, such as his mousetrap.
A computer model of the co-evolution of proteins binding to DNA in the peer-reviewed journal "Nucleic Acids Research" consisted of several parts (DNA binders and DNA binding sites) which contribute to the basic function; removal of either one leads immediately to the death of the organism. This model fits the definition of irreducible complexity exactly, yet it evolves. (The program can be run from Ev program.)
In addition, research published in the peer-reviewed journal "Nature" has shown that computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it is possible for complex features to evolve naturally.
One can compare a mousetrap with a cat in this context. Both normally function so as to control the mouse population. The cat has many parts that can be removed leaving it still functional; for example, its tail can be bobbed, or it can lose an ear in a fight. Comparing the cat and the mousetrap, then, one sees that the mousetrap (which is not alive) offers better evidence, in terms of irreducible complexity, for intelligent design than the cat. Even looking at the mousetrap analogy, several critics have described ways in which the parts of the mousetrap could have independent uses or could develop in stages, demonstrating that it is not irreducibly complex.
Moreover, even cases where removing a certain component in an organic system will cause the system to fail do not demonstrate that the system could not have been formed in a step-by-step, evolutionary process. By analogy, stone arches are irreducibly complex—if you remove any stone the arch will collapse—yet humans build them easily enough, one stone at a time, by building over centering that is removed afterward. Similarly, naturally occurring arches of stone form by the weathering away of bits of stone from a large concretion that has formed previously.
Evolution can act to simplify as well as to complicate. This raises the possibility that seemingly irreducibly complex biological features may have been achieved with a period of increasing complexity, followed by a period of simplification.
A team led by Joseph Thornton, assistant professor of biology at the University of Oregon's Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, using techniques for resurrecting ancient genes, reconstructed the evolution of an apparently irreducibly complex molecular system. The April 7, 2006 issue of "Science" published this research.
Irreducible complexity may not actually exist in nature, and the examples given by Behe and others may not in fact represent irreducible complexity, but can be explained in terms of simpler precursors. The theory of facilitated variation challenges irreducible complexity. Marc W. Kirschner, a professor and chair of Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, and John C. Gerhart, a professor in Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, presented this theory in 2005. They describe how certain mutation and changes can cause apparent irreducible complexity. Thus, seemingly irreducibly complex structures are merely "very complex", or they are simply misunderstood or misrepresented.
The precursors of complex systems, when they are not useful in themselves, may be useful to perform other, unrelated functions. Evolutionary biologists argue that evolution often works in this kind of blind, haphazard manner in which the function of an early form is not necessarily the same as the function of the later form. The term used for this process is exaptation. The mammalian middle ear (derived from a jawbone) and the panda's thumb (derived from a wrist bone spur) provide classic examples. A 2006 article in "Nature" demonstrates intermediate states leading toward the development of the ear in a Devonian fish (about 360 million years ago). Furthermore, recent research shows that viruses play a heretofore unexpected role in evolution by mixing and matching genes from various hosts.
Arguments for irreducibility often assume that things started out the same way they ended up—as we see them now. However, that may not necessarily be the case. In the "Dover" trial an expert witness for the plaintiffs, Ken Miller, demonstrated this possibility using Behe's mousetrap analogy. By removing several parts, Miller made the object unusable as a mousetrap, but he pointed out that it was now a perfectly functional, if unstylish, tie clip.
Irreducible complexity can be seen as equivalent to an "uncrossable valley" in a fitness landscape. A number of mathematical models of evolution have explored the circumstances under which such valleys can, nevertheless, be crossed.
Some critics, such as Jerry Coyne (professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago) and Eugenie Scott (a physical anthropologist and former executive director of the National Center for Science Education) have argued that the concept of irreducible complexity and, more generally, intelligent design is not falsifiable and, therefore, not scientific.
Behe argues that the theory that irreducibly complex systems could not have evolved can be falsified by an experiment where such systems are evolved. For example, he posits taking bacteria with no flagellum and imposing a selective pressure for mobility. If, after a few thousand generations, the bacteria evolved the bacterial flagellum, then Behe believes that this would refute his theory.
Other critics take a different approach, pointing to experimental evidence that they consider falsification of the argument for intelligent design from irreducible complexity. For example, Kenneth Miller describes the lab work of Barry G. Hall on E. coli as showing that "Behe is wrong".
Other evidence that irreducible complexity is not a problem for evolution comes from the field of computer science, which routinely uses computer analogues of the processes of evolution in order to automatically design complex solutions to problems. The results of such genetic algorithms are frequently irreducibly complex since the process, like evolution, both removes non-essential components over time as well as adding new components. The removal of unused components with no essential function, like the natural process where rock underneath a natural arch is removed, can produce irreducibly complex structures without requiring the intervention of a designer. Researchers applying these algorithms automatically produce human-competitive designs—but no human designer is required.
Intelligent design proponents attribute to an intelligent designer those biological structures they believe are irreducibly complex and therefore they say a natural explanation is insufficient to account for them. However, critics view irreducible complexity as a special case of the "complexity indicates design" claim, and thus see it as an argument from ignorance and as a God-of-the-gaps argument.
Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education note that intelligent design arguments from irreducible complexity rest on the false assumption that a lack of knowledge of a natural explanation allows intelligent design proponents to assume an intelligent cause, when the proper response of scientists would be to say that we don't know, and further investigation is needed. Other critics describe Behe as saying that evolutionary explanations are not detailed enough to meet his standards, while at the same time presenting intelligent design as exempt from having to provide any positive evidence at all.
Irreducible complexity is at its core an argument against evolution. If truly irreducible systems are found, the argument goes, then intelligent design must be the correct explanation for their existence. However, this conclusion is based on the assumption that current evolutionary theory and intelligent design are the only two valid models to explain life, a false dilemma.
While testifying during the 2005 "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District" trial, Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting his claims that complex molecular systems, like the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system, were intelligently designed nor are there any peer-reviewed articles supporting his argument that certain complex molecular structures are "irreducibly complex."
In the final ruling of "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District", Judge Jones specifically singled out Behe and irreducible complexity:
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Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia
Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included indigenous animistic-polytheistic beliefs, as well as Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, and Iranian religions of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Manichaeism. Arabian polytheism, the dominant form of religion in pre-Islamic Arabia, was based on veneration of deities and spirits. Worship was directed to various gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt, at local shrines and temples such as the Kaaba in Mecca. Deities were venerated and invoked through a variety of rituals, including pilgrimages and divination, as well as ritual sacrifice. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in Meccan religion. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods are traced to idols, especially near the Kaaba, which is said to have contained up to 360 of them.
Other religions were represented to varying, lesser degrees. The influence of the adjacent Roman, Aksumite, and Sasanian Empires resulted in Christian communities in the northwest, northeast, and south of Arabia. Christianity made a lesser impact, but secured some conversions, in the remainder of the peninsula. With the exception of Nestorianism in the northeast and the Persian Gulf, the dominant form of Christianity was Miaphysitism. The peninsula had been a destination for Jewish migration since Roman times, which had resulted in a diaspora community supplemented by local converts. Additionally, the influence of the Sasanian Empire resulted in Iranian religions being present in the peninsula. Zoroastrianism existed in the east and south, while there is evidence of Manichaeism or possibly Mazdakism being practiced in Mecca.
Until about the fourth century, almost all inhabitants of Arabia practiced polytheistic religions. Although significant Jewish and Christian minorities developed, polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic Arabia.
The contemporary sources of information regarding the pre-Islamic Arabian religion and pantheon include a small number of inscriptions and carvings, pre-Islamic poetry, external sources such as Jewish and Greek accounts, as well as the Muslim tradition, such as the Qur'an and Islamic writings. Nevertheless, information is limited.
One early attestation of Arabian polytheism was in Esarhaddon’s Annals, mentioning Atarsamain, Nukhay, Ruldaiu, and Atarquruma. Herodotus, writing in his "Histories", reported that the Arabs worshipped Orotalt (identified with Dionysus) and Alilat (identified with Aphrodite). Strabo stated the Arabs worshipped Dionysus and Zeus. Origen stated they worshipped Dionysus and Urania.
Muslim sources regarding Arabian polytheism include the eight-century "Book of Idols" by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, which F.E. Peters argued to be the most substantial treatment of the religious practices of pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as the writings of the Yemeni historian al-Hasan al-Hamdani on south Arabian religious beliefs.
According to the "Book of Idols", descendants of the son of Abraham (Ishmael) who had settled in Mecca migrated to other lands. They carried holy stones from the Kaaba with them, erected them, and circumambulated them like the Kaaba. This, according to al-Kalbi led to the rise of idol worship. Based on this, it may be probable that Arabs originally venerated stones, later adopting idol-worship under foreign influences. The relationship between a god and a stone as his representation can be seen from the third-century work called the Syriac "Homily of Pseudo-Meliton" where he describes the pagan faiths of Syriac-speakers in northern Mesopotamia, who were mostly Arabs.
The pre-Islamic Arabian religions were polytheistic, with many of the deities' names known. Formal pantheons are more noticeable at the level of kingdoms, of variable sizes, ranging from simple city-states to collections of tribes. Tribes, towns, clans, lineages and families had their own cults too. Christian Julien Robin suggests that this structure of the divine world reflected the society of the time.
A large number of deities did not have proper names and were referred to by titles indicating a quality, a family relationship, or a locale preceded by "he who" or "she who" ("dhū" or "dhāt" respectively).
The religious beliefs and practices of the nomadic Bedouin were distinct from those of the settled tribes of towns such as Mecca. Nomadic religious belief systems and practices are believed to have included fetishism, totemism and veneration of the dead but were connected principally with immediate concerns and problems and did not consider larger philosophical questions such as the afterlife. Settled urban Arabs, on the other hand, are thought to have believed in a more complex pantheon of deities. While the Meccans and the other settled inhabitants of the Hejaz worshiped their gods at permanent shrines in towns and oases, the Bedouin practiced their religion on the move.
In south Arabia, "mndh’t" were anonymous guardian spirits of the community and the ancestor spirits of the family. They were known as ‘the sun ("shms") of their ancestors’.
In north Arabia, "ginnaye" were known from Palmyrene inscriptions as “the good and rewarding gods” and were probably related to the "jinn" of west and central Arabia. Unlike jinn, ginnaye could not hurt nor possess humans and were much more similar to the Roman genius. According to common Arabian belief, soothsayers, pre-Islamic philosophers, and poets were inspired by the jinn. However, jinn were also feared and thought to be responsible for causing various diseases and mental illnesses.
Aside from benevolent gods and spirits, there existed malevolent beings. These beings were not attested in the epigraphic record, but were alluded to in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and their legends were collected by later Muslim authors.
Commonly mentioned are ghouls. Etymologically, the English word “ghoul” was derived from the Arabic "ghul", from "ghala", “to seize”, related to the Sumerian "galla". They are said to have a hideous appearance, with feet like those of an ass. Arabs were said to utter the following couplet if they should encounter one: “Oh ass-footed one, just bray away, we won’t leave the desert plain nor ever go astray.”
Christian Julien Robin notes that all the known south Arabian divinities had a positive or protective role and that evil powers were only alluded to but were never personified.
Some scholars postulate that in pre-Islamic Arabia, including in Mecca, Allah was considered to be a deity, possibly a creator deity or a supreme deity in a polytheistic pantheon. The word "Allah" (from the Arabic "al-ilah" meaning "the god") may have been used as a title rather than a name. The concept of "Allah" may have been vague in the Meccan religion. According to Islamic sources, Meccans and their neighbors believed that the goddesses Al-lāt, Al-‘Uzzá, and Manāt were the daughters of Allah.
Regional variants of the word "Allah" occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. References to Allah are found in the poetry of the pre-Islamic Arab poet Zuhayr bin Abi Sulma, who lived a generation before Muhammad, as well as pre-Islamic personal names. Muhammad's father's name was "ʿAbd-Allāh", meaning "the servant of Allah".
Charles Russell Coulter and Patricia Turner considered that Allah's name may be derived from a pre-Islamic god called Ailiah and is similar to El, Il, Ilah and Jehova. They also considered some of his characteristics to be seemingly based on lunar deities like Almaqah, Kahl, Shaker, Wadd and Warakh. Alfred Guillaume states that the connection between Ilah that came to form Allah and ancient Babylonian "Il" or "El" of ancient Israel is not clear. Wellhausen states that Allah was known from Jewish and Christian sources and was known to pagan Arabs as the supreme god. Winfried Corduan doubts the theory of Allah of Islam being linked to a moon god, stating that the term Allah functions as a generic term, like the term El-Elyon used as a title for the god Sin.
South Arabian inscriptions from the fourth century AD refer to a god called Rahman ("The Merciful One") who had a monotheistic cult and was referred to as the "Lord of heaven and Earth". Aaron W. Hughes states that scholars are unsure whether he developed from the earlier polytheistic systems or developed due to the increasing significance of the Christian and Jewish communities, and that it is difficult to establish whether Allah was linked to Rahmanan. Maxime Rodinson, however, considers one of Allah's names "Ar-Rahman" to have been used in the form of Rahmanan earlier.
Al-Lāt, Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt were common names used for multiple goddesses across Arabia. G.R. Hawting states that modern scholars have frequently associated the names of Arabian goddesses Al-lāt, Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt with cults devoted to celestial bodies, particularly Venus, drawing upon evidence external to the Muslim tradition as well as in relation to Syria, Mesopotamia and the Sinai Peninsula.
Allāt (Arabic: اللات) or al-Lāt was worshipped throughout the ancient Near East with various associations. Herodotus in the 5th century BC identifies "Alilat" (Greek: Ἀλιλάτ) as the Arabic name for Aphrodite (and, in another passage, for Urania), which is strong evidence for worship of Allāt in Arabia at that early date. Al-‘Uzzá (Arabic: العزى) was a fertility goddess or possibly a goddess of love. Manāt (Arabic: مناة) was the goddess of destiny.
Al-Lāt's cult was spread in Syria and northern Arabia. From Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, it is probable that she was worshiped as Lat ("lt"). F. V. Winnet saw al-Lat as a lunar deity due to the association of a crescent with her in 'Ayn esh-Shallāleh and a Lihyanite inscription mentioning the name of Wadd, the Minaean moon god, over the title of "'fkl lt". René Dussaud and Gonzague Ryckmans linked her with Venus while others have thought her to be a solar deity. John F. Healey considers that al-Uzza actually might have been an epithet of al-Lāt before becoming a separate deity in the Meccan pantheon. Paola Corrente, writing in "Redefining Dionysus", considers she might have been a god of vegetation or a celestial deity of atmospheric phenomena and a sky deity.
According to F.E. Peters, "one of the characteristics of Arab paganism as it has come down to us is the absence of a mythology, narratives that might serve to explain the origin or history of the gods." Many of the deities have epithets, but are lacking myths or narratives to decode the epithets, making them generally uninformative.
Cult images of a deity were most often an unworked stone block. The most common name for these stone blocks was derived from the Semitic "nsb" ("to be stood upright"), but other names were used, such as Nabataean "masgida" ("place of prostration") and Arabic "duwar" ("object of circumambulation", this term often occurs in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry). These god-stones were usually a free-standing slab, but Nabataean god-stones are usually carved directly on the rock face. Facial features may be incised on the stone (especially in Nabataea), or astral symbols (especially in south Arabia). Under Greco-Roman influence, an anthropomorphic statue might be used instead.
The "Book of Idols" describes two types of statues: idols ("sanam") and images ("wathan"). If a statue were made of wood, gold, or silver, after a human form, it would be an idol, but if the statue were made of stone, it would be an image.
Representation of deities in animal-form was common in south Arabia, such as the god Sayin from Hadhramaut, who was represented as either an eagle fighting a serpent or a bull.
Sacred places are known as "hima", "haram" or "mahram", and within these places, all living things were considered inviolable and violence was forbidden. In most of Arabia, these places would take the form of open-air sanctuaries, with distinguishing natural features such as springs and forests. Cities would contain temples, enclosing the sacred area with walls, and featuring ornate structures.
Sacred areas often had a guardian or a performer of cultic rites. These officials were thought to tend the area, receive offerings, and perform divination. They are known by many names, probably based on cultural-linguistic preference: "afkal" was used in the Hejaz, "kâhin" was used in the Sinai-Negev-Hisma region, and "kumrâ" was used in Aramaic-influenced areas. In south Arabia, "rs2w" and "'fkl" were used to refer to priests, and other words include "qyn" ("administrator") and "mrtd" ("consecrated to a particular divinity"). A more specialized staff is thought to have existed in major sanctuaries.
Pilgrimages to sacred places would be made at certain times of the year. Pilgrim fairs of central and northern Arabia took place in specific months designated as violence-free, allowing several activities to flourish, such as trade, though in some places only exchange was permitted.
The most important pilgrimage in Saba' was probably the pilgrimage of Almaqah at Ma'rib, performed in the month of dhu-Abhi (roughly in July). Two references attest the pilgrimage of Almaqah dhu-Hirran at 'Amran. The pilgrimage of Ta'lab Riyam took place in Mount Tur'at and the Zabyan temple at Hadaqan, while the pilgrimage of Dhu-Samawi, the god of the Amir tribe, took place in Yathill. Aside from Sabaean pilgrimages, the pilgrimage of Sayin took place at Shabwa.
The pilgrimage of Mecca involved the stations of Mount Arafat, Muzdalifah, Mina and central Mecca that included Safa and Marwa as well as the Kaaba. Pilgrims at the first two stations performed "wuquf" or standing in adoration. At Mina, animals were sacrificed. The procession from Arafat to Muzdalifah, and from Mina to Mecca, in a pre-reserved route towards idols or an idol, was termed "ijaza" and "ifada", with the latter taking place before sunset. At Jabal Quzah, fires were started during the sacred month.
Nearby the Kaaba was located the betyl which was later called "Maqam Ibrahim"; a place called "al-Ḥigr" which Aziz al-Azmeh takes to be reserved for consecrated animals, basing his argument on a Sabaean inscription mentioning a place called "mḥgr" which was reserved for animals; and the Well of Zamzam. Both Safa and Marwa were adjacent to two sacrificial hills, one called Muṭ'im al Ṭayr and another Mujāwir al-Riḥ which was a pathway to Abu Kubais from where the Black Stone is reported to have originated.
Meccan pilgrimages differed according to the rites of different cult associations, in which individuals and groups joined together for religious purposes. The "Ḥilla" association performed the "hajj" in autumn season while the "Ṭuls" and "Ḥums" performed the "umrah" in spring.
The "Ḥums" were the Quraysh, Banu Kinanah, Banu Khuza'a and Banu 'Amir. They did not perform the pilgrimage outside the zone of Mecca's "haram", thus excluding Mount Arafat. They also developed certain dietary and cultural restrictions. According to "Kitab al-Muhabbar", the "Ḥilla" denoted most of the Banu Tamim, Qays, Rabi`ah, Qūḍa'ah, Ansar, Khath'am, Bajīlah, Banu Bakr ibn Abd Manat, Hudhayl, Asad, Tayy and Bariq. The "Ṭuls" comprised the tribes of Yemen and Hadramaut, 'Akk, Ujayb and Īyād. The "Basl" recognised at least eight months of the calendar as holy. There was also another group which didn't recognize the sanctity of Mecca's "haram" or holy months, unlike the other four.
In south Arabia, oracles were regarded as "ms’l", or "a place of asking", and that deities interacted by "hr’yhw" ("making them see") a vision, a dream, or even direct interaction. Otherwise deities interacted indirectly through a medium.
There were three methods of chance-based divination attested in pre-Islamic Arabia; two of these methods, making marks in the sand or on rocks and throwing pebbles are poorly attested. The other method, the practice of randomly selecting an arrow with instructions, was widely attested and was common throughout Arabia. A simple form of this practice was reportedly performed before the image of Dhu'l-Khalasa by a certain man, sometimes said to be the Kindite poet Imru al-Qays according to al-Kalbi. A more elaborate form of the ritual was performed in before the image of Hubal. This form of divination was also attested in Palmyra, evidenced by an honorific inscription in the temple of al-Lat.
The most common offerings were animals, crops, food, liquids, inscribed metal plaques or stone tablets, aromatics, edifices and manufactured objects. Camel-herding Arabs would devote some of their beasts to certain deities. The beasts would have their ears slit and would be left to pasture without a herdsman, allowing them to die a natural death.
Pre-Islamic Arabians, especially pastoralist tribes, sacrificed animals as an offering to a deity. This type of offering was common and involved domestic animals such as camels, sheep and cattle, while game animals and poultry were rarely or never mentioned. Sacrifice rites were not tied to a particular location though they were usually practiced in sacred places. Sacrifice rites could be performed by the devotee, though according to Hoyland, women were probably not allowed. The victim's blood, according to pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and certain south Arabian inscriptions, was also 'poured out' on the altar stone, thus forming a bond between the human and the deity. According to Muslim sources, most sacrifices were concluded with communal feasts.
In south Arabia, beginning with the Christian era, or perhaps a short while before, statuettes were presented before the deity, known as "slm" (male) or "slmt" (female).
Human sacrifice was sometimes carried out in Arabia. The victims were generally prisoners of war, who represented the god's part of the victory in booty, although other forms might have existed.
Blood sacrifice was definitely practiced in south Arabia, but few allusions to the practice are known, apart from some Minaean inscriptions.
In the Hejaz, menstruating women were not allowed to be near the cult images. The area where Isaf and Na'ila's images stood was considered out-of-bounds for menstruating women. This was reportedly the same with Manaf. According to the "Book of Idols", this rule applied to all the "idols". This was also the case in south Arabia, as attested in a south Arabian inscription from al-Jawf.
Sexual intercourse in temples was prohibited, as attested in two south Arabian inscriptions. One legend concerning Isaf and Na'ila, when two lovers made love in the Kaaba and were petrified, joining the idols in the Kaaba, echoes this prohibition.
The Dilmun civilization, which existed along the Persian Gulf coast and Bahrain until the 6th century BC, worshipped a pair of deities, Inzak and Meskilak. It is not known whether these were the only deities in the pantheon or whether there were others. The discovery of wells at the sites of a Dilmun temple and a shrine suggests that sweet water played an important part in religious practices.
In the subsequent Greco-Roman period, there is evidence that the worship of non-indigenous deities was brought to the region by merchants and visitors. These included Bel, a god popular in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Mesopotamian deities Nabu and Shamash, the Greek deities Poseidon and Artemis and the west Arabian deities Kahl and Manat.
The main sources of religious information in pre-Islamic south Arabia are inscriptions, which number in the thousands, as well as the Quran, complemented by archaeological evidence.
The civilizations of south Arabia are considered to have the most developed pantheon in the Arabian peninsula. In south Arabia, the most common god was 'Athtar, who was considered remote. The patron deity ("shym") was considered to be of much more immediate significance than 'Athtar. Thus, the kingdom of Saba' had Almaqah, the kingdom of Ma'in had Wadd, the kingdom of Qataban had 'Amm, and the kingdom of Hadhramaut had Sayin. Each people was termed the “children” of their respective patron deity. Patron deities played a vital role in sociopolitical terms, their cults serving as the focus of a person’s cohesion and loyalty.
Evidence from surviving inscriptions suggests that each of the southern kingdoms had its own pantheon of three to five deities, the major deity always being a god. For example, the pantheon of Saba comprised Almaqah, the major deity, together with 'Athtar, Haubas, Dhat-Himyam, and Dhat-Badan. The main god in Ma'in and Himyar was 'Athtar, in Qataban it was Amm, and in Hadhramaut it was Sayin. 'Amm was a lunar deity and was associated with the weather, especially lightning. One of the most frequent titles of the god Almaqah was "Lord of Awwam".
Anbay was an oracular god of Qataban and also the spokesman of Amm. His name was invoked in royal regulations regarding water supply. Anbay's name was related to that of the Babylonian deity Nabu. Hawkam was invoked alongside Anbay as god of "command and decision" and his name is derived from the root word "to be wise".
Each kingdom's central temple was the focus of worship for the main god and would be the destination for an annual pilgrimage, with regional temples dedicated to a local manifestation of the main god. Other beings worshipped included local deities or deities dedicated to specific functions as well as deified ancestors.
The encroachment of northern Arab tribes into south Arabia also introduced northern Arab deities into the region. The three goddesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat became known as Lat/Latan, Uzzayan and Manawt. Uzzayan’s cult in particular was widespread in south Arabia, and in Qataban, she was invoked as a guardian of the final royal palace. Lat/Latan was not significant in south Arabia, but appears to be popular with the Arab tribes bordering Yemen. Other Arab deities include Dhu-Samawi, a god originally worshipped by the Amir tribe, and Kahilan, perhaps related to Kahl of Qaryat al-Faw.
Bordering Yemen, the Azd Sârat tribe of the Asir region was said to have worshipped Dhu'l-Shara, Dhu'l-Kaffayn, Dhu'l-Khalasa and A'im. According to the "Book of Idols", Dhu'l-Kaffayn originated from a clan of the Banu Daws. In addition to being worshipped among the Azd, Dushara is also reported to have a shrine amongst the Daws. Dhu’l-Khalasa was an oracular god and was also worshipped by the Bajila and Khatham tribes.
Before conversion to Christianity, the Aksumites followed a polytheistic religion that was similar to that of Southern Arabia. The lunar god Hawbas was worshiped in South Arabia and Aksum. The name of the god Astar, a sky-deity was related to that of 'Attar. The god Almaqah was worshiped at Hawulti-Melazo. The South Arabian gods in Aksum included Dhat-Himyam and Dhat-Ba'adan. A stone later reused for the church of Enda-Cerqos at Melazo mentions these gods. Hawbas is also mentioned on an altar and sphinx in Dibdib. The name of Nrw who is mentioned in Aksum inscriptions is related to that of the South Arabian god Nawraw, a deity of stars.
The Himyarite kings radically opposed polytheism in favor of Judaism, beginning officially in 380. The last trace of polytheism in south Arabia, an inscription commemorating a construction project with a polytheistic invocation, and another, mentioning the temple of Ta’lab, all date from just after 380 (the former dating to the rule of the king Dhara’amar Ayman, and the latter dating to the year 401–402). The rejection of polytheism from the public sphere did not mean the extinction of it altogether, as polytheism likely continued in the private sphere.
The Kindah tribe’s chief god was Kahl, whom their capital Qaryat Dhat Kahl (modern Qaryat al-Faw) was named for. His name appears in the form of many inscriptions and rock engravings on the slopes of the Tuwayq, on the walls of the souk of the village, in the residential houses and on the incense burners. An inscription in Qaryat Dhat Kahl invokes the gods Kahl, Athtar al-Shariq and Lah.
According to Islamic sources, the Hejaz region was home to three important shrines dedicated to al-Lat, al-’Uzza and Manat. The shrine and idol of al-Lat, according to the "Book of Idols", once stood in Ta'if, and was primarily worshipped by the Banu Thaqif tribe. Al-’Uzza’s principal shrine was in Nakhla and was the chief-goddess of the Quraysh tribe. Manāt’s idol, reportedly the oldest of the three, was erected on the seashore between Medina and Mecca, and was honored by the Aws and Khazraj tribes. Inhabitants of several areas venerated Manāt, performing sacrifices before her idol, and pilgrimages of some were not considered completed until they visited Manāt and shaved their heads.
In the Muzdalifah region near Mecca, the god Quzah, who is a god of rains and storms, was worshipped. In pre-Islamic times pilgrims used to halt at the "hill of Quzah" before sunrise. Qusai ibn Kilab is traditionally reported to have introduced the association of fire worship with him on Muzdalifah.
Various other deities were venerated in the area by specific tribes, such as the god Suwa' by the Banu Hudhayl tribe and the god Nuhm by the Muzaynah tribe.
The majority of extant information about Mecca during the rise of Islam and earlier times comes from the text of the Quran itself and later Muslim sources such as the prophetic biography literature dealing with the life of Muhammad and the "Book of Idols". Alternative sources are so fragmentary and specialized that writing a convincing history of this period based on them alone is impossible. Several scholars hold that the sīra literature is not independent of the Quran but has been fabricated to explain the verses of the Quran. There is evidence to support the contention that some reports of the sīras are of dubious validity, but there is also evidence to support the contention that the sīra narratives originated independently of the Quran. Compounding the problem is that the earliest extant Muslim historical works, including the sīras, were composed in their definitive form more than a century after the beginning of the Islamic era. Some of these works were based on subsequently lost earlier texts, which in their turn recorded a fluid oral tradition. Scholars do not agree as to the time when such oral accounts began to be systematically collected and written down, and they differ greatly in their assessment of the historical reliability of the available texts.
The Kaaba, whose environs were regarded as sacred ("haram"), became a national shrine under the custodianship of the Quraysh, the chief tribe of Mecca, which made the Hejaz the most important religious area in north Arabia. Its role was solidified by a confrontation with the Christian king Abraha, who controlled much of Arabia from a seat of power in Yemen in the middle of the sixth century. Abraha had recently constructed a splendid church in Sana'a, and he wanted to make that city a major center of pilgrimage, but Mecca's Kaaba presented a challenge to his plan. Abraha found a pretext for an attack on Mecca, presented by different sources alternatively as pollution of the church by a tribe allied to the Meccans or as an attack on Abraha's grandson in Najran by a Meccan party. The defeat of the army he assembled to conquer Mecca is recounted with miraculous details by the Islamic tradition and is also alluded to in the Quran and pre-Islamic poetry. After the battle, which probably occurred around 565, the Quraysh became a dominant force in western Arabia, receiving the title "God's people" ("ahl Allah") according to Islamic sources, and formed the cult association of "ḥums", which tied members of many tribes in western Arabia to the Kaaba.
According to tradition, the Kaaba was a cube-like, originally roofless structure housing a black stone venerated as a fetish. The sanctuary was dedicated to Hubal (Arabic: هبل), who, according to some sources, was worshiped as the greatest of the 360 idols the Kaaba contained, which probably represented the days of the year. Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Al-Kalbi both report that the human-shaped idol of Hubal made of precious stone came into the possession of the Quraysh with its right hand broken off and that the Quraysh made a hand of gold to replace it. A soothsayer performed divination in the shrine by drawing ritual arrows, and vows and sacrifices were made to assure success. Marshall Hodgson argues that relations with deities and fetishes in pre-Islamic Mecca were maintained chiefly on the basis of bargaining, where favors were expected in return for offerings. A deity's or oracle's failure to provide the desired response was sometimes met with anger.
Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in Meccan religion. According to one hypothesis, which goes back to Julius Wellhausen, Allah (the supreme deity of the tribal federation around Quraysh) was a designation that consecrated the superiority of Hubal (the supreme deity of Quraysh) over the other gods. However, there is also evidence that Allah and Hubal were two distinct deities. According to that hypothesis, the Kaaba was first consecrated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh after their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad. Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as a name of a polytheist deity centuries earlier, but we know nothing precise about this use. Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities. There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult. No iconic representation or idol of Allah is known to have existed.
The three chief goddesses of Meccan religion were al-Lat, Al-‘Uzzá, and Manāt, who were called the daughters of Allah. Egerton Sykes meanwhile states that Al-lāt was the female counterpart of Allah while Uzza was a name given by Banu Ghatafan to the planet Venus.
Other deities of the Quraysh in Mecca included Manaf, Isaf and Na’ila. Although the early Arab historian Al-Tabari calls Manaf (Arabic: مناف), "one of the greatest deities of Mecca," very little information is available about it. Women touched his idol as a token of blessing, and kept away from it during menstruation. Gonzague Ryckmans described this as a practice peculiar to Manaf, but according to the Encyclopedia of Islam, a report from Ibn Al-Kalbi indicates that it was common to all idols. Muhammad's great-great-grandfather's name was Abd Manaf which means "slave of Manaf". He is thought by some scholars to be a sun-god. The idols of Isāf and Nā'ila were located near the Black Stone with a "talbiyah" performed to Isāf during sacrifices. Various legends existed about the idols, including one that they were petrified after they committed adultery in the Kaaba.
The pantheon of the Quraysh was not identical with that of the tribes who entered into various cult and commercial associations with them, especially that of the "hums". Christian Julien Robin argues that the former was composed principally of idols that were in the sanctuary of Mecca, including Hubal and Manaf, while the pantheon of the associations was superimposed on it, and its principal deities included the three goddesses, who had neither idols nor a shrine in that city.
The second half of the sixth century was a period of political disorder in Arabia and communication routes were no longer secure. Religious divisions were an important cause of the crisis. Judaism became the dominant religion in Yemen while Christianity took root in the Persian Gulf area. In line with the broader trends of the ancient world, Arabia yearned for a more spiritual form of religion and began believing in afterlife, while the choice of religion increasingly became a personal rather than communal choice. While many were reluctant to convert to a foreign faith, those faiths provided intellectual and spiritual reference points, and the old pagan vocabulary of Arabic began to be replaced by Jewish and Christian loanwords from Aramaic everywhere, including Mecca. The distribution of pagan temples supports Gerald Hawting's argument that Arabian polytheism was marginalized in the region and already dying in Mecca on the eve of Islam. The practice of polytheistic cults was increasingly limited to the steppe and the desert, and in Yathrib (later known as Medina), which included two tribes with polytheistic majorities, the absence of a public pagan temple in the town or its immediate neighborhood indicates that polytheism was confined to the private sphere. Looking at the text of the Quran itself, Hawting has also argued that the criticism of idolaters and polytheists contained in Quran is in fact a hyperbolic reference to other monotheists, in particular the Arab Jews and Arab Christians, whose religious beliefs were considered imperfect. According to some traditions, the Kaaba contained no statues, but its interior was decorated with images of Mary and Jesus, prophets, angels, and trees.
To counter the effects of anarchy, the institution of sacred months, during which every act of violence was prohibited, was reestablished. During those months, it was possible to participate in pilgrimages and fairs without danger. The Quraysh upheld the principle of two annual truces, one of one month and the second of three months, which conferred a sacred character to the Meccan sanctuary. The cult association of "hums", in which individuals and groups partook in the same rites, was primarily religious, but it also had important economic consequences. Although, as Patricia Crone has shown, Mecca could not compare with the great centers of caravan trade on the eve of Islam, it was probably one of the most prosperous and secure cities of the peninsula, since, unlike many of them, it did not have surrounding walls. Pilgrimage to Mecca was a popular custom. Some Islamic rituals, including processions around the Kaaba and between the hills of al-Safa and Marwa, as well as the salutation "we are here, O Allah, we are here" repeated on approaching the Kaaba are believed to have antedated Islam. Spring water acquired a sacred character in Arabia early on and Islamic sources state that the well of Zamzam became holy long before the Islamic era.
According to Ibn Sa'd, the opposition in Mecca started when the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, delivered verses that "spoke shamefully of the idols they (the Meccans) worshiped other than Himself (God) and mentioned the perdition of their fathers who died in disbelief." According to William Montogomery Watt, as the ranks of Muhammad's followers swelled, he became a threat to the local tribes and the rulers of the city, whose wealth rested upon the Kaaba, the focal point of Meccan religious life, which Muhammad threatened to overthrow. Muhammad's denunciation of the Meccan traditional religion was especially offensive to his own tribe, the Quraysh, as they were the guardians of the Kaaba.
The conquest of Mecca around 629-630 AD led to the destruction of the idols around the Kaaba, including Hubal. Following the conquest, shrines and temples dedicated to deities were destroyed, such as the shrines to al-Lat, al-’Uzza and Manat in Ta’if, Nakhla and al-Qudayd respectively.
Less complex societies outside south Arabia often had smaller pantheons, with the patron deity having much prominence. The deities attested in north Arabian inscriptions include Ruda, Nuha, Allah, Dathan, and Kahl. Inscriptions in a North Arabian dialect in the region of Najd referring to Nuha describe emotions as a gift from him. In addition, they also refer to Ruda being responsible for all things good and bad.
The Safaitic tribes in particular prominently worshipped the goddess al-Lat as a bringer of prosperity. The Syrian god Baalshamin was also worshipped by Safaitic tribes and is mentioned in Safaitic inscriptions.
Religious worship amongst the Qedarites, an ancient tribal confederation that was probably subsumed into Nabataea around the 2nd century AD, was centered around a polytheistic system in which women rose to prominence. Divine images of the gods and goddesses worshipped by Qedarite Arabs, as noted in Assyrian inscriptions, included representations of Atarsamain, Nuha, Ruda, Dai, Abirillu and Atarquruma. The female guardian of these idols, usually the reigning queen, served as a priestess ("apkallatu", in Assyrian texts) who communed with the other world. There is also evidence that the Qedar worshipped al-Lat to whom the inscription on a silver bowl from a king of Qedar is dedicated. In the Babylonian Talmud, which was passed down orally for centuries before being transcribed c. 500 AD, in tractate Taanis (folio 5b), it is said that most Qedarites worshiped pagan gods.
The Aramaic stele inscription discovered by Charles Hubert in 1880 at Tayma mentions the introduction of a new god called Salm of "hgm" into the city's pantheon being permitted by three local gods - Salm of Mahram who was the chief god, Shingala and Ashira. The name Salm means "image" or "idol".
The Midianites, a people referred to in the Book of Genesis and located in north-western Arabia, may have worshipped Yahweh. Indeed, some scholars believe that Yahweh was originally a Midianite god and that he was subsequently adopted by the Israelites. An Egyptian temple of Hathor continued to be used during the Midianite occupation of the site, although images of Hathor were defaced suggesting Midianite opposition. They transformed it into a desert tent-shrine set up with a copper sculpture of a snake.
The Lihyanites worshipped the god Dhu-Ghabat and rarely turned to others for their needs. Dhu-Ghabat's name means "he of the thicket", based on the etymology of "gabah", meaning forest or thicket. The god al-Kutba', a god of writing probably related to a Babylonian deity and perhaps was brought into the region by the Babylonian king Nabonidus, is mentioned in Lihyanite inscriptions as well. The worship of the Hermonian gods Leucothea and Theandrios was spread from Phoenicia till Arabia.
According to the "Book of Idols", the Tayy tribe worshipped al-Fals, whose idol stood on Jabal Aja, while the Kalb tribe worshipped Wadd, who had an idol in Dumat al-Jandal.
The Nabataeans worshipped primarily northern Arabian deities. Under foreign influences, they also incorporated foreign deities and elements into their beliefs.
The Nabataeans’ chief-god is Dushara. In Petra, the only major goddess is al-’Uzza, assuming the traits of Isis, Tyche and Aphrodite. It is unknown if her worship and identity is related to her cult at Nakhla and others. The Nabatean inscriptions define Allāt and Al-Uzza as the "bride of Dushara". Al-Uzza may have been an epithet of Allāt in the Nabataean religion according to John F. Healey.
Outside Petra, other deities were worshipped; for example, Hubal and Manat were invoked in the Hejaz, and al-Lat was invoked in the Hauran and the Syrian desert. The Nabataean king Obodas I, who founded Obodat, was deified and worshipped as a god. They also worshipped Shay al-Qawm, al-Kutba', and various Greco-Roman deities such as Nike and Tyche. Maxime Rodinson suggests that Hubal, who was popular in Mecca, had a Nabataean origin.
The worship of Pakidas, a Nabataean god, is attested at Gerasa alongside Hera in an inscription dated to the first century A.D. while an Arabian god is also attested by three inscriptions dated to the second century.
The Nabataeans were known for their elaborate tombs, but they were not just for show; they were meant to be comfortable places for the dead. Petra has many "sacred high places" which include altars that have usually been interpreted as places of human sacrifice, although, since the 1960s, an alternative theory that they are "exposure platforms" for placing the corpses of the deceased as part of a funerary ritual has been put forward. However, there is, in fact, little evidence for either proposition.
Palmyra was a cosmopolitan society, with its population being a mix of Aramaeans and Arabs. The Arabs of Palmyra worshipped al-Lat, Rahim and Shamash. The temple of al-Lat was established by the Bene Ma'zin tribe, who were probably an Arab tribe. The nomads of the countryside worshipped a set of deities, bearing Arab names and attributes, most prominent of them was Abgal, who himself is not attested in Palmyra itself. Ma'n, an Arab god, was worshipped alongside Abgal in a temple dedicated in 195 AD at Khirbet Semrin in the Palmyrene region while an inscription dated 194 AD at Ras esh-Shaar calls him the "good and bountiful god". A stele at Ras esh-Shaar shows him riding a horse with a lance while the god Saad is riding a camel. Abgal, Ma'n and Sa'd were known as the "genii".
The god Ashar was represented on a stele in Dura-Europos alongside another god Sa'd. The former was represented on a horse with Arab dress while the other was shown standing on the ground. Both had Parthian hairstyle, large facial hair and moustaches as well as similar clothing. Ashar's name is found to have been used in a theophoric manner among the Arab-majority areas of the region of the Northwest Semitic languages, like Hatra, where names like "Refuge of Ashar", "Servant of Ashar" and "Ashar has given" are recorded on an inscription.
In Edessa, the solar deity was the primary god around the time of the Roman Emperor Julian and this worship was presumably brought in by migrants from Arabia. Julian's oration delivered to the denizens of the city mentioned that they worshipped the Sun surrounded by Azizos and Monimos whom Iamblichus identified with Ares and Hermes respectively. Monimos derived from "Mu'nim" or "the favourable one", and was another name of Ruda or Ruldaiu as apparent from spellings of his name in Sennacherib's Annals.
The idol of the god al-Uqaysir was, according to the "Book of Idols", located in Syria, and was worshipped by the tribes of Quda'a, Lakhm, Judham, Amela, and Ghatafan. Adherents would go on a pilgrimage to the idol and shave their heads, then mix their hair with wheat, "for every single hair a handful of wheat."
A shrine to Dushara has been discovered in the harbour of ancient Puteoli in Italy. The city was an important nexus for trade to the Near East, and it is known to have had a Nabataean presence during the mid 1st century BCE. A Minaean altar dedicated to Wadd evidently existed in Delos, containing two inscriptions in Minaean and Greek respectively.
The Bedouin were introduced to Meccan ritualistic practices as they frequented settled towns of the Hejaz during the four months of the "holy truce", the first three of which were devoted to religious observance, while the fourth was set aside for trade. Alan Jones infers from Bedouin poetry that the gods, even Allah, were less important to the Bedouins than Fate. They seem to have had little trust in rituals and pilgrimages as means of propitiating Fate, but had recourse to divination and soothsayers ("kahins"). The Bedouins regarded some trees, wells, caves and stones as sacred objects, either as fetishes or as means of reaching a deity. They created sanctuaries where people could worship fetishes.
The Bedouins had a code of honor which Fazlur Rahman Malik states may be regarded as their religious ethics. This code encompassed women, bravery, hospitality, honouring one's promises and pacts, and vengeance. They believed that the ghost of a slain person would cry out from the grave until their thirst for blood was quenched. Practices such as killing of infant girls were often regarded as having religious sanction. Numerous mentions of jinn in the Quran and testimony of both pre-Islamic and Islamic literature indicate that the belief in spirits was prominent in pre-Islamic Bedouin religion. However, there is evidence that the word jinn is derived from Aramaic, "ginnaye", which was widely attested in Palmyrene inscriptions. The Aramaic word was used by Christians to designate pagan gods reduced to the status of demons, and was introduced into Arabic folklore only late in the pre-Islamic era. Julius Wellhausen has observed that such spirits were thought to inhabit desolate, dingy and dark places and that they were feared. One had to protect oneself from them, but they were not the objects of a true cult.
Bedouin religious experience also included an apparently indigenous cult of ancestors. The dead were not regarded as powerful, but rather as deprived of protection and needing charity of the living as a continuation of social obligations beyond the grave. Only certain ancestors, especially heroes from which the tribe was said to derive its name, seem to have been objects of real veneration.
Iranian religions existed in pre-Islamic Arabia on account of Sasanian military presence along the Persian Gulf and South Arabia and on account of trade routes between the Hejaz and Iraq. Some Arabs in northeast of the peninsula converted to Zoroastrianism and several Zoroastrian temples were constructed in Najd. Some of the members from the tribe of Banu Tamim had converted to the religion. There is also evidence of existence of Manichaeism in Arabia as several early sources indicate a presence of "zandaqas" in Mecca, although the term could also be interpreted as referring to Mazdakism. However according to the most recent research by Tardieu, the prevalence of Manichaeism in Mecca during 6th & 7th-century, when Islam emerged, can not be proven. Similar reservations regarding the appearance of Manichaeism & Mazdakism in pre-islamic Mecca are offered by Trompf & Mikkelsen et al in their latest work (2018). There is evidence for the circulation of Iranian religious ideas in the form of Persian loan words in Quran such as "firdaws" (paradise).
Zoroastrianism was also present in Eastern Arabia and Persian-speaking Zoroastrians lived in the region. The religion was introduced in the region including modern-day Bahrain during the rule of Persian empires in the region starting from 250 B.C. It was mainly practiced in Bahrain by Persian settlers. Zoroastrianism was also practiced in the Persian-ruled area of modern-day Oman. The religion also existed in Persian-ruled area of modern Yemen. The descendants of Abna, the Persian conquerors of Yemen, were followers of Zoroastrianism. Yemen's Zoroastrians who had the jizya imposed on them after being conquered by Muhammad are mentioned by the Islamic historian al-Baladhuri. According to Serjeant, the Baharna people may be the Arabized descendants of converts from the original population of ancient Persians (majus) as well as other religions.
A thriving community of Jewish tribes existed in pre-Islamic Arabia and included both sedentary and nomadic communities. Jews had migrated into Arabia from Roman times onwards. Arabian Jews spoke Arabic as well as Hebrew and Aramaic and had contact with Jewish religious centers in Babylonia and Palestine. The Yemeni Himyarites converted to Judaism in the 4th century, and some of the Kindah, a tribe in central Arabia who were their vassals, were also converted in the 4th/5th century. Jewish tribes existed in all major Arabian towns during Muhammad's time including in Tayma and Khaybar as well as Medina with twenty tribes living in the peninsula. From tomb inscriptions, it is visible that Jews also lived in Mada'in Saleh and Al-`Ula.
There is evidence that Jewish converts in the Hejaz were regarded as Jews by other Jews, as well as by non-Jews, and have sought advice from Babylonian rabbis on matters of attire and kosher food. In at least one case, it is known that an Arab tribe agreed to adopting Judaism as a condition for settling in a town dominated by Jewish inhabitants. Some Arab women in Yathrib/Medina are said to have vowed to make their child a Jew if the child survived, since they considered the Jews to be people "of knowledge and the book" ("`ilmin wa-kitābin"). Philip Hitti infers from proper names and agricultural vocabulary that the Jewish tribes of Yathrib consisted mostly of Judaized clans of Arabian and Aramaean origin.
The key role played by Jews in the trade and markets of the Hejaz meant that market day for the week was the day preceding the Jewish Sabbath. This day, which was called "aruba" in Arabic, also provided occasion for legal proceedings and entertainment, which in turn may have influenced the choice of Friday as the day of Muslim congregational prayer. Toward the end of the sixth century, the Jewish communities in the Hejaz were in a state of economic and political decline, but they continued to flourish culturally in and beyond the region. They had developed their distinctive beliefs and practices, with a pronounced mystical and eschatological dimension. In the Islamic tradition, based on a phrase in the Quran, Arab Jews are said to have referred to Uzair as the son of Allah, although the historical accuracy of this assertion has been disputed.
Jewish agriculturalists lived in the region of Eastern Arabia. According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the Arabized "descendants of converts from Christians (Arameans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus) inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Arab conquest". From the Islamic sources, it seems that Judaism was the religion most followed in Yemen. Ya'qubi claimed all Yemenites to be Jews, Ibn Hazm however states only Himyarites and some Kindites were Jews.
The main areas of Christian influence in Arabia were on the north eastern and north western borders and in what was to become Yemen in the south. The north west was under the influence of Christian missionary activity from the Roman Empire where the Ghassanids, a client kingdom of the Romans, were converted to Christianity. In the south, particularly at Najran, a centre of Christianity developed as a result of the influence of the Christian Kingdom of Axum based on the other side of the Red Sea in Ethiopia. Some of the Banu Harith had converted to Christianity. One family of the tribe built a large church at Najran called "Deir Najran", also known as the "Ka'ba of Najran". Both the Ghassanids and the Christians in the south adopted Monophysitism.
The third area of Christian influence was on the north eastern borders where the Lakhmids, a client tribe of the Sassanians, adopted Nestorianism, being the form of Christianity having the most influence in the Sassanian Empire. As the Persian Gulf region of Arabia increasingly fell under the influence of the Sassanians from the early third century, many of the inhabitants were exposed to Christianity following the eastward dispersal of the religion by Mesopotamian Christians. However, it was not until the fourth century that Christianity gained popularity in the region with the establishment of monasteries and a diocesan structure.
In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs (including Abd al-Qays) and Aramean Christians among other religions. Syriac functioned as a liturgical language. Serjeant states that the Baharna may be the Arabized descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), among other religions at the time of Arab conquests. Beth Qatraye which translates "region of the Qataris" in Syriac was the Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia. It included Bahrain, Tarout Island, Al-Khatt, Al-Hasa, and Qatar. Oman and the United Arab Emirates comprised the diocese known as Beth Mazunaye. The name was derived from 'Mazun', the Persian name for Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Sohar was the central city of the diocese.
In Nejd, in the centre of the peninsula, there is evidence of members of two tribes, Kindah and Taghlib, converting to Christianity in the 6th century. However, in the Hejaz in the west, whilst there is evidence of the presence of Christianity, it is not thought to have been significant amongst the indigenous population of the area.
Arabicized Christian names were fairly common among pre-Islamic Arabians, which has been attributed to the influence that Syrianized Christian Arabs had on Bedouins of the peninsula for several centuries before the rise of Islam.
Neal Robinson, based on verses in the Quran, believes that some Arab Christians may have held unorthodox beliefs such as the worshipping of a divine triad of God the father, Jesus the Son and Mary the Mother. Furthermore, there is evidence that unorthodox groups such as the Collyridians, whose adherents worshiped Mary, were present in Arabia, and it has been proposed that the Quran refers to their beliefs. However, other scholars, notably Mircea Eliade, William Montgomery Watt, G.R. Hawting and Sidney H. Griffith, cast doubt on the historicity or reliability of such references in the Quran. Their views are as follows:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15388
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International Refugee Organization
The International Refugee Organization (IRO) was an intergovernmental organization founded on 20 April 1946 to deal with the massive refugee problem created by World War II. A Preparatory Commission began operations fourteen months previously. In 1948, the treaty establishing the IRO formally entered into force and the IRO became a United Nations specialized agency. The IRO assumed most of the functions of the earlier United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1952, operations of the IRO ceased, and it was replaced by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The Constitution of the International Refugee Organization, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 December 1946, is the founding document of the IRO. The constitution specified the organization's field of operations. Controversially, the constitution defined "persons of German ethnic origin" who had been expelled, or were to be expelled from their countries of birth into the postwar Germany, as individuals who would "not be the concern of the Organization." This excluded from its purview a group that exceeded in number all the other European displaced persons put together. Also, because of disagreements between the Western allies and the Soviet Union, the IRO only worked in areas controlled by Western armies of occupation.
Twenty-six states became members of the IRO and it formally came into existence in 1948: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Republic of China, Chile, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Italy, Liberia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela. The U.S. provided about 40% of the IRO's $155 million annual budget. The total contribution by the members for the five years of operation was around $400 million. It had rehabilitated around 10 million people during this time, out of 15 million people who were stranded in Europe. The IRO's first Director General was William Hallam Tuck, succeeded by J. Donald Kingsley on 31 July 1949.
IRO closed its operations on 31 January 1952 and after a liquidation period, went out of existence on 30 September 1953. By that time many of its responsibilities had been assumed by other agencies. Of particular importance was the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, established in January 1951 as a part of the United Nations, and the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (originally PICMME), set up in December 1951.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15395
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Isabella d'Este
Isabella d'Este (19 May 1474 – 13 February 1539) was Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by women throughout Italy and at the French court. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world".
She served as the regent of Mantua during the absence of her husband, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, and the minority of her son, Federico, Duke of Mantua. In 1500 she met King Louis XII of France in Milan on a diplomatic mission to persuade him not to send his troops against Mantua.
She was a prolific letter-writer and maintained a lifelong correspondence with her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga. Lucrezia Borgia was another sister-in-law; she later became the mistress of Isabella's husband.
She was described as having been physically attractive, albeit slightly plump; however, she also possessed "lively eyes" and was "of lively grace".
Isabella d'Este grew up in a cultured family in the city-state of Ferrara. She received a fine classical education and as a girl met many famous humanist scholars and artists.
Due to the vast amount of extant correspondence between Isabella and her family and friends, her life is unusually well documented. She was born on Tuesday 19 May 1474 at nine o'clock in the evening in Ferrara, to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Eleanor of Naples. Eleanor was the daughter of Ferdinand I, the Aragonese King of Naples, and Isabella of Clermont.
One year later on 29 June 1475, her sister Beatrice was born, and in 1476 and 1477 two brothers, Alfonso and Ferrante, arrived. In 1479 and 1480 two more brothers were born; they were Ippolito and Sigismondo. Of all the children, Isabella was considered to have been the favourite.
In the year of Ferrante's birth, Isabella travelled to Naples with her mother. When her mother returned to Ferrara, Isabella accompanied her, while the other children stayed behind with their grandfather for eight years. It was during the journey with her mother that Isabella acquired the art of diplomacy and statecraft.
Isabella was a very well educated young woman. As a child she studied Roman history and rapidly learned to translate Greek and Latin (the former would become her favourite language). Because of her outstanding intellect, she often discussed the classics and the affairs of state with ambassadors. Moreover, she was personally acquainted with the painters, musicians, writers, and scholars who lived in and around the court. Besides her knowledge of history and languages, she could also recite Virgil and Terence by heart. Isabella was also a talented singer and musician, and was taught to play the lute by Giovanni Angelo Testagrossa. In addition to all these admirable accomplishments, she was also an innovator of new dances, having been instructed in the art by Ambrogio, a Jewish dancing master.
In 1480, at the age of six, Isabella was betrothed to Francesco, the heir to the Marquess of Mantua, for a dowry of 25,000 ducats. Although he was not handsome, Isabella admired him for his strength and bravery; she also regarded him as a gentleman. After their first few encounters she found that she enjoyed his company and she spent the next few years getting to know him and preparing herself to be the Marchioness of Mantua. During their courtship, Isabella treasured the letters, poems, and sonnets he sent her as gifts.
Ten years later on 11 February 1490, at age 15, she married Francesco by proxy, who had by then succeeded to the marquisate. Isabella became his wife and marchioness amid a spectacular outpouring of popular acclamation and a grand celebration that took place on 15 February. Besides being the Marquess, Francesco was also Captain General of the armies of the Republic of Venice. She brought as her marriage portion the sum of 3,000 ducats as well as valuable jewellery, dishes, and a silver service. Prior to the magnificent banquet which followed the wedding ceremony, Isabella rode through the main streets of Ferrara astride a horse draped in gems and gold.
As the couple had known and admired one another for many years, their mutual attraction deepened into love; marriage to Francesco allegedly caused Isabella to "bloom". At the time of her wedding, Isabella was said to have been pretty, slim, graceful and well-dressed. Her long, fine hair was dyed pale blonde, and her eyes, "brown as fir cones in autumn, scattered laughter".
Francesco, in his capacity of Captain General of the Venetian armies, was often required to go to Venice for conferences which left Isabella in Mantua on her own at "La Reggia", the ancient palace which was the family seat of the Gonzagas. She did not lack company, however, as she passed the time with her mother and with her sister, Beatrice; and upon meeting Elisabetta Gonzaga, her 18-year-old sister-in-law, the two women became close friends. They enjoyed reading books, playing cards, and travelling about the countryside together. Once they journeyed as far as Lake Garda during one of Francesco's absences, and later travelled to Venice. They maintained a steady correspondence until Elisabetta's death in 1526.
Almost four years after her marriage in December 1493, Isabella gave birth to her first child out of an eventual total of eight; it was a daughter, Eleonora, whom they called Leonora for short.
Together Isabella and Francesco had eight children:
A year after her marriage to Isabella's brother Alfonso in 1502, the notorious Lucrezia Borgia became the mistress of Francesco. Isabella had given birth to a daughter, Ippolita, at about the same time, and she continued to bear him children throughout Francesco and Lucrezia's long, passionate affair, which was more sexual than romantic. Lucrezia had previously made overtures of friendship to Isabella which the latter had coldly and disdainfully ignored. From the time Lucrezia had first arrived in Ferrara as Alfonso's intended bride, Isabella, despite having acted as hostess during the wedding festivities, had regarded Lucrezia as a rival, whom she sought to outdo at every opportunity. Francesco's affair with Lucrezia, whose beauty was renowned, caused Isabella much jealous suffering and emotional pain. Their liaison ended when he contracted syphilis as a result of encounters with prostitutes.
Isabella played an important role in Mantua during the city's troubled times. When her husband was captured in 1509 and held hostage in Venice, she took control of Mantua's military forces and held off the invaders until his release in 1512. In the same year, 1512, she was the hostess at the Congress of Mantua, which was held to settle questions concerning Florence and Milan. As a ruler, she appeared to have been much more assertive and competent than her husband. When apprised of this fact upon his return, Francesco was furious and humiliated at being upstaged by his wife's superior political ability. This caused their marriage to break down irrevocably. As a result, Isabella began to travel freely and live independently from her husband until his death on 19 March 1519.
After the death of her husband, Isabella ruled Mantua as regent for her son Federico. She began to play an increasingly important role in Italian politics, steadily advancing Mantua's position. She was instrumental in promoting Mantua to a Duchy, which was obtained by wise diplomatic use of her son's marriage contracts. She also succeeded in obtaining a cardinalate for her son Ercole. She further displayed shrewd political acumen in her negotiations with Cesare Borgia, who had dispossessed Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, the husband of her sister-in-law and good friend Elisabetta Gonzaga in 1502.
Isabella d'Este is famous as the most important art patron of the Renaissance; her life is documented by her correspondence, which is still archived in Mantua (c. 28,000 letters received and copies of c. 12,000 letters written).
In painting she had numerous famous artists of the time work for her, including Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Mantegna (court painter until 1506), Perugino, Raphael, Titian, Antonio da Correggio, Lorenzo Costa (court painter from 1509), Dosso Dossi, Francesco Francia, Giulio Romano and many others. For instance her 'Studiolo' in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, was decorated with allegories by Mantegna, Perugino, Costa and Correggio.
In parallel she contracted the most important sculptors and medallists of her time, i.e. Michelangelo, Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (L'Antico), Gian Cristoforo Romano and Tullio Lombardo, and collected ancient Roman art.
For what concerns writers, she was in contact with Pietro Aretino, Ludovico Ariosto, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Mario Equicola, Gian Giorgio Trissino and others.
In music Isabella sponsored the composers Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Marco Cara and played the lute herself. Unusually, she employed women as professional singers at her court, including Giovanna Moreschi, the wife of Marchetto Cara.
In the architecture field, she could not afford new palaces, however she commissioned architects like Biagio Rossetti and Battista Covo.
Being a leader of fashion, she ordered the finest clothing, including furs as well as the newest distillations of perfume, which she concocted herself and sent as presents. Her style of dressing in caps ('capigliari') and plunging décolletage was imitated throughout Italy and at the French court.
Isabella d'Este has been proposed as a plausible candidate for Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" of c. 1503–1506, usually considered a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. (Lisa was the wife of a merchant in Florence and Giorgio Vasari wrote of her portrait by Leonardo – it remains open whether this is the portrait now known as the 'Mona Lisa'.) Evidence in favor of Isabella as the subject of the famous work includes Leonardo's drawing 'Isabella d'Este' from 1499 and her letters of 1501–1506 requesting the promised painted portrait; further arguments are the mountains in the background and the armrest as a Renaissance symbol for a portrait of a sovereign.
Despite her significant art patronage, which included a number of portraits – no other person of her time was so often portrayed – there are very few surviving identified portraits of Isabella. These few identifications are known as inhomogeneous (i.e. differing eye and hair colours as well as divergent eyebrows in both Titian portraits) and there are no images of her between the ages of 26 and 54 (see picture). It is known that the elderly Isabella preferred idealized paintings and even waived sitting as a model. However, it could be assumed that she still insisted on seeing her personal characteristics in the outcome. Isabelle carefully managed her image. A portrait of her by Andrea Mantegna was rejected because it 'looked nothing at all like us'. The portrait most probably looked too much like Isabella, who was prone to corpulence.
In recent years several museums have withdrawn their few identifications of portraits as Isabella because of the risk of misidentification.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15401
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International standard
International standards may be used either by direct application or by a process of modifying an international standard to suit local conditions. The adoption of international standards results in the creation of equivalent, national standards that are substantially the same as international standards in technical content, but may have (i) editorial differences as to appearance, use of symbols and measurement units, substitution of a point for a comma as the decimal marker, and (ii) differences resulting from conflicts in governmental regulations or industry-specific requirements caused by fundamental climatic, geographical, technological, or infrastructural factors, or the stringency of safety requirements that a given standard authority considers appropriate.
International standards are one way of overcoming technical barriers in international commerce caused by differences among technical regulations and standards developed independently and separately by each nation, national standards organization, or company. Technical barriers arise when different groups come together, each with a large user base, doing some well established thing that between them is mutually incompatible. Establishing international standards is one way of preventing or overcoming this problem.
The implementation of standards in industry and commerce became highly important with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the need for high-precision machine tools and interchangeable parts. Henry Maudslay developed the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800, which allowed for the standardisation of screw thread sizes for the first time.
Maudslay's work, as well as the contributions of other engineers, accomplished a modest amount of industry standardization; some companies' in-house standards spread a bit within their industries. Joseph Whitworth's screw thread measurements were adopted as the first (unofficial) national standard by companies around the country in 1841. It came to be known as the British Standard Whitworth, and was widely adopted in other countries.
By the end of the 19th century differences in standards between companies were making trade increasingly difficult and strained. The Engineering Standards Committee was established in London in 1901 as the world's first national standards body. After the First World War, similar national bodies were established in other countries. The Deutsches Institut für Normung was set up in Germany in 1917, followed by its counterparts, the American National Standard Institute and the French Commission Permanente de Standardisation, both in 1918.
By the mid to late 19th century, efforts were being made to standardize electrical measurement. An important figure was R. E. B. Crompton, who became concerned by the large range of different standards and systems used by electrical engineering companies and scientists in the early 20th century. Many companies had entered the market in the 1890s and all chose their own settings for voltage, frequency, current and even the symbols used on circuit diagrams. Adjacent buildings would have totally incompatible electrical systems simply because they had been fitted out by different companies. Crompton could see the lack of efficiency in this system and began to consider proposals for an international standard for electric engineering.
In 1904, Crompton represented Britain at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis as part of a delegation by the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He presented a paper on standardisation, which was so well received that he was asked to look into the formation of a commission to oversee the process. By 1906 his work was complete and he drew up a permanent constitution for the first international standards organization, the International Electrotechnical Commission. The body held its first meeting that year in London, with representatives from 14 countries. In honour of his contribution to electrical standardisation, Lord Kelvin was elected as the body's first President.
The International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA) was founded in 1926 with a broader remit to enhance international cooperation for all technical standards and specifications. The body was suspended in 1942 during World.
After the war, ISA was approached by the recently formed United Nations Standards Coordinating Committee (UNSCC) with a proposal to form a new global standards body. In October 1946, ISA and UNSCC delegates from 25 countries met in London and agreed to join forces to create the new International Organization for Standardization (ISO); the new organization officially began operations in February 1947.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15402
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ISO 4217
ISO 4217 is a standard first published by International Organization for Standardization in 1978, which delineates currency designators, country codes (alpha and numeric), and references to minor units in three tables:
The tables, history and ongoing discussion are maintained by SIX Interbank Clearing on behalf of ISO and the Swiss Association for Standardization.
The ISO 4217 code list is used in banking and business globally. In many countries the ISO codes for the more common currencies are so well known publicly that exchange rates published in newspapers or posted in banks use only these to delineate the currencies, instead of translated currency names or ambiguous currency symbols. ISO 4217 codes are used on airline tickets and international train tickets to remove any ambiguity about the price.
The first two letters of the code are the two letters of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (which are also used as the basis for national top-level domains on the Internet) and the third is usually the initial of the currency itself. So Japan's currency code is JPY—JP for Japan and Y for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the names "dollar, franc, peso" and "pound" being used in dozens of countries, each having significantly differing values. Also, if a currency is revalued, the currency code's last letter is changed to distinguish it from the old currency. In some cases, the third letter is the initial for "new" in that country's language, to distinguish it from an older currency that was revalued; the code sometimes outlasts the usage of the term "new" itself (for example, the code for the Mexican peso is MXN). Other changes can be seen, however; the Russian ruble, for example, changed from RUR to RUB, where the B comes from the third letter in the word "ruble".
Another example of the third letter not being the initial of the unit's name is EUR for the euro.
In addition to codes for most active national currencies ISO 4217 provides codes for "supranational" currencies, procedural purposes, and several things which are "similar to" currencies:
The use of an initial letter "X" for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO 3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned. Because of this rule ISO 4217 can use "X" codes for non-country-specific currencies without risk of clashing with a future country code. ISO 3166 country codes beginning with "X" are used for private custom use (reserved), never for official codes. For instance, the ISO 3166-based NATO country codes (STANAG 1059, 9th edition) use "X" codes for imaginary exercise countries ranging from XXB for "Brownland" to XXR for "Redland", as well as for major commands such as XXE for SHAPE or XXS for SACLANT.
The inclusion of EU (denoting the European Union) in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list, allows the euro to be coded as EUR rather than assigned a code beginning with X, even though it is a supranational currency.
The ISO 4217 standard includes a crude mechanism for expressing the relationship between a major currency unit and its corresponding minor currency unit. This mechanism is called the currency "exponent" and assumes a base of 10. For example, USD (the United States dollar) is equal to 100 of its minor currency unit the "cent". So the USD has exponent 2 (10 to the power 2 is 100, which is the number of cents in a dollar). The code JPY (Japanese yen) is given the exponent 0, because its minor unit, the sen, although nominally valued at 1/100 of a yen, is of such negligible value that it is no longer used. Usually, as with the USD, the minor currency unit has a value that is 1/100 of the major unit, but in some cases (including most varieties of the dinar) 1/1000 is used, and sometimes ratios apply which are not integer powers of 10. Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya (UM) equal to 5 khoums, and Madagascar has 1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja. Some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all and these are given an exponent of 0, as with currencies whose minor units are unused due to negligible value.
There is also a three-digit code number assigned to each currency, in the same manner as there is also a three-digit code number assigned to each country as part of ISO 3166. This numeric code is usually the same as the ISO 3166-1 numeric code. For example, USD (United States dollar) has code 840 which is also the numeric code for the US (United States).
The ISO standard does not regulate either the spacing, prefixing or suffixing in usage of currency codes. According however to the European Union's Publication Office, in English, Irish, Latvian and Maltese texts, the ISO 4217 code is to be followed by a hard space and the amount:
In Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish the order is reversed; the amount is followed by a hard space and the ISO 4217 code:
Note that, as illustrated, the order is determined not by the currency, but by the native language of the document context.
In 1973, the ISO Technical Committee 68 decided to develop codes for the representation of currencies and funds for use in any application of trade, commerce or banking. At the 17th session (February 1978), the related UN/ECE Group of Experts agreed that the three-letter alphabetic codes for International Standard ISO 4217, "Codes for the representation of currencies and funds", would be suitable for use in international trade.
Over time, new currencies are created and old currencies are discontinued. Such changes usually originate from the formation of new countries, treaties between countries on shared currencies or monetary unions, or redenomination from an existing currency due to excessive inflation. As a result, the list of codes must be updated from time to time. The ISO 4217 maintenance agency (MA), SIX Interbank Clearing, is responsible for maintaining the list of codes.
The following is a list of active codes of official ISO 4217 currency names.
In the standard the values are called "alphabetic code", "numeric code", and "minor unit".
The US dollar has two codes assigned: USD and USN (next day). The USS (same day) code is not in use any longer, and was removed from the list of active ISO 4217 codes in March 2014.
According to UN/CEFACT recommendation 9, paragraphs 8–9 ECE/TRADE/203, 1996, available online:
As of August 2018, there are no new codes planned to be added to the standard.
A number of active currencies do not have an ISO 4217 code, because they may be: (1) a minor currency pegged at par (1:1) to a larger currency, even if independently regulated, (2) a currency only used for commemorative banknotes or coins, or (3) a currency of an unrecognized or partially recognized state. These currencies include:
See for a list of all currently pegged currencies.
Despite having no official recognition in ISO 4217, the following non-ISO codes are sometimes used locally or commercially.
In addition, GBX is sometimes used (for example on the London Stock Exchange) to denote Penny sterling, a subdivision of pound sterling, the currency for the United Kingdom.
Another example is ZAC (South African Cents), a subdivision of South African Rand (ZAR)
Recently, cryptocurrencies have unofficially used ISO-like codes on various cryptocurrency exchanges, for instance LTC for Litecoin, NMC for Namecoin and XRP for the XRP Ledger. SIX Interbank Clearing (a Maintenance Agency of ISO) is currently studying the impact and role of cryptocurrencies and other independent currencies on ISO 4217.
A number of currencies had official ISO 4217 currency codes and currency names until their replacement by another currency. The table below shows the ISO currency codes of former currencies and their common names (which do not always match the ISO 4217 names). These codes were first introduced in December 1988.
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Ghana
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean, in the subregion of West Africa. Spanning a land mass of , Ghana is bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, Togo in the east, and the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean in the south. "Ghana" means "Warrior King" in the Soninke language.
The first permanent state in the territory of present-day Ghana dates back to the 11th century. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful was the Kingdom of Dagbon and the Kingdom of Ashanti. Beginning in the 15th century, the Portuguese Empire, followed by numerous other European powers, contested the area for trading rights, until the British ultimately established control of the coast by the late 19th century. Following over a century of native resistance, what are now Ghana's borders follow the lines of what were four separate British colonial territories: Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland. Those were unified as an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth on 6 March 1957.
Ghana's population of approximately 30 million spans a variety of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. According to the 2010 census, 71.2% of the population was Christian, 17.6% was Muslim, and 5.2% practised traditional faiths. Its diverse geography and ecology ranges from coastal savannahs to tropical rain forests.
Ghana is a unitary constitutional democracy led by a president who is both head of state and head of the government. Ghana's growing economic prosperity and democratic political system have made it a regional power in West Africa. It is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Group of 24 (G24) and the Commonwealth of Nations.
The etymology of the name "Ghana" means "Warrior King" and was the title accorded to the kings of the medieval Ghana Empire in West Africa, but the empire was further north than the modern nation of Ghana, in the region of Guinea.
Ghana was already recognised as one of the great kingdoms in Bilad el-Sudan by the ninth century.
Ghana was inhabited in the Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery by a number of ancient predominantly Akan kingdoms in the Southern and Central territories. This included the Ashanti Empire, the Akwamu, the Bonoman, the Denkyira, and the Mankessim Kingdom.
Although the area of present-day Ghana in West Africa has experienced many population movements, the Akans were firmly settled by the 5th century CE. By the early 11th century, the Akans were firmly established in the Akan state called Bonoman, for which the Brong-Ahafo Region is named.
From the 13th century, Akans emerged from what is believed to have been the Bonoman area, to create several Akan states of Ghana, mainly based on gold trading. These states included Bonoman (Brong-Ahafo Region), Ashanti (Ashanti Region), Denkyira (Western North region), Mankessim Kingdom (Central region), and Akwamu (Eastern region). By the 19th century, the territory of the southern part of Ghana was included in the Kingdom of Ashanti, one of the most influential states in sub-saharan Africa prior to the onset of colonialism.
The Kingdom of Ashanti government operated first as a loose network, and eventually as a centralised kingdom with an advanced, highly specialised bureaucracy centred in the capital city of Kumasi. Prior to Akan contact with Europeans, the Akan people created an advanced economy based on principally gold and gold bar commodities then traded with the states of Africa.
The earliest known kingdoms to emerge in modern Ghana were the Mole-Dagbani states. The Mole-Dagomba came on horseback from present-day Burkina Faso under a single leader, Naa Gbewaa. With their advanced weapons and based on a central authority, they easily invaded and occupied the lands of the local people ruled by the "Tendamba" (land god priests), established themselves as the rulers over the locals, and made Gambaga their capital. The death of Naa Gbewaa caused civil war among his children, some of whom broke off and founded separate states including Dagbon, Mamprugu, Mossi, Nanumba and Wala.
Akan trade with European states began after contact with the Portuguese in the 15th century. Early European contact by the Portuguese people, who came to the Gold Coast region in the 15th century to trade and then established the Portuguese Gold Coast (Costa do Ouro), focused on the extensive availability of gold. The Portuguese built a trading lodge at a coastal settlement called Anomansah (the perpetual drink) which they renamed São Jorge da Mina.
In 1481, King John II of Portugal commissioned Don Diego d'Azambuja to build the Elmina Castle, which was completed in three years. By 1598, the Dutch had joined the Portuguese in the gold trade, establishing the Dutch Gold Coast (Nederlandse Bezittingen ter Kuste van Guinea) and building forts at Fort Komenda and Kormantsi. In 1617, the Dutch captured the Olnini Castle from the Portuguese, and Axim in 1642 (Fort St Anthony).
Other European traders had joined in gold trading by the mid-17th century, most notably the Swedes, establishing the Swedish Gold Coast (Svenska Guldkusten), and Denmark-Norway, establishing the Danish Gold Coast (Danske Guldkyst "or" Dansk Guinea). Portuguese merchants, impressed with the gold resources in the area, named it "Costa do Ouro" or "Gold Coast". Also beginning in the 17th century — in addition to the gold trade — Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French traders also participated in the Atlantic slave trade in this area.
More than thirty forts and castles were built by the Portuguese, Swedish, Dano-Norwegians, Dutch and German merchants; the latter Germans establishing the German Gold Coast (Brandenburger Gold Coast "or" Groß Friedrichsburg). In 1874 Great Britain established control over some parts of the country, assigning these areas the status of British Gold Coast. Many military engagements occurred between the British colonial powers and the various Akan nation-states. The Akan Kingdom of Ashanti defeated the British a few times in the 100-year-long Anglo-Ashanti wars but eventually lost with the War of the Golden Stool in the early 1900s.
In 1947, the newly formed United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) led by "The Big Six" called for "self-government within the shortest possible time" following the Gold Coast legislative election, 1946. Kwame Nkrumah was the first Prime Minister of Ghana and the first President of Ghana and formed the Convention People's Party (CPP) with the motto "self-government now".
Nkrumah won a majority in the Gold Coast legislative election, 1951 for the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly in 1952. Nkrumah was appointed leader of the Gold Coast's government business. The Gold Coast region declared independence from the United Kingdom on 6 March 1957 and established the nation of Ghana.
On 6 March 1957 at 12 am, the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland were unified as one single independent dominion within the British Commonwealth under the name Ghana. This was done under the Ghana Independence Act 1957. On 1 July 1960, following the Ghanaian constitutional referendum and Ghanaian presidential election, Nkrumah declared Ghana as a republic as the first President of Ghana. 6 March is the nation's Independence Day and 1 July is now celebrated as Republic Day.
At the time of independence Nkrumah declared, "My first objective is to abolish from Ghana poverty, ignorance, and disease. We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school, and by the quality of their education; by the availability of water and electricity in our towns and villages; and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that the government will ask to be judged.".
The flag of Ghana, consisting of the colours red, gold, green, and a black star, became the new flag in 1957 when Gold Coast gained its name Ghana. It was designed by Theodosia Salome Okoh; the red represents the blood that was shed towards independence, the gold represents the industrial minerals wealth of Ghana, the green symbolises the rich grasslands of Ghana, and the black star is the symbol of the Ghanaian people and African emancipation.
Nkrumah was the first African head of state to promote the concept of Pan-Africanism, which he had been introduced to during his studies at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in the United States, at the time when Marcus Garvey was becoming famous for his "Back to Africa Movement". Nkrumah merged the teachings of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the naturalised Ghanaian scholar W. E. B. Du Bois into the formation of 1960s Ghana.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, as he became known, played an instrumental part in the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement, and in establishing the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to teach his ideologies of communism and socialism. His life achievements were recognised by Ghanaians during his centenary birthday celebration, and the day was instituted as a public holiday in Ghana (Founder's Day).
The government of Nkrumah was subsequently overthrown by a coup by the Ghana Armed Forces codenamed "Operation Cold Chop". This occurred while Nkrumah was abroad with Zhou Enlai in the People's Republic of China, on a fruitless mission to Hanoi in Vietnam to help end the Vietnam War. The coup took place on 24 February 1966, led by Col. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka. The National Liberation Council (NLC) was formed, chaired by Lt. General Joseph A. Ankrah.
A series of alternating military and civilian governments, often affected by economic instabilities, ruled Ghana from 1966 to 1981, ending with the ascension to power of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in 1981. These changes resulted in the suspension of the Constitution of Ghana in 1981, and the banning of political parties in Ghana. The economy soon declined, so Rawlings negotiated a structural adjustment plan changing many old economic policies, and economic growth soon recovered during the mid-1980s. A new Constitution of Ghana restoring multi-party system politics was promulgated in Ghanaian presidential election, 1992; Rawlings was elected as president of Ghana then, and again in Ghanaian general election, 1996.
Winning the 2000 Ghanaian elections, John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was sworn into office as president of Ghana on 7 January 2001, and attained the presidency again in the 2004 Ghanaian elections, thus also serving two terms (the term limit) as president of Ghana and thus marking the first time under the fourth republic that power was transferred from one legitimately elected head of state and head of government to another.
Nana Akufo-Addo, the ruling party candidate, was defeated in a very close election by John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) following the Ghanaian presidential election, 2008. Mills died of natural causes and was succeeded by vice-president John Dramani Mahama on 24 July 2012.
Following the Ghanaian presidential election, 2012, John Dramani Mahama became President-elect and was inaugurated on 7 January 2013. Ghana was a stable democracy.
As a result of the Ghanaian presidential election, 2016, Nana Akufo-Addo became President-elect and was inaugurated as the fifth President of the Fourth Republic of Ghana and eighth President of Ghana on 7 January 2017.
Ghana is located on the Gulf of Guinea, only a few degrees north of the Equator, therefore giving it a warm climate. Ghana spans an area of , and has an Atlantic coastline that stretches on the Gulf of Guinea in Atlantic Ocean to its south. It lies between latitudes 4°45'N and 11°N, and longitudes 1°15'E and 3°15'W. The Prime Meridian passes through Ghana, specifically through the industrial port town of Tema.
Ghana is geographically closer to the "centre" of the Earth geographical coordinates than any other country; even though the notional centre, (0°, 0°) is located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately off the south-east coast of Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea.
Grasslands mixed with south coastal shrublands and forests dominate Ghana, with forest extending northward from the south-west coast of Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean and eastward for a maximum of about with the Kingdom of Ashanti or the southern part of Ghana being a primary location for mining of industrial minerals and timber.
Ghana encompasses plains, waterfalls, low hills, rivers, Lake Volta, the world's largest artificial lake, Dodi Island and Bobowasi Island on the south Atlantic Ocean coast of Ghana. The northernmost part of Ghana is Pulmakong and the southernmost part of Ghana is Cape Three Points.
The climate of Ghana is tropical and there are two main seasons: the wet season and the dry season.
Ghana is a unitary presidential constitutional democracy with a parliamentary multi-party system. Ghana alternated between civilian and military governments until January 1993, when the military government gave way to the Fourth Republic of Ghana after presidential and parliamentary elections in late 1992. The 1992 constitution of Ghana divides powers among a Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (President of Ghana), parliament (Parliament of Ghana), cabinet (Cabinet of Ghana), council of state (Ghanaian Council of State), and an independent judiciary (Judiciary of Ghana). The Government of Ghana is elected by universal suffrage after every four years.
Nana Akufo-Addo won the Presidency in the Ghanaian general election held on 7 December 2016, defeating incumbent John Mahama. He was sworn in on 7 January 2017.
The 2012 Fragile States Index indicated that Ghana is ranked the 67th least fragile state in the world and the 5th least fragile state in Africa after Mauritius, 2nd Seychelles, 3rd Botswana, and 4th South Africa. Ghana ranked 112th out of 177 countries on the index. Ghana ranked as the 64th least corrupt and politically corrupt country in the world out of all 174 countries ranked and Ghana ranked as the 5th least corrupt and politically corrupt country in Africa out of 53 countries in the 2012 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. Ghana was ranked 7th in Africa out of 53 countries in the 2012 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The Ibrahim Index is a comprehensive measure of African government, based on a number of different variables which reflect the success with which governments deliver essential political goods to its citizens.
Nkrumah was a Ghanaian nationalist leader who led the country from 1957 to 1966. Nkrumah's political journey started when he entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1935. He graduated with master's degrees from Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania. He formed the Convention Peoples' Party. The party initiated a "positive action" campaign involving non-violent protests, strikes and non-cooperation with the British authorities. Nkrumah was arrested and sentenced to one year imprisonment during this time. In the Gold Coast's February 1951 general election, he was elected to Parliament and released from prison to become leader of government business. He became Prime Minister of the Gold Coast in 1952s leadership was authoritarian but he improved the infrastructure of the country and his Africanisation policies created better career opportunities for Ghanaians. He was deposed in a coup in 1966.
Since independence, Ghana has been devoted to ideals of nonalignment and is a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Ghana favours international and regional political and economic co-operation, and is an active member of the United Nations and the African Union.
Ghana has a strong relationship with the United States. Three recent US presidents--Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—made diplomatic trips to Ghana. Many Ghanaian diplomats and politicians hold positions in international organisations, including Ghanaian diplomat and former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, International Criminal Court Judge Akua Kuenyehia, and former President Jerry John Rawlings and former President John Agyekum Kuffour, who both served as diplomats of the United Nations.
In September 2010, Ghana's former President John Atta Mills visited China on an official visit. Mills and China's former President Hu Jintao, marked the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations, at the Great Hall of the People on 20 September 2010. China reciprocated with an official visit in November 2011, by the Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, Zhou Tienong who visited Ghana and met with Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the 6th President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with the 12th President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama on 16 April 2013 to hold discussions with President John Dramani Mahama on strengthening the Non-Aligned Movement and also co–chair a bilateral meeting between Ghana and Iran at the Ghanaian presidential palace Flagstaff House. The Government of Ghana reciprocated with an official state visit on 5 August 2013 by the Vice-President of Ghana, Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who met with the Vice-President of Iran, Eshaq Jahangiri on the basis of autarky and possible bilateral trade at the Islamic Republic of Iran's presidential palace, Sa'dabad Palace.
The Ghana Police Service (GPS) and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) are the main law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Ghana, and are responsible for the detection of crime, maintenance of law and order and the maintenance of internal peace and security. The Ghana Police Service has eleven specialised police units including a Militarized police Rapid deployment force (RDF) and Marine Police Unit (MPU). The Ghana Police Service operates in 12 divisions: ten covering the ten regions of Ghana, one assigned specifically to the seaport and industrial hub of Tema, and the twelfth being the Railways, Ports and Harbours Division. The Ghana Police Service's Marine Police Unit and Division handles issues that arise from the country's offshore oil and gas industry.
The Ghana Prisons Service and the sub-division Borstal Institute for Juveniles administers incarceration in Ghana. Ghana retains and exercises the death penalty for treason, corruption, robbery, piracy, drug trafficking, rape, and homicide. 27 convicts (all men) were sentenced to death in Ghana in 2012 and the Ghana Prisons Service statistics of the total number of convicts sentenced to death in Ghana was 162 men and 4 women, with a total prison inmate population of 13,983 convicts . "The new sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations call for the international community to come together to promote the rule of law; support equal access to justice for all; reduce corruption; and develop effective, accountable, and transparent institutions at all levels."
Ghana is used as a key narcotics industry transshipment point by traffickers, usually from South America as well as some from other African nations. In 2013, the UN chief of the Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) stated that "West Africa is completely weak in terms of border control and the big drug cartels from Colombia and Latin America have chosen Africa as a way to reach Europe."
There is not a wide or popular knowledge about the narcotics industry and intercepted narcotics within Ghana itself, due to the industry's operations and involvement in the underground economy. The social context within which narcotic trafficking, storage, transportation, and repacking systems exist in Ghana and the state's location along the Gulf of Guinea within the Atlantic Oceanonly a few degrees north of the Equatormakes Ghana an attractive country for the narcotics business.
The Narcotic Control Board (NACOB) has impounded container ships at the Sekondi Naval Base in the Takoradi Harbour. These ships were carrying thousands of kilograms of cocaine, with a street value running into billions of Ghana cedis. However, drug seizures saw a decline in 2011.
Drug cartels are using new methods in narcotics production and narcotics exportation, to avoid Ghanaian security agencies. Underdeveloped institutions, porous open borders, and the existence of established smuggling organisations contribute to Ghana's position in the narcotics industry. John Atta Mills, president between 2009 and 2012, initiated ongoing efforts to reduce the role of airports in Ghana's drug trade.
In 1957, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) consisted of its headquarters, support services, three battalions of infantry and a reconnaissance squadron with armoured vehicles. Ghanaian Prime Minister and President Kwame Nkrumah aimed at rapidly expanding the GAF to support the United States of Africa ambitions. Thus in 1961, 4th and 5th Battalions were established, and in 1964 6th Battalion was established, from a parachute airborne unit originally raised in 1963.
Today, Ghana is a regional power and regional hegemon. In his book "Shake Hands with the Devil", Canadian Forces commander Roméo Dallaire highly rated the GAF soldiers and military personnel.
The military operations and military doctrine of the GAF are conceptualised on the Constitution of Ghana, Ghana's Law on Armed Force Military Strategy, and Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) agreements to which GAF is attestator. GAF military operations are executed under the auspices and imperium of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) Minister for Defence.
Although Ghana is relatively peaceful and is often considered to be one of the least violent countries in the region, Ghana has experienced political violence in the past and 2017 has thus far seen an upward trend in incidents motivated by political grievances.
In 2017, Ghana signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Ghana is divided into 16 administrative regions, sub-divided into 275 districts:
Homosexual acts are prohibited by law in Ghana. According to 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 96% of Ghanaians believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society. Sometimes old women in Ghana are accused of witchcraft, particularly in rural Ghana. Issues of witchcraft mainly remain as speculations based on superstitions within families. In some parts of northern Ghana, there exists what are called witch camps. This is said to house a total of around 1,000 people accused of witchcraft. The Ghanaian government has announced that it intends to close the camps.
While women in Ghana are given equal rights under the constitution of Ghana, disparities in education, employment, and healthcare for women remain prevalent.
Ghana is an average natural resource enriched country possessing industrial minerals, hydrocarbons and precious metals. It is an emerging designated digital economy with mixed economy hybridisation and an emerging market with 8.7% GDP growth in 2012. It has an economic plan target known as the "Ghana Vision 2020". This plan envisions Ghana as the first African country to become a developed country between 2020 and 2029 and a newly industrialised country between 2030 and 2039. This excludes fellow Group of 24 member and Sub-Saharan African country South Africa, which is a newly industrialised country. Ghana's economy also has ties to the Chinese yuan renminbi along with Ghana's vast gold reserves. In 2013, the Bank of Ghana began circulating the renminbi throughout Ghanaian state-owned banks and to the Ghana public as hard currency along with the national Ghana cedi for second national trade currency.
Between 2012 and 2013, 37.9 percent of rural dwellers were experiencing poverty whereas only 10.6 percent of urban dwellers were. Urban areas hold greater opportunity for employment, particularly in informal trade, while nearly all (94 percent) of rural poor households participate in the agricultural sector.
The state-owned Volta River Authority and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation are the two major electricity producers. The Akosombo Dam, built on the Volta River in 1965, along with Bui Dam, Kpong Dam, and several other hydroelectric dams provide hydropower. In addition, the Government of Ghana has sought to build the second nuclear power plant in Africa.
The Ghana Stock Exchange is the 5th largest on continental Africa and 3rd largest in sub-saharan Africa with a market capitalisation of GH¢ 57.2 billion or CN¥ 180.4 billion in 2012 with the South Africa JSE Limited as first. The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) was the 2nd best performing stock exchange in sub-saharan Africa in 2013.
Ghana also produces high-quality cocoa. It is the 2nd largest producer of cocoa globally, and was projected to become the world's largest producer of cocoa in 2015.
Ghana is classified as a middle income country. Services account for 50% of GDP, followed by manufacturing (24.1%), extractive industries (5%), and taxes (20.9%).
The Ghana economy is an emerging digital-based mixed economy hybrid with an increasing primary manufacturing and export of digital technology goods along with assembling and exporting automobiles and ships, diverse resource rich exportation of industrial minerals, agricultural products primarily cocoa, petroleum and natural gas, and industries such as information and communications technology primarily via Ghana's state digital technology corporation Rlg Communications which manufactures tablet computers with smartphones and various consumer electronics.
Ghana produces and exports an abundance of hydrocarbons such as sweet crude oil and natural gas. The 100% state-owned filling station company of Ghana, Ghana Oil Company (GOIL) is the number 1 petroleum and gas filling station of Ghana and the 100% state-owned state oil company Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) oversees hydrocarbon exploration and production of Ghana's entire petroleum and natural gas reserves. Ghana aims to further increase output of oil to per day and gas to per day.
Ghana's Jubilee Oilfield which contains up to of sweet crude oil was discovered in 2007, among the many other offshore and inland oilfields in Ghana. Ghana is believed to have up to to of petroleum in reserves, which is the fifth largest in Africa and the 21st to 25th largest proven reserves in the world. It also has up to of natural gas in reserves, which is the sixth largest in Africa and the 49th largest natural gas proven reserves in the world. Oil and gas exploration off Ghana's eastern coast on the Gulf of Guinea is ongoing, and the amount of both crude oil and natural gas continues to increase. The Government of Ghana has drawn up plans to nationalise Ghana's entire petroleum and natural gas reserves to increase government revenue.
Known for its industrial minerals, Ghana is the world's 7th largest producer of gold; producing over 102 metric tons of gold and the 10th largest producer of gold in the world in 2012; producing 89 metric tons of gold. Ghana is the 2nd largest producer of gold on the Africa continent behind South Africa. Ghana has the 9th largest reserves, and is the 9th largest producer, of diamonds in the world. Industrial minerals and exports from South Ghana are gold, silver, timber, diamonds, bauxite, and manganese. South Ghana also has great deposits of barite, basalt, clay, dolomite, feldspar, granite, gravel, gypsum, iron ore, kaolin, laterite, limestone, magnesite, marble, mica, phosphates, phosphorus, rocks, salts, sand, sandstone, silver, slate, talc, and uranium that are yet to be fully exploited. The Government of Ghana has drawn up plans to nationalise Ghana's entire mining industry to increase government revenues.
The real estate and housing market of Ghana has become an important and strategic economic sector, particularly in the urban centres of south Ghana such as Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Tema. Kumasi is growing at a faster rate than Accra, and there is less competition in its real estate market. The gross rental income tax of Ghana is withheld at 10%, capital gains are taxed at 15% with a 5% gift tax imposed on the transfer of properties and Ghana's real estate market is divided into 3 areas: public sector real estate development, emerging private sector real estate development, and private individuals. The activities of these 3 groups are facilitated by the Ghanaian banks and the primary mortgage market which has demonstrated enormous growth potential. Recent developments in the Ghanaian economy has given birth to a boom in the construction sector, including the housing and public housing sector generating and injecting billions of dollars annually into the Ghanaian economy. The real estate market investment perspective and attraction comes from Ghana's tropical location and robust political stability. An increasing number of the Ghanaian populace are investing in properties and the Ghana government is empowering the private sector in
the real estate direction.
In July 2013, International Enterprise Singapore opened its 38th global office in Accra, to develop trade and investment on logistics, oil and gas, aviation, transportation and consumer sectors. Singapore and Ghana also signed four bilateral agreements to promote public sector and private sector collaboration, as Ghana aims to predominantly shift its economic trade partnership to East Asia and Southeast Asia. The economic centre is IE Singapore's second office in Africa, coming six months after opening in Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2013. Ghana's labour force in 2008 totalled 11.5 million Ghanaian citizens. Tema Harbour is Africa's largest harbour and Takoradi Harbour along with Tema harbour in Ghana handles goods and exports for Ghana. They are also traffic junctions where goods are transhipped; the Tema harbour handles the majority of the nation's export cargo and most of the country's chief exports is shipped from Takoradi harbour. The Takoradi harbour and Tema harbour are operated by the state-owned Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority.
Severe shortages of electricity in 2015 & 2016 led to dumsor (persistent, irregular and unpredictable electric power outages), increasing the interest in renewables. As of 2019, there is now a surplus of electricity which now presents a new set of financial challenges.
According to Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index of 2018, out of 180 countries, Ghana was ranked 78th, with a score of 41 on a scale where a 0–9 score means highly corrupt, and a 90–100 score means very clean. This was based on perceived levels of public sector corruption.
In 2013, out of 177 countries, Ghana was ranked 63rd with Cuba and Saudi Arabia with a score of 46. Previously in 2012, the country ranked 64 and scored 45. Thus, Ghana's public sector scored lower in 2013 than in 2012, according to CPI's scores.
Local reports have claimed that Ghana loses US$4.5 billion annually from nominal gross domestic product (Nominal GDP) growth as a result of economic corruption and economic crime by the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of Ghana led by John Dramani Mahama. It is also said Ghana has lost an additional US$2.5 billion from nominal gross domestic product (Nominal GDP) growth between the months of January 2013 to October 2013 through economic corrupt practices under the Mahama administration.
The incumbent president is however seen to be fighting corruption by some government members, and a fellow politician of an opposition party, after ordering investigations into scandals. Nonetheless others believe his actions are not sufficient in some cases.
John Addo Kufuor, son of former President John Agyekum Kufuor, and Kojo Annan, son of former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, have been named in association with the Panama Papers.
Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to launch a cellular mobile network (1992). It was one of the first countries in Africa to be connected to the internet and to introduce ADSL broadband services.
The Ghana Space Science and Technology Centre (GSSTC) and Ghana Space Agency (GhsA) oversee the space exploration and space programmes of Ghana. GSSTC and GhsA worked to have a national security observational satellite launched into orbit in 2015. The first practical step in its endeavor was a CanSat launched on 15 May 2013, a space programme spearheaded by the All Nations University College (ANUC) in Koforidua. The CanSat was deployed high from a helium-filled balloon and took some aerial images as well as temperature readings. As its next step in advancing space science and satellite technology in the sub-region, an amateur ground station has been designed and built by the university. It has successfully tracked and communicated with several (amateur) radio satellites in orbit including the International Space Station, receiving slow-scan TV images on 18 and 20 December 2014. The miniaturized earth observational satellite is to be launched into orbit in 2017.
Ghana's annual space exploration expenditure has been 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP), to support research in science and technology. In 2012, Ghana was elected to chair the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (Comsats); Ghana has a joint effort in space exploration with South Africa's South African National Space Agency (SANSA).
The use of computer technology for teaching and learning began to receive government of Ghana's attention from the late 1990s. The information and communications technology in education policy of Ghana requires the use of information and communications technology for teaching and learning at all levels of the education of Ghana system. The Ministry of Education (MOE) supports institutions in teaching of information and communications technology literacy. Majority of secondary, and some basic schools of Ghana have computer laboratories.
Ghana's intention to become the information technology hub of West Africa has led the government of Ghana to enact cyber crime legislation and enhance cyber security practices. Acting on that goal, in 2008 Ghana passed the "Electronic Communications Act" and the "Electronic Transactions Act", which established the legal framework for governing information technology. In November 2011, the Deputy Minister for Communications and Technology announced the development of a national cyber security strategy, aimed at combating cyber crime and securing critical infrastructure.
In June 2012, the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) announced a national computer emergency response team "strategy" designed to co-ordinate government response to cyberattacks, both internal and external. The agency also established computer emergency response teams for each municipal, metropolitan, and district assembly to improve co-ordination and information-sharing on cyberspace threats. Ghana is ranked 2nd on continental Africa and 7th globally in cyber warfare, cyberterrorism, cyber crime, and internet crime.
The Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine is an agency of the Ministry of Health that was set up in the 1970s for both R&D and as a practical resource (product production & distribution/provision) primarily in areas of biotechnology related to medicinal plants. This includes both herbal medicine and work on more advanced applications. It also has a secondary role as an educational resource for foreign students in health, biotechnology and related fields.
Ghanaian education system is divided in three parts: Basic Education, secondary cycle, and tertiary education. "Basic Education" lasts 11 years (ages 4‒15). It is divided into Kindergarten (2 years), Primary School (2 module of 3 years) and Junior High (3 years). Junior High School (JHS) ends with the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). Once the BECE is achieved, the pupil can proceed to the secondary cycle. Hence, the pupil has the choice between general education (offered by the Senior High School) and vocational education (offered by the technical Senior High School or the Technical and Vocational Institutes). Senior High School lasts three years and leads to the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which is a prerequisite for enrollment in a university bachelor's degree programme. Polytechnics are open to vocational students, from SHS or TVI.
A Bachelor's degree usually requires four years of study. It can be followed by a one- or two-year master's degree programme, which can be followed by a three-year PhD programme A polytechnic programme lasts two or three years. Ghana also possesses numerous colleges of education. The Ghanaian education system from kindergarten up to an undergraduate degree level generally takes 20 years.
The academic year usually goes from August to May inclusive. The school year in primary education lasts 40 weeks in Primary School and SHS, and 45 weeks in JHS.
With over 95% of its children in school, Ghana currently has one of the highest school enrollment rates in all of Africa. The ratio of females to males in the total education system was 0.98, in 2014.
Ghana's education system annually attracts a large number of foreign students particularly in the university sector.
The government largely funds basic education comprising public primary schools and public junior high schools. Senior high schools were subsidised by the government until September 2017/2018 academic year that senior high education became free. At the higher education level, the government funds more than 80% of resources provided to public universities, polytechnics and teacher training colleges.
As part of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education, Fcube, the government supplies all basic education schools with all their textbooks and other educational supplies like exercise books. Senior high schools are also provided with all their textbook requirement by the government. Private schools acquire their educational material from private suppliers.
The female and male ages 15–24 years literacy rate in Ghana was 81% in 2010, with males at 82%, and females at 80%.
Ghanaian children begin their education at the age of three or four starting from kindergarten (nursery school and preschool), then to elementary school (primary school), high school (junior high school and senior high school) and finally university. The average age at which a Ghanaian child enters primary school is 6 years.
Ghana has a free education 6-year primary school education system beginning at age six, and, under the educational reforms implemented in 1988 and reformed in 2007, they pass on to a 3-year junior high school system. At the end of the third year of junior high, there is a mandatory "Basic Education Certificate Examination". Those continuing must complete the 4-year senior high school programme (which has been changed to three years) and take an admission exam to enter any university or tertiary programme. The Ghanaian education system from nursery school up to an undergraduate degree level takes 20 years.
In 2005, Ghana had 12,130 primary schools, 5,450 junior secondary schools, 503 senior secondary schools, 21 public training colleges, 18 technical institutions, two diploma-awarding institutions and 6 universities.
In 2010, there were relatively more females (53.0%) than males (40.5%) with primary school and JSS (junior secondary school) / JHS (junior high school) as their highest level of education.
The Ghanaian Ministry of Education and the Ghanaian National Accreditation Board provide free education at the elementary school (primary school) level, and most Ghanaians have relatively easy access to high school education (junior high school and senior high school). These numbers can be contrasted with the single university and handful of secondary and primary schools that existed at the time of independence in 1957. Ghana's spending on education has varied between 28–40% of its annual budget in the past decade. All teaching is done in English, mostly by qualified Ghanaian educators.
The courses taught at the primary or basic school level include English, Ghanaian language and culture, mathematics, environmental studies, social studies, Mandarin and French as an OIF associated-member, integrated or general science, pre-vocational skills and pre-technical skills, religious and moral education, and physical activities such as Ghanaian music and dance, and physical education.
The senior high level school curriculum has core subjects and elective subjects of which students must take four the core subjects of English language, mathematics, integrated science (including science, agriculture and environmental studies) and social studies (economics, geography, history and government).
High school students also choose four elective subjects from five available programmes: agriculture programme, general programme (arts or science option), business programme, vocational programme and technical programme. Apart from most primary and secondary schools which choose the Ghanaian system of schooling, there are also international schools such as the Takoradi International School, Tema International School, Galaxy International School, The Roman Ridge School, Lincoln Community School, Faith Montessori School, American International School, Alpha Beta Christian College, Ghana Christian International High School, Association International School, New Nation School, SOS Hermann Gmeiner International College, Vilac International School, Akosombo International School (which offers Cambridge O level certificate), North Legon Little Campus and International Community School, which offer the International Baccalaureat, Advanced Level General Certificate of Education and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE).
There are eight national public universities in Ghana: the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Cape Coast, University of Education, University for Development Studies, University of Mines and Technology, University of Professional Studies, Accra, University of Energy and Natural Resources, and University of Health and Allied Sciences.
Ghana has a growing number of accredited private universities including Lancaster University, Ghana, Ghana Technology University College, Ashesi University College, Methodist University College Ghana, Central University College, Accra Institute of Technology, Regent University College of Science and Technology, Valley View University, Catholic University College, Presbyterian university college, and Zenith University College.
The oldest university in Ghana, the University of Ghana, was founded in 1948. It had 29,754 students in 2008. Its programmes in the arts, humanities, business, and the social sciences, as well as medicine, are among the best in the country. Many universities—including Harvard University, Cornell University, and Oxford University—have special study-abroad programmes with Ghanaian schools and provide their students the opportunity to study abroad at Ghanaian universities. New York University has a campus in Accra.
The University of Ghana has seen a shift of its traditionally best students to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Since Ghana's independence, the country has been one of the most educational in sub-Saharan Africa. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been chancellor of the University of Ghana since 2008.
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the second university to be established in the country, is the premier university of science and technology in Ghana and West Africa.
Ghana is a multiethnic country. The largest ethnic group is the Ashanti people. Ghana's territorial area within West Africa was unoccupied and uninhabited by humans until the 10th century BC. By the 10th century AD. The Guans were the first settlers in Ghana long before the other tribes came. Akans had established Bonoman (Brong Ahafo region) and were joined by the current settlers and inhabitants by the 16th century.
In 2010, the population of Ghana was 72.2% Christian (24.3% Pentecostal, 18.4% Protestant, 13.1% Catholic and 11.4% other). Approximately 18.6% of the population of Ghana are Muslim, (51% Sunni, 16% Ahmadiyya, and 8% Shia). Just over 10,000 Ghanaians practice Hinduism, with most of them being indigenous converts. Hinduism in Ghana was popularized by Swami Ghana Nanda ji, who opened several temples in the nation. The temple of Lord Shiva in Accra is one of the largest where there are celebrations to Ganesh Chaturthi, Rath Yatra, and other Hindu observations.
The Bahá’í religious community, established in Ghana in 1951, today includes more than 100 communities and over 50 local Bahá’í administrative councils, called Local Spiritual Assemblies.
, there are 375,000 registered legal skilled workers (permanent residents) or foreign workers/students (i.e. Ghana Card holders) inhabitants with an annually 1.5 million transited airport layovers. In its first post-colonial census in 1960, Ghana had a population of 6.7 million. The median age of Ghanaian citizens is 30 years old and the average household size is 3.6 persons. The Government of Ghana states that the official language of Ghana is English, and is spoken by 67.1% of the inhabiting population of Ghana.
, Ghana has a population of 30,083,000. Around 29 percent of the population is under the age of 15, while persons aged 15–64 make up 57.8 percent of the population. The Ashanti Region had the most, (Akan) (Ashanti) (4.7 million in Ashanti, 2.3 million in Brong-Ahafo, 2.2 million in Central, 2.6 million in Eastern, 2.3 million in Western, and 4 million in the seat of government in Greater Accra geographically and legally part of Eastern then administered separately on 23 July 1982).
, 4.1 million persons reside in the Northern territories (2.4 million in Northern, 1 million in Upper East, and 0.7 million in Upper West).
Most Whites are born of British descent. Some are of Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, German most from Berlin and Prussia, and French descent.
, 2.1 million persons reside in Ewe territory Volta.
Due to the recent legal immigration of skilled workers who possess Ghana Cards, there is a small population of Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Middle Eastern and European nationals.
In 2010, the Ghana Immigration Service reported a large number of economic migrants and Illegal immigrants inhabiting Ghana: 14.6% (or 3.1 million) of Ghana's 2010 population (predominantly Nigerians, Burkinabe citizens, Togolese citizens, and Malian citizens). In 1969, under the "Ghana Aliens Compliance Order" (GACO) enacted by the Prime Minister of Ghana Kofi Abrefa Busia; Government of Ghana with BGU (Border Guard Unit) deported over 3,000,000 aliens and illegal immigrants in three months as they made up 20% of the population at the time. In 2013, there was a mass deportation of illegal miners, more than 4,000 of them Chinese nationals.
English is the official language and lingua franca.
Additionally, there are eleven languages that have the status of government-sponsored languages:
Of these, Akan is the most widely spoken.
Since Ghana is surrounded by French-speaking countries, French is widely taught in schools and universities, as well as a language used for commercial and international economic exchanges. Since 2006, Ghana has been an associate member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the global organisation that unites French-speaking countries (84 nations on 6 continents). In 2005, over 350 000 Ghanaian children studied French in schools. Since then, its status has progressively been updated to a mandatory language in every high school.
Ghana is a largely Christian country, although a sizable Muslim minority exists. Traditional (indigenous) beliefs are also practiced.
The fertility rate of Ghana declined from 3.99 (2000) to 3.28 (2010) with 2.78 in urban region and 3.94 in rural region. The United Nations reports a fertility decline from 6.95 (1970) to 4.82 (2000) to 3.93 live births per woman in 2017.
, the maternal mortality rate was 350 deaths/100,000 live births, and the infant mortality rate was 38.52 deaths/1,000 live births.
According to a 2013 UNICEF report, 4% of women in Ghana have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice has been made illegal in the country.
Ghana is also the birth country of anti-FGM campaigner Efua Dorkenoo.
Crime in Ghana is investigated by the Ghana Police Service. Ghana had a murder rate of 1.68 per 100,000 population in 2011.
Ghana has a universal health care system strictly designated for Ghanaian nationals, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Health care is very variable throughout Ghana and in 2012, over 12 million Ghanaian nationals were covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (Ghana) (NHIS). Urban centres are well served, and contain most of the hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in Ghana. There are over 200 hospitals in Ghana and Ghana is a destination for medical tourism. In 2010, there were 0.1 physicians per 1,000 people and , 0.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people.
The 2014 estimate of life expectancy at birth had increased to an average of 65.75 years with males at 63.4 years and females at 68.2 years, and in 2013 infant mortality decreased to 39 per 1,000 live births. Sources vary on life expectancy at birth; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 62 years for men and 64 years for women born in 2016.
There was an estimation of 15 physicians and 93 nurses per 100,000 persons in 2010. 5.2% of Ghana's GDP was spent on health in 2010, and all Ghanaian citizens have the right to access primary health care. In May 2020, the WHO announced Ghana became the second country in the WHO African Region to attain regulatory system "maturity level 3", the second-highest in the four-tiered WHO classification of National medicines regulatory systems.
, the HIV/AIDS prevalence was estimated at 1.40% among adults aged 15–49.
Ghanaian culture is a diverse mixture of the practices and beliefs of many different Ghanaian ethnic groups. The 2010 census reported that the largest ethnic groups are the Akan (47.3 percent), the Mole-Dagbani (16.6 percent), the Ewe (13.9 percent), the Ga-Dangme (7.4 percent), the Gurma (5.7) and the Guan (3.7 percent). The Akan make up a majority of the population in the Central (81.7 percent), Western (78.2 percent), Ashanti (74.2 percent), Brong Ahafo (58.9 percent) and Eastern (51.1 percent) regions.
Ghanaian cuisine and gastronomy is diverse, and includes an assortment of soups and stews with varied seafoods and most Ghanaian soups are prepared with vegetables, meat, poultry or fish. Fish is important in the Ghanaian diet with tilapia, roasted and fried whitebait, smoked fish and crayfish all being common components of Ghanaian dishes.
Banku (Akple) is a common Ghanaian starchy food made from ground corn (maize), and cornmeal based staples, kormi (kenkey) and banku (akple) are usually accompanied by some form of fried fish (chinam) or grilled tilapia and a very spicy condiment made from raw red and green chillies, onions and tomatoes (pepper sauce). Banku and tilapia is a combo served in most Ghanaian restaurants. Fufu is the most common exported Ghanaian dish in that it is a delicacy across the African diaspora.
The Ghanaian national literature radio programme and accompanying publication "Voices of Ghana" was one of the earliest on the African continent. The most prominent Ghanaian authors are novelists; J. E. Casely Hayford, Ayi Kwei Armah and Nii Ayikwei Parkes, who gained international acclaim with the books, "Ethiopia Unbound" (1911), "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" (1968) and "Tail of the Blue Bird" (2009), respectively. In addition to novels, other literature arts such as Ghanaian theatre and poetry have also had a very good development and support at the national level with prominent Ghanaian playwrights and poets Joe de Graft and Efua Sutherland.
During the 13th century, Ghanaians developed their unique art of "adinkra" printing. Hand-printed and hand-embroidered adinkra clothes were made and used exclusively by the then Ghanaian royalty for devotional ceremonies. Each of the motifs that make up the corpus of adinkra symbolism has a name and meaning derived from a proverb, a historical event, human attitude, ethology, plant life-form, or shapes of inanimate and man-made objects. These are graphically rendered in stylised geometric shapes. The meanings of the motifs may be categorised into aesthetics, ethics, human relations, and concepts.
The Adinkra symbols have a decorative function as tattoos but also represent objects that encapsulate evocative messages that convey traditional wisdom, aspects of life or the environment. There are many different symbols with distinct meanings, often linked with proverbs. In the words of Anthony Appiah, they were one of the means in a pre-literate society for "supporting the transmission of a complex and nuanced body of practice and belief".
Along with the "Adinkra cloth" Ghanaians use many different cloth fabrics for their traditional attire. The different ethnic groups have their own individual cloth. The most well known is the Kente cloth. Kente is a very important Ghanaian national costume and clothing and these cloths are used to make traditional and modern Ghanaian Kente attire.
Different symbols and different colours mean different things. Kente is the most famous of all the Ghanaian cloths. Kente is a ceremonial cloth hand-woven on a horizontal treadle loom and strips measuring about 4 inches wide are sewn together into larger pieces of cloths. Cloths come in various colours, sizes and designs and are worn during very important social and religious occasions.
In a cultural context, kente is more important than just a cloth and it is a visual representation of history and also a form of written language through weaving. The term kente has its roots in the Akan word "kɛntɛn" which means a basket and the first kente weavers used raffia fibres to weave cloths that looked like kenten (a basket); and thus were referred to as "kenten ntoma"; meaning basket cloth. The original Akan name of the cloth was "nsaduaso" or "nwontoma", meaning "a cloth hand-woven on a loom"; however, "kente" is the most frequently used term today.
Contemporary Ghanaian fashion includes traditional and modern styles and fabrics and has made its way into the African and global fashion scene. The cloth known as African print fabric was created out of Dutch wax textiles, it is believed that in the late 1800s, Dutch ships on their way to Asia stocked with machine-made textiles that mimicked Indonesian Batik stopped at many West African ports on the way. The fabrics did not do well in Asia. However, in West Africa – mainly Ghana where there was an already established market for cloths and textiles – the client base grew and it was changed to include local and traditional designs, colours and patterns to cater to the taste of the new consumers.
Today outside of Africa it is called "Ankara" and it has a client base well beyond Ghana and Africa as a whole. It is very popular among Caribbean peoples and African Americans; celebrities such as Solange Knowles and her sister Beyoncé have been seen wearing African print attire. Many designers from countries in North America and Europe are now using African prints and it has gained a global interest. British luxury fashion house Burberry created a collection around Ghanaian styles. American musician Gwen Stefani has repeatedly incorporated African prints into her clothing line and can often be seen wearing it. Internationally acclaimed Ghanaian-British designer Ozwald Boateng introduced African print suits in his 2012 collection.
The music of Ghana is diverse and varies between different ethnic groups and regions. Ghanaian music incorporates several distinct types of musical instruments such as the talking drum ensembles, Akan Drum, goje fiddle and koloko lute, court music, including the Akan Seperewa, the Akan atumpan, the Ga kpanlogo styles, and log xylophones used in asonko music. The most well known genres to have come from Ghana are African jazz, which was created by Ghanaian artist Kofi Ghanaba, and its earliest form of secular music, called highlife. Highlife originated in the late 19th century and early 20th century and spread throughout West Africa. In the 1990s a new genre of music was created by the youth incorporating the influences of highlife, Afro-reggae, dancehall and hiphop. This hybrid was called hiplife. Ghanaian artists such as "Afro Roots" singer, activist and songwriter Rocky Dawuni, R&B and soul singer Rhian Benson and Sarkodie have had international success. In December 2015, Rocky Dawuni became the first Ghanaian musician to be nominated for a Grammy award in the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album category for his 6th studio album titled "Branches of The Same Tree" released 31 March 2015.
Ghanaian dance is as diverse as its music, and there are traditional dances and different dances for different occasions. The most known Ghanaian dances are those for celebrations. These dances include the Adowa, Kpanlogo, Azonto, Klama, Agbadza, Borborbor and Bamaya.
The Nana Otafrija Pallbearing Services, also known as the Dancing Pallbearers, come from the coastal town of Prampram in the Greater Accra Region of southern Ghana. The group of pallbearers were featured in a BBC feature story in 2017, and footage from the story became part of an Internet meme in the wake of the COVID-19 world pandemic.
Ghana has a budding and thriving film industry. Ghana's film industry dates as far back as 1948 when the Gold Coast Film Unit was set up in the Information Services Department. Some internationally recognised films have come from Ghana. In 1970, "I Told You So" was one of the first Ghanaian films to receive international acknowledgement and received great reviews from "The New York Times". It was followed by the 1973 Ghanaian and Italian production "The African Deal" also known as ""Contratto carnale"" featuring Bahamian American actor Calvin Lockhart. 1983's "Kukurantumi: the Road to Accra", a Ghanaian and German production directed by King Ampaw, was written about by famous American film critic Vincent Canby. In 1987, "Cobra Verde", another Ghanaian and German production directed by Werner Herzog, received international acclamation and in 1988, "Heritage Africa" won more than 12 film awards.
In recent times there have been collaborations between Ghanaian and Nigerian crew and cast and a number of productions turned out. Many Ghanaian films are co-produced with Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, and some are distributed by Nigerian marketers. Also, Nigerian filmmakers often feature Ghanaian actors and actresses in their movies and Ghanaian filmmakers feature Nigerian actors and actresses in theirs. Nadia Buari, Yvonne Nelson, Lydia Forson and Jackie Appiah all popular Ghanaian actresses and Van Vicker and Majid Michel both popular Ghanaian actors, have starred in many Nigerian movies. As a result of these collaborations, Western viewers often confuse Ghanaian movies with Nollywood and count their sales as one; however, they are two independent industries that sometimes share "Nollywood". In 2009, Unesco described Nollywood as the second-biggest film industry in the world after Bollywood.
The media of Ghana are amongst the most free in Africa. Chapter 12 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana guarantees freedom of the press and independence of the media, while Chapter 2 prohibits censorship. Post-independence, the government and media often had a tense relationship, with private outlets closed during the military governments and strict media laws that prevented criticism of government.
Press freedoms were restored in 1992, and after the election in 2000 of John Agyekum Kufuor the tensions between the private media and government decreased. Kufuor supported press freedom and repealed a libel law, but maintained that the media had to act responsibly. The Ghanaian media has been described as "one of the most unfettered" in Africa, operating with little restriction. The private press often carries criticism of government policy.
Association football (or soccer) is the top spectator sport in Ghana and the national men's football team is known as the Black Stars, with the under-20 team known as the Black Satellites. Ghana has won the African Cup of Nations four times, the FIFA U-20 World Cup once, and has participated in three consecutive FIFA World Cups in 2006, 2010, and 2014. In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Ghana became the third African country to reach the quarter-final stage of the World Cup after Cameroon in 1990 and Senegal in 2002. Ghana national U-20 football team, known as the "Black Satellites", is considered to be the feeder team for the Ghana national football team. Ghana is the first and only country on the Africa continent to be crowned FIFA U-20 World Cup Champions, and two-time runners up in 1993 and 2001. The Ghana national U-17 football team known as the Black Starlets are two-time FIFA U-17 World Cup champions in 1991 and 1995, two-time runners up in 1993 and 1997.
Ghanaian football teams Asante Kotoko SC and Accra Hearts of Oak SC are the 5th and 9th best football teams on the Africa continent and have won a total of five Africa continental association football and Confederation of African Football trophies; Ghanaian football club Asante Kotoko SC has been crowned two-time CAF Champions League winners in 1970, 1983 and five-time CAF Champions League runners up, and Ghanaian football club Accra Hearts of Oak SC has been crowned 2000 CAF Champions League winner and two-time CAF Champions League runners up, 2001 CAF Super Cup champions and 2004 CAF Confederation Cup champions. The International Federation of Football History and Statistics crowned Asante Kotoko SC as the African club of the 20th century. There are several club football teams in Ghana that play in the Ghana Premier League and Division One League, both administered by the Ghana Football Association.
Ghana competed in the Winter Olympics in 2010 for the first time. Ghana qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics, scoring 137.5 International Ski Federation points, within the qualifying range of 120–140 points.
Ghanaian skier, Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, nicknamed "The snow leopard", became the first Ghanaian to take part in the Winter Olympics, at the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, taking part in the slalom skiing.
Ghana finished 47th out of 102 participating nations, of whom 54 finished in the Alpine skiing slalom. Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong broke on the international skiing circuit, being the second black African skier to do so.
Ghanaian athletes have won a total of four Olympics medals in thirteen appearances at the Summer Olympics, three in boxing, and a bronze medal in association football, and thus became the first country on the Africa continent to win a medal at association football.
The country has also produced a number of world class boxers, including Azumah Nelson a three-time world champion and considered as Africa's greatest boxer, Nana Yaw Konadu also a three-time world champion, Ike Quartey, and Joshua Clottey.
Ghana's women's football team won bronze at the Africa Women Cup of Nations 2016 edition in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The team beat South Africa 1–0.
Ghana will host the 2023 African Games in Accra.
There are two types of Ghanaian traditional construction: the series of adjacent buildings in an enclosure around a common are common and the traditional round huts with grass roof. The round huts with grass roof architecture are situated in the northern regions of Ghana (Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions), while the series of adjacent buildings are in the southern regions of Ghana (Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra and Western regions).
Ghanaian postmodern architecture and high-tech architecture buildings are predominant in the Ghanaian southern regions, while the Ghanaian heritage sites are most evident by the more than thirty forts and castles built in Ghana. Some of these forts are Fort William and Fort Amsterdam. Ghana has museums that are situated inside castles, and two are situated inside a fort. The Military Museum and the National Museum organise temporary exhibitions.
Ghana has museums that show a in-depth look at specific Ghanaian regions, there are a number of museums that provide insight into the traditions and history of their own geographical area in Ghana. The Cape Coast Castle Museum and St. Georges Castle (Elmina Castle) Museum offer guided tours. The Museum of Science and Technology provides its visitors with a look into the domain of Ghanaian scientific development, through exhibits of objects of scientific and technological interest.
The coat of arms depicts two animals: the tawny eagle ("Aquila rapax", a very large bird that lives in the savannas and deserts; 35% of Ghana's landmass is desert, 35% is forest, 30% is savanna) and the lion ("Panthera leo", a big cat); a ceremonial sword, a heraldic castle on a heraldic sea, a cocoa tree and a mine shaft representing the industrial mineral wealth of Ghana, and a five-pointed black star rimmed with gold representing the mineral gold wealth of Ghana and the lodestar of the Ghanaian people. It also has the legend "Freedom and Justice".
The flag of Ghana consists of three horizontal bands (strips) of red (top), gold (middle) and green (bottom); the three bands are the same height and width; the middle band bears a five-pointed black star in the centre of the gold band, the colour red band stands for the blood spilled to achieve the nation's independence: gold stands for Ghana's industrial mineral wealth, and the color green symbolises the rich tropical rainforests and natural resources of Ghana.
In 2011, 1,087,000 tourists visited Ghana. Tourist arrivals to Ghana include South Americans, Asians, Europeans, and North Americans. The attractions and major tourist destinations of Ghana include a warm, tropical climate year-round, diverse wildlife, waterfalls such as Kintampo waterfalls and the largest waterfall in west Africa, Wli waterfalls, Ghana's coastal palm-lined sandy beaches, caves, mountains, rivers, and reservoirs and lakes such as Lake Bosumtwi and the largest man-made lake in the world by surface area, Lake Volta, dozens of forts and castles, World Heritage Sites, nature reserves and national parks.
The World Economic Forum statistics in 2010 showed that out of the world's favourite tourist destinations, Ghana was ranked 108th out of 139 countries. The country had moved two places up from the 2009 rankings. In 2011, "Forbes" magazine, published that Ghana was ranked the eleventh most friendly country in the world. The assertion was based on a survey in 2010 of a cross-section of travellers. Of all the African countries that were included in the survey, Ghana ranked highest. Tourism is the fourth highest earner of foreign exchange for the country. In 2017, Ghana ranks as the 43rd–most peaceful country in the world.
To enter Ghana, it is necessary to have a visa authorised by the Government of Ghana. Travelers must apply for this visa at a Ghanaian embassy; this process can take approximately two weeks. By law, visitors entering Ghana must be able to produce a yellow fever vaccination certificate.
According to Destination Pride – a data-driven search platform used to visualize the world's LGBTQ+ laws, rights and social sentiment – Ghana's Pride score is 22 (out of 100).
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Geography of Ghana
Ghana is a West African country in Africa, along the Gulf of Guinea, just a few degrees north of the equator.
Ghana encompasses plains, low hills, rivers, Lake Volta, the world's largest artificial lake, Dodi Island and Bobowasi Island on the south Atlantic Ocean coast of Ghana. Ghana can be divided into four different geographical ecoregions. The coastline is mostly a low, sandy shore backed by plains and scrub and intersected by several rivers and streams. The northern part of Ghana features high plains. South-west and south-central Ghana is made up of a forested plateau region consisting of the Ashanti uplands and the Kwahu Plateau. The hilly Akwapim-Togo ranges are found along Ghana's eastern international border.
The Volta Basin takes up most of south-central Ghana and Ghana's highest point is Mount Afadja which is and is found in the Akwapim-Togo ranges. The climate is tropical and the eastern coastal belt is warm and comparatively dry, the south-west corner of Ghana is hot and humid, and the north of Ghana is warm and wet. Lake Volta, the world's largest artificial lake, extends through small portions of south-eastern Ghana and many tributary rivers such as the Oti and Afram rivers flow into it.
The northernmost part of Ghana is Pulmakong and the southernmost part of Ghana is Cape three points near Axim. Ghana lies between latitudes 4° and 12°N. South Ghana contains evergreen and semi-deciduous forests consisting of trees such as mahogany, odum, ebony and it also contains much of Ghana's oil palms and mangroves with shea trees, baobabs and acacias found in the northern part of Ghana.
Ghana, which lies in the center of the Gulf of Guinea coast, 2,420 km of land borders with three countries: Burkina Faso (602 km) to the north, Ivory Coast (720 km) to the west, and Togo (1,098 km) to the east. To the south are the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Its southernmost coast at Cape Three Points is 4° 30' north of the equator. From here, the country extends inland for some 670 kilometers to about 11° north. The distance across the widest part, between longitude 1° 12' east and longitude 3° 15' west, measures about 560 kilometers.
The Greenwich Meridian, which passes through London, also traverses the eastern part of Ghana at Tema.
The terrain consists of small desert mountains with the Kwahu Plateau in the south-central area. Half of Ghana lies less than above sea level, and the highest point is . The coastline is mostly a low, sandy shore backed by plains and scrub and intersected by several rivers and streams, most of which are navigable only by canoe.
A tropical rain forest belt, broken by heavily forested hills and many streams and rivers, extends northward from the shore, near the Ivory Coast frontier. This area, known as the "Ashanti," produces most of Ghana's cocoa, minerals, and timber. North of this belt, the elevation varies from above sea level and is covered by low bush, park-like savanna, and grassy plains.
Irrigated land:
Total renewable water resources:
Ghana is characterized in general by low physical relief. The Precambrian rock system that underlies most of the nation has been worn down by erosion almost to a plain. The highest elevation in Ghana, Mount Afadja in the Akwapim-Togo Ranges, rises 880 meters above sea level.
There are four distinct geographical regions. Low plains stretch across the southern part of Ghana. To their north lie three regions—the Ashanti Uplands, the Akwapim-Togo Ranges, and the Volta Basin. The fourth region, the high plains, occupies the northern and northwestern sector of Ghana. Like most West African countries, Ghana has no natural harbors. Because strong surf pounds the shoreline, two artificial harbors were built at Takoradi and Tema (the latter completed in 1961) to accommodate Ghana's shipping needs.
The low plains comprise the four subregions of the coastal savanna, the Volta Delta, the Accra Plains, and the Akan lowlands or peneplains. A narrow strip of grassy and scrubby coast runs from a point near Takoradi in the west to the Togo border in the east. This coastal savanna, only about eight kilometers in width at its western end, stretches eastward through the Accra Plains, where it widens to more than eighty kilometers, and terminates at the southeastern corner of the country at the lower end of the Akwapim-Togo Ranges.
Almost flat and featureless, the Accra Plains descend gradually to the gulf from a height of about 150 meters. The topography east of the city of Accra is marked by a succession of ridges and spoonshaped valleys. The hills and slopes in this area are the favored lands for cultivation. Shifting cultivation is the usual agricultural practice because of the swampy nature of the very lowlying areas during the rainy seasons and the periodic blocking of the rivers at the coast by sandbars that form lagoons. A plan to irrigate the Accra Plains was announced in 1984. Should this plan come to reality, much of the area could be opened to large-scale cultivation.
To the west of Accra, the low plains contain wider valleys and rounded low hills, with occasional rocky headlands. In general the land is flat and covered with grass and scrub. Dense groves of coconut palms front the coastline. Several commercial centers, including Winneba, Saltpond, and Cape Coast are located here. Winneba has a small livestock industry and palm tree cultivation is expanding in the area away from the coast, with the predominant occupation of the coastal inhabitants being fishing via dug-out canoe.
The Volta Delta, which forms a distinct subregion of the low plains, extends into the Gulf of Guinea in the extreme southeast. The delta's rock formation—consisting of thick layers of sandstone, some limestone, and silt deposits—is flat, featureless, and relatively young. As the delta grew outward over the centuries, sandbars developed across the mouths of the Volta and smaller rivers that empty into the gulf in the same area, forming numerous lagoons, some quite large, making road construction difficult.
To avoid the lowest-lying areas the road between Accra and Keta makes a detour inland just before reaching Ada, and approaches Keta from the east along the narrow spit on which the town stands. Road links with Keta continue to be a problem. By 1989 it was estimated that more than 3,000 houses in the town had been swallowed by flooding from the lagoon. About 1,500 other houses were destroyed by erosion caused by the powerful waves of the sea.
This flat, silt-composed delta region with its abundance of water supports shallot, corn, and cassava cultivation in the region. The sandy soil of the delta gave rise to the copra industry. Salt-making, from the plentiful supply in the dried beds of the lagoons, provides additional employment. The main occupation of the delta people is fishing, an industry that supplies dried and salted fish to other parts of the country.
The largest part of the low plains is the Akan Lowlands. Some experts prefer to classify this region as a subdivision of the Ashanti Uplands because of the many characteristics they share. Unlike the uplands, the height of the Akan Lowlands is generally between sea level and 150 meters. Some ranges and hills rise to about 300 meters, but few exceed 600 meters. The lowlands that lie to the south of the Ashanti Uplands receive the many rivers that make their way to the sea.
The Akan Lowlands contain the basins of the Densu River, the Pra River, the Ankobra River, and the Tano River, all of which play important roles in the economy of Ghana. The Densu River Basin, location of the important urban centers of Koforidua and Nsawam in the eastern lowlands, has an undulating topography. Many of the hills here have craggy summits, which give a striking appearance to the landscape. The upper section of the Pra River Basin, to the west of the Densu, is relatively flat. The topography of its lower reaches resembles that of the Densu Basin and is a rich cocoa and food-producing region. The valley of the Birim River, one of the main tributaries of the Pra, is Ghana's most important diamond-producing area.
The Ankobra River Basin and the middle and lower basins of the Tano River to the west of the lowlands form the largest subdivision of the Akan Lowlands. Here annual rainfall between 1,500 and 2,150 millimeters helps assure a dense forest cover. In addition to timber, the area is rich in minerals. The Tarkwa goldfield, the diamond operations of the Bonsa Valley, and high-grade manganese deposits are all found in this area. The middle and lower Tano basins have been intensely explored for oil and natural gas since the mid-1980s. The lower basins of the Pra, Birim, Densu, and Ankobra rivers are also sites for palm tree cultivation.
Comprising the Southern Ashanti Uplands and the Kwahu Plateau, the Ashanti Uplands lie just north of the Akan Lowlands and stretch from the Ivory Coast border in the west to the elevated edge of the Volta Basin in the east. Stretching in a northwest-to-southeast direction, the Kwahu Plateau extends 193 kilometers between Koforidua in the east and Wenchi in the northwest. The average elevation of the plateau is about 450 meters, rising to a maximum of 762 meters. The relatively cool temperatures of the plateau were attractive to Europeans, particularly missionaries, who founded many well-known schools and colleges in this region.
The plateau forms one of the important physical divides in Ghana. From its northeastern slopes, the Afram and Pru Rivers flow into the Volta River, while from the opposite side, the Pra, Birim, Ofin, Tano, and other rivers flow south toward the sea. The plateau also marks the northernmost limit of the forest zone. Although large areas of the forest cover have been destroyed through farming, enough deciduous forest remains to shade the head waters of the rivers that flow from the plateau.
The Southern Ashanti Uplands, extending from the foot of the Kwahu Plateau in the north to the lowlands in the south, slope gently from an elevation of about 300 meters in the north to about 150 meters in the south. The region contains several hills and ranges as well as several towns of historical and economic importance, including Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city and former capital of the Asante. Obuasi and Konongo, two of the country's gold-mining centers, are also located here. The region is Ghana's chief producer of cocoa, and its tropical forests continue to be a vital source of timber for the lumber industry.
Taking the central part of Ghana, the Volta Basin covers about 45 percent of the nation's total land surface. Its northern section, which lies above the upper part of Lake Volta, rises to a height of 150 to 215 meters above sea level. Elevations of the Konkori Scarp to the west and the Gambaga Scarp to the north reach from 300 to 460 meters. To the south and the southwest, the basin is less than 300 meters. The Kwahu Plateau marks the southern end of the basin, and forms a natural part of the Ashanti Uplands.
The basin is characterized by poor soil, generally of Voltaian sandstone. Annual rainfall averages between 1,000 and 1,140 millimeters. The most widespread vegetation type is savanna, the woodlands of which, depending on local soil and climatic conditions, may contain such trees as red ironwood and shea.
The basin's population, principally farmers, is low in density, especially in the central and northwestern areas of the basin, where tsetse flies are common. Archeological finds indicate that the region was once more heavily populated. Periodic burning occurred over extensive areas for perhaps more than a millennium, exposing the soil to excessive drying and erosion, rendering the area less attractive to cultivators.
In contrast with the rest of the region are the Afram Plains, located in the southeastern corner of the basin. Here the terrain is low, averaging 60 to 150 meters in elevation, and annual rainfall is between 1,140 and about 1,400 millimeters. Near the Afram River, much of the surrounding countryside is flooded or swampy during the rainy seasons. With the creation of Lake Volta (8500 km2 in area) in the mid-1960s, much of the Afram Plains was submerged. Despite the construction of roads to connect communities displaced by the lake, road transportation in the region remains poor. Renewed efforts to improve communications, to enhance agricultural production, and to improve standards of living began in earnest in the mid-1980s.
The general terrain in the northern and northwestern part of Ghana outside the Volta Basin consists of a dissected plateau, which averages between 150 and 300 meters in elevation and, in some places, is even higher. Rainfall averages between 1,000 and 1,150 millimeters annually, although in the northwest it is closer to 1,350 millimeters. Soils in the high plains are more arable than those in the Volta Basin, and the population density is considerably higher. Grain and cattle production are the major economic activities in the high plains of the northern region.
Since the mid-1980s, when former United States President Jimmy Carter's Global 2000 program (see Glossary) adopted Ghana as one of a select number of African countries whose local farmers were to be educated and financially supported to improve agricultural production, there has been a dramatic increase in grain production in northern Ghana. The virtual absence of tsetse flies in the region has led to increased livestock raising as a major occupation in the north. The region is Ghana's largest producer of cattle.
Ghana is drained by a large number of streams and rivers. In addition, there are a number of coastal lagoons, the huge man-made Lake Volta, and Lake Bosumtwi created by a meteorite, southeast of Kumasi and which has no outlet to the sea. In the wetter south and southwest areas of Ghana, the river and stream pattern is denser, but in the area north of the Kwahu Plateau, the pattern is much more open, making access to water more difficult. Several streams and rivers also dry up or experience reduced flow during the dry seasons of the year, while flooding during the rainy seasons is common.
The major drainage divide runs from the southwest part of the Akwapim-Togo Ranges northwest through the Kwahu Plateau and then irregularly westward to the Ivory Coast border. Almost all the rivers and streams north of this divide form part of the Volta system. Extending about 1,600 kilometers in length and draining an area of about 388,000 square kilometers, of which about 158,000 km2 lie within Ghana, the Volta and its tributaries, such as the Afram River and the Oti River, drain more than two thirds of Ghana. To the south of the divide are several smaller, independent rivers. The most important of these are the Pra River, the Tano River, the Ankobra River, the Birim River, and the Densu River. With the exception of smaller streams that dry up in the dry seasons or rivers that empty into inland lakes, all the major rivers in Ghana flow into the Gulf of Guinea directly or as tributaries to other major rivers. The Ankobra and Tano are navigable for considerable distances in their lower reaches.
Navigation on the Volta River has changed significantly since 1964. Construction of the dam at Akosombo, about 80 kilometers upstream from the coast, created the vast Lake Volta and the associated 1020 megawatt hydroelectric project. Arms of the lake extended into the lower-lying areas, forcing the relocation of 78,000 people to newly created townships on the lake's higher banks. The Black Volta River and the White Volta River flow separately into the lake. Before their confluence was submerged, the rivers came together in the middle of Ghana to form the main Volta River.
The Oti River and the Daka River, the principal tributaries of the Volta in the eastern part of Ghana, and the Pru River, the Sene River, and the Afram River, major tributaries to the north of the Kawhu Plateau, also empty into flooded extensions of the lake in their river valleys. Lake Volta is a rich source of fish, and its potential as a source for irrigation is reflected in an agricultural mechanization agreement signed in the late 1980s to irrigate the Afram Plains. The lake is navigable from Akosombo through Yeji in the middle of Ghana. A 24-meter pontoon was commissioned in 1989 to link the Afram Plains to the west of the lake with the lower Volta region to the east. Hydroelectricity generated from Akosombo supplies Ghana, Togo, and Benin.
On the other side of the Kwahu Plateau from Lake Volta are several river systems, including the Pra, Ankobra, Tano and Densu. The Pra is the easternmost and the largest of the three principal rivers that drain the area south of the Volta divide. Rising south of the Kwahu Plateau and flowing southward, the Pra enters the Gulf of Guinea east of Takoradi. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Pra was used extensively to float timber to the coast for export. This trade is now carried by road and rail transportation.
The Ankobra, which flows to the west of the Pra, has a relatively small drainage basin. It rises in the hilly region of Bibiani and flows in a southerly direction to enter the gulf just west of Axim. Small craft can navigate approximately eighty kilometers inland from its mouth. At one time, the Ankobra helped transport machinery to the gold-mining areas in the vicinity of Tarkwa. The Tano, which is the westernmost of the three rivers, rises near Techiman in the center of the country. It also flows in a southerly direction, and it empties into a lagoon in the southeast corner of Ivory Coast. Navigation by steam launch is possible on the southern sector of the Tano for about 70 kilometers.
A number of rivers are found to the east of the Pra. The two most important are the Densu and Ayensu, both of which rise in the Atewa Range, and which are important as sources of water for Accra and Winneba respectively. The country has one large natural lake, Lake Bosumtwi, located about 32 kilometers southeast of Kumasi. It occupies the steep-sided meteoric crater and has an area of about 47 square kilometers. A number of small streams flow into Lake Bosumtwi, but there is no drainage from it. Apart from providing an opportunity for fishing for local inhabitants, the lake serves as a tourist attraction.
Dry, dusty, harmattan winds occur from January to March. Ghana is also prone to droughts, and was severely affected by floods in 2007 and 2009.
Environmental issues include recurrent drought in the north, severely affecting agricultural activities, deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, poaching and habitat destruction threatens wildlife populations, water pollution, and inadequate supplies of potable water
International agreements (ratified):
Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands.
Marine Life Conservation.
Volta Lake, the largest artificial lake in the world, extends from the Akosombo Dam in southeastern Ghana to the town of Yapei, to the north. The lake generates electricity, provides inland transportation, and is a potentially valuable resource for irrigation and fish farming.
Ghana has a large and well-preserved national park system that includes Kakum National Park in the Central Region, Mole National Park in the Northern Region, Digya National Park along the western bank of the Volta Lake.
This is a list of the extreme points of Ghana, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
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Demographics of Ghana
The Demography of Ghana describes the condition and overview of Ghana's population. This article is about the demographic features of the population of Ghana, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Ghana's population is 31,072,940 (January 2020 estimate).
Ghana is a multilingual country in which about eighty languages are spoken. English is the official language and lingua franca. Of the languages indigenous to Ghana, Akan is the most widely spoken.
Ghana has more than seventy ethnic groups, each with its own distinct language. Languages that belong to the same ethnic group are usually mutually intelligible.
Eleven languages have the status of government-sponsored languages: four Akan ethnic languages (Akuapem Twi, Asante Twi, Fante and Nzema) and two Mole-Dagbani ethnic languages (Dagaare and Dagbanli). The rest are Ewe, Dangme, Ga, Gonja, and Kasem, Hausa.
Ghana has more than seventy ethnic groups. Major ethnic groups in Ghana include the Akan at 47.5% of the population, the Mole-Dagbon at 16.6%, the Ewe at 13.9%, the Ga-Dangme at 7.4%, the Gurma at 5.7%, the Guang at 3.7%, the Grusi at 2.5%, the Kusaasi at 1.2%, and the Bikpakpaam a.k.a. Konkomba people at 3.5%. 700,000 of the people living in Ghana are from China. There is a 3% white population most of British descent but some of Swedish, Danish, German, Portuguese, and Dutch descent. They represent 2,4% of the total population of Ghana.
Primary and junior secondary school education is tuition-free and mandatory. Since 1987, the Government of Ghana has increased its education budget by 700%. Basic education's share has grown from 45% to 60% of that total.
Students begin their 6-year primary education at age six. They pass into a junior secondary school system for 3 years of academic training combined with technical and vocational training. Those continuing move into the 3-year senior secondary school program. Entrance to one of the best Ghanaian universities is by examination following completion of senior secondary school with a pass mark.
Ghana's first postindependence population census in 1961 counted about 6.7 million inhabitants. Between 1965 and 1989, a constant 45 percent of Ghana total female population was of childbearing age.
The crude death rate of 18 per 1,000 population in 1965 fell to 13 per 1,000 population in 1992. Life expectancy rose from a 1992 average of forty-two years for men and forty-five years for women to fifty-two and fifty-six years in 2002. The fertility rate averaged two children per adult female in 2013.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR.) Demographics Health Survey:
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Births and deaths
Fertility data as of 2014 (DHS Program):
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
The following demographic are from the independent Ghana Statistical Service and from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.
"noun:"
Ghanaian
"adjective:"
Ghanaian
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.)
Population density increased steadily from thirty-six per square kilometer in 1970 to fifty-two per square kilometer in 1984. In 1990 sixty-three persons per square kilometer was the estimate for Ghana's overall population density. These averages did not reflect variations in population distribution. For example, while the Northern Region, one of ten administrative regions, showed a density of seventeen persons per square kilometer in 1984, in the same year Greater Accra Region recorded nine times the national average of fifty-two per square kilometer.
As was the case in the 1960 and 1970 figures, the greatest concentration of population in 1984 was to the south of the Kwahu Plateau. The highest concentration of habitation continued to be within the Accra-Kumasi-Takoradi triangle, largely because of the economic productivity of the region. All of Ghana's mining centers, timber-producing deciduous forests, and cocoa-growing lands lie to the south of the Kwahu Plateau. The Accra-Kumasi-Takoradi triangle is linked to the coast by rail and road systems—making this area an important magnet for investment and labor.
A large part of the Volta Basin is sparsely populated. The far north is heavily populated. The population density of the Upper East Region is well above the national average. This may be explained in part by the better soil found in some areas.
Localities of 5,000 persons and above have been classified as urban since 1960. The 1960 urban population totalled 1,551,174 persons, or 23.1 percent of total population. By 1970 the urban percentage had increased to 28 percent. That percentage rose to 32 in 1984 and was estimated at 33 percent for 1992.
Urban areas in Ghana have customarily been supplied with more amenities than rural locations. Consequently, Kumasi, Accra, and many settlements within the southern economic belt attracted more people than the savanna regions of the north; only Tamale in the north has been an exception. The linkage of the national electricity grid to the northern areas of the country in the late 1980s may help to stabilize the north-to-south flow of internal migration.
Ghana has continued to be a nation of rural communities. Rural residency was estimated to be 67 percent of the population in 1992. In the 1970s, 72 percent of Ghana's population lived in rural areas. The "Rural Manifesto," which assessed the causes of rural underdevelopment, was introduced in April 1984. Development strategies were evaluated, and some were implemented to make rural residency more attractive. The Bank of Ghana established more than 120 rural banks to support rural entrepreneurs, and the rural electrification program was intensified in the late 1980s. The government presented its plans for district assemblies as a component of its strategy for rural improvement through decentralized administration.
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Economy of Ghana
The economy of Ghana has a diverse and rich resource base, including the manufacturing and exportation of digital technology goods, automotive and ship construction and exportation, and the exportation of diverse and rich resources such as hydrocarbons and industrial minerals. These have given Ghana one of the highest GDP per capita in West Africa. Owing to a GDP rebasement, in 2011 Ghana became the fastest-growing economy in the world.
The Ghanaian domestic economy in 2012 revolved around services, which accounted for 50% of GDP and employed 28% of the work force. Besides the industrialization associated with minerals and oil, industrial development in Ghana remains basic, often associated with plastics (such as for chairs, plastic bags, razors and pens). 53.6% of Ghana's workforce were employed in agriculture in 2013.
Ghana embarked on a currency re-denomination exercise, from Cedi (₵) to the new currency, the Ghana Cedi (GH₵) in July 2007. The transfer rate is 1 Ghana Cedi for every 10,000 Cedis.
Ghana is Africa's second-biggest gold producer (after South Africa) and second-largest cocoa producer. It is also rich in diamonds, manganese ore, bauxite, and oil. Most of its debt was canceled in 2005, but government spending was later allowed to balloon. Coupled with a plunge in oil prices, this led to an economic crisis that forced the government to negotiate a $920 million extended credit facility from the IMF in April 2015.
Value-added tax is a consumption tax administered in Ghana. The tax regime which started in 1998 had a single rate but since September 2007 entered into a multiple rate regime. In 1998, the rate of tax was 10% and amended in 2000 to 12.5%. The top income tax and corporate tax rates are 25%. Other taxes included with value-added tax (VAT), are national health insurance levy, and a capital gains tax. The overall tax burden was 12.1% of Ghana's total domestic income in 2013. Ghana's national budget was the equivalent of 39.8% of GDP in 2013.
Ghana's industrial base is relatively advanced. Import-substitution industries include electronics manufacturing. Rlg Communications is the first indigenous African company to assemble laptops, desktops, and mobile phones, and is West Africa's biggest information and communications technology (ICT) and mobile phone manufacturing company.
Ghana began its automotive industry with the construction of a prototype robust SUV, named the SMATI Turtle 1, intended for use in the rough African terrain. It was designed and manufactured by the Artisans of Suame Magazine Industrial Development Organization. Urban electric cars have been manufactured in Ghana since 2014.
As of 2012 there were four major companies in the textiles sector: Akosombo Textiles Limited, Tex Style Ghana Limited, Printex Ghana, and Ghana Textile Manufacturing Company.
Ghana National Petroleum Corporation and Ghana Oil Company deal with crude oil and gas exploration, exploitation, and refining.
At the end of January 2020, total number of voice subscription in Ghana stood at 41,380,751.This represents a percentage increase of 1.28% over December 2019 figures of 40,857,007. The total penetration rate stands at 136.79%.
Competition among mobile-phone companies in Ghana is an important part of the telecommunications industry growth, Current market leader MTN with voice subscription of 23,150,485 representing 55.95% of the market is followed by Vodafone with voice subscription of 9,075,795 representing 21.93% market share,AirtelTigo voice subscription stands at 8,428,322 representing 20.69%, Glo's current voice subscription stands at 726,149 which represent a market share of 1.75%.
The mass media of Ghana is among the most liberal in Africa, with Ghana ranking as the third-freest in Africa and 30th-most free in the world on the worldwide press freedom index. Chapter 12 of the Constitution of Ghana guarantees freedom of the Ghanaian press and the independence of the mass media, and Chapter 2 prohibits censorship. Ghanaian press freedom was restored in 1992.
Ghana was one of the first countries in Africa to achieve the connection to the World Wide Web. In 2010, there were 165 licensed internet service providers in Ghana and they were running 29 of the fiber optic, and authorized networks VSAT operators were 176, of which 57 functioned, and 99 internet operators were authorized to the public, and private data and packet-switched network operators were 25.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation below 5% is in green.
Ghana's top export products in 2016 were crude petroleum ($2.66B), gold ($2.39B), cocoa beans ($2.27B), cocoa paste ($382M) and cocoa butter ($252M). Ghana's top export destinations in 2016 were Switzerland ($1.73B), China ($1.06B), France ($939M), India ($789M) and the Netherlands ($778M).
Ghana's top import categories in 2016 were refined petroleum ($2.18B), crude petroleum ($546M), gold ($428M), rice ($328M) and packaged medicaments ($297M). The nations with the highest value of imports to Ghana in 2016 were China ($4.1B), the Netherlands ($1.58B), the United States ($1.1B), Nigeria ($920M) and India ($668M).
The financial services in Ghana have seen a lot of reforms in the past years. The Banking (Amendment) Act 2007 included the awarding of a general banking license to qualified banks, which allows only indigenous Ghana offshore banks to operate in country Ghana. Indigenous Ghana private bank Capital Bank was the first to be awarded the general banking license in Ghana as well as indigenous Ghana private banks UniBank, National Investment Bank and Prudential Bank Limited. It has therefore become possible for Ghanaian non-resident individuals or residents and foreign companies or indigenous Ghana companies to open indigenous Ghana offshore bank accounts in Ghana. Indigenous Ghana retail and savings banks include Agricultural Development Bank of Ghana, CAL Bank, GCB Bank Ltd, Home Finance Company and UT Bank as well as indigenous Ghana savings and loan institutions ABii National and Savings and Loans Company.
The Stock Exchange of Ghana is one of the largest in Africa, with a market capitalization of GH¢57.2 billion or CN¥180.4 billion in 2012. South Africa's JSE Limited is the largest.
As of December 2012, Ghana gets 49.1% of its energy from renewable energy and exports some of this to neighboring countries.
Ghana has aggressively begun the construction of solar plants across its sun-rich land in an aim to become the first country to get 6% of its energy from solar energy generation by 2016.
Ghana has Class 4–6 wind resources and high-wind locations, such as Nkwanta, the Accra Plains, and Kwahu and Gambaga mountains. The maximum energy that could be tapped from Ghana's available wind resource for electricity is estimated to be about 500–600 GWh/year. To give perspective: in 2011, per the same Energy Commission, the largest Akosombo hydroelectric dam in Ghana alone produced 6,495 GWh of electric power and, counting all Ghana's geothermal energy production in addition, the total energy generated was 11,200 GWh in that year. These assessments do not take into consideration further limiting factors such as land-use restrictions, the existing grid (or how far the wind resource may be from the grid) and accessibility.
Ghana has put in place mechanisms to attract investments into its biomass and bio-energy sectors to stimulate rural development, create jobs and save foreign exchange. Main investments in the bio-energy subsector existed in the areas of production, are transportation, storage, distribution, sale, marketing and exportation.
The goal of Ghana regarding bio-energy, as articulated by its energy sector policy, is to modernize and examine the benefits of bio-energy on a sustainable basis. Biomass is Ghana's dominant energy resource in terms of endowment and consumption, with the two primary bio-fuels consumed being ethanol and biodiesel. To that effect, the Ghana ministry of Energy in 2010 developed its energy sector strategy and development plan. Highlights of the strategy include sustaining the supply and efficient use of wood fuels while ensuring that their utilization does not lead to deforestation.
The plan would support private sector investments in the cultivation of bio-fuel feedstock, the extraction of bio-oil, and refining it into secondary products, thereby creating financial and tax incentives. The Ghana Renewal Energy Act provides the necessary fiscal incentives for renewable energy development by the private sector, and also details the control and management of bio-fuel and wood fuel projects in Ghana. The Ghana National Petroleum Authority (NPA) was tasked by the Renewable Energy Act 2011 to price Ghana's bio-fuel blend in accordance with the prescribed petroleum pricing formula.
The combined effects of climate change and global economic turbulence had triggered a sense of urgency among Ghanaian policymakers, industry and development practitioners to find sustainable and viable solutions in the area of bio-fuels.
Brazil, which makes ethanol from maize and sugarcane, is currently the world's largest bio-fuel market.
Electricity generation is one of the key factors in achieving the development of the Ghanaian national economy, with aggressive and rapid industrialization; Ghana's national electric energy consumption was 265 kilowatts per capita in 2009. Shortages of electricity have led to dumsor (blackouts), increasing the interest in renewables.
Ghana has to of petroleum in reserves. A large oilfield which contains up to of sweet crude oil was discovered in 2007. Oil exploration is ongoing and the amount of oil continues to increase. Ghana produces crude oil, as of 15 December 2010, and until June 2011, Ghana exploited around 120,000 barrels per day and is expected to increase production up to 2.5 million barrels per day in 2014.
Ghana has vast natural gas reserves, which is used by many foreign multinational companies operating in Ghana. The hydrocarbon industry has had major implications for regional and urban development in Ghana and these are likely to substantially increase in the years to come
Mining has gained importance in the Ghanaian economy since the turn of the 21st century, with a growth of around 30% in 2007. The main mining extractions are bauxite, gold (Ghana is one of the largest gold producers in the world), and the phosphates.
The Ministry of Tourism has placed great emphasis upon further tourism support and development. Tourism contributed to 4.9% of GDP in 2009, attracting around 500,000 visitors. Tourist destinations include Ghana's many castles and forts, national parks, beaches, nature reserves, landscapes and World Heritage buildings and sites.
In 2011, "Forbes" magazine ranked Ghana eleventh-friendliest country in the world. The assertion was based on a survey of a cross-section of travelers in 2010. Of all the countries on the African continent that were included in the survey, Ghana ranked highest.
To enter Ghana, it is necessary to have a visa authorized by the Government of Ghana, except for certain entrepreneurs on business trips.
In 2013 agriculture employed 53.6% of Ghana's total labor force. Agribusiness accounts for a small fraction of the gross domestic product. The main harvested crops are corn, plantain, rice, millet, sorghum, cassava and yam. Unlike the agricultural livestock, forestry and fishing sectors, the crop sector is key to the Ghanaian agricultural industry.
With the economic program "Ghana: Vision 2020", Ghana intends to achieve its goals of accelerated economic growth and improved quality of life for all its citizens, by reducing poverty through private investment, rapid and aggressive industrialization, and direct and aggressive poverty-alleviation efforts. These plans were released in the 1995 government report, Ghana: Vision 2020. Nationalization of state-owned enterprises continues, with about two thirds of 300 parastatal enterprises owned by the government of Ghana. Other reforms adopted under the government's structural adjustment program include increasing exchange rate controls and increasing autarky and increasing restrictions on imports.
The Ghana: Vision 2020 forecast assumes political stability; successful economic stabilization; the implementation of Ghana: Vision 2020 policy agenda on private sector growth; and aggressive public spending on social services, infrastructure and industrialization. It projection states that Ghana's goals of reaching high-income economy status and newly industrialized country status will be easily realized between 2020 and 2039.
The judicial system of Ghana deals with corruption, economic malpractice and lack of economic transparency. Despite significant economic progress, obstacles do remain. Particular institutions need reform, and property rights need improvement. The overall investment regime in Ghana lacks market transparency. Tackling these issues will be necessary if Ghana's rapid economic growth is to be maintained.
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Telecommunications in Ghana
Telecommunications in Ghana include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Telecommunications is the main economic sector of Ghana according to the statistics of the World Bank due to the Ghana liberal policy around Information and communications technology (ICT). Among the main sectors of investments, 65% is for ICT, 8% for communications and 27% is divided for public administration.
In 2007 Ghana was served by one state-owned TV station, two state-owned radio networks; several privately owned TV stations and a large number of privately owned radio stations. Multiple international broadcasters and several cable and satellite TV subscription services were also available. In 2010, there were 140 authorised radio stations with 84 in operation and 32 authorised television stations with approximately 26 in operation. Television broadcasters include First Digital TV (ATV, BTA, FAITH TV, CHANNEL D, STAR TV, FTV, SPORTS 24, CINIMAX, PLANET KIDZ) TV Africa, Metro TV, TV3, GTV, GH One TV and Viasat 1.
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) founded by decree in 1968 is the state agency that provides civilian radio and television services. It was created for the development of the education and entertainment sectors and to enhance the knowledge of the people of Ghana.
After the overthrow of the elected government by Jerry Rawlings in December 1981 the Provisional National Defence Council repealed the liberal media reforms of previous governments, abolished the Third Constitution and the Press Commission, and passed laws that prevented criticism of the government or its policies, dismissed editors critical of Rawlings or the provisional council, the Preventive Custody and Newspaper Licensing Law which allowed indefinite detention of journalists without trial, and the Newspaper Licensing Law which stifled private media development. Ghanaian press freedom was restored with the promulgation of a new constitution in 1992, presidential and parliamentary elections in November and December 1992, and a return to multiparty democratic rule on 7 January 1993.
The mass media of Ghana today is among the most liberal in Africa, with Ghana ranking as the third freest in Africa and 30th in the world on the "2013 World Press Freedom Index" from Reporters Without Borders. Article 21 of the Constitution of Ghana guarantees freedom of the press and other media, freedom of speech and expression, thought, and information.
The prefix code of Ghana for international calls is +233.
As of 2012 there were 285,000 fixed telephone lines in use, 120th in the world, and 25.6 million mobile cellular lines, 42nd in the world.
The telephone system is outdated, with an unreliable fixed-line infrastructure heavily concentrated in Accra and some wireless local loop installed, domestic trunks primarily use microwave radio relay. There are 4 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) satellite earth stations. Microwave radio relay links Ghana to its neighbours (2009).
The SAT-3/WASC, Main One, GLO-1, and ACE international optical fibre submarine cables provide links to countries along the west coast of Africa and on to Europe and Asia.
In 2010 two fixed line and six mobile phone companies were authorised to operate in Ghana of which 5 were operating, 13 satellite providers were authorised of which 8 were operating, 176 VSAT providers were authorised of which 57 were operating, and 99 public and private network operators were authorised of which 25 were operating. Authorized telecommunications companies include Mobile Telecommunications Networks (MTN), Vodafone Ghana which purchased Telecom Ghana, Tigo which replaced Mobitel (Millicom International Cellular), Bharti Airtel and Zain which acquired Western Telesystems Ltd (Westel), Glo Mobile Ghana Limited, and Expresso Telecom which acquired Kasapa Telecom. In 2017, Tigo Ghana and Airtel Ghana merged to form AirtelTigo.
Competition among multiple mobile-cellular providers has spurred growth, with a mobile phone teledensity in 2009 of more than 80 per 100 persons and rising. The cost of mobile phones is increased by taxes of around 38%.
The top-level domain of Ghana is .gh.
Ghana was one of the first countries in Africa to connect to the Internet. With an average household download speed of 5.8 Mbit/s Ghana had the third fastest speed on the African continent and the 110th fastest out of 188 countries worldwide in February 2014.
In 2009 the number of Internet users stood at 1.3 million, 93rd in the world. In 2012 the number of Internet users reached 4.2 million (69th in the world) or 17.1% of the population (149th in the world).
In 2012 there were 62,124 fixed (109th in the world; 0.3% of the population, 156th in the world) and 8.2 million wireless (27th in the world; 33.3% of the population, 49th in the world) broadband subscriptions.
In 2012 there were 59,086 Internet hosts operating in Ghana, 93rd in the world, and Ghana had been allocated 332,544 IPv4 addresses, 102nd in the world, with less than 0.05% of the world total, and 13.2 addresses per 1000 people.
In 2010 there were 165 authorised Internet service providers of which 30 were operating.
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms without judicial oversight. Individuals and groups engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail.
Although the constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and press, the government sometimes restricts those rights. The police arbitrarily arrest and detain journalists. Some journalists practice self-censorship. The constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government respects these prohibitions in practice.
In 2002 the government of Ghana censored Internet media coverage of tribal violence in Northern Ghana.
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Transport in Ghana
Transport in Ghana is accomplished by road, rail, air and water. Ghana's transportation and communications networks are centered in the southern regions, especially the areas in which gold, cocoa, and timber are produced. The northern and central areas are connected through a major road system.
Increased transport investment helped to increase the number of new vehicle registrations and transportation alternatives include rail, road, ferry, marine and air.
The railway system in Ghana has historically been confined to the plains south of the barrier range on mountains north of the city of Kumasi. However, the narrow gauge railway, totalling 935 kilometres, is presently undergoing major rehabilitation and inroads to the interior are now being made. In Ghana, most of the lines are single tracked, and in 1997, it was estimated that 32 kilometres were double tracked.
In 2005, the Minister of Ports, Harbours and Railways announced plans to extend the railway system to facilitate economic development. To begin, $5 million was invested for feasibility studies. Possible projects at the time included extending a line from Ejisu to Nkoranza and Techiman; a line from Tamale to Bolgatanga and Paga to Burkina Faso; a line from Wenchi, Bole to Wa and Hamile and also to Burkina Faso, and a line to Yendi where there are iron ore deposits.
Over the next two years, there were various studies and in 2007, work began.
In March 2007, a Private Public Partnership was proposed to rehabilitate the Eastern Railway from Accra to Ejisu and Kumasi, with an extension from Ejisu via Mampong, Nkoranza, Tamale, Bolgatanga and Paga, with a branch from Tamale to Yendi and Sheini. The extension starts at Kumasi and will cost $1.6b.
There was another proposal in September 2007 to extend the Western Railway from Awaso via Techiman, Bole, Sawla, Wa to Hamile.
In February 2008, the "Ghana General News" reported that the Ministry of Harbours and Railways and the Ghana Railway Corporation (GRC) expected to complete a new commuter line linking Accra and Tema by June 2008. The formation was complete from Sakumono to the SSNIT flats near Tema. Diesel multiple-unit trainsets will be imported for use on the line. Construction of sleeper plant for the far north line was also initiated in 2008.
The Ghana railway network occupies a total rail route length and rail track length of 947 km and 1300 km, comprising national rail lines that do not go outside of Ghana and the Ghana national border. Ghana railway network is limited to south Ghana and the southern part of Ghana within the Greater Accra region, Central region, Western region, Eastern region and Ashanti region of south Ghana.
There are plans underway that revamp the operations of the Ghana Railway Corporation and Ghana Railway Company to make it more viable, and to attract private sector participation. Concession agreements have been signed by the Ghana Railway Corporation for the development and extension of the Ghana Eastern Rail Line and the rehabilitation of the Ghana Western Rail Line.
These towns are proposed to be served by rail:
Korean engineers studying the building of new lines in February 2007 were also to consider conversion to standard gauge.
Road transport is by far the dominant carrier of freight and passengers in Ghana's land transport system. It carries over 95% of all passenger and freight traffic and reaches most communities, and is classified under three categories of trunk roads, urban roads, and feeder roads. The Ghana Highway Authority, established in 1974 is tasked with developing and maintaining the country's trunk road network totaling 13,367 km, which makes up 33% of Ghana's total road network of 40,186 km.
Trunk roads in Ghana are classified as National roads, Regional roads, and Inter-regional roads, all of which form the Ghana road network. National roads, designated with the letter N, link all the major population centers in Ghana. Regional roads, designated with the letter R, are a mix of primary and secondary routes, which serve as feeder roads to National roads; while Inter-Regional roads, designated with the prefix IR, connect major settlements across regional borders.
With respect to this mode of transport, many people prefer to use the public means. Many of the town and cities in the country can be reached by the use of urban buses known as "trotro" or taxis. For inter-regional transport bigger buses are normally used.
The Ghana road network is 64,323 km and road transportation is the most dominant choice of transportation in Ghana. Road transport infrastructure in Ghana can be used throughout to facilitate the exchange of commodities and enable regular school attendance and fast access to health facilities in Ghana. There has been an increased investment and expansion in the road transportation of Ghana, GH₵1 billion (US$500 million) in 2012.
There is a Ghanaian Bus Rapid Transit, known as Metro mass Transit L.T.D, and a Taxicab system connecting the Ghanaian big cities among themselves, and a Minibuses system, known as Tro Tros, connecting big cities with the country's rural areas and small towns. The Ghana Police Service's Motor Transport and Traffic Unit (MTTU) and the Ghana Highways Authority is responsible for the maintenance of the Road Traffic Control of Ghana and the Ghana Road Network (Ghana national highways and motorways).
The Trans–West African Coastal Highway, part of the Trans-African Highway network crosses Ghana along the N1, connecting it to Abidjan, (Ivory Coast), Lomé, (Togo) and to Benin and Nigeria. Eventually the highway will connect to another seven Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) nations to the west. The N2, which connects Tema in the Greater Accra Region to Kulungugu in the Upper East Region; the N10, which connects Yamoransa in the Central Region to Paga in the Upper East Region; and the N12, which connects Elubo in the Western Region to Hamile in the Upper West Region; all connect Ghana to landlocked Burkina Faso, where it joins another highway in the Trans-African network, the Trans-Sahelian Highway.
The Volta, Ankobra, and Tano rivers provide 168 km of perennial navigation for launches and lighters; Lake Volta provides 1,125 kilometres of arterial and feeder waterway.
There are ferries on Lake Volta at Yeji and Kwadjokrom.
There are ports on the Atlantic Ocean at Takoradi and Tema. Tema Port in South Ghana, officially opened in 1962, is the bigger of the two seaports in Ghana, and is Africa's largest harbour. It has a water-enclosed area of and a total land area of . Apart from handling goods for Ghana, it is also a traffic junction, where goods are transhipped, and transit cargo destined for the landlocked countries to the north of Ghana.
The port of Tema handles the majority of the nation's import and export cargo and most of the country's chief exports is shipped from Sekondi-Takoradi and Tema. The port of Tema has of breakwaters, 12 deepwater berths, an outsize oil tanker berth, a dockyard, warehouses, and transit sheds. The port has open and covered areas for the storage of cargo, including a 77,200-m² (7.72-hectare) paved area for the storage of containers, steel products and other conventional cargo. The port's container yard is capable of holding over 8,000 TEUs at any given time. The closed storage area, which is about 25,049 m² (2.51 hectares) in area, consists of six sheds with a total storage capacity of 50,000 tonnes of cargo. The port also includes a 100,000 dwt dry dock and slipway facility. The Tema and Takoradi harbours in South Ghana are operated by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority.
There are six ships (with a volume of or over) totaling /. This includes two petroleum tankers and four refrigerated cargo vessels (1999 estimates).
Ghana's Volta River, Ankobra River, and Tano River provide 168 km of perennial navigation for launches and lighters, and Volta Lake provides 1,125 kilometres of arterial and feeder waterway. There are two main seaports in Ghana which are located in the southern coastal cities of Sekondi-Takoradi and Tema (Takoradi Harbour and Tema Harbour). The strategic geographical location of Ghana to the Volta Lake and the many rivers of Ghana that provide inland transport make Ghana a very transited sovereign state for freighters.
Inland water transport in Ghana includes the movement of passengers by ferry or water taxis and cargo on rivers, lakes and other water bodies in Ghana and Ghana has a ferry transportation system on Volta Lake at Yeji and Kwadjokrom. The Volta Lake is the major inland water transport facility that is efficiently regulated to transport passengers and cargo. The main transport service provider on the Volta Lake is the Volta Lake Transport Company Limited (VLTC). The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority and Ghana Railway Corporation and the Volta River Authority collectively have oversight responsibility over the Volta Lake and the Volta Lake Transport Company Limited (VLTC).
On July 4, 1958, the Ghanaian government established Ghana Airways connecting Ghana with other countries. By the mid-1990s, Ghana Airways operated international scheduled passenger and cargo service to numerous European, Middle Eastern, and African destinations, including London, Düsseldorf, Rome, Abidjan, Dakar, Lagos, Lomé, and Johannesburg. As a result of persistent management and financial problems, Ghana Airways ceased all operations and entered into liquidation in 2004.
Ghana has twelve airports, six with hard surfaced runways. The most important are Kotoka International Airport at Accra and airports at Sekondi-Takoradi, Kumasi, and Tamale that serve domestic air traffic. In 1990, the government spent US$12 million to improve Accra's facilities. Workmen resurfaced the runway, upgraded the lighting system and built a new freight terminal. Construction crews also extended and upgraded the terminal building at Kumasi. In early 1991, the government announced further plans to improve Accra's international airport. The main runway was upgraded, improvements were made in freight landing and infrastructure, and the terminal building and the airport's navigational aids were upgraded.
The first Ghanaian flag carrier was the Ghana Airways which commenced operations in 1958; then ceased operations in 2005 and was succeeded by the Ghana International Airlines in 2005. Ghana has a vibrant airline industry and there are five main airports in Ghana: Kotoka International Airport in Greater Accra, Kumasi Airport in Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi Airport in Western Ghana, Sunyani Airport in Sunyani, and Tamale Airport in Tamale. In addition, Ghana has a total of 8 airports, of which the most transited is the Kotoka International Airport located in Accra, with a transit in 2009 of 1.2 million passengers.
In 2005, Ghana International Airlines (GIA) began services as the new national airline of Ghana. GIA operated Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 aircraft under wet lease arrangements with other airlines, and connected Kotoka International Airport in Accra with London Gatwick and Düsseldorf. After several years GIA also ceased operations. After the cessation of operations of Ghana International Airlines in 2010, major airlines of Ghana are Africa World Airlines, Antrak Air, CTK – CiTylinK and Starbow Airlines which fly to domestic destinations in Ghana, around the world and to main flight points of the Africa continent. There are also some commercial airlines running domestic flights between the major cities in Ghana. In 2010, Ghana planned for the revival of Ghana Airways to commence commercial aviation. At present there exists no Ghanaian airline providing long-haul international services.
Between 2009 and 2013, the number of air passengers in Ghana more than quadrupled.
Kotoka International Airport
"total:"
6
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"
1
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"
3
"914 to 1,523 m:"
2 (1999 est.)
"total:"
6
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"not true
1
"914 to 1,523 m:"
3
"under 914 m:"
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Ghana Armed Forces
The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) is the unified armed force of Ghana, consisting of the Army (GA), Navy (GN), and Ghana Air Force.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces is the President of Ghana, who is also the supreme military commander of the Border Guard Unit (BGU). The Armed Forces are managed by the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Defence Staff.
In 1879 the Gold Coast Constabulary was established from personnel of the Hausa Constabulary of Southern Nigeria, to perform internal security and police duties in the British colony of the Gold Coast. In this guise, the regiment earned its first battle honour as part of the Ashanti campaign.
The Gold Coast Constabulary was renamed in 1901 as the Gold Coast Regiment, following the foundation of the West African Frontier Force, under the direction of the Colonial Office of the British Government. The regiment raised a total of five battalions for service during the First World War, all of which served during the East Africa campaign. During the Second World War, the regiment raised nine battalions, and saw action in Kenya's Northern Frontier District, Italian Somaliland, Abyssinia and Burma as part of the 2nd (West Africa) Infantry Brigade. Gold Coast soldiers returning from the Far East carried different perspectives from when they had departed.
The Ghana Armed Forces were formed in 1957. Major General Stephen Otu was appointed Chief of Defence Staff in September 1961. From 1966, the Armed Forces were extensively involved in politics, mounting several coups. Kwame Nkrumah had become Ghana's first Prime Minister when the country became independent in 1957. As Nkrumah's rule wore on, he began to take actions which disquieted the leadership of the armed forces, including the creation and expansion of the President's Own Guard Regiment (POGR).
As a result, on February 24, 1966, a small number of Army personnel and senior police officials, led by Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka, commander of the Second Brigade at Kumasi, Major Akwasi Afrifa, (staff officer in charge of army training and operations), Lieutenant General (retired) Joseph Ankrah, and J.W.K. Harlley, (the police inspector general), successfully launched "Operation Cold Chop", the 1966 Ghanaian coup d'état, against the Nkrumah regime. The group formed the National Liberation Council, which ruled Ghana from 1966 to 1969.
The Armed Forces seized power again in January 1972, after the reinstated civilian government cut military privileges and started changing the leadership of the army's combat units. Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong (temporary commander of the First Brigade around Accra) led the bloodless 1972 Ghanaian coup d'état that ended the Second Republic. Thus the National Redemption Council was formed. Acheampong became head of state, and the NRC ruled from 1972 to 1975.
On October 9, 1975, the NRC was replaced by the Supreme Military Council (SMC). Council members were Colonel Acheampong, (chairman, who was also promoted straight from Colonel to General), Lt. Gen. Fred Akuffo, (the Chief of Defence Staff), and the army, navy, air force and Border Guard Unit commanders.
In July 1978, in a sudden move, the other SMC officers forced Acheampong to resign, replacing him with Lt. Gen. Akuffo. The SMC apparently acted in response to continuing pressure to find a solution to the country's economic dilemma; inflation was estimated to be as high as 300% that year. The council was also motivated by Acheampong's failure to dampen rising political pressure for changes. Akuffo, the new SMC chairman, promised publicly to hand over political power to a new government to be elected by 1 July 1979.
The decree lifting the ban on party politics went into effect on 1 January 1979, as planned. However in June, just before the scheduled resumption of civilian rule, a group of young armed forces officers, led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, mounted the 1979 Ghanaian coup d'état. They put in place the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, which governed until September 1979. However, in 1981, Rawlings deposed the new civilian government again, in the 1981 Ghanaian coup d'état. This time Rawlings established the Provisional National Defence Council. The PNDC remained in government until January 7, 1993. In the last years of the PNDC, Jerry Rawlings assumed civilian status; he was elected as a civilian President in 1993 and continued as President until 2001.
The Armed Forces' first external operation was the United Nations Operation in the Congo in the early 1960s, then the GAF training of Rhodesian guerrillas. The GAF operated in the Balkans, including with UNMIK, with the GAF external operations within Africa including the Rwandan genocide (UNAMIR) which in his book "Shake Hands with the Devil", Canadian Forces commander Romeo Dallaire gave the Ghanaian soldiers high praise for their work during the civil and conflict, and Liberia civil war paving way for the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement among others. Operations in Asia have included Iran and Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War, Kuwait and Lebanon civil war among others.
A total of 3,359 Ghana Army soldiers and 283 Ghana Military Police operated as part of UNTAC in Cambodia. The UNTAC operation lasted two years, 1992−1993. After the long running Cambodia civil war ignited by external interventions, a resolution was accepted by the four warring factional parties. Operation UNTAC was the largest Ghanaian external operation since Ghana's first external military operation, ONUC in the Congo in the 1960s. Operation UNTAC and its contingent UNAMIC had a combined budget of more than $1.6 billion.
In 2012, closer military cooperation was agreed with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In 2013, the Armed Forces agreed closer military cooperation with the China People's Liberation Army, and with the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Ghana Army is structured as follows:
In 1996, the Support Services Brigade was reorganized and transferred from the Army to be responsible to the Armed Forces GHQ.
From that point its units included 49 Engineer Regiment, the Ghana Military Police, Defence Signal Regiment (Ghana), FRO, Forces Pay Office, 37 Military Hospital, Defence Mechanical Transport Battalion (Def MT Bn), Base Ordnance Depot, Base Ammunition Depot, Base Supply Depot, Base Workshop, Armed Forces Printing Press (AFPP), Armed Forces Fire Service (AFFS), the Ghana Armed Forces Central Band, Ghana Armed Forces Institution (GAFI), 1 Forces Movement Unit (Tema Port), 5 Forces Movement Unit, Base Engineer Technical Services (BETS), 5 Garrison Education Centre (5 GEC), the Armed Forces Museum, Army Signals Training School, and the Armed Forces Secondary Technical School (AFSTS). By 2016 the Forces Pay Office had been upgraded to the Forces Pay Regiment.
The Armed Forces uses imported weaponry and locally manufactured secondary equipment. M16 rifles, AK-47s, Type 56 assault rifles, ballistic vests and personal armor are standard issue, while much of the secondary equipment used by the Army and Air Force are manufactured internally by the Defence Industries Holding Company (DIHOC). External suppliers include Russia, Iran, and the People's Republic of China.
The Armed Forces are heavily committed to international peacekeeping operations. Ghana prefers to send its troops to operations in Africa. However the United Nations has used Ghanaian forces in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Georgia, Nepal, Cambodia and Lebanon. Currently, Ghanaian armed forces are posted to United Nations peacekeeping missions in:
Ghana armed forces provided the first Force Commander of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), Lieutenant General Arnold Quainoo. Quainoo led the force from July 1990 to September 1990.
Ghana Armed Forces peacekeepers have many roles: patrolling, as military police, electoral observers, de-miners (bomb disposal units and clearance divers), ceasefire monitors, humanitarian aid workers, and even special forces or frogmen against insurgents.
The Ghana Air Force is headquartered in Burma Camp in Accra, and operates from bases in Accra (main transport base), Tamale (combat and training base), Sekondi-Takoradi (training base), and Kumasi (support base). The GHF military doctrine and stated mission is to perform counterinsurgency operations within Ghana or externally and to provide logistical support to the Ghana Army.
The Ghana Navy's mission is to provide defence of Ghana and its territorial waters, fishery protection, exclusive economic zone, and internal security on Lake Volta. It is also tasked with resupplying GA (Ghana Army) peacekeepers in Africa, fighting maritime criminal activities such as Piracy, disaster and humanitarian relief operations, and evacuation of Ghanaian citizens and other nationals from troubled spots. In 1994 the Navy was re-organized into an Eastern command, with headquarters at Tema, and a Western command, with headquarters at Sekondi-Takoradi.
The Ghana Armed Forces, in addition to owning its own arms industry weapons and military technology and equipment manufacturer (DIHOC − Defence Industries Holding Company), operates its own private bank. The military private bank is sited at Burma Camp and serves Ghanaian military personnels and their civilian counterparts.
The GAF has two hospitals, the 37 Military Hospital in Accra and the Kumasi Military Hospital in the north. The 37 Military Hospital has recently undergone expansion and its facilities include a twenty-four-hour Emergency Department (ED).
The GAF main military hospital has been organized into departments and divisions, which created structure within the establishment. The Divisions and Departments (the units) are developed and joined according to medical, paramedical and administrative lines and each of these units has its own departmental head. The GAF military hospital is staffed by GAF military personnel and also houses a medical education training facility. 37 Military Hospital is also accredited for post-graduate medical education teaching. Vyacheslav Lebedev, Chairman of the Supreme Court of Russia, expressed gratitude following his emergency treatment at the hospital.
The Ghana Army operates a Cadet Corps for GAF Cadets whom go on to Military Education and Training and Recruit Training graduation from the GAF Military Academy for Army Recruit and Seaman Recruit prior to enlistment into the Army, Navy or Air Force.
Training institutions include the Ghana Military Academy and the Ghana Army-sponsored Cadet Corps. Also located in Accra is the internationally-funded Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, which is not part of the Armed Forces but provides a wide ranging of peace operations training, including to GAF personnel.
Ghanaian statutory law officially prohibits civilians and foreign nationals from wearing military apparel such as camouflage clothing, or clothing which resembles military dress. Officially, fines and/or short prison sentences can be passed against civilians seen in military dress in public. In addition, Ghanaian law prohibits the photographing of Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) Ghana Military Police (GMP) police or GAF military personnel and vehicles while on duty, strategic sites such as Kotoka International Airport when in use, and the seat of the Ghanaian government, The Flagstaff House.
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Foreign relations of Ghana
The foreign relations of Ghana are controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ghana. Ghana is active in the United Nations and many of its specialised agencies, the World Trade Organization, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States. Generally, it follows the consensus of the Non-aligned Movement and the OAU on economic and political issues not directly affecting its own interests. Ghana has been extremely active in international peacekeeping activities under UN auspices in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Rwanda, and the Balkans, in addition to an eight-year sub-regional initiative with its ECOWAS partners to develop and then enforce a cease-fire in Liberia. Ghana is also a member of the International Criminal Court.
Ghana's foreign policy since independence has been characterised by a commitment to the principles and ideals of non-alignment and Pan-Africanism as first enunciated by Kwame Nkrumah in the early 1960s. For Nkrumah, non-alignment meant complete independence from the policies and alliances of both East and West and support for a worldwide union of so-called non-aligned nations as a counter to both East and West power blocs. Pan-Africanism, by contrast, was a specifically African policy that envisioned the independence of Africa from Western colonialism and the eventual economic and political unity of the African continent.[1]
The PNDC, like most of its predecessors, made serious and consistent attempts at the practical application of these ideals and principles, and its successor, the NDC government, promises to follow in the PNDC's footsteps. Under the NDC, Ghana remains committed to the principle of non-alignment in world politics. Ghana is also opposed to interference in the internal affairs of both small and large countries. This is a departure from Nkrumah's foreign policy approach; Nkrumah was frequently accused of subverting African regimes, such as Togo and Ivory Coast, which he considered ideologically conservative. The NDC government, like the PNDC before it, believes in the principle of self-determination, including the right to political independence and the right of people to pursue their economic and social development free from external interference. Another feature of NDC rule carried over from the PNDC era is faithfulness to what a leading scholar of Africa has called "one of the most successful neoclassical economic reform efforts supported by the IMF and the World Bank."
The broad objectives of Ghana's foreign policy thus include maintaining friendly relations and cooperation with all countries that desire such cooperation, irrespective of ideological considerations, on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. Africa and its liberation and unity are naturally the cornerstones of Ghana's foreign policy. As a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), NDC policy is to adhere faithfully to the OAU Charter.
Another important principle of Ghana's foreign policy involves the closest possible cooperation with neighbouring countries with which the people of Ghana share cultural history, ties of blood, and economics. The results have included various bilateral trade and economic agreements and permanent joint commissions involving Ghana and its immediate neighbours, sometimes in the face of latent ideological and political differences and mutual suspicion, as well as numerous reciprocal state visits by high-ranking officials. These measures have contributed significantly to subregional cooperation, development, and the reduction of tension.
As an example of Ghana's interest in regional cooperation, the country enthusiastically endorsed formation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975. This organisation was created specifically to foster inter-regional economic and political cooperation. It has served as a useful vehicle for contacts with neighbouring West African governments and for channelling increased Ghanaian exports to regional markets. Since 1990 ECOWAS has been engaged in a peacekeeping mission in Liberia to which Ghana has contributed a large contingent of troops. Ghana has participated in other international peacekeeping efforts as well, sending soldiers to operations of the United Nations (UN) in Cambodia in 1992-93 and Rwanda in 1993-94.
In August 1994, Rawlings became ECOWAS chairman, a post that had eluded him since the PNDC came to power. He immediately undertook several initiatives to reduce tensions and conflict in West Africa. Notable among them was the Akosombo Accord of September 12, designed to end civil war in Liberia.
Ghana has been a member state of the Commonwealth since independence in 1957, firstly as a Dominion, then as a Commonwealth republic.
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Demographics of Gibraltar
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Gibraltar, including ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
One of the main features of Gibraltar’s population is the diversity of their ethnic origins. The demographics of Gibraltar reflects Gibraltarians' racial and cultural fusion of the many European and non-European immigrants who came to the Rock over three hundred years. They are the descendants of economic migrants that came to Gibraltar after the majority of the Spanish population left in 1704.
The majority of the Spanish population in Gibraltar (about 5000), with few exceptions, left Gibraltar when the Dutch and English took the village in 1704. The few Spaniards who remained in Gibraltar in August 1704 were augmented by others who arrived in the fleet with Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt, possibly some two hundred in all, mostly Catalans.
Menorcans began migrating to Gibraltar at the beginning of the common British rule in 1713, thanks to the links between both British possessions during the 18th century. Initially, Menorcans came to Gibraltar looking for work in several trades, especially when Gibraltar was rebuilt after the 1783 Grand Siege. Immigration continued even after Menorca (the original English name was "Minorca") was returned to Spain in 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens.
Immigration from Spain (like the exiles from the Spanish Civil War) and intermarriage with Spaniards from the surrounding Spanish towns was a constant feature of Gibraltar's history until the then Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, closed the border with Gibraltar in 1969, cutting off many Gibraltarians from their relatives on the Spanish side of the frontier.
Together, Gibraltarians of Spanish origin are one of the bigger groups (more than 24% according to last names, even more taking into account the fact that many Spanish women married native Gibraltarians).
Britons have come and settled or gone since the first days of the conquest. One group of Britons have had temporary residence in Gibraltar (to work in the administration and the garrison). This group, who represented a larger proportion in the beginning of the British period, are nowadays only about 3% of the total population (around 1,000 persons).
A larger group is formed by the Britons who moved to Gibraltar and settled down. Some of them, since the beginning, moved to Gibraltar to earn a living as traders and workers. Others moved to Gibraltar on a temporary assignment and then married with local women. Major construction projects, such as the dockyard in the late 1890s and early 20th century brought large numbers of workers from Great Britain.
13% of Gibraltarian residents are from the United Kingdom proper and the electoral roll shows that 27% of Gibraltar's population has British surnames.
Genoese came during the 18th and 19th centuries, especially from the poorer parts of Liguria, some of them annually following fishing shoals, as repairmen for the British navy, or as successful traders and merchants; many others came during the Napoleonic period to avoid obligatory conscription to the French Army. Genoese formed the larger group of the new population in the 18th century and middle 19th century. Other Italians came from islands like Sardinia and Sicily. Nowadays, people with Genoese/Italian last names represent about 20% of the population.
Portuguese were one of the earliest groups to move to Gibraltar, especially from the Algarve region in the far south of Portugal. Most of them went to work as labourers and some as traders. Their number increased significantly during the 18th century, and again when many Spaniards left their jobs in Gibraltar after General Franco closed the border in 1969. About 10% of last names in Gibraltar have Portuguese origin.
Moroccans have always had a significant presence in Gibraltar. However, the modern community has more recent origins. Moroccans began arriving in Gibraltar soon after the Spanish government imposed the first restrictions on Spanish workers in Gibraltar in 1964. By the end of 1968 there were at least 1,300 Moroccan workers resident in Gibraltar and this more than doubled following the final closure of the frontier with Spain in June 1969.
There is also a significant amount of Moroccan Jews in Gibraltar, representing Jews of both Sephardic origin and Arabic speaking Jews of Morocco (although almost no Gibraltarian Jews today speak Arabic as a first language). Most notably the Hassan family which runs Gibraltar's largest law firm Hassans International Law Firm and the late Sir Joshua Hassan who served four terms as Chief Minister for a total of 17 years.
Other groups include:
The composition of the population by nationality at the 2012 census was as follows:
The composition of the population by nationality at the 2001 census was as follows:
The population of Gibraltar was 29,752 in 2011.
1During World War II a large part of the civilian population (including most women) was evacuated.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
"0-14 years:"
17.2% (male 2,460; female 2,343)
"15-64 years:"
66.3% (male 9,470; female 9,070)
"65 years and over:"
16.5% (male 2,090; female 2,534) (2007 est.)
"At birth:"
1.06 males/female
"0-14 years:"
1.05 males/female
"15-64 years:"
1.044 males/female
"65 years and over:"
0.825 males/female
"total population:"
1.005 males/female (2007 est.)
The median age is:
total: 40.3 years
male: 39.8 years
female: 40.7 years (2008 est.)
"total population:"
79.93 years
"male:"
77.05 years
"female:"
82.96 years (2007 est.)
1.95 children born/woman (2007 est.)
"total:"
4.98 deaths/1,000 live births
"male:"
5.54 deaths/1,000 live births
"female:"
4.39 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.)
"noun:"
Gibraltarian(s)
"adjective:"
Gibraltar
Roman Catholic 78.09%, Church of England 6.98%, Other Christian 3.21%, Muslim 4.01%, Jewish 2.12%, Hindu 1.79%, other or unspecified 0.94%, none 2.86% (2001 census)
English (used in schools and for official purposes), Spanish. Most Gibraltarians converse in "Llanito", an Andalusian Spanish based vernacular. It consists of an eclectic mix of Andalusian Spanish and British English as well as languages such as Maltese, Portuguese, Italian of the Genoese variety and Haketia. Among more educated Gibraltarians, it also typically involves code-switching to English. Arabic is spoken by the Moroccan community, just like Hindi and Sindhi is spoken by the Indian community of Gibraltar. Maltese is still spoken by some families of Maltese descent.
"definition:"
NA
"total population:"
above 80%
"male:"
NA%
"female:"
NA%
A total of 2,093 criminal offences were recorded in Gibraltar during 2005/2006.
Indians had a significantly lower crime rate in 2005/2006 than all other national origins in Gibraltar at 1.69 crimes per 100 Indian people. The crimes per 100 population in Gibraltar now stands at 6.3. The crime rate for Gibraltarians and Moroccans has risen from 6.1 and 9.36 per 100 people in 2004/2005 to its current levels.
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Politics of Gibraltar
The politics of Gibraltar takes place within a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic British Overseas Territory, whereby the Monarch of the United Kingdom is the constitutional head of state represented by the Governor of Gibraltar. The Chief Minister of Gibraltar is the head of Government. As a British Overseas Territory, the Government of Gibraltar is not subordinate to the Government of the United Kingdom. The British Government, however, is responsible for defence and external affairs but Gibraltar has full internal self-government under its 2006 Constitution.
The government of Spain continues with an irredentist territorial claim to Gibraltar, which was ceded in perpetuity to the British Crown in 1713 by of the Treaty of Utrecht. In a referendum held in 2002, a proposal for shared sovereignty was overwhelmingly rejected by the Gibraltar electorate with 98.97% voting against. The sovereignty issue remains an important factor in local politics.
Gibraltar has a number of political parties which have developed to address local issues. The preamble to the 2006 Constitution repeated from the 1969 Constitution states that ""Her Majesty's Government will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their freely and democratically expressed wishes.""
As an overseas territory of Britain, the head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who is represented by the Governor of Gibraltar. Britain retains responsibility for defence, foreign relations, internal security and financial stability.
The Government of Gibraltar is elected for a term of four years. The head of Government is the Chief Minister, currently the Hon. Fabian Picardo of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party (GSLP) who has been in office since 9 December 2011, in alliance with the Gibraltar Liberal Party (Liberals), following the 2011 General Election. The Leader of the Opposition is the Hon. Daniel Feetham of the Gibraltar Social Democrats (GSD) since 2013.
The composition of the Government of Gibraltar is the following:
The Gibraltar Parliament (previously the House of Assembly) consists of seventeen elected members, and the Speaker. Under the electoral system of partial bloc voting used since 1969, voters (since 2007) could choose up to ten candidates, who do not necessarily need to be from the same party (but usually are). The winning candidates are then chosen by simple plurality; consequently, a party seeking to form a government stands ten candidates, and the party that forms the government is usually successful in having all ten of its candidates elected; the remaining seats are usually won by the 'best loser' which then forms the opposition. The last election was held on 26 November 2015.
Queen Elizabeth II is represented by the Governor and Commander-in-Chief, presently Lieutenant General Edward Davis (sworn in 19 January 2016). After an election, the Governor appoints the leader of the largest party in the unicameral parliament, as Chief Minister. The Governor is not involved in the day-to-day administration of Gibraltar, and his role is largely as a ceremonial head of state. The Governor is responsible for matters of defence and security only.
There are three political parties currently represented in the Gibraltar Parliament: Gibraltar Social Democrats; Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party; and Gibraltar Liberal Party.
All parties support Gibraltar's right to self-determination, and reject any concessions on the issue of sovereignty.
Since the 2003 election the Reform Party has dissolved, with the party leader and others now involved in Friends of the Earth (Gibraltar). The Labour Party has merged with the Gibraltar Social Democrats.
A new party, New Gibraltar Democracy, announced it would contest the next election. NGD claimed that the two main parties were "Out of touch with people's expectations and make up for their lack of ideas through Orwellian style propaganda." At the 2007 election one candidate, Charles Gomez, stood for election for the party. It achieved under 1% of the vote and has subsequently ceased any activity.
In June 2006 the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) was formed and announced it would be presenting a full slate of candidates and had entered the political arena as "a fresh, positive and modern alternative," to both the ruling Gibraltar Social Democrats and the Opposition GSLP/Liberals. However. in the 2007 election it only presented six candidates.
In August 2013, the PDP has dissolved after a series of disappointing election results.
Although part of the EU under the British Treaty of accession, Gibraltar had not voted in elections for the European Parliament although its membership of the European Union meant it was affected by European Union law. A ten-year campaign to acquire the vote culminated in the case of Matthews v. United Kingdom. Denise Matthews, a British Citizen resident in Gibraltar, claimed that the exclusion of the Gibraltar electorate from enfranchisement in the European Parliamentary elections was a breach of human rights. The European Court of Human Rights decided in her favour, ruling that the European Parliament formed a part of Gibraltar's legislature and held that the UK was bound by its conventions to secure the right for the people of Gibraltar to elect the European Parliament. The UK Government passed the European Parliament (Representation) Act in 2003 in order to comply with the ruling. Gibraltar is included in the South West England Region for the purposes of European Parliament elections, and first voted in the 2004 election.
The 2004 European Election was the first UK election in which Gibraltar participated. The Conservative Party took 69.52% of the vote, which has generally been interpreted as a protest against the handling of Gibraltar by the Labour Party. The Conservatives also campaigned strongly, with the support of the Gibraltar branch of the party and a visit from the party leader Michael Howard.
In 2009, the Conservatives again topped the poll with 54% but in contrast to 2004 the turnout at 35% was much lower, being comparable to other EU states.
In 2014 the Liberal Democrat Party topped the poll, but the votes cast in South West England resulted in the none of the Liberal Democrat candidates becoming MEPs. Six MEPs were returned, two UKIP, two Conservative, one Labour and one Green.
In 1999, the Government of Gibraltar established a Select Committee on Constitutional Reform, to consider how the 1969 Constitution should be reformed.
In March 2006, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced in the British House of Commons that the details of a new constitution had been agreed. There were some differences between the draft constitution and the one to which the UK agreed, namely that the Governor's title would remain unchanged, and that the Police Authority would remain independent of the Government of Gibraltar.
In December 2006 Gibraltar was granted a new constitution, providing a modern constitutional relationship between Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, not based on colonialism. The constitution does not in any way diminish British sovereignty of Gibraltar, and the United Kingdom retains its full internal responsibility for Gibraltar, including Gibraltar's external relations and defence, and the Member State responsible for Gibraltar in the European Union.
Writing to the Spanish Foreign Minister, Jack Straw stated:
After several months of political wrangling, the Gibraltar Government published the draft Constitution Order, which includes the existing preamble promising that there would be no transfer of sovereignty against the wishes of the Gibraltarians and a new addition explaining the status.
The proposal was put to the people in a referendum and approved. The constitution took effect in 2007 and 29 January declared a public holiday in celebration.
Various groups in Gibraltar have campaigned in favour of a far closer relationship with Britain, in the form of devolved integration or incorporation into the Britain itself. This is similar to the offer made to Malta in 1955, under which Malta would be represented in the British House of Commons and be placed under the Home Office, while retaining internal self-government. This would be a similar status to France's overseas departments and to Spain's North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, claimed by Morocco. One of Spain's arguments in rejecting comparisons between Gibraltar and these territories is that they are part of Spain, whereas Gibraltar is a British overseas territory and not part of the UK.
However, the British Foreign Office rejected the idea in 1976, along with independence, on the grounds that any further constitutional reform or decolonisation would have to take into account the so-called "Spanish dimension". Similarly, this has also been opposed by governments in Gibraltar itself; in its election manifesto in 2003, the Gibraltar Social Democrats argued that integration would "necessarily involve the loss of a significant degree of this vital self-government" and "would simply hand power over our vital affairs (and therefore our ability to survive) to people in London."
While there is still attachment to the idea of Gibraltar being British, some, like leader of the Liberal Party, Joseph Garcia, see the Rock's future as being within a larger 'Europe of the Regions', rather than as part of one nation state or another.
The idea of a condominium, with sovereignty over Gibraltar shared between the UK and Spain, has been proposed. In 1985, during talks with British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, Spanish Foreign Minister Fernando Morán proposed a condominium or leaseback period of between 15 and 20 years, before Spain regained full sovereignty, but this received no reply from the British government.
In 1991, the Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, was reported to have proposed a plan for joint sovereignty, under which Gibraltar would become effectively autonomous, with the British and Spanish monarchs as joint heads of state, but this was rejected by the Government of Gibraltar in July of that year.
In 1997, the then Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes put forward a proposal for joint sovereignty over Gibraltar, which also entailed full Spanish sovereignty after a transitional period, but his British counterpart, Robin Cook, stated that there was "no question of compromise on sovereignty".
Although the co-principality of Andorra, in which the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell are joint heads of state, has been suggested as a model for Gibraltar, in 2010, its then Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, argued that this was not a case of joint sovereignty between Spain and France, as under Andorra's 1993 Constitution, neither country exercised sovereignty over the Principality.
Gibraltar was caught unawares when the whole issue of the relationship between the territory and the UK, as well as the question of Spain was brought before the United Nations Committee on Decolonization, otherwise known as the "Committee of 24", in 1963.
Resolution 2231 (XXI), which formed part of the Spanish claim, stated that "any colonial situation which partially or completely destroys the national unity and territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations."
Resolution 2353 (XXII) also urged the United Kingdom and Spain to overcome their differences, respecting the "interests" of the people of Gibraltar and declared the 1967 referendum to be a "contravention of the provisions of Resolution 2231.
It was supported by 73 countries (mainly Latin American, Arab, African and Eastern European countries), rejected by 19 (United Kingdom and the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations), while 27 countries abstained (Western Europe and the United States).
Since then and up to the present time, representatives of Gibraltar have regularly petitioned the "UNC24" and the "UNC4", although no progress has been achieved. The Committees regularly roll out their 'consensus resolution' which:
The commitment of the British Government is not to hold the talks envisaged by the above resolution without the consent of the Gibraltarians.
The effective stalemate has led Peter Caruana to conclude that attending future meetings of the Committee of 24 is a pointless exercise.
In a referendum on 10 September 1967, the people of Gibraltar voted by 12,138 to 44 to reject the transfer of sovereignty to Spain and to remain under British sovereignty. This day is now celebrated as Gibraltar's National Day. In a referendum organised by the Government of Gibraltar on 7 November 2002, voters overwhelmingly rejected the principle that Spain and the United Kingdom should share sovereignty over Gibraltar, by 17,900 votes to 187 on a turnout of almost 88%.
Unlike most other British territories, Gibraltar has not been offered independence by the UK. It has been suggested that this is on the grounds that the Treaty of Utrecht, under which Spain ceded the territory to the British Crown, states that, if the British Crown should ever wish to dispose of Gibraltar, it must first be offered to Spain. However, the Government of Gibraltar has pointed out at the UN that Article 103 of the UN Charter overrules and annuls this "reversionary clause".
Neither the United Kingdom nor Spain seem keen to test the legal status of in court. The remaining parts of the treaty that regulated such things as the slave trade, and the transfer of Menorca to the British, have become obsolete.
Spain argues that Gibraltar's status is an anachronism, and that it should become an autonomous community of Spain, similar to Catalonia or the Basque Country. It also argues that the principle of territorial integrity, not self-determination applies, drawing parallels with the British handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. The "Junta de Andalucia" (Andalucia's elected regional government) believes that Gibraltar should be integrated into its regional autonomy.
At the same time, the British government continues to state that there can be no change in the status of Gibraltar without their democratic consent .
The Gibraltarian government has asked the UN Committee of 24 to refer the issues to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion, but Spain has lobbied against this. The government of Gibraltar has also invited the Committee to visit the territory, but so far, despite no objection from the United Kingdom, they have not done so.
The 2006 constitution further increases the level of self-government in the territory, and the colonial status of Gibraltar is now considered to be over. In a letter to the United Nations describing this, the British Foreign Secretary stated that ""I do not think that this description would apply to any relationship based on colonialism.""
In addition to the parties there are a number of pressure groups active in Gibraltar, not aligned to any political party.
The Gibraltar Women's Association was founded on 16 February 1966, by Mrs Mariola Summerfield and Mrs Angela Smith.
It was originally known as the Gibraltar Housewives Association, and subsequently, in the early eighties it was changed to the Gibraltar Women's Association keeping in with more modern times that not all women were solely housewives.
Launched in September 2000 by Felix Alvarez, initially named GGR (Gib Gay Rights) now has a wider human rights platform in Gibraltar and is known as Equality Rights Group GGR .
Although it still defends sexual minorities it has also been active on issues regarding the disabled, and issues regarding the protection of children against sex abuse.
The Environmental Safety Group (ESG) is a non-governmental organisation that was formed in 2000. It is a registered charity and works to promote environmental issues within the community. Concerns of: air and water quality, pollution, preservation of our green areas, traffic, need for renewable energy, litter/recycling and climate change have been the focus of many ESG campaigns. The group is apolitical and enjoys widespread support from the community. Its membership runs into several hundred and many others are regularly invited to support or participate in local and global environmental campaigns.
The Gibraltar Local Disability Movement (GLDM) was established in 1985 to improve the lives of disabled people in Gibraltar, promote equal opportunities and tackle discrimination. The movement ceased to be active for several years during the 1990s and early 2000s, but was reactivated in 2005 to address the situation for disabled people in Gibraltar, which did not see great improvement for several years. Although the 2006 Equal Opportunities Act protects disabled people in Gibraltar from discrimination, Gibraltar remains behind the UK and other countries on issues such as disability allowances and wheelchair access to both private and government buildings. www.disability.gi
The Voice of Gibraltar Group was founded in 1996. In 1997 it organised a march attended by 10,000 people campaigning for Spanish recognition of Gibraltarians' rights within the EU for the support of the new British Labour Government in this matter. In 2001 it drew criticism from the Government of Gibraltar for pressuring the Select Committee of the House of Assembly to accelerate completion of its work and for introducing what the Government claimed were partisan politics into the matter of Gibraltar remaining British. The same year, in concert with the Self-Determination for Gibraltar Group, the VOGG organised a demonstration attended by an estimated 10,000 people. Joining a Government-sponsored initiative led by local musicians under the auspices of Rock on the Rock Club, a non-political organisation, the VOGG mounted protest in Neath, the constituency of Peter Hain the UK Minister for Europe.
It campaigned, with others, for a "no" vote in the 2002 referendum It has been described as "Gibraltar's most-hardline protest group".
The Integration With Britain Movement (IWBM) is a pressure group advocating further integration with the United Kingdom. They aim for Gibraltar to attain a state of devolved integration similar to that pertaining in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. They are led by Joe Caruana and are successors to the defunct Integration With Britain Party (IWBP).
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Economy of Gibraltar
The economy of Gibraltar consists largely of the services sector. While being part of the European Union, the British overseas territory of Gibraltar has a separate legal jurisdiction from the United Kingdom and enjoys a different tax system.
The role of the UK Ministry of Defence, which at one time was Gibraltar's main source of income, has declined, with today's economy mainly based on shipping, tourism, financial services, and the Internet (mostly gambling).
In his June 2009, budget speech, Chief Minister Peter Caruana noted that Gibraltar's economy remains in good shape and Government finances remain healthy, solid, stable and robust, despite global economic and financial turmoil.
Gibraltar has a functioning stock exchange, the Gibraltar Stock Exchange.
In December 2008 in a landmark decision the European Court of Justice ruled that:
This allowed the implementation of a new low tax system which is took full effect by 2010.
Gibraltar is one of the largest bunkering ports in the Mediterranean Sea, with 4.3 million tonnes of bunkers delivered in 2007. This has become the main activity within the Port of Gibraltar.
Gibraltar is a constituent part of the European Union as a Special Member State territory, having joined the European Economic Community with the United Kingdom in 1973, under the provisions of the Treaty of Rome relating to European dependent territories. However, it is exempt from the Common external tariff, the Common Agricultural Policy and the requirement to levy Value added tax.
Financial institutions operating in Gibraltar are regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission.
Subject to notifying the Commissioner, who must be satisfied that they meet certain criteria in accordance with the relevant EU Directive, Gibraltar-licensed or -authorised financial institutions can provide services throughout the EU and European Economic Area without having to seek separate licences or authorisation in the host Member State. This is known as the "passporting" of financial services.
Referred to as an International Finance Centre, Gibraltar was among 35 jurisdictions identified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a tax haven in June 2000. However, the list's disclaimer states:
As a result of having made a commitment in accordance with the OECD's 2001 Progress Report on the OECD's Project on Harmful Tax Practices, Gibraltar is not included in the OECD's list of uncooperative tax havens. It has also never been listed on the FATF Blacklist of uncooperative countries in the fight against money laundering. It may also be referred to as an offshore financial centre, by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
However, in its April 2009 progress report, the OECD listed Gibraltar in the list of jurisdictions which, although committed, had not "substantially implemented" yet the internationally agreed tax standard. Following Gibraltar's signing of 12 additional Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs), as of October 2009, with jurisdictions including the UK, US and Germany, to sum 13, Gibraltar is currently listed in the OECD "white list", and is considered a jurisdiction that has substantially implemented the tax standard. It therefore shares the same status as OECD member states such as the UK, the US, Spain or Germany.
Fiscal advantages, including no tax on capital income, are offered to a maximum of 8,464 offshore qualified companies incorporated in Gibraltar. After an agreement with the European Union in 2005, this tax exempt regime is due to disappear on 31 December 2010.
A 2007 IMF report on the regulatory environment and anti-money laundering has once again endorsed Gibraltar's robust regulatory environment.
According to the report:
In 2008 Gibraltar was listed for the first time in the Global Financial Centres Index published by the City of London Corporation. The Rock was ranked 26th in a list of 69 leading finance centres around the world based on an online survey of 1,236 business professionals, who provided a total of 18,878 assessments. In the most recent GFCI report of 2011, Gibraltar was ranked 63rd in the world, and 8th of the leading offshore financial centres (OFCs).
The Tax Justice Network ranked Gibraltar at #43 out of 71 jurisdictions on its 2011 Financial Secrecy Index. Gibraltar's "secrecy score" was 78, equating to Switzerland in that category.
Gibraltar was also ranked in the top 20 centres for e-readiness, coming 20th after major capitals and leading offshore centres.
The territory also has a small manufacturing sector, with one company supplying ambulances produced from converted SUV vehicles to the United Nations and other agencies.
Gibraltar offers a favourable tax system, good internet connectivity along with a well-developed regulatory system. All gambling operations in Gibraltar require licensing under the Gambling Act 2005. The Gibraltar Regulatory Authority is the Gambling Commissioner under the Gambling Act 2005, and therefore the regulatory body. Good regulation, and being part of the EU is seen as a strong advantange by large legitimate operators. The UK has published plans to protect online gamblers from crime and exploitation by banning gambling adverts from poorly regulated countries which specifically mention Gibraltar as an approved location.
The UK's Ministry of Defence was originally the mainstay of Gibraltar's economy but this has greatly reduced to around 6% of the GDP. In 2006 the MoD announced that it would contractorise the provision of services to the military base to make further cost savings.
This was finalised in January 2007.
Gibraltar benefits from an extensive shipping trade, a well regulated international finance center, tourism, and has become a global leader in the virtual gaming industry.
Self-sufficient Gibraltar benefits from an extensive shipping trade, offshore banking, and its position as an international conference center. The British military presence has been sharply reduced and now contributes about 7% to the local economy, compared with 60% in 1984. The financial sector, tourism (almost 5 million visitors in 1998), shipping services fees, and duties on consumer goods also generate revenue. The financial sector, the shipping sector, and tourism each contribute 25%-30% of GDP. Telecommunications accounts for another 10%. In recent years, Gibraltar has seen major structural change from a public to a private sector economy, but changes in government spending still have a major impact on the level of employment.
Figures from the CIA World Factbook show the main export markets in 2006 were United Kingdom 30.8%, Spain 22.7%, Germany 13.7%, Turkmenistan 10.4%, Switzerland 8.3%, Italy 6.7% while the corresponding figures for imports are Spain 23.4%, Russia 12.3%, Italy 12%, UK 9%, France 8.9%, Netherlands 6.8% and United States 4.7%.
The Gibraltar Government state that economy grew in 2004/2005 by 7% to a GDP of £599,180,000. Based on statistics in the 2006 surveys, the Government statisticians estimate it has grown by 8.5% in 2005/6 and by 10.8% in 2006/7 and that the GDP is probably now around 730 million. Inflation was running at 2.6% in 2006 and predicted to be 2% to 3% in 2007. Speaking at the 2007 budget session, Peter Caruana, the Chief Minister said "The scale of Gibraltar's economic success makes it one of the most affluent communities in the entire world."
Labour force:
12,690 (including non-Gibraltar labourers) (2001)
Labour force - by occupation:
services 60%, industry 40%, agriculture NEGL%
Unemployment rate
2% (2001)
Budget
revenues: $455.1 million
expenditures: $423.6 million (2005 est.)
Public debt
15.7% of GDP (2005 est.)
Industries
tourism, banking and finance, ship repairing, tobacco
Industrial production growth rate
NA%
Electricity - production
142 million kWh (2006 est.)
Electricity - production by source
fossil fuel
100%
hydro
0%
nuclear
0%
other
0%
Electricity - consumption
142 million kWh (2006 est.)
Electricity - exports
0 kWh (1998)
Electricity - imports
0 kWh (1998)
Oil - production
Oil - consumption
Oil - exports
NA (2001)
Oil - imports
NA (2001)
Agriculture - products
none
Exports
$271 million (2004 est.)
Exports - commodities
(principally reexports) petroleum 51%, manufactured goods 41%, other 8%
Exports - partners
UK, Morocco, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, US, Germany
Imports
$2.967 billion (2004 est.)
Imports - commodities
Fuels, manufactured goods, and foodstuffs
Imports - partners
UK, Spain, Japan, Netherlands
Fiscal year
1 July - 30 June
The above figures taken from the CIA World Factbook September 2009 edition.
In September 2009 the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce released an Economic impact study and analysis of the economies of Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar produced by Professor John Fletcher of Bournemouth University. The report aimed at clarifying the effects of Gibraltar's economy on the Campo area. It demonstrated that Gibraltar's economy has a significant and very positive economic impact on the Campo de Gibraltar. It also noted that the Campo region played a "significant role [..] in Gibraltar's economic development as well", concluding that "[b]oth economies and societies would be the poorer without the other..."
Its conclusions were:
The average annual earnings of Indo-Gibraltarians is nearly twice that of the rest of Gibraltarian people and approximately 1.5 times that of immigrants in the UK, thus making people of Indian descent by far the most economically affluent ethnic group in Gibraltar.
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Communications in Gibraltar
Communications in Gibraltar comprise a wide range of telephony systems (both fixed-line and mobile), Internet access, broadcasting (radio and television) and satellite control. There is also printed and online media. Regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting are the responsibility of the Gibraltar Regulatory Authority (GRA), established by means of the Gibraltar Regulatory Authority Act in 2000.
The first submarine telegraph cable started its operation in Gibraltar in 1870. Gibraltar was a landing point of the long-range submarine cable that from Porthcurno, in the United Kingdom ran to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Suez, Aden, Bombay, over land to the east coast of India, then on to Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Batavia (current Jakarta), to finally reach Darwin, Australia. It was the first direct link between Australia and Great Britain. The company that laid the first part of the cable took the name of Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company and had been founded in 1869. This company later operated as the Eastern Telegraph Company from Mount Pleasant in Gibraltar and eventually became Cable & Wireless.
The first telephones were introduced to Gibraltar in 1886 by a private company which was later taken over by the colonial authorities. The first wireless message was transmitted to Gibraltar in 1903. Since 1926, the telephone service was operated by the City Council. An automatic exchange was installed in the last floor of the City Hall. On 4 April 1927, following an agreement signed between the Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España, the Spanish incumbent telecommunications operator, and the Gibraltar City Council, direct communications between Spain and Gibraltar were established.
Upon the approval of the 1969 Constitution and the dissolution of the City Council, the telephone service was transferred to the newly formed Government of Gibraltar. In the 1970s there were three generations of automatic telephone exchange equipment in use with four and five digit numbers. The volume of calls grew and a System X digital exchange was installed.
Until 1990, all telephone services were operated by the Gibraltar Government Telephone Department. International circuits were provided by Cable & Wireless, present in Gibraltar since 1870 as the Falmouth, Malta, Gibraltar Telegraph Company. However, Cable & Wireless left Gibraltar in 1987. On 1 January 1988, British Telecom (BT) and the Government of Gibraltar formed a joint venture company called Gibraltar Telecommunications International Ltd (known by its commercial brand Gibtel) to operate Gibraltar's international telecommunications services. Gibtel was subsequently granted a licence to offer mobile telephony introducing a GSM900 network.
In 1990, the Government decided to privatise its Telephone Department and therefore entered into a joint venture with Nynex of the United States. Gibraltar Nynex Communications Ltd (GNC) became responsible for fixed-line telephony. GNC was the first acquisition of Nynex outside the Americas. In 1997, GNC, through its wholly owned subsidiary, GNC Networks, commenced Internet services. GNC Networks was later renamed GibConnect. ADSL services were introduced in 2002.
In 2001, BT sold its 50% stake in Gibtel to GNC. Both companies subsequently merged to form Gibtelecom, a joint venture between the Government of Gibraltar and Nynex's successor company, Verizon. The name Gibtelecom begun to be used in July 2002, and as of 1 October 2003 this name was formally adopted by the company (which up until then was still Gibraltar Nynex Communications). In April 2007, Verizon sold its shares to Telekom Slovenije which is the incumbent telecommunications operator in Slovenia and is quoted on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange.
Telephones - Numbers in use: 25,000 (2006)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
15,000 (2006)
The telecommunications infrastructure in Gibraltar is modelled on that of the UK; for example; the ringing tone of fixed telephone lines is identical to that of the UK, although that of mobile phones may resemble that of mainland Europe, with long tones. Telephone jacks are also British Standard BS 6312, as opposed to the RJ11 versions found in other parts of Europe and the world.
Calling code: +350
Telecommunication services in Gibraltar were subject to Spanish restrictions until 10 February 2007. Subsequent to the resolution of the dispute, the Gibraltar telephone numbering plan has been increased to eight digits for land lines, adding a prefix of 200 to the existing Gibtelecom five digit numbers which is required to be dialled from October 2008.
Gibtelecom was also prevented from having roaming agreements with Spanish GSM networks so its mobile phones did not operate in Spain. Gibtelecom had roaming arrangements with local GSM networks in most other countries. After the Córdoba Agreement, Gibtel (Gibtelecom's mobile service) could roam on Spanish network Movistar (Telefonica). As of recent customers can now roam on Vodafone and Yoigo. Orange still (September 2008) identifies as AMENA and does not allow Gibraltar phones to register.
In the 1980s there was a shortage of local line capacity on the existing crossbar exchange, which itself had replaced the relay and Strowger switch exchanges and a modern digital System/X switch was installed.
Cable and Wireless, who provided international circuits installed a satellite earth station which made International Subscriber Dialling possible.
When the frontier with Spain was re-opened, telephone and telex circuits cut by General Franco were re-established. Subsequently, fibre links into the FLAG cable system (which had a landing point in Estepona, about 50 km from Gibraltar) were established and along with microwave links to Morocco giving Gibraltar a resilient communications infrastructure. Gibtelecom is also a partner in the EIG cable system, which will have a landing point in Gibraltar.
Provision for Local Loop Unbundling was introduced in Gibraltar, under the 2006 Communications Act, similar to the UK's 2003 Communications Act. Earlier in December 2005, the European Commission initiated the second stage of infringement proceedings against the British Government relating to Gibraltar's failure to transpose five European Union directives on electronic communications, but these were closed after the relevant legislation was passed into law by the then House of Assembly in June 2006.
Fixed line numbers are now eight digits, with Gibtelecom numbers being prefixed with 200. A second operator, CTS Gibraltar Limited, provided fixed line services beginning with the prefix 216, but closed down in early 2013.
GSM Network Identifiers : GIBTEL
Gibraltar Telecommunications International Limited (Gibtel) (now Gibtelecom) introduced mobile phones in Gibraltar using a GSM900 network. The new GPRS network installed by the Scandinavian company allows faster and permanent connectivity for all mobile users, as well as providing high-speed picture and video messaging for owners of the new range of multi-purpose hand-sets.
Gibtelecom operates 3G & 4G networks.
CTS ceased providing 3G services in early 2013.
A new provider, Shine Mobile, launched on 23 September 2013. On 12 May 2016 the Company posted a notice on its website [www.shinemobile.gi] saying that "As from 18/05/2016, our services are going to be SUSPENDED; therefore your Shine line will NOT be operational." It was said that was to facilitate working on upgrading infrastructure, but as of 29 May 2016 the service is still down. Suspending service with less than a week's notice, suggests this may not have just been related to upgrading infrastructure which presumably would have been in the planning stage for more than six days. Shine Mobile will not be back.
Television broadcast stations:
1 (plus three low-power repeaters) (2002)
Television Licences:
7,452 (2002)
Requirement abolished (2007).
GBC Television is operated by the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is transmitted on VHF Channel 12 with UHF repeaters on 56 and 53.
Until 1999, GBC retransmitted BBC Prime, but was relaunched as a community-based service focusing on local news and other items of local interest. GBC programming starts at around 19:30 and finishes before midnight with the most popular programme being the local news bulletin, News Watch at 20:30. During the day fillers and the sound of GBC radio are transmitted.
The station was funded by a mix of advertising, government funding, and an annual television licence fee. In June 2006, the licence was abolished by the Government. A new general manager was appointed in 2010 with a mandate to develop the station to meet future requirements of the community.
The majority of homes also have access to satellite television with mostly United Kingdom channels. Gibraltar also receives Spanish national digital television and radio stations, as well as Spanish digital regional (from Andalusia) and local stations (from the Campo de Gibraltar area).
Radio broadcast stations:
AM 1, FM 4, DAB+, Internet 2 (2019)
Radios:
37,000 (1997) - Radio licences now discontinued
The Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) operates Radio Gibraltar on both FM and AM, broadcasting a mix of local programming in English and Spanish, and retransmissions of the BBC World Service. In December 2005, GBC started internet streaming of its radio service, and in 2009 the daily Newswatch programme became available as video on demand. These services along with an up-to-date programme guide for GBC television and radio, can be found on the website.
The British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) operates two radio stations on FM, BFBS1 and BFBS2 and a private cable television network. BFBS1 and 2 are also available on the Internet streamed from the UK.
On 1 October 2018, Rock Radio - Gibraltar's Hit Music Station was launched. Rock Radio is Gibraltar's first and only independent commercial radio station, the first to launch in over 50 years. The station transmits live from the top of the Rock on 99.2 FM, DAB+ and online.
Callsigns:
ZB0x (VHF only), ZB2xx (Full), ZB3x (novice) + special event stations
Amateur radio started in Gibraltar shortly after the Second World War. The Gibraltar Amateur Radio Society (GARS) is a small but active society representing the interests of Amateur Radio both locally and internationally as a full International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) member society.
Each year for Gibraltar National Week amateur radio operators can use the ZG prefix instead of ZB. Special event stations are licensed by the GRA for example the Lighthouse Activity Weekend uses ZB2LGT.
Country code (top-level domain): .gi
Internet service providers (ISPs): 4
Gibnet Limited, a private company, began Internet services in January 1996, with a 64 kbit/s circuit to Spain. In 2005 it merged with Broadband Gibraltar Limited to form Sapphire Networks Limited. Sapphire have their own redundant fibre and microwave infrastructure into and around Gibraltar.
Sapphire uses the Gibtelecom ADSL concentrator to reach customers that are outside their own network, and sells high-bandwidth Internet services and Internet connectivity, competing directly with Gibtelecom.
GNC Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gibraltar Nynex Communications, commenced services in 1997. GNC Networks was renamed Gibconnect and the parent company became Gibraltar Telecommunications International Limited, which is referred to as Gibtelecom, in 2002. ADSL services were introduced in 2002, by 2005, there were several thousand users. The company is co-owned by the Government of Gibraltar and Slovenia Telecom.
In 2000, the Gibraltar Regulatory Authority issued Ladbrokes, who then operated Gibraltar's biggest call centre, with a licence to establish their own internet services. Under this Advanced Business Communications (Europe) began operating on the rock. The company applied for a licence in their own right. The GRA eventually denied ABC (Europe) a licence. Ladbrokes scaled down their Gibraltar operations and their 'Internet permit' was not renewed. ABC ceased their Gibraltar operations in early 2002.
CTS Gibraltar Limited launched a WiMax service in 2008, competing against the established ADSL providers. It then expanded into ADSL for nearby housing estates, and set up a rival UTMS service. CTS was closed down in early 2013 due to significant debts owed to government authorities and other creditors.
Shine Mobile, launched in September 2013, has obtained a licence for broadband services, which it planned to introduce, but the company closed down.
In 2013, GibFibreSpeed Ltd, trading under A.J. Sheriff Electrical Ltd, obtained a broadband licence. GibFibreSpeed is Gibraltar's first communications provider to offer Fibre To The Home (FTTH) broadband services. Since 2013, GibFibreSpeed has been upgrading its own independent all-fibre network and preparing for the launch of broadband services, it has since opened its stores and has planned to begin offering broadband in early 2015.
The largest and most frequently published newspaper is the "Gibraltar Chronicle", Gibraltar's oldest established daily newspaper and the world's second oldest English language newspaper to have been in print continuously with daily editions six days a week. "Panorama" is published on weekdays, and "7 Days", "The New People", and "Gibsport" are weekly. Other newspapers such as the weekly "El Faro de Gibraltar", are published in Spanish.
Defunct newspapers include "El Calpense", a Spanish-language newspaper that was published in Gibraltar between 1868 and 1982. In the 1960s it became a weekly newspaper. When the border between Spain and Gibraltar was eventually closed by the Spanish dictator in 1969, the newspaper changed its ownership and begun to be published in English. It later closed in 1982. Also, "El Anunciador" was a Spanish-language newspaper that was published between 1885 and 1940.
Gibraltar has two prominent monthly magazines; "Insight" and the "Gibraltar Magazine".
EuropeAxess Media, in liaison with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gibraltar, also publishes a monthly magazine: "Upon This Rock"
"Globe" magazine also appears monthly, having first started as a bi-lingual publication which produced two versions of each of its articles - one in English and the other in Spanish. Over time, "Globe" phased out the Spanish language element and is now an English language monthly aimed at Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar.
"B" magazine is Gibraltar's first locally produced magazine aimed at women. It appears monthly and its contents include fashion, advice, health, weddings and similar features geared at young women. The publication also features a Social spotlight section composed of photos depicting eventsand fundraisers.
Various online news outlets covering general news exist such as online editions of the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation, and the Gibraltar Chronicle. Independent online media include Your Gibraltar TV and sports news outlets such as GibFootballTalk.
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Transport in Gibraltar
Gibraltar has a limited public transport system, due to the compact size of the territory.
Gibraltar has of highways, all of which are paved. It has one of the highest levels of per capita car ownership in the world, with as many motor vehicles as people. Unlike the United Kingdom, along with the British Overseas Territories, traffic in Gibraltar drives on the right, as it shares a land border with Spain. Traffic formerly drove on the left; the change to driving on the right was made at 5.00 a.m. on 16 June 1929.
Older roads in Gibraltar, primarily in the city centre, are fairly narrow with a typical speed limit of . Gibraltar has ten fuelling stations, and fuel prices are lower than in neighbouring Spain. Some people from Spain even enter Gibraltar for the sole purpose of filling their cars' fuel tanks.
Gibraltar's international vehicle registration is GBZ, and vehicle registration plates of Gibraltar consist of the letter 'G' followed by up to five digits (1-99999) or four digits (1000-9999) and a single letter. These are as standard, the same shape, type face and colours as those in the UK, however non-standard number plates have been permitted. The Chief Minister's official car has the registration number "G1", while the Governor's car, following tradition, has a crown, in place of a number.
The two highways in Spain leading in the vicinity are the A-383 which ends in La Linea, and the CA-34, which leads to the border.
There are a total of eight different bus routes in Gibraltar. There are two companies who provide stage-carriage bus services in Gibraltar: Gibraltar Bus Company and Calypso Transport.
The Government of Gibraltar owned Gibraltar Bus Company operates routes 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 with a fleet of 21 buses, 18 of which are Dennis Dart low-floor midibus with Caetano Nimbus bodies and featuring 28 seats and three Mercedes-Benz Sprinter minibuses with Unvi bodies and catering for 15 seated passengers. The Darts entered service the day the company was officially formed, Saturday 10 April 2004, when it took over the operation of private company Rock City Services, who had been unwilling to invest in its fleet. The trio of Sprinters entered service during November 2010 and operate Service 1 to the Moorish Castle Estate in the Upper Town area of the city. This route is well worth travelling in order to see how narrow and winding the roads are in this part of town. The latest timetable is dated 1 September 2012.
Calypso Transport operates route 5 between the Frontier (the land border with Spain), the airport and the city centre and tickets between this route and those operated by the Gibraltar Bus Company are not inter-changeable. An adult single fare on either operators' services currently costs £1.00 and an all-day Hoppa ticket costs £1.50. A year-long trial period where free travel was permitted aboard the buses of the Gibraltar Bus Company ended in May 2012 and only qualifying residents, commuters and military personnel now qualify for free travel in the territory.
Calypso Transport uses a fleet of red double-decker buses.
Route 5 buses operate every 15 minutes Monday to Saturdays, and every 20 minutes on Sundays, this is a shuttle between Reclamation Road (British Steps) near John Macintosh Square and the Frontier/Airport terminus via the Market Place bus station Grand Casemates Square.
Gibraltar Bus Company increased the bus fares for all routes in Gibraltar in May 2013.
Taxis are available from a number of taxi ranks around the Rock. Many taxis cater specifically for tours of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve and these can be picked up from the frontier or the city centre, however, taxi drivers are also obliged to take standard fares as well as tours.
There are no extant railways in Gibraltar. There was formerly an extensive railway within the Gibraltar Dockyard, and neighbouring works and storage facilities. It included tunnels, one of which went through the Rock of Gibraltar, and is still in use today as a road tunnel. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries there was also a temporary industrial railway in Gibraltar. At the period when both railways were operational, it was possible to travel right round the entire coastline of Gibraltar by train. The dockyard railway had a roster of 17 locomotives, distinguished by numbers, but four of which also carried names: "Gibraltar", "Catalan", "Rosia", and "Calpe".
Whilst railway track extends to the outskirts of La Linea from the aborted San Roque-La Línea railway line expansion project in the 1970s, the nearest actual railway station (in Spain) is ""San Roque - La Línea"" station on the ADIF Algeciras-Bobadilla railway line Junction via Ronda.
Until 1969 a ferry from Gibraltar provided convenient access to Algeciras station, which along with the railway line to Ronda was built by a British company known as the Algeciras Gibraltar Railway Company.
Ferries by "FRS" running twice a week from Gibraltar to Tanger-Med port provide access to the Moroccan railway system.
Being a peninsula, the sea has long been vital to Gibraltar's transport links. The Royal Navy Dockyard was formerly Gibraltar's major employer. There is still a harbour on the west side of the territory. The Gibraltar-registered merchant marine consists of 26 ships of 1000 tonnes and above. There is an irregular direct regular fast ferry service to Tanger-Med port, Morocco but many passengers now travel from Algeciras or Tarifa due to a more regular service being present at those ports.
The ferry between Gibraltar and Algeciras, which existed until 1969, when communications with Spain were severed by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, was reopened on 16 December 2009, served by the Spanish company Transcoma, which used a catamaran, "Punta Europa Segundo" in memory of the original ferry that served the cross-Bay route in the 1960s. The maritime operations of Transcoma were taken over by Grupo Medex on 10 November 2010, which announced a higher-capacity new ship for 2011.
Various cruise liners visit the Port of Gibraltar throughout the year, and dock at the Gibraltar Cruise Terminal on the Western Arm of the North Mole. This provides the means of transport for a significant proportion of day-tripper tourists arriving in the territory.
During World War 1, the Royal Naval Air Service brought one of the first seaplanes to come to Gibraltar, a Wight Seaplane, to search for submarines.
In 1931 the seaplane Saro Windhover Captained by Edgar Percival for GB Airways was the first of regular passenger flights from Gibraltar to Morocco. If there was a levant wind, then the seaplane would land on an aerodrome in Morocco instead of Tangier harbour.
Work began in 1939 to build what is today Gibraltar Airport and is the territory's only airport. It is situated very close to the border with Spain. Winston Churchill Avenue the road which runs from the Gibraltar–Spain border, crosses the runway, requiring the road to be closed each time an aircraft lands or takes off. Scheduled civilian passenger flights are operated by EasyJet, British Airways and Royal Air Maroc.
Following an agreement signed in Córdoba between the Governments of the United Kingdom, Spain and Gibraltar in September 2006, the use of Gibraltar Airport by both Gibraltarian and Spanish services was agreed. Gibraltar Airport will be adapted to have an entrance from Spain (as well as Gibraltar), in a similar manner to Basel and Geneva airports (which are also adjacent to borders).
Iberia commenced direct flights between Madrid and Gibraltar on 16 December 2006 with GB Airways following on 1 May 2007. However, GB Airways discontinued its Madrid service on 30 September 2007 and Iberia subsequently considered using smaller aircraft, possibly from its Air Nostrum regional partner – indicating that neither operator may have been able to fill their planes with passengers. Iberia eventually withdrew its service in September 2008. In 2009 Ándalus Líneas Aéreas started flights between Gibraltar and Madrid. However, on 13 August 2010, the airline ceased operations because the Spanish aviation authorities withdrew their licence.
Following the takeover by EasyJet, GB Airways dropped its direct Gibraltar–London Heathrow service on 28 October 2006 despite apparently remaining popular. The reason cited by GB Airways was the "convenience of" concentrating all its London services onto a single hub at Gatwick. Later, a sale of several of GB Airways' Heathrow slots is believed to have netted GB Airways with up to £80m. In late 2007 GB Airways was bought by EasyJet (and thus ceased to be a British Airways franchise partner); all flights were rebranded as EasyJet in 2008.
Flights are available from Gibraltar to London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Luton, Bristol, Casablanca, Tangier and Manchester airports. During 2012 bmibaby offered a service to East Midlands Airport, but the airline ceased operations in September 2012.
A cable car runs from just south of the city centre to the Ape's Den and the Top of the Rock, which despite its name is actually the second highest peak of the Rock.
The road crossing into Spain was closed by the Spanish authorities in 1969 and only reopened for pedestrians in 1982 and for vehicles in 1985.
A ferry operated between Algeciras and Gibraltar until 1969. For a few months in 2004 Spain banned cruise ships which had visited Gibraltar from going to Spanish ports on the same journey. In 2003, the land frontier was closed for a day by Spain on the grounds that a visiting cruise liner, the MV "Aurora", was affected by contagious food poisoning. No cases in Gibraltar were reported.
The airport is built on the isthmus which the Spanish Government claim not to have been ceded in the Treaty of Utrecht, thus the integration of Gibraltar Airport in the Single European Sky system has been blocked by Spain. The 1987 agreement for joint control of the airport with Spain was rejected by the then Government of Gibraltar. All successive Governments of Gibraltar have rejected it, although welcoming joint use of the airport (which being next to the border could operate in a similar manner to Geneva Airport or Basel Airport). Following the "Cordoba Agreement" (between the UK, Spain and Gibraltar) in 2006, the joint use of the airport was finally agreed.
The road crossing from Gibraltar into Spain can often be subject to long delays. A loop road is located next to the border to hold cars waiting in the queue to cross into Spain. Motorists (and sometimes pedestrians) crossing the border are randomly subjected to long delays and searches by the Spanish authorities.
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Gulf of Finland
The Gulf of Finland (; ; ; ) is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland (to the north) and Estonia (to the south) all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn. The eastern parts of the Gulf of Finland belong to Russia, and some of Russia's most important oil harbours are located farthest in, near Saint Petersburg (including Primorsk). As the seaway to Saint Petersburg, the Gulf of Finland has been and continues to be of considerable strategic importance to Russia. Some of the environmental problems affecting the Baltic Sea are at their most pronounced in the shallow gulf.
The gulf has an area of . The length (from the Hanko Peninsula to Saint Petersburg) is and the width varies from near the entrance to on the meridian of Moshchny Island; in the Neva Bay, it decreases to . The gulf is relatively shallow, with the depth decreasing from the entrance to the gulf to the continent. The sharpest change occurs near Narva-Jõesuu, which is why this place is called the Narva wall. The average depth is with the maximum of . The depth of the Neva Bay is less than ; therefore, a channel was dug at the bottom for safe navigation. Because of the large influx of fresh water from rivers, especially from the Neva River (two-thirds of the total runoff), the gulf water has very low salinity – between 0.2 and 5.8 ‰ at the surface and 0.3–8.5 ‰ near the bottom. The average water temperature is close to in winter; in summer, it is at the surface and at the bottom. Parts of the gulf can freeze from late November to late April; the freezing starts in the east and gradually proceeds to the west. Complete freezing usually occurs by late January, and it may not occur in mild winters.
Frequent strong western winds cause waves, surges of water and floods.
The northern coast of the gulf is high and winding, with abundant small bays and skerries, but only a few large bays (Vyborg) and peninsulas (Hanko and Porkkalanniemi). The coast is mostly sloping; there are abundant sandy dunes, with occasional pine trees. The southern shores are smooth and shallow, but along the entire coast runs a limestone escarpment, the Baltic Klint, with a height up to . In the east, the gulf ends with Neva Bay; in the west it merges with the Baltic Sea.
The gulf contains numerous banks, skerries and islands. The largest include Kotlin Island with the city of Kronstadt (population 42,800), Beryozovye Islands, Lisiy Island, Maly Vysotsky Island with the nearby city of Vysotsk (population 1706), Hogland (Suursaari), Moshtchny (Lavansaari), Bolshoy Tyuters (Tytärsaari), Sommers, Naissaar, Kimitoön, Kökar, Seskar (Seiskari), Pakri Islands and others.
Starting in 1700, Russia constructed nineteen artificial islands with fortresses in the gulf. They aimed to defend Russia from maritime attacks, especially in the context of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. Such fortresses include Fort Alexander, Krasnaya Gorka, Ino, Totleben and .
The largest rivers flowing into the gulf are the Neva (from the east), the Narva (from the south), and the Kymi (from the north). Keila, Pirita, Jägala, Kunda, Luga, Sista and Kovashi flow into the gulf from the south. From the north flow the Sestra River, Porvoo, Vantaa and several other small rivers. The Saimaa Canal connects the gulf with the Saimaa lake.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the western limit of the Gulf of Finland as a line running from Spithami (59°13'N), in Estonia, through the Estonian island of Osmussaar from SE to NW and on to the SW extremity of Hanko Peninsula (22°54'E) in Finland.
The modern depression can be traced to the incision of large rivers during the Cenozoic prior to the Quaternary glaciation. These rivers eroded the sedimentary strata above the Fennoscandian Shield. In particular the eroded material was made up of Ediacaran (Vendian) and Cambrian-aged claystone and sandtone. As erosion progressed, the rivers encountered harder layers of Ordovician-aged limestone, leading to the formation of the cliffs of Baltic Klint in northern Estonia and Ingria. Subsequently the depression was somewhat reshaped by glacier activities. Its retreat formed the Littorina Sea, whose water level was some 7–9 metres higher than the present level of the Baltic Sea. Some 4,000 years ago the sea receded and shoals in the gulf have become its islands. Later uplifting of the Baltic Shield skewed the surface of the gulf; for this reason, its ancient northern shores are significantly higher than the southern ones.
The climate in the area is humid continental climate, characterized by temperate to hot summers and cold, occasionally severe winters with regular precipitation. The vegetation is dominated by a mixture of coniferous and deciduous forests and treeless coastal meadows and cliffs. The major forest trees are pine, spruce, birch, willows, rowan, aspen, common and gray alder. In the far eastern part of the gulf vegetation of the marshy areas consists mainly of bulrush and reeds, as well as fully aquatic plants, such as white and yellow waterlilies and acute sedge. Aquatic plants in the shallow waters of the gulf include "Ruppia" and spiny naiad.
Fish species of the gulf include Atlantic salmon, viviparous eelpout, gobies, belica, loach, European chub, common minnow, silver bream, common dace, ruffe, Crucian carp, stickleback, European smelt, common rudd, brown trout, tench, pipefish, burbot, perch, gudgeon, lumpsucker, roach, lamprey, vendace, garfish, common whitefish, common bream, zander, orfe, northern pike, spined loach, sprat, Baltic herring, sabre carp, common bleak, European eel and Atlantic cod. Commercial fishing is carried out in spring and autumn. Grey seal and ringed seal are met in the gulf, but the latter is very rare.
Many ancient sites were discovered on the shores of the gulf dated to up to nine thousand years old. Humans began to inhabit these places soon after the ice age glaciers have retreated and the water level of the Littorina Sea lowered to reveal the land. Remains of about 11 Neolithic settlements were found since 1905 in the mouth of the river Sestra River (Leningrad Oblast). They contain arrow tips and scrapers made of quartz, numerous food utensils and traces of fire camps – all indicative of hunting rather than agricultural or animal husbandry activities.
The gulf coast was later populated by Finno-Ugric peoples. Eesti (or Chud) inhabited the region of the modern Estonia, Votes were living on the south of the gulf and Izhorians to the south of Neva River. Korela tribes settled to the west of Lake Ladoga. In the 8th and 9th centuries, the banks of Neva and of the Gulf of Finland was populated by East Slavs, in particular by Ilmen Slavs and Krivichs. They were engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing. From the 8th to the 13th century, the Gulf of Finland and Neva were parts of the waterway from Scandinavia, through Eastern Europe to the Byzantine Empire.
From the 9th century, the eastern coast of the gulf belonged to Veliky Novgorod and were called Vodskaya Pyatina. As a result of the 1219 crusade and the Battle of Lindanise, the Northern Estonia became part of Denmark (Danish Estonia). In the 12th century, the city Reval (, ) was established on the territory of modern Tallinn. As a result of the Estonian uprising in 1343, the Northern Estonia was taken over by the Teutonic Order and sold by Denmark in 1346. In 1559, during the Livonian War, the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek in Old Livonia sold his lands to King Frederick II of Denmark for 30,000 thalers. The Danish king gave the territory to his younger brother Magnus who landed on Saaremaa with an army in 1560. The whole of Saaremaa became a Danish possession in 1573, and remained so until it was transferred to Sweden in 1645.
In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Finnish tribes on the north of the gulf were conquered by the Swedes who then proceeded to the Slavs. The first encounter is attributed to 1142 when 60 Swedish ships attacked 3 Russian merchant vessels. After a Swedish attack in 1256, the Russian army of Alexander Nevsky crossed the frozen gulf and raided the Swedish territories in the modern Finland. In 1293, the Vyborg Castle and city of Vyborg was founded by the Swedish marshal Torkel Knutsson. The castle was fought over for decades between Sweden and the Novgorod Republic. By the Treaty of Nöteborg in 1323, Vyborg was finally recognized as a part of Sweden. It withstood a prolonged siege by Daniil Shchenya during the Russo–Swedish War of 1496–1499. The town's trade privileges were chartered by King Eric of Pomerania in 1403. Vyborg remained in Swedish hands until its capture by Peter the Great in the Great Northern War (1710).
In 1323, the Treaty of Nöteborg set the border between Sweden and Russia along the river Sestra. In the 15th century, the Izhorian lands of the Novgorod Republic were attached to the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1550, Gustav I of Sweden founded a city on the site of modern Helsinki. As a result of the Russian defeat in the Ingrian War (1610–1617) and the Treaty of Stolbovo (1617) the lands on the Gulf of Finland and Neva River became part of the Swedish Ingria. Its capital Nyen was located in the delta of Neva River.
Russia reclaimed the eastern part of the gulf as a result of the victory in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). On 16 May 1703, Saint Petersburg was founded in the mouth of Neva River, not far from Nyen, and in 1712 it became Russia's capital. To protect the city from the Swedish fleet, the Kronshlot fortress was built on an artificial island near the Kotlin Island in May 1704. By 1705, five more such forts were built nearby composing the city Kronstadt. These fortifications, nicknamed by the contemporaries "the Russian Dardanelles", were designed to control the Gulf waterway.
In 1710, the cities of Peterhof and Oranienbaum were founded on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. On 27 July 1714, near the Hanko Peninsula, the Russian Navy won the Battle of Gangut – a decisive victory over the Imperial Swedish Navy. The Russo-Swedish war ended in 1721 by the Treaty of Nystad, by which Russia received all the lands along the Neva and the Gulf of Finland, as well as Estland, Swedish Livonia and western part of the Karelian Isthmus, including Vyborg. However, Finland was returned to Sweden. The war resumed in (1788–1790), and the Battle of Hogland occurred on 6 July 1788 near the island Gogland. Both the battle and the war were relatively minor and indecisive, with the outcome of Russia retaining its territories.
The next Russo-Swedish war was fought in (1808–1809). It ended with the Treaty of Fredrikshamn giving the Russia rights on the territory of Finland and Åland Islands. The newly established in 1809 Grand Duchy of Finland received broad autonomy within the Russian Empire and Western Karelia was returned to Finland. On 6 December 1917, the Parliament of Finland promulgated the Finnish Declaration of Independence. Western Karelia was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War.
Estonia declared independence on 24 February 1918 and fought a war of independence. The republic existed until 1940 and then was annexed by the Soviet Union. Estonia regained its independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
In March 1921, the Kronstadt rebellion by sailors was put down by the Red Army. The Gulf of Finland had several major naval operations during World War II. In August 1941, during the evacuation of the Baltic Fleet from Tallinn to Kronstadt, German forces sank 15 Russian military vessels, (5 destroyers, 2 submarines, 3 guard ships, 2 minesweepers, 2 gunboats and 1 Motor Torpedo Boat) as well as 43 transport and support ships. Several ships still remain on the gulf bottom near Cape Juminda, and a monument was raised there in memory of those lost in the events.
In 1978, construction was started on the Saint Petersburg Dam aiming to protect Saint Petersburg from the frequent floods. The work was halted at 60% completion in the late 1980s, due to the financial problems related to the breakup of the Soviet Union; it was resumed in 2001 and is — as of August 2011 — complete.
The southern coast of the gulf contains the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant and a network of ports and unique natural and historical places. Navigation has long been the dominant activity in the gulf. The major port cities and their functions are, in Russia: Saint Petersburg (all kinds of goods), Kronstadt (container shipping),
Lomonosov (general cargo, containers, metals), Vyborg (general cargo), Primorsk (oil and petroleum products), Vysotsk (oil and coal), Ust-Luga (oil, coal, timber, containers); in Finland: Helsinki (containers), Kotka (containers, timber, agricultural products; it is the main transhipment cargo port for Russia), Hanko (containers, vehicles), Turku (containers, rail ferry), Kilpilahti/Sköldvik harbour (oil refinery); in Estonia: Tallinn (grains, refrigerators, oil), Paldiski, Sillamäe. Gulf of Finland is also part of the Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea–Baltic Canal. Important goods include apatite from the Kola Peninsula, Karelian granite and greenstone, timber from Arkhangelsk Oblast and Vologda, ferrous metals from Cherepovets, coal from Donbass and the Kuznetsk Basin, pyrite from Ural, potassium chloride from Solikamsk, oil from Volga region, and grains from many regions of Russia.
Passenger transport on the gulf includes a number of ferry lines which connect the following ports: Helsinki and Hanko (Finland), Mariehamn (Åland Islands), Stockholm and Kapellskär (Sweden), Tallinn and Paldiski, Rostock (Germany), Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad (Russia), as well as many other cities.
Another major and historical activity in the gulf is fishing, especially on the northern coast near Vyborg, Primorsk and on the southern coast near Ust-Luga. Commercial fish species are herring, sprats, European smelt, whitefishes, carp bream, roaches, perch, European eel, lamprey and others. In 2005, the catchment was 2000 tons by the ships of Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast alone.
In September 2005 the agreement was signed on the construction of the Nord Stream offshore gas pipeline on the Baltic Sea, from Vyborg to the German city of Greifswald. The first line was expected become operational in 2011. Afterwards, the first line of Nord Stream was laid by May 2011 and was inaugurated on 8 November 2011; the second line was inaugurated on 8 October 2012.
The bottom of the gulf is one of the world's largest ship cemeteries. Because of the low salinity and cold waters, and no shipworms, the ships are relatively well preserved. Since the 6th century, major waterways were running through the gulf, and from the 8th to the 10th century, about 3,000 tonnes of silver was transported there. Later, the gulf was actively used by Sweden and Russia for transport of goods. Every year saw dozens of lost ships. In the fall of 1743, 17 Russian warships returning from Finland sank in just 7 hours, and in the summer of 1747, 26 merchant vessels sank within 4 hours near Narva. A record was set in 1721 when during the evacuation of Russian troops from Finland, more than 100 vessels were lost within 3 months, including 64 in a single night.
By the end of 1996, about 5,000 submerged objects were identified in the Russian part of the gulf, including 2,500 ships, 1,500 airplanes, and small items such as boats, anchors, tanks, tractors, cars, cannons, and even naval mines, aerial bombs, torpedoes, and other ammunition. The ships belonged to Russia (25%), Germany (19%), United Kingdom (17%), Sweden (15%), Netherlands (8%), and Finland (7%). The remaining 9% are from Norway, Denmark, France, United States, Italy, Estonia, and Latvia. These objects present potential hazards to navigation, fishery, coastal construction, laying of submarine pipelines and cables, and the environment. Mines were laid in the gulf during World War I (38,932 units), the Russian Civil War, and the Soviet-Finnish War (1939–1940), with an estimated total number of 60,000; 85,000 more mines were set during World War II, and only a fraction of all those were eliminated after the wars.
The ecological condition of the Gulf of Finland, Neva Bay and Neva River is unsatisfactory. There is significant contamination by ions of mercury and copper, organochlorine pesticides, phenols, petroleum products and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Cleaning of waste water in Saint Petersburg was started in 1979 and by 1997 about 74% of wastewater was purified. This number rose to 85% in 2005, to 91.7% by 2008, and as of 2009 was expected to reach 100% by 2011 with the completion of the expansion of the main sewerage plant. Nevertheless, in 2008, the Federal Service of Saint Petersburg announced that no beach of Saint Petersburg is fit for swimming.
Fish catchment decreased 10 times between 1989 and 2005. Apart from pollution, another reason for that is hydraulic and engineering works. For example, construction of new ports in Ust-Luga and Vysotsk and on Vasilyevsky Island adversely affected the spawning of fish. Extraction of sand and gravel in the Neva Bay for the land reclamation destroy spawning sites of European smelt.
Construction of the Saint Petersburg Dam reduced water exchange of the Neva Bay with the eastern part of the gulf by 10–20% that increased the contamination level of Neva Bay. The largest changes occur within from the dam. Some shallow areas between Saint Petersburg and the dam are turning into swamps. Waterlogging and the associated rotting of plants may eventually lead to eutrophication of the area. Also worrying is expansion of oil ports in the gulf and the construction of a treatment center for spent fuel from the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant.
The port of Kronstadt is currently serving as a transit point for the import in Russia of radioactive waste through the Baltic Sea. The waste, mostly depleted uranium hexafluoride, is further transported through Saint Petersburg to Novouralsk, Angarsk and other cities of eastern Russia. This transit point will be moved from Saint Petersburg to the port Ust-Luga, which is about west of Saint Petersburg, and within the Border Security Zone of Russia, as decided by the Russian government in 2003 (Order No. 1491-r of 14 October 2003). It is expected that after this completes it should reduce the ecological risks for Saint Petersburg. Ust-Luga is envisioned to be the largest transportation and logistics hub in northwestern Russia. However, in 2015 it was reported that some construction plans in Ust-Luga were frozen, and the construction of Ust-Luga Multimodal Complex, supposed to be the transit point for radioactive waste, never started.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12098
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Gdańsk
Gdańsk (, also , ; ; ; ) is a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland. With a population of 470,907, Gdańsk is the capital and largest city of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and one of the most prominent cities within the cultural and geographical region of Kashubia. It is Poland's principal seaport and the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.
The city is situated on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay on the Baltic Sea, in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, the resort town of Sopot, and suburban communities; these form a metropolitan area called the Tricity ("Trójmiasto"), with a population approaching 1.4 million. Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motława River, connected to the Leniwka, a branch in the delta of the nearby Vistula River, which drains 60 percent of Poland and connects Gdańsk with the Polish capital, Warsaw. Together with the nearby port of Gdynia, Gdańsk is also a notable industrial centre.
The city's history is complex, with periods of Polish, Prussian and German rule, and periods of autonomy or self-rule as a free city state. In the early-modern age, Gdańsk was a royal city of Poland. It was considered the wealthiest and the largest city of Poland, before the 18th century rapid growth of Warsaw. In the late Middle Ages it was an important seaport and shipbuilding town and, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a member of the Hanseatic League.
In the interwar period, owing to its multi-ethnic make-up and history, Gdańsk lay in a disputed region between Poland and Germany, which became known as the Polish Corridor. The city's ambiguous political status was exploited, furthering tension between the two countries, which would ultimately culminate in the Invasion of Poland and the first clash of the Second World War just outside the city limits, followed by the flight and expulsion of the German-speaking majority of the city's population in 1945.
In the 1980s, Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which played a major role in bringing an end to communist rule in Poland and helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
Gdańsk is home to the University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, the National Museum, the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, the Museum of the Second World War, the Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the European Solidarity Centre. The city also hosts St. Dominic's Fair, which dates back to 1260, and is regarded as one of the biggest trade and cultural events in Europe. Gdańsk has also topped rankings for the quality of life, safety and living standards worldwide.
The city's name is thought to originate from the Gdania River, the original name of the Motława branch on which the city is situated. The name of a settlement was recorded after St. Adalbert's death in AD 997 as "urbs Gyddanyzc" and it was later written as "Kdanzk" in 1148, "Gdanzc" in 1188, "Danceke" in 1228, "Gdansk" in 1236, "Danzc" in 1263, "Danczk" in 1311, "Danczik" in 1399, "Danczig " in 1414, "Gdąnsk" in 1656. In Polish the modern name of the city is pronounced . In English (where the diacritic over the "n" is frequently omitted) the usual pronunciation is or . The German name, "Danzig", is pronounced .
The city's Latin name may be given as either "Gedania", "Gedanum" or "Dantiscum"; the variety of Latin names reflects the mixed influence of the city's Polish, German and Kashubian heritage. Other former spellings of the name include "Dantzig", "Dantsic" and "Dantzic".
On special occasions the city is also referred to as "The Royal Polish City of Gdańsk" (Polish "Królewskie Polskie Miasto Gdańsk", Latin "Regia Civitas Polonica Gedanensis", Kashubian "Królewsczi Polsczi Gard Gduńsk"). In the Kashubian language the city is called . Although some Kashubians may also use the name "Our Capital City Gduńsk" ("Nasz Stoleczny Gard Gduńsk") or "The Kashubian Capital City Gduńsk" ("Stoleczny Kaszëbsczi Gard Gduńsk"), the cultural and historical connections between the city and the region of Kashubia are debatable and use of such names rises controversy among Kashubians.
The first written record thought to refer to Gdańsk is the "vita" of Saint Adalbert. Written in 999, it describes how in 997 Saint Adalbert of Prague baptised the inhabitants of "urbs Gyddannyzc", "which separated the great realm of the duke [i.e. Boleslaw the Brave of Poland] from the sea." No further written sources exist for the 10th and 11th centuries. Based on the date in Adalbert's "vita", the city celebrated its millennial anniversary in 1997.
Archaeological evidence for the origins of the town was retrieved mostly after World War II had laid 90 percent of the city centre in ruins, enabling excavations. The oldest seventeen settlement levels were dated to between 980 and 1308. It is generally thought that Mieszko I of Poland erected a stronghold on the site in the 980s, thereby connecting the Polish state ruled by the Piast dynasty with the trade routes of the Baltic Sea. Traces of buildings and housing from the 10th century have been found in archaeological excavations of the city.
The site was ruled as a duchy of Poland by the Samborides. It consisted of a settlement at the modern Long Market, settlements of craftsmen along the "Old Ditch", German merchant settlements around "St Nicholas's" church and the old Piast stronghold. In 1186, a Cistercian monastery was set up in nearby Oliwa, which is now within the city limits. In 1215, the ducal stronghold became the centre of a Pomerelian splinter duchy. At that time the area of the later city included various villages. From at least 1224/25 a German market settlement with merchants from Lübeck existed in the area of today's Long Market. In 1224/25, merchants from Lübeck were invited as "hospites" ("immigrants with specific privileges") but were soon (in 1238) forced to leave by Swantopolk II of the Samborides during a war between Swantopolk and the Teutonic Knights, during which Lübeck supported the latter. Migration of merchants to the town resumed in 1257. Significant German influence did not reappear until the 14th century, after the takeover of the city by the Teutonic Knights.
At latest in 1263 Pomerelian duke, Swantopolk II. granted city rights under Lübeck law to the emerging market settlement. It was an autonomy charter similar to that of Lübeck, which was also the primary origin of many settlers. In a document of 1271 the Pomerelian duke Mestwin II addressed the Lübeck merchants settled in the city as his loyal citizens from Germany.
In 1300, the town had an estimated population of 2,000. While overall the town was not a very important trade centre at that time, it had some relevance in the trade with Eastern Europe. Low on funds, the Samborides lent the settlement to Brandenburg, although they planned to take the city back and give it to Poland. Poland threatened to intervene, and Brandenburg left the town. Subsequently, the city was taken by Danish princes in 1301. The Teutonic Knights were hired by the Polish nobles to drive out the Danes.
In 1308, the town was taken by Brandenburg and the Teutonic Knights restored order. Subsequently, the Knights took over control of the town. Primary sources record a massacre carried out by the Teutonic Knights on the local population, of 10,000 people, but the exact number killed is subject of dispute in modern scholarship. Some authors accept the number given in the original sources, while others consider 10,000 to have been a medieval exaggeration, although scholarly consensus is that a massacre of some magnitude did take place. The events were used by the Polish crown to condemn the Teutonic Knights in a subsequent papal lawsuit.
The knights colonised the area, replacing local Kashubians and Poles with German settlers. In 1308, they founded "Osiek" "Hakelwerk" near the town, initially as a Slavic fishing settlement. In 1340, the Teutonic Knights built a large fortress, which became the seat of the knights' Komtur. In 1346 they changed the Town Law of the city, which then consisted only of the "Rechtstadt", to Kulm law. In 1358, Danzig joined the Hanseatic League, and became an active member in 1361. It maintained relations with the trade centres Bruges, Novgorod, Lisboa and Sevilla. Around 1377, the Old Town was equipped with city rights as well. In 1380, the "New Town" was founded as the third, independent settlement.
After a series of Polish-Teutonic Wars, in the Treaty of Kalisz (1343) the Order had to acknowledge that it would hold Pomerelia as a fief from the Polish Crown. Although it left the legal basis of the Order's possession of the province in some doubt, the city thrived as a result of increased exports of grain (especially wheat), timber, potash, tar, and other goods of forestry from Prussia and Poland via the Vistula River trading routes, although after its capture, the Teutonic Knights tried to actively reduce the economic significance of the town. While under the control of the Teutonic Order German migration increased. The Order's religious networks helped to develop Danzig's literary culture. A new war broke out in 1409, culminating in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), and the city came under the control of the Kingdom of Poland. A year later, with the First Peace of Thorn, it returned to the Teutonic Order.
In 1440, the city participated in the foundation of the Prussian Confederation which was an organisation opposed to the rule of the Teutonic Knights. The organisation in its complaint of 1453 mentioned repeated cases in which the Teutonic Knights imprisoned or murdered local patricians and mayors without a court verdict. Upon the request of the organisation King Casimir IV of Poland reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. This led to the Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the State of the Teutonic Order (1454–1466). Since 1454, the city was authorized by the King to mint Polish coins. The local mayor pledged allegiance to the King during the incorporation in March 1454 in Kraków, and the city again solemnly pledged allegiance to the King in June 1454 in Elbląg, recognizing the prior Teutonic annexation and rule as unlawful. On 25 May 1457 the city gained its rights as an autonomous city.
On 15 May 1457, Casimir IV of Poland granted the town the "Great Privilege", after he had been invited by the town's council and had already stayed in town for five weeks. With the "Great Privilege", the town was granted full autonomy and protection by the King of Poland. The privilege removed tariffs and taxes on trade within Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia (present day Belarus and Ukraine) and conferred on the town independent jurisdiction, legislation and administration of her territory, as well as the right to mint its own coin. Furthermore, the privilege united "Old Town", "Osiek" and "Main Town", and legalised the demolition of "New Town", which had sided with the Teutonic Knights. By 1457, "New Town" was demolished completely, no buildings remained.
Gaining free and privileged access to Polish markets, the seaport prospered while simultaneously trading with the other Hanseatic cities. After the Second Peace of Thorn (1466) between Poland and the Teutonic Order the warfare ended permanently. After the Union of Lublin between Poland and Lithuania in 1569 the city continued to enjoy a large degree of internal autonomy (cf. Danzig law). Being the largest and one of the most influential cities of Poland, it enjoyed voting rights during the royal election period in Poland.
In 1569 a Mennonite Church was founded here.
In the 1575 election of a king to the Polish throne, Danzig supported Maximilian II against Stephen Báthory. It was the latter who eventually became monarch but the city, encouraged by the secret support of Denmark and Emperor Maximilian, shut its gates against Stephen. After the Siege of Danzig (1577), lasting six months, the city's army of 5,000 mercenaries was utterly defeated in a field battle on 16 December 1577. However, since Stephen's armies were unable to take the city by force, a compromise was reached: Stephen Báthory confirmed the city's special status and her Danzig law privileges granted by earlier Polish kings. The city recognised him as ruler of Poland and paid the enormous sum of 200,000 guldens in gold as payoff ("apology").
Around 1640, Johannes Hevelius established his in the Old Town. Polish King John III Sobieski regularly visited Hevelius numerous times.
Beside a majority of German-speakers, whose elites sometimes distinguished their German dialect as Pomerelian, the city was home to a large number of Polish-speaking Poles, Jewish Poles, Latvian speaking Kursenieki, Flemings and Dutch. In addition, a number of Scots took refuge or migrated to and received citizenship in the city. During the Protestant Reformation, most German-speaking inhabitants adopted Lutheranism. Due to the special status of the city and significance within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the city inhabitants largely became bi-cultural sharing both Polish and German culture and were strongly attached to the traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The city suffered a last great plague and a slow economic decline due to the wars of the 18th century. As a stronghold of Stanisław Leszczyński's supporters during the War of the Polish Succession, it was taken by the Russians after the Siege of Danzig in 1734.
The Danzig Research Society (in German ) founded in 1743 was one of the first of its kind.
Danzig was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1793, in the Second Partition of Poland. Both the Polish and the German-speaking population largely opposed the Prussian annexation and wished the city to remain part of Poland. The mayor of the city stepped down from his office due to the annexation, and also notable city councilor Jan (Johann) Uphagen, historian and art collector, whose Baroque house is now a museum, resigned as a sign of protest against the annexation. An attempted student uprising against Prussia led by was crushed quickly by the authorities in 1797.
During the Napoleonic era the city became a free city from 1807 to 1814.
In 1815, after France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, it again became part of Prussia and became the capital of within the province of West Prussia. The city's longest serving president was Robert von Blumenthal, who held office from 1841, through the revolutions of 1848, until 1863. With the unification of Germany in 1871 under Prussian hegemony, the city became part of the German Empire and remained so until 1919, after Germany's defeat in World War I.
When Poland regained its independence after World War I with access to the sea as promised by the Allies on the basis of Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" (point 13 called for "an independent Polish state", "which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea"), the Poles hoped the city's harbour would also become part of Poland.
However, in the end – since Germans formed a majority in the city, with Poles being a minority (in the 1923 census 7,896 people out of 335,921 gave Polish, Kashubian or Masurian as their native language) – the city was not placed under Polish sovereignty. Instead, in accordance with the terms of the Versailles Treaty, it became the Free City of Danzig (German: ), an independent quasi-state under the auspices of the League of Nations with its external affairs largely under Polish control – without, however, any public vote to legitimize Germany's loss of the city. Poland's rights also included free use of the harbour, a Polish post office, a Polish garrison in Westerplatte district, and customs union with Poland. This arrangement was inspired by the history of the city, which for hundreds of years was part of Poland, with which it shared economic interests, thanks to which it flourished, and within which it enjoyed wide autonomy. This led to a considerable tension between the local German administration and the Republic of Poland. The Free City had its own constitution, national anthem, parliament, and government (). It issued its own stamps as well as its currency, the Danzig gulden.
With the growth of Nazism among Germans, Anti-Polish sentiment increased and both Germanisation and segregation policies intensified, in the 1930s the rights of local Poles were commonly violated and limited by the local administration. Polish children were refused admission to public Polish-language schools, premises were not allowed to be rented to Polish schools and preschools. Due to such policies, only 8 Polish-language public schools existed in the city, and Poles managed to organize 7 more private Polish schools. In 1937, Poles who sent their children to private Polish schools were demanded to transfer children to German schools, under threat of police intervention, and attacks were carried out on Polish schools and Polish youth. German militias carried out numerous beatings of Polish activists, scouts and even mailmen, as "punishment" for distributing the Polish press. German students attacked and expelled Polish students from the technical university. Dozens of Polish surnames were forcibly Germanized, while Polish symbols that reminded that for centuries Gdańsk was part of Poland were removed from the city's landmarks, such as the Artus Court and the Neptune's Fountain. From 1937, the employment of Poles by German companies was prohibited, and already employed Poles were fired, the use of Polish in public places was banned and Poles were not allowed to enter several restaurants, in particular those owned by Germans. In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II, local Polish railwaymen were victims of beatings, and after the invasion, they were also imprisoned and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
In the early 1930s, the local Nazi Party capitalised on pro-German sentiments and in 1933 garnered 50% of vote in the parliament. Thereafter, the Nazis under Gauleiter Albert Forster achieved dominance in the city government, which was still nominally overseen by the League of Nations' High Commissioner. The German government officially demanded the return of Danzig to Germany along with an extraterritorial (meaning under German jurisdiction) highway through the area of the Polish Corridor for land-based access from the rest of Germany. Hitler used the issue of the status of the city as a pretext for attacking Poland and on May 1939, during a high level meeting of German military officials explained to them: "It is not Danzig that is at stake. For us it is a matter of expanding our Lebensraum in the east", adding that there will be no repeat of the Czech situation, and Germany will attack Poland at first opportunity, after isolating the country from its Western Allies. After the German proposals to solve the three main issues peacefully were refused and the sixteen point proposal had been undermined by the British Government (Navy Minister Cooper), German-Polish relations rapidly deteriorated. Germany attacked Poland on 1 September after having signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union (which included a Secret Part regarding the division of Poland and the Baltic States between the two countries) in late August and after postponing the attack three times.
The German attack began in Danzig, with a bombardment of Polish positions at Westerplatte by the German battleship , and the landing of German infantry on the peninsula. Outnumbered Polish defenders at Westerplatte resisted for seven days before running out of ammunition. Meanwhile, after a fierce day-long fight (1 September 1939), defenders of the Polish Post office were tried and executed then buried on the spot in the Danzig quarter of Zaspa in October 1939. In 1998 a German court overturned their conviction and sentence.
The city was officially annexed by Nazi Germany and incorporated into the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. About 50 percent of members of the Jewish Community of Danzig had left the city within a year after a Pogrom in October 1937, after the Kristallnacht riots in November 1938 the community decided to organize its emigration and in March 1939 a first transport to Palestine started. By September 1939 barely 1,700 mostly elderly Jews remained. In early 1941, just 600 Jews were still living in Danzig, most of whom were later murdered in the Holocaust.
Out of the 2,938 Jewish community in the city 1,227 were able to escape from the Nazis before the outbreak of war. Nazi secret police had been observing Polish minority communities in the city since 1936, compiling information, which in 1939 served to prepare lists of Poles to be captured in Operation Tannenberg. On the first day of the war, approximately 1,500 ethnic Poles were arrested, some because of their participation in social and economic life, others because they were activists and members of various Polish organisations. On 2 September 1939, 150 of them were deported to the Sicherheitsdienst camp Stutthof some from Danzig, and murdered. Many Poles living in Danzig were deported to Stutthof or executed in the Piaśnica forest.
In 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, eventually causing the fortunes of war to turn against Germany. As the Soviet Army advanced in 1944, German populations in Central and Eastern Europe took flight, resulting in the beginning of a great population shift. After the final Soviet offensives began in January 1945, hundreds of thousands of German refugees converged on Danzig, many of whom had fled on foot from East Prussia, some tried to escape through the city's port in a large-scale evacuation involving hundreds of German cargo and passenger ships. Some of the ships were sunk by the Soviets, including the after an evacuation was attempted at neighbouring Gdynia. In the process, tens of thousands of refugees were killed.
The city also endured heavy Allied and Soviet air raids. Those who survived and could not escape had to face the Soviet Army, which captured the heavily damaged city on 30 March 1945, followed by large-scale rape and looting. In line with the decisions made by the Allies at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the city was integrated with Poland. The remaining German residents of the city who had survived the war fled or were expelled to postwar Germany, and the city was repopulated by ethnic Poles; up to 18 percent (1948) of them had been deported by the Soviets in two major waves from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union, such as the eastern portion (Kresy) of pre-war Poland.
Parts of the historic old city of Gdańsk, which had suffered large-scale destruction during the war, were rebuilt during the 1950s and 1960s. The reconstruction was not tied to the city's pre-war appearance, but instead was politically motivated as a means of culturally cleansing and destroying all traces of German influence from the city. Any traces of German tradition were ignored by the communists, suppressed, or regarded as "Prussian barbarism" only worthy of demolition, while communist and Flemish/Dutch, Italian and French influences were used to replace the historically accurate Germanic architecture which the city was built upon since the 14th century.
Boosted by heavy investment in the development of its port and three major shipyards for Soviet ambitions in the Baltic region, Gdańsk became the major shipping and industrial centre of the People's Republic of Poland.
In December 1970, Gdańsk was the scene of anti-regime demonstrations, which led to the downfall of Poland's communist leader Władysław Gomułka. During the demonstrations in Gdańsk and Gdynia, military as well as the police opened fire on the demonstrators causing several dozen deaths. Ten years later, in August 1980, Gdańsk Shipyard was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement.
In September 1981, to deter Solidarity, Soviet Union launched Exercise Zapad-81, the largest military exercise in history, during which amphibious landings were conducted near Gdańsk. Meanwhile, the Solidarity held its first national congress in Hala Olivia, Gdańsk when more than 800 deputies participated. Its opposition to the Communist regime led to the end of Communist Party rule in 1989, and sparked a series of protests that overthrew the Communist regimes of the former Soviet bloc. Solidarity's leader, Lech Wałęsa, became President of Poland in 1990. In 2014 the European Solidarity Centre, a museum and library devoted to the history of the movement, opened in Gdańsk.
Gdańsk native Donald Tusk became Prime Minister of Poland in 2007, and President of the European Council in 2014. Today Gdańsk is a major shipping port and tourist destination.
In January 2019, the Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was assassinated by a man who had just been released from prison for violent crimes; the man claimed after stabbing the mayor in the abdomen, near the heart that the mayor's political party had been responsible for imprisoning him. Though Adamowicz was able to undergo a multi-hour surgery to try to treat his wounds, he died the next day.
In October 2019, the City of Gdańsk was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the Concord category as a recognition of the fact that "the past and present in Gdańsk are sensitive to solidarity, the defense of freedom and human rights, as well as to the preservation of peace".
Gdańsk has a climate with both oceanic and continental influences. According to some categorizations, it has an oceanic climate (Cfb), while others classify it as belonging to the continental climate zone (Dfb). It actually depends on whether the mean reference temperature for the coldest winter month is set at or . Gdańsk's dry winters and the precipitation maximum in summer are indicators of continentality. However seasonal extremes are less pronounced than those in inland Poland.
The city has moderately cold and cloudy winters with mean temperature in January and February near or below and mild summers with frequent showers and thunderstorms. Average temperatures range from and average monthly rainfall varies per month with a rather low annual total of . In general, it is damp, variable, and mild.
The seasons are clearly differentiated. Spring starts in March and is initially cold and windy, later becoming pleasantly warm and often very sunny. Summer, which begins in June, is predominantly warm but hot at times with temperature reaching as high as at least couple times a year with plenty of sunshine interspersed with heavy rain. Gdańsk averages 1,700 hours of sunshine per year. July and August are the warmest months. Autumn comes in September and is at first warm and usually sunny, turning cold, damp, and foggy in November. Winter lasts from December to March and includes periods of snow. January and February are the coldest months with the temperature sometimes dropping as low as .
The industrial sections of the city are dominated by shipbuilding, petrochemical, and chemical industries, and food processing. The share of high-tech sectors such as electronics, telecommunications, IT engineering, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals is on the rise. Amber processing is also an important part of the local economy, as the majority of the world's amber deposits lie along the Baltic coast. The Pomeranian Voivodeship, including Gdańsk, is also a major tourist destination in the summer, as millions of Poles and other European tourists flock to the beaches of the Baltic coastline.
Major companies in Gdańsk:
The city has some buildings surviving from the time of the Hanseatic League. Most tourist attractions are located along or near Ulica Długa ("Long Street") and Długi Targ ("Long Market"), a pedestrian thoroughfare surrounded by buildings reconstructed in historical (primarily during the 17th century) style and flanked at both ends by elaborate city gates. This part of the city is sometimes referred to as the Royal Route, since it was once the former path of processions for visiting Kings of Poland.
Walking from end to end, sites encountered on or near the Royal Route include:
Gdańsk has a number of historical churches, including St. Catherine's Church and St. Mary's Church ("Bazylika Mariacka"). This latter is a municipal church built during the 15th century, and is the largest brick church in the world.
The city's 17th-century fortifications represent one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments ("Pomnik historii"), as designated on 16 September 1994 and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland.
Other main sights in the historical city centre include:
Main sights outside the historical city centre include:
In 2011–2015 the Warsaw-Gdańsk-Gdynia railway route underwent a major upgrading costing $3 billion, partly funded by the European Investment Bank, including track replacement, realignment of curves and relocation of sections of track to allow speeds up to , modernization of stations, and installation of the most modern ETCS signalling system, which was completed in June 2015. In December 2014 new Alstom Pendolino high-speed trains were put into service between Gdańsk, Warsaw and Kraków reducing the rail travel time from Gdańsk to Warsaw to 2 hours 58 minutes, further reduced in December 2015 to 2 hours 39 minutes.
Gdańsk is the starting point of the EuroVelo 9 cycling route which continues southward through Poland, then into the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia before ending at the Adriatic Sea in Pula, Croatia.
There are many popular professional sports teams in the Gdańsk and Tricity area. Amateur sports are played by thousands of Gdańsk citizens and also in schools of all levels (elementary, secondary, university).
The city's professional football club is Lechia Gdańsk. Founded in 1945, they play in the Ekstraklasa, Poland's top division. Their home stadium, Stadion Energa Gdańsk, was one of the four Polish stadiums to host the UEFA Euro 2012 competition. In addition, it will also host the 2020 UEFA Europa League Final. Other notable football clubs are Gedania 1922 Gdańsk and Polonia Gdańsk, both playing on the second tier in the past.
Other notable clubs include:
The city's Hala Olivia was a venue for the official 2009 EuroBasket, and the Ergo Arena was one of the 2013 Men's European Volleyball Championship, 2014 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship and 2016 European Men's Handball Championship venues.
Contemporary Gdańsk is the capital of the province called Pomeranian Voivodeship and is one of the major centres of economic and administrative life in Poland. Many important agencies of the state and local government levels have their main offices here: the Provincial Administration Office, the Provincial Government, the Ministerial Agency of the State Treasury, the Agency for Consumer and Competition Protection, the National Insurance regional office, the Court of Appeals, and the High Administrative Court.
Gdańsk Voivodeship was extended in 1999 to include most of former Słupsk Voivodeship, the western part of Elbląg Voivodeship and Chojnice County from Bydgoszcz Voivodeship to form the new Pomeranian Voivodeship.
The area of the region was thus extended from and the population rose from 1,333,800 (1980) to 2,198,000 (2000). By 1998, Tricity constituted an absolute majority of the population; almost half of the inhabitants of the new region live in the centre.
Legislative power in Gdańsk is vested in a unicameral Gdańsk City council (Rada Miasta), which comprises 34 members. Council members are elected directly every four years. Like most legislative bodies, the City Council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government.
Gdańsk is divided into 34 administrative divisions: 6 "dzielnicas" and 28 "osiedles". Gdańsk "dzielnicas" include: Chełm, Piecki-Migowo, Przymorze Wielkie, Śródmieście, Wrzeszcz Dolny, Wrzeszcz Górny.
"Osiedles": Aniołki, Brętowo, Brzeźno, Jasień, Kokoszki, Krakowiec-Górki Zachodnie, Letnica, Matarnia, Młyniska, Nowy Port, Oliwa, Olszynka, Orunia-Św. Wojciech-Lipce, Osowa, Przeróbka, Przymorze Małe, Rudniki, Siedlce, Sobieszewo Island, Stogi, Strzyża, Suchanino, Ujeścisko-Łostowice, VII Dwór, Wzgórze Mickiewicza, Zaspa-Młyniec, Zaspa-Rozstaje, Żabianka-Wejhera-Jelitkowo-Tysiąclecia.
There are 15 higher schools including 3 universities. In 2001 there were 60,436 students, including 10,439 graduates.
Gdańsk is twinned with:
The end of World War II is a significant break in continuity with regards to the inhabitants of Gdańsk.
German citizens began to flee en masse as the Soviet Red Army advanced, composed of both spontaneous flights driven by rumors of Soviet atrocities, and organised evacuation starting in the summer of 1944 which continued into the spring of 1945. Approximately 1% (100,000) of the German civilian population residing east of the Oder–Neisse line perished in the fighting prior to the surrender in May 1945. German civilians were also sent as "reparations labour" to the Soviet Union. In mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million ethnic Germans remained on the territories that were placed under Polish jurisdiction in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement.
Poles from other parts of Poland replaced the former German population, with the first settlers arriving in March of 1945. On 30 March 1945, the Gdańsk Voivodeship was established as the first administrative Polish unit in the Recovered Territories. As of 1 November 1945, around 93,029 Germans remained within the city limits. While the Germans were interned and expelled, close to 5 million settlers were either attracted or forced to settle the areas between 1945 and 1950. The locals of German descent who declared Polish nationality were permitted to remain, as of 1 January 1949 13,424 persons who had received Polish citizenship in a post-war "ethnic vetting" process lived in Gdańsk.
The settlers can be grouped according to their background:
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Graviton
In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical quantum of gravity, an elementary particle that mediates the force of gravity. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathematical problem with renormalization in general relativity. In string theory, believed to be a consistent theory of quantum gravity, the graviton is a massless state of a fundamental string.
If it exists, the graviton is expected to be massless because the gravitational force is very long range and appears to propagate at the speed of light. The graviton must be a spin-2 boson because the source of gravitation is the stress–energy tensor, a second-order tensor (compared with electromagnetism's spin-1 photon, the source of which is the four-current, a first-order tensor). Additionally, it can be shown that any massless spin-2 field would give rise to a force indistinguishable from gravitation, because a massless spin-2 field would couple to the stress–energy tensor in the same way that gravitational interactions do. This result suggests that, if a massless spin-2 particle is discovered, it must be the graviton.
It is hypothesized that gravitational interactions are mediated by an as yet undiscovered elementary particle, dubbed the "graviton". The three other known forces of nature are mediated by elementary particles: electromagnetism by the photon, the strong interaction by gluons, and the weak interaction by the W and Z bosons. All three of these forces appear to be accurately described by the standard model of particle physics. In the classical limit, a successful theory of gravitons would reduce to general relativity, which itself reduces to Newton's law of gravitation in the weak-field limit.
The term graviton was originally coined in 1934 by Soviet physicists Dmitrii Blokhintsev and F.M. Gal'perin.
When describing graviton interactions, the classical theory of Feynman diagrams, and semiclassical corrections such as one-loop diagrams behave normally. However, Feynman diagrams with at least two loops lead to ultraviolet divergences. These infinite results cannot be removed because quantized general relativity is not perturbatively renormalizable, unlike quantum electrodynamics and models such as the Yang–Mills theory. Therefore, incalculable answers are found from the perturbation method by which physicists calculate the probability of a particle to emit or absorb gravitons, and the theory loses predictive veracity. Those problems and the complementary approximation framework are grounds to show that a theory more unified than quantized general relativity is required to describe the behavior near the Planck scale.
Like the force carriers of the other forces (see photon, gluon), gravitation plays a role in general relativity, in defining the spacetime in which events take place. In some descriptions energy modifies the "shape" of spacetime itself, and gravity is a result of this shape, an idea which at first glance may appear hard to match with the idea of a force acting between particles. Because the diffeomorphism invariance of the theory does not allow any particular space-time background to be singled out as the "true" space-time background, general relativity is said to be background-independent. In contrast, the Standard Model is "not" background-independent, with Minkowski space enjoying a special status as the fixed background space-time. A theory of quantum gravity is needed in order to reconcile these differences. Whether this theory should be background-independent is an open question. The answer to this question will determine our understanding of what specific role gravitation plays in the fate of the universe.
String theory predicts the existence of gravitons and their well-defined interactions. A graviton in perturbative string theory is a closed string in a very particular low-energy vibrational state. The scattering of gravitons in string theory can also be computed from the correlation functions in conformal field theory, as dictated by the AdS/CFT correspondence, or from matrix theory.
A feature of gravitons in string theory is that, as closed strings without endpoints, they would not be bound to branes and could move freely between them. If we live on a brane (as hypothesized by brane theories), this "leakage" of gravitons from the brane into higher-dimensional space could explain why gravitation is such a weak force, and gravitons from other branes adjacent to our own could provide a potential explanation for dark matter. However, if gravitons were to move completely freely between branes, this would dilute gravity too much, causing a violation of Newton's inverse-square law. To combat this, Lisa Randall found that a three-brane (such as ours) would have a gravitational pull of its own, preventing gravitons from drifting freely, possibly resulting in the diluted gravity we observe, while roughly maintaining Newton's inverse square law. See brane cosmology.
A theory by Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das adds quantum mechanical corrections (using Bohm trajectories) to general relativistic geodesics. If gravitons are given a small but non-zero mass, it could explain the cosmological constant without need for dark energy and solve the smallness problem. The theory received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation for
explaining the smallness of cosmological constant. Also the theory received an Honorable Mention in the 2015 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation for naturally explaining the observed large-scale homogeneity and isotropy of the universe due to the proposed quantum corrections.
While gravitons are presumed to be massless, they would still carry energy, as does any other quantum particle. Photon energy and gluon energy are also carried by massless particles. It is unclear which variables might determine graviton energy, the amount of energy carried by a single graviton.
Alternatively, if gravitons are massive at all, the analysis of gravitational waves yielded a new upper bound on the mass of gravitons. The graviton's Compton wavelength is at least , or about 1.6 light-years, corresponding to a graviton mass of no more than . This relation between wavelength and mass-energy is calculated with the Planck–Einstein relation, the same formula that relates electromagnetic wavelength to photon energy. However, if gravitons are the quanta of gravitational waves, then the relation between wavelength and corresponding particle energy is fundamentally different for gravitons than for photons, since the Compton wavelength of the graviton is not equal to the gravitational-wave wavelength. Instead, the lower-bound graviton Compton wavelength is about times greater than the gravitational wavelength for the GW170104 event, which was ~ 1,700 km. The report did not elaborate on the source of this ratio. It is possible that gravitons are not the quanta of gravitational waves, or that the two phenomena are related in a different way.
Unambiguous detection of individual gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector. The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of gravitons with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.
LIGO and Virgo collaborations' observations have directly detected gravitational waves. Others have postulated that graviton scattering yields gravitational waves as particle interactions yield coherent states. Although these experiments cannot detect individual gravitons, they might provide information about certain properties of the graviton. For example, if gravitational waves were observed to propagate slower than "c" (the speed of light in a vacuum), that would imply that the graviton has mass (however, gravitational waves must propagate slower than "c" in a region with non-zero mass density if they are to be detectable). Recent observations of gravitational waves have put an upper bound of on the graviton's mass. Astronomical observations of the kinematics of galaxies, especially the galaxy rotation problem and modified Newtonian dynamics, might point toward gravitons having non-zero mass.
Most theories containing gravitons suffer from severe problems. Attempts to extend the Standard Model or other quantum field theories by adding gravitons run into serious theoretical difficulties at energies close to or above the Planck scale. This is because of infinities arising due to quantum effects; technically, gravitation is not renormalizable. Since classical general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to be incompatible at such energies, from a theoretical point of view, this situation is not tenable. One possible solution is to replace particles with strings. String theories are quantum theories of gravity in the sense that they reduce to classical general relativity plus field theory at low energies, but are fully quantum mechanical, contain a graviton, and are thought to be mathematically consistent.
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Göta Canal
The Göta Canal () is a Swedish canal constructed in the early 19th century.
The canal is long, of which were dug or blasted, with a width varying between and a maximum depth of about .
The Göta Canal is a part of a waterway long, linking a number of lakes and rivers to provide a route from Gothenburg (Göteborg) on the west coast to Söderköping on the Baltic Sea via the Trollhätte kanal and Göta älv river, through the large lakes Vänern and Vättern.
This waterway was dubbed as Sweden's Blue Ribbon ().
Contrary to the popular belief it is not correct to consider this waterway is as a sort of the "greater" Göta Canal: the Trollhätte Canal and the Göta Canal are completely separate entities.
The idea of a canal across southern Sweden was first put forward as early as 1516, by Hans Brask, the bishop of Linköping. However, it was not until the start of the 19th century that Brask's proposals were put into action by Baltzar von Platen, a German-born former officer in the Swedish Navy. He organised the project and obtained the necessary financial and political backing. His plans attracted the enthusiastic backing of the government and the new king, Charles XIII, who saw the canal as a way of kick-starting the modernisation of Sweden. Von Platen himself extolled the modernising virtues of the canal in 1806, claiming that mining, agriculture and other industries would benefit from "a navigation way through the country."
The project was inaugurated on 11 April 1810 with a budget of 24 million Swedish riksdalers. It was by far the greatest civil engineering project ever undertaken in Sweden up to that time, taking 22 years of effort by more than 58,000 workers. Much of the expertise and equipment had to be acquired from abroad, notably from Britain, whose canal system was the most advanced in the world at that time. The Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford, renowned for his design of the Caledonian Canal in Scotland, developed the initial plans for the canal and travelled to Sweden in 1810 to oversee some of the early work on the route. Many other British engineers and craftsmen were imported to assist with the project, along with significant quantities of equipment - even apparently mundane items such as pickaxes, spades and wheelbarrows.
The Göta Canal was officially opened on 26 September 1832. Von Platen himself did not live to see the completion of the canal, having died shortly before its opening. However, it was never an economic success. The arrival of the railways in 1855 quickly made it redundant, as trains could carry passengers and goods far more rapidly and did not have to shut down with the arrival of winter, which made the canal impassable for five months of the year. By the 1870s, the canal's goods traffic had dwindled to just three major types of bulk goods - forest products, coal and ore, none of which required rapid transportation. Traffic volumes stagnated after that and never recovered.
Bishop Hans Brask's original justifications for the canal's construction were the onerous Sound Dues imposed by Denmark–Norway on all vessels passing through the narrow Øresund channel between Sweden and Denmark and the trouble with the Hanseatic League. The canal enabled vessels travelling to or from the Baltic Sea to bypass the Øresund and so evade the Danish toll. In 1851, the tycoon André Oscar Wallenberg founded the Company for Swedish Canal Steamboat Transit Traffic to carry goods from England to Russia via the canal. However, it only ran two trips between St Petersburg and Hull via Motala before the Crimean War halted Anglo-Russian trade. After the war ended, the great powers pressured Denmark into ending the four-hundred-year-old tradition of the Sound Dues, thus eliminating at a stroke the canal's usefulness as an alternative to the Øresund.
The canal had one major industrial legacy in the shape of Motala Verkstad - a factory established in Motala to produce the machines such as cranes and steam dredgers that were needed to build the canal. This facility has sometimes been referred to as the "cradle of the Swedish engineering industry". After the canal was opened, Motala Verkstad focused on producing equipment, locomotives and rolling stock for the newly constructed railways, beginning a tradition of railway engineering that continues to this day in the form of AB Svenska Järnvägsverkstädernas Aeroplanavdelning (ASJA) that was bought by the aeroplane manufacturer SAAB in Linköping.
These days the canal is primarily used as a tourist and recreational attraction. Around two million people visit the canal each year on pleasure cruises - either on own boats or on one of the many cruise ships - and related activities. The canal sometimes is ironically called the "divorce ditch" () because of the troubles that unexperienced couples have to endure while trying to navigate the narrow canal and the many locks by themselves.
The canal has 58 locks and can accommodate vessels up to long, wide and in draft.
From the east-coast of Sweden to Lake Vänern the locks are as follows (with meters of height difference per lock):
"Lake Vättern" (88 m above sea level)
"Lake Viken" (92 m above sea level – canal's highest point)
After Lake Vänern (44 m above sea level) Trollhätte kanal to Gothenburg and the west-coast of Sweden.
Maximal ship or boat measurements:
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General Motors
General Motors Company, commonly referred to as General Motors (GM), is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Detroit that designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts, and sells financial services, with global headquarters in Detroit's Renaissance Center. It was originally founded by William C. Durant on September 16, 1908, as a holding company. The company is the largest American automobile manufacturer, and one of the world's largest. As of 2019, General Motors is ranked #13 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
General Motors manufactures vehicles in many countries; its core automobile brands include Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac. It also either owns or holds a significant stake in foreign brands such as Holden, Wuling, Baojun, and Jiefang. Annual worldwide sales volume reached a milestone of 10 million vehicles in 2016.
In addition to its twelve brands, General Motors holds a 20% stake in IMM, and a 77% stake in GM Korea. It also has a number of joint-ventures, including Shanghai GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and FAW-GM in China, GM Uzbekistan, General Motors India, General Motors Egypt, and Isuzu Truck South Africa. General Motors employs 212,000 people and does business in more than 140 countries. General Motors is divided into four business segments: "GM North America" (GMNA), "GM International Operations" (GMIO), Cruise, and "GM Financial".
The company also operates a mobility division called Maven, which operates car-sharing services in the United States, and is studying alternatives to individual vehicle ownership.
GM Defense is General Motors' military defense division, catering to the needs of the military for advanced technology and propulsion systems for military vehicles.
General Motors led global annual vehicle sales for 77 consecutive years from 1931 through 2007, longer than any other automaker, and is still among the world's largest automakers by vehicle unit sales.
General Motors acts in most countries outside the U.S. via wholly owned subsidiaries, but operates in China through ten joint ventures. GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety, security and information services.
In 2009, General Motors shed several brands, closing Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer, and emerged from a government-backed Chapter 11 reorganization. In 2010, the reorganized GM made an initial public offering that was one of the world's top five largest IPOs to date, and returned to profitability later that year.
William C. Durant's Durant-Dort Carriage Company, of Flint, Michigan, had become the leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in the United States by 1900. Durant was averse to automobiles, but fellow Flint businessman James H. Whiting, owner of Flint Wagon Works, sold him the Buick Motor Company in 1904. Durant formed the "General Motors Company" in 1908 as a holding company, with partner Charles Stewart Mott. GM's first acquisition was Buick, which Durant already owned, then Oldsmobile, on November 12, 1908. In 1909 Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, Oakland (predecessor of Pontiac), and the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan (predecessors of GMC). Durant over-leveraged the fledgling company in making these acquisitions, and was removed by the board of directors in 1910 at the behest of the bankers who backed the loans to keep GM in business.
Durant re-entered the automotive industry the following year by co-founding the Chevrolet Motor Company with Swiss race car driver Louis Chevrolet (who left the company bearing his name in 1915). In 1916 GM was reincorporated in Detroit as "General Motors Corporation". By 1917 the Chevrolet Motor Company had become successful enough that Durant, with the backing of McLaughlin and Pierre S. du Pont, reacquired a controlling interest in GM. Chevrolet Motor Company was consolidated into GM on May 2, 1918. Only two years later du Pont orchestrated the removal of Durant once again and replaced him with Alfred P. Sloan.
Sloan established annual styling changes making previous year's models to be "dated". He also implemented the pricing strategy that all car companies use today. The pricing strategy had Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac priced from least expensive to most, respectively.
General Motors grew in prominence surpassing Ford Motors selling just over 50% of car sales in 1962. With the prominence of the company, president of General Motors, Charlie Wilson said it best - “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”.
Their industrial dominance was displayed as they manufactured products other than cars and trucks such as aircraft (North American Aviation), construction equipment (Terex), trains (Electro-Motive), and appliances (Frigidaire).
On July 10, 2009, following Chapter 11 reorganization after an initial filing on June 8 2009, the original General Motors sold assets and some subsidiaries to an entirely new company including the trademark General Motors. Liabilities were left with the original GM freeing the companies of many liabilites resulting in a new GM.
GM emerged from government backed Chapter 11 reorganization after an initial filing on June 8, 2009. Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program the US Treasury invested $49.5 billion in General Motors and recovered $39 billion when it sold its shares on December 9, 2013, resulting in a loss of $10.3 billion. The Treasury invested an additional $17.2 billion into GM's former financing company, GMAC (now Ally). The shares in Ally were sold on December 18, 2014, for $19.6 billion netting $2.4 billion. A study by the Center for Automotive Research found that the GM bailout saved 1.2 million jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in tax revenue.
Also in 2009 General Motors of Canada Limited was not part of the General Motors Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the company shed several brands, closing Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer, while selling Saab Automobile to Dutch automaker Spyker, and emerged from a government-backed Chapter 11 reorganization. In 2010, the reorganized GM made an initial public offering that was one of the world's top five largest IPOs to date, and returned to profitability later that year.
Based on global sales, General Motors is routinely among the world's largest automakers. Headquartered at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, GM employs approximately 180,000 people around the world. In 2009, General Motors sold 6.5 million cars and trucks globally; in 2010, it sold 8.39 million.
, Mary Barra is the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of the board and Mark Reuss is the president. The head of design, Edward T. Welburn, was the first African American to lead a global automotive design organization, and was the highest ranking African American in the US motor industry in 2014. On April 7, 2016, he announced his retirement from General Motors after 44 years, effective July 1, 2016. He was replaced by Michael Simcoe.
As part of the company's advertising, Ed Whitacre announced the company's 60-day money-back guarantee and repayment of a $6.7 billion loan from the government ahead of schedule. On December 12, 2013, GM announced that Mary Barra, 51, executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, was elected by the board of directors to become the next CEO of the company succeeding Dan Akerson on January 15, 2014. Barra also joined the GM board. From June 2009 to March 2011, the company had three chief executive officers and three chief financial officers.
The company has reported annual profits since 2010. It can carry forward previous losses to reduce tax liability on future earnings. It earned $4.7 billion in 2010. The "Wall Street Journal" estimated the tax break, including credits for costs related to pensions and other expenses, can be worth as much as $45 billion over the next 20 years.
In 2010, General Motors ranked second on the list with 8.5 million units produced globally. In 2011, GM returned to the first place with 9.025 million units sold worldwide, corresponding to 11.9% market share of the global motor vehicle industry. The top two markets in 2011 were China, with 2,547,203 units, and the United States, with 2,503,820 vehicles sold. The Chevrolet brand was the main contributor to GM performance, with 4.76 million vehicles sold around the world in 2011, a global sales record.
In May 2013 during a commencement speech, CEO Dan Akerson suggested that GM was on the cusp of rejoining the S&P 500 index. GM was removed from the index as it approached bankruptcy in 2009.
On April 24, 2014, CNNMoney reported that GM profits fell to $108 million for the first three months of 2014. GM now estimates the cost of their 2014 recall due to faulty ignition switches, which have been linked to at least 124 deaths, at $1.5 billion. Shares of GM were down 16% for the year before the new announcement of GM's lower profits.
On January 4, 2016, "Fortune" reported that GM led a $1 billion equity financing in the transportation network company (TNC) Lyft.com. This was GM's first investment in the ride-sharing ventures and its reported participation ($500,000,000) in the round is considered to be indicative of its efforts towards the future of transportation, which it believes will be "connected, seamless and autonomous".
As of February 2017:
General Motors Canada Limited is the Canadian allied subsidiary of General Motors. The employees are not all Canadian, as some salaried personnel are from the U.S. and work for the company. GM products focus primarily on its four core divisions — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. The GM restructuring has resulted in a lower break-even point for annual sales and renewed profits because of the loss of millions of jobs.
In mid-2005, GM announced that its corporate chrome power emblem "Mark of Excellence" would begin appearing on all recently introduced and all-new 2006 model vehicles produced and sold in North America. However, in 2009 the "New GM" reversed this, saying that emphasis on its four core divisions would downplay the GM logo.
In May 2012, GM recorded an 18.4% market share in the U.S. with stock imported. In November 2018, GM announced it would lay off more than 14,000 employees in North America, comprising 15% of its workforce and 25% of its executive staff in the region. The company plans to cease production in three assemblies (Lordstown Assembly in Ohio, Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly in Michigan and Oshawa The first GM Corporation in North America 1918 in Canada) and two engine/transmission (White Marsh, Maryland, and Warren, Michigan) plants during 2019. Employees from those plants would also be made redundant.
In 2008 the third-largest individual country by sales was Brazil with some 550,000 GM vehicles sold. In that year Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela sold another 300,000 GM vehicles, suggesting that the total GM sales in South America (including sales in other South American countries such as Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc.) in that year were at a similar level to sales in China.
On April 20, 2017, General Motors announced that the Venezuelan government had seized the General Motors Venezolana plant in Valencia.
Prior to their sale to Groupe PSA in 2017, Opel was the main GM brand name in Europe except in the United Kingdom, where GM's British subsidiary, Vauxhall, used its own "Vauxhall" brand name.
The Chevrolet brand was reintroduced in Europe in 2005, selling mostly rebranded Daewoo cars acquired by GM Korea. After having lost approximately $18B over 12 years, GM began phasing out mainstream sales of Chevrolet in Europe in late 2013, and finished by late 2015, to focus on Opel/Vauxhall. Chevrolets continue to be sold in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, through the GM Uzbekistan joint venture. Chevrolet still has a limited presence in Europe through imports of the Corvette and Camaro, while Cadillac maintains a limited presence as well.
In 2012, PSA Peugeot Citroën and General Motors formed an alliance, which involved General Motors acquiring seven percent of the PSA Group. The ownership was soon divested on December 13, 2013, generating "gross proceeds of €0.25 billion." By 2017, Groupe PSA considered taking over Opel from GM, after GM reported a loss of $257 million from its European operations in 2016, the sixteenth consecutive loss-making year for GM in Europe, bringing its total losses in Europe since 2000 to more than US$15 billion. On March 6, 2017, the sale of Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group for $2.3 billion was confirmed.
The company manufactures most of its China market vehicles locally. Shanghai GM, a joint venture with the Chinese company SAIC Motor, was created with Canadian Regal in 1990 on March 25, 1997. The Shanghai GM plant was officially opened on December 15, 1998, when the first Chinese-built Buick came off the assembly line. The SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile joint-venture is also successfully selling microvans under the Wuling brand (34 percent owned by GM). Much of General Motors' recent growth has been in the People's Republic of China, where its sales rose 66.9 percent in 2009, selling 1,830,000 vehicles and accounting for 13.4 percent of the market.
Buick is strong in China from early Introduction by the Canadian Buick sold to the last Emperor of China, later being led by the Buick Regal 1990 subcompact. The last emperor of China owned a Buick. The Cadillac brand was introduced in China in 2004, starting with exports to China. GM pushed the marketing of the Chevrolet brand in China in the mid-2000s as well. As part of this push, GM transferred Buick Sail to that brand as an attempt to appeal to Chinese middle-class buyers looking for small and affordable cars.
In August 2009 the joint venture of FAW GM Light Duty Commercial Vehicle Co Ltd was formed that mainly produces Jiefang light-duty trucks.
General Motors vehicle sales in China rose 28.8 percent to a record 2,351,610 units in 2010. GM set up an auto research center as part of a US250 million corporate campus in Shanghai to develop 'gasoline-hybrid cars, electric vehicles and alternative fuels, engines and new technologies'. The company plans to double its sales from 2010 to about 5 million units in China by 2015.
SAIC-GM-Wuling established the low-cost Baojun brand to better compete with domestic rivals, Chery, Geely and BYD for first-time buyers of cars priced around US$10,000. It is estimated that such market in China is about 5 million vehicles a year, larger than the auto market in France and Britain combined. However, some are worried that 'local brands like Baojun could eventually become threats to their parent brands if they compete more against established models over time'. Shanghai-GM-Wuling sold 1.23 million vehicles in 2010, mainly commercial vans and trucks, of which about 700,000 units were a van called Sunshine.
GM maintains a dealership presence in Japan, called , previously known as "GM Auto World Shop". Current GM Japan dealerships were either former Saturn dealerships or Isuzu dealership locations. GM products are also currently sold by the company Yanase Co., Ltd. since 1915.
In August 2011, GM announced plans to reactivate its plant that previously produced rebadged Chevrolet Blazer as Opel as well as Brazilian Blazer, and also build a new plant in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, which would produce 40,000 passenger cars per year for the Southeast Asian market. It is the third plant in Southeast Asia, after the Rayong plant, Thailand, and the Hanoi plant, Vietnam.
In October 2011, the South Korea Free Trade Agreement opened up the South Korean auto market to American made cars. GM owns (per December 31, 2011) 77.0% of its joint venture in South Korea, GM Korea.
On March 11, 2013, GM opened a new 190,300 square-foot manufacturing plant in Bekasi, Indonesia. In February 2015, GM announced they will close the Bekasi plant by the end of June and stop production of the Sonic in Thailand by mid-year.
GM announced on May 18, 2017, that it would exit the Indian market, which it had entered for the second time in 1996. The first time was in 1928 when it became the first car maker to manufacture cars in India. GM would, however, continue to manufacture cars from its Talegaon, Maharashtra plant for the export market. This plant has a capacity of 1,60,000 units annually. The older Halol, Gujarat plant with a capacity for 50,000 units stopped production on April 28, 2017. It will be sold, with GM in talks with China's SAIC Motor Corporation Ltd. The India arm's domestic sales for April 2016 – March 2017 declined to 25,823 units from 32,540 the previous year and market share contracted from 1.17 percent to 0.85 percent for the same period. However, exports surged 89 percent during the same period to 70,969 units. GMTC-I, GM's technical center in Bengaluru, India will continue doing its global work. About 400 employees, 8 percent of GM's total Indian work-force, would be affected by the pull-out. Weak product line-up and below par service quality were the reasons for the poor showing by GM in India. It will also affect 10,000 employees working with about 120 Outlets/Dealership of GM in India.
In February 2018, comments by CEO Mary Barra that GM's Korean operations' cost structures had "become challenging" fuelled speculation that the company might divest GM Korea, followed by a market exit. GM is currently negotiating a $2.8 billion investment plan for its Korean operations from the South Korean government, to be dispersed over the next decade. Furthermore, the company approached the Korea Development Bank to participate in a $2.7 billion debt swap issued by its Korean subsidiary.
According to the South Korean unit of General Motors, its domestic sales for March dropped by 58 percent, which is more than half compared to the past year. In February 2018, General Motors had said to shut down one factory and then decide what lies ahead for the remaining three plants in South Korea during rising losses there. In recent years, the US automaker pulled its Chevy brand from Europe which wedged GM Korea's exports since it was a major market for the Korean firm.
On February 17, 2020, GM announced it will withdraw from the Thai market and sell its Rayong plant to Great Wall Motors by the end of the year.
GM has a long history in Egypt which began in the 1920s with the assembly of cars and light pickup trucks for the local market. In the mid of the 1950s, GM withdrew from the Egyptian market. Some years later, the Ghabbour Brothers began to assemble Cadillac, Chevrolet and Buick models up to the 1990s. Since 1983 GM and Al-Monsour Automotive Company have owned General Motors Egypt, which is currently the only manufacturer of traditional GM branded vehicles in Egypt.
In the 1920s "Miller Brothers Nigeria" was founded as an importer of commercial vehicles of the Bedford brand into the country. In 1949, the company opened its own assembly plant and operated under the name Niger/Nigeria Motors. In 1965 the plant and its distribution network was split into different companies and renamed as Federated Motors Industries. In 1991 the company was taken in by a joint venture between General Motors and UACN of Nigeria.
Another manufacturing base of the GM for the African markets is the Industries Mécaniques Maghrébines headquartered in Kairouan, Tunisia, which assembles Isuzu and Mazda models for the Maghreb region.
Formed in 1975, General Motors East Africa (GMEA) was the largest assembler of commercial vehicles in the region exporting them from Kenya to East and Central African countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda and Burundi. Its facility located in Nairobi assembled a wide range of Isuzu trucks and buses including the popular Isuzu N-Series versatile light commercial vehicle, TF Series pick-ups and Isuzu bus chassis. In addition to assembly, GMEA also marketed the Chevrolet products Spark and Optra. Selling entire GM's 57.7 per cent stake in General Motors East Africa to Isuzu was announced on February 28, 2017. After finishing the sale, GMEA was renamed to Isuzu East Africa Limited, effective from August 1, 2017.
General Motors began operating in South Africa in 1913 through its wholly owned subsidiary, General Motors South Africa. Following the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, GM was forced to divest from South Africa, and GMSA became the independent Delta Motor Corporation. GM purchased a 49% stake in Delta in 1997 following the end of apartheid, and acquired the remaining 51% in 2004, reverting the company to its original name. By 2014 it was targeting the production of 50,000 cars a year but was being hampered by national labor unrest, strikes and protests. In May 2017, GM announced that it would exit the South Africa market by the end of 2017 by selling part of the business to Isuzu and look for a buyer for the rest of the business.
In New Zealand, GM was represented by locally assembled Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Pontiac vehicles from 1926, and Vauxhall cars from 1931. After World War II, the local production of Chevrolet and Vauxhalls resumed followed by Pontiac again in 1959.
In 1954 sales of fully imported Holden vehicles into New Zealand began. New Zealand assembly of Holdens began in 1957 and by the end of the 1960s Holdens replaced all Chevrolets and Pontiacs (both in 1968), and most Vauxhalls. Opel, Bedford, and Isuzu, vehicles were assembled or imported at different times during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. All local General Motors assembly plants in New Zealand closed by 1990. GM New Zealand was renamed Holden New Zealand in 1994.
In Australia, GM has been represented by the Holden brand since 1948. Vauxhall, Chevrolet, and Pontiac vehicles were also assembled in Australia, but production ceased by the end of 1968.
In 2012, GM established Opel as a niche marque in Australia and began to sell Opel branded cars in Australia. However, less than twelve months later, Opel sales ceased.
On December 10, 2013, GM announced that Holden would cease manufacturing operations in Australia by the end of 2017. Holden's Australian presence now only consists of a national sales company, a parts distribution centre and a global design studio. Holdens are now sourced from GM's Korean and North American operations, and PSA (Opel).
On February 17, 2020, GM announced that it would exit Australian, New Zealand, and Thailand markets, and confirmed that the Holden badge would cease to exist by 2021. The global design center and Lang Lang (Victoria) test track are set to be closed, with the remaining 200 staff catering for warranty-related claims for up to 10 years. Despite its announcement, GM will continue to have some presence in Australia, as they plan to export some Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles through a new entity called General Motors Specialty Vehicles, as plans are still on track to bring American-built brands to the region, which was announced before Holden's shutdown.
GM has participated over the years in the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), 24 Hours of Le Mans, NASCAR, SCCA, Supercars Championship, and many other world venues.
GM's engines were highly successful in the Indy Racing League (IRL) throughout the 1990s, winning many races in the small V-8 class. GM has also done much work in the development of electronics for GM auto racing. An unmodified Aurora V-8 in the Aerotech, captured 47 world records, including the record for speed endurance in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America. Recently, the Cadillac V-Series has entered motorsports racing.
GM has also used many cars in the American racing series NASCAR. Currently the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 is the only entry in the series, but in the past the Pontiac Grand Prix, Buick Regal, Oldsmobile Cutlass, Chevrolet Lumina, Chevrolet Malibu, Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Chevrolet Impala, and the Chevrolet SS were also used. GM has won a total of 40 NASCAR Cup Series manufacturer's championships, including 34 with Chevrolet, the most of any make in NASCAR history, 3 with Oldsmobile, 2 with Buick, and 1 with Pontiac. GM leads all other automobile manufacturers in races won in NASCAR's premier series at 1,011. Chevrolet leads individual makes with 677 wins.
In Australia, there is the Supercars Championship which is battled out by the two main rivals of (GM) Holden and Ford. The current Holden Racing Team cars are based on the Holden Commodore and run a 5.0-litre V8-cylinder engine producing . These cars have a top speed of and run 0–100 km/h in 3.8 seconds. The Holden Racing Team is Australia's most successful team in Australian touring car history. In 2006 and 2007, the drivers' championship was won by the very closely linked (now defunct) HSV Dealer Team. With Holden's demise in 2020, GM is expected to make the exported Chevrolet Camaro the successor-in-line to the Holden Commodore once existing deals are completed.
Research and development (R&D) at General Motors began organically as the continuation of such R&D as the various divisions (e.g., Cadillac, Buick, Olds, Oakland) were already doing for themselves before the merger. Its character was entirely empirical; it was whatever key people in each company had been competent enough to organize and pursue.
R. S. McLaughlin's Carriage Company in 1876 was designing and inventing Carriage Gear. The McLaughlin Companies became General Motors of Canada Limited.
Charles F. Kettering's Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco), at Dayton, Ohio, was still an independent firm at this time. Its work was well known to GM central management through its relationship as a supplier and consultancy to Cadillac and Buick.
In 1916, Durant organized the United Motors Corporation as an amalgamation of parts suppliers, supplying GM and other OEMs but independent of GM. Alfred P. Sloan, head of the newly acquired Hyatt Roller Bearing Corporation, became United Motors' CEO. United Motors acquired Delco, and Kettering began his association with Sloan. United Motors also acquired at this time the original Remy corporation (called the Remy Electric Company), a competitor of Delco. In 1918 General Motors bought United Motors. Various entities grew out of the original Delco and Remy, including the Dayton Metal Products Corporation, the General Motors Research Corporation, the Delco Division and Remy Electric Division of GM, Delco Remy (now Remy International, Inc.), ACDelco, Delco Electronics, and others. Today's main successor corporation is Delphi Automotive, which nowadays is an independent parent corporation.
The General Motors Research Corporation, at Dayton under Kettering, became a true automotive research center. During the next few decades it led the development of:
Although GM R&D (as it is known in colloquial shorthand) began as an organization largely built around one man (Kettering), it eventually evolved into a more modern organization whose path is shaped by individuals but not dominated entirely by any of them. World War II was a turning point wherein military affairs, after mingling with the technologies of applied science for some 80 years, first started to become fundamentally reinvented by them. Civilian life, too, changed in this direction. By the 1950s, corporations such as GM and many others were facing a new era of R&D, different from earlier ones. Less about genius inventors and individual inventions, and more about organizational progress and integrated systems, it raised new questions about where the capital for R&D would come from in an era of limitless demand for R&D (although not necessarily for production). Alfred Sloan, longtime CEO of GM (1920s to 1960s), discussed in his memoir (also considered a seminal management treatise) the relationships between government, academia, and private industry in the areas of basic science and applied science, in light of this new era. The views he laid out reflected (and influenced) wide consensus on these relationships that persists largely to today.
Today, GM R&D, headquartered in Warren, Michigan, is a network of six laboratories, six science offices, and collaborative relationships in over twelve countries including working relationships with universities, government groups, suppliers, and other partners from across the globe.
On September 7, 2014, at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in Detroit GM disclosed it would be introducing auto-pilot features into certain 2017 models of its cars, which would go on sale in 2016. The "super cruise" or vehicle-to-vehicle V2V technology is likely to be first introduced to the Cadillac range, enabling drivers to switch in and out of semi-automated mode. In December 2016, General Motors announced it would begin testing self-driving vehicles on public roads in Michigan after Gov. Rick Snyder signed a package of bills legalizing the operation of autonomous vehicles.
In March 2016, General Motors bought Cruise Automation, a San Francisco self-driving vehicle start-up, to develop self-driving cars that could be used in ride-sharing fleets.
In October 2017, General Motors acquired Strobe, a solid state LIDAR company. Strobe's prototypes produce brief "chirps" of frequency-modulated (FM) laser light, where the frequency within each chirp varies linearly. Measuring the phase and frequency of the echoing chirp allows the system to directly measure both the distance and the velocity of objects in the road ahead. Strobe, Cruise and GM will work together to develop the technology for future self-driving cars.
In November 2017 Two self-driving Chevy Bolt EV cars were seen during a media event by Cruise Automation, GM's autonomous car unit, in San Francisco, California, U.S. The automaker is already operating self-driving Chevy Bolts in San Francisco as part of a beta test run by the company's subsidiary.
In October 2018, Honda announced the investment of $2.75 billion in GM's self-driving car unit. The firm announced an initial investment of $275 million initially, followed by $2 billion within the year.
From the 1920s onward, General Motors always maintained an internal dialog about what its economy-car and small-car policies should be. The economy and size considerations often naturally overlapped, although a strong distinction was always drawn in the 20th century between policies for the U.S. market and policies for other markets. Economy (in some form) always had good demand anywhere, but its definition in the U.S. was long considered different from that in other markets. In this view, "economy" in the U.S. did not mean "small" in the sense of what qualified as "small" outside the U.S. The policy discussion often focused on topics like the higher demand for truly small cars in non-U.S. markets than in the U.S., and whether it made more sense to import a car into a certain country or to build it domestically within that country, either as some variant of knockdown or with truly extensive domestic sourcing. GM's acquisitions of Vauxhall Motors Ltd (UK, 1925) and Adam Opel AG (Germany, 1929), rather than starting new domestic companies to compete against them, were based on analyses that convinced GM managers that acquiring an existing domestic manufacturer was a better business decision.
Although GM since the 1920s has always offered economy models in the U.S. market (relative to that market's definition in any given decade) and had done research and development in the 1940s and 1950s in preparation for any potential rise of strong demand for truly small cars in the U.S. market, it has also been criticized over the decades for not doing enough to promote fuel efficiency in the U.S. market in the 1970s through 1990s. GM's response has been that it has always responded to market demands and that most Americans, despite anything they said to the contrary, did not actually demand (at purchasing-decision time) small size or fuel efficiency in their vehicles to any great or lasting extent. Although some U.S. consumers flocked temporarily to the ideal of fuel economy whenever fuel supply crises arose (such as 1973 and 1979), they flocked equally enthusiastically to SUVs when cheap fuel of the 1980s and 1990s temporarily shielded them from any downside to these choices.
Since the return of high fuel prices in the 2000s and 2010s, GM's interest in truly small-car programs for the U.S. market has been renewed. As part of General Motors Company development, GM revived one of its idled U.S. factories for the production of a small car in Orion, Michigan, with the creation of 1,200 American jobs. This will be the first time that GM produced a sub compact car in the United States since the Chevrolet Chevette ended production in 1986. This retooled plant will be capable of building 160,000 cars annually, including both small and compact vehicles. Production started in late 2011 with the Chevrolet Sonic.
General Motors has published principles regarding the environment and maintains an extensive website to inform the public. In 2008, General Motors committed to engineering half of its manufacturing plants to be landfill-free. In order to achieve its landfill-free status, production waste is recycled or reused in the manufacturing process.
The world's largest rooftop solar power installation was installed at General Motors Spanish Zaragoza Manufacturing Plant in late 2008. The Zaragoza solar installation has about of roof at the plant and contains about 85,000 solar panels. The installation was created, owned and operated by Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy, who lease the rooftop area from General Motors. In 2011, General Motors also invested $7.5 million in solar-panel provider Sunlogics, which will install solar panels on GM facilities.
GM has long worked on alternative-technology vehicles, and has led the industry with ethanol-burning flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on either E85 (ethanol) or gasoline. The company was the first to use turbochargers and was an early proponent of V6 engines in the 1960s, but quickly lost interest as muscle car popularity increased. They demonstrated gas turbine vehicles powered by kerosene, an area of interest throughout the industry, but abandoned the alternative engine configuration in view of the 1973 oil crisis. In the 1970s and 1980s, GM pushed the benefits of diesel engines and cylinder deactivation technologies with disastrous results due to poor durability in the Oldsmobile diesels and drivability issues in the Cadillac V8-6-4 variable-cylinder engines. In 1987, GM, in conjunction with AeroVironment, built the Sunraycer, which won the inaugural World Solar Challenge and was a showcase of advanced technology. Much of the technology from Sunraycer found its way into the Impact prototype electric vehicle (also built by Aerovironment) and was the predecessor to the General Motors EV1.
GM supported a compromise version of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard increase from , the first such increase in over 20 years. GM hinted that they will not introduce more Volt-based plug-in hybrids.
The company has publicly announced that it is committed to invest heavily in electric cars. In October 2017, GM's executive vice president of global development, Mark Reuss, announced that GM's vehicle lineup would feature 20 electric car models by 2023.
In May 2004, GM delivered the world's first full-sized hybrid pickups, the 1/2-ton Silverado/Sierra. These mild hybrids did not use electrical energy for propulsion, like GM's later designs. In 2005, the Opel Astra diesel Hybrid concept vehicle was introduced. The 2006 Saturn Vue Green Line was the first hybrid passenger vehicle from GM and is also a mild design. GM has hinted at new hybrid technologies to be employed that will be optimized for higher speeds in freeway driving.
GM offered the 2-mode hybrid system in the 2008–2013 Chevrolet Tahoe/GMC Yukon/Cadillac Escalade, and 2009–2013 GM 1/2 half-ton pickups. This hybrid technology, co-developed with DaimlerChrysler and BMW, was first used by GM in a diesel-electric hybrid powertrain (manufactured by Allison Transmission) for transit buses, starting in 2004.
Within the framework of its vehicle electrification strategy, GM introduced the Chevrolet Volt in 2010 as an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (EREV), an electric vehicle with back-up generators powered by gasoline, or series plug-in hybrid. The production Chevrolet Volt was available in late 2010 as a 2011 model with limited availability. GM delivered the first Volt during December 2010. The second-generation Volt was launched in the U.S. and Canada in October 2015. The second generation has an upgraded drivetrain and improved battery system that increased the all-electric range to from . In November 2018, GM announced it would cease Volt production in March 2019.
, global Volt/Ampera family sales totaled about 177,000 units since its inception in December 2010, including over 10,000 Opel/Vauxhall Amperas sold in Europe up to December 2015. The Volt family of vehicles ranked as the world's all-time top-selling plug-in hybrid , and it is also the third best selling plug-in electric car in history after the Nissan Leaf (375,000) and the Tesla Model S (253,000), . The Chevrolet Volt is also the U.S. all-time top-selling plug-in electric car with 148,556 units delivered through October 2018.
General Motors was the first company (in the modern era) to release an all-electric automobile. In 1990, GM debuted the "Impact" concept car at the Los Angeles Auto Show. It was the first car with zero-emissions marketed in the US in over three decades. The Impact was eventually produced as the EV1 for the 1996 model year. It was available through dealers located in only a few regions (e.g., California, Arizona, Georgia). Vehicles were leased, rather than sold, to individuals. In 1999 GM decided to cease production of the vehicles. When the individual leases had expired, they declined to renew the leases or allow the lessors to purchase them. All of the EV1s were eventually returned to General Motors and, with the exception of a few which were donated to museums, all were destroyed. The documentary film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" covered the EV1 story.
The EV1's cancellation had disappointed supporters of electric vehicles. In 2010, GM debuted the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with back-up generators powered by gasoline (range-extended electric vehicle). General Motors has announced that it is building a prototype two-seat electric vehicle with Segway. An early prototype of the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility vehicle—dubbed Project P.U.M.A. – was presented in New York at the 2009 New York International Auto Show.
In October 2011, General Motors announced the production of the Chevrolet Spark EV, an all-electric version of the third generation Chevrolet Spark, with availability limited to select U.S. and global markets. In October 2012, GM Korea announced it will start making and selling the Spark EV domestically in 2013. The production version was unveiled at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show. Within the framework of GM's vehicle electrification strategy, the Spark EV is the first all-electric passenger car marketed by General Motors in the U.S. since the EV1 was discontinued in 1999. The Spark EV was released in the U.S. in selected markets in California and Oregon in June 2013. Retail sales began in South Korea in October 2013. GM also plans to sell the Spark EV in limited quantities in Canada and select European markets.
GM began production of the Chevrolet Bolt EV in October 2016, the first ever mass market all-electric car with a range of more than . Deliveries in California are scheduled to begin in late 2016. The vehicle will be launched in all 50 US states and analysts expect it to sell around 30,000 units per year, though GM itself has not confirmed these estimates. The battery pack and most drivetrain components are built by LG and assembled in GM's Lake Orion plant.
In March 2019, the company announced that it would begin production of a new EV model in Lake Orion but declined to provide details about the vehicle at that time. In May 2019, General Motors received pushback on its plan to release a fleet of up to 2,500 modified Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. The company planned to release these vehicles by Q4 of 2019 as part of their initiatives to build a controlled self-driving fleet.
In January 2020, GM announced the return of the Hummer nameplate as a series of electric vehicles to be sold from within the GMC portfolio, known as the GMC Hummer EV. The first vehicle, a pickup truck variant, will go on sale in late 2021 with over 1,000 horsepower, to be followed by an SUV sometime in 2022–2023.
GM builds battery packs in southern Michigan. GM also established an automotive battery laboratory in Michigan. GM will be responsible for battery management systems and power electronics, thermal management, as well as the pack assembly. An existing GM facility at Brownstown Township was chosen to be upgraded as battery pack plant. LG Chem's U.S. subsidiary, Compact Power of Troy, Michigan, has been building the prototype packs for the development vehicles and will continue to provide integration support and act as a liaison for the program.
The 1966 GM Electrovan is credited with being the first hydrogen fuel cell car ever produced. Though fuel cells have been around since the early 1800s, General Motors was the first to use a fuel cell, supplied by Union Carbide, to power the wheels of a vehicle with a budget of "millions of dollars". In 2002, it was reported that GM spent about $100 million a year in research and development of fuel cell vehicle. In June 2007, Larry Burns, vice president of research and development, said he was not yet willing to say exactly when hydrogen vehicles would be mass-produced, but he said it should happen before 2020, the year many experts have predicted. He said "I sure would be disappointed if we weren't there" before 2020.
On July 2, 2013, GM and Honda announced a partnership to develop fuel cell systems and hydrogen storage technologies for the 2020 time frame. GM and Honda are leaders in fuel cell technology, ranking No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in total fuel cell patents filed between 2002 and 2012, with more than 1,200 between them according to the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index.
GM produces several flexible-fuel vehicles that can operate on E85 ethanol fuel or gasoline, or any blend of both. Since 2006 GM started featuring a bright yellow gas cap to remind drivers of the E85 capabilities.
GM is the leader in E85 flex fuel vehicles, with over 6 million FlexFuel vehicles on the road in the U.S. In 2010, GM pledged to have more than half of their annual vehicle production be E85 or biodiesel capable by 2012. As of 2012, GM offers 20 ethanol-enabled FlexFuel cars and trucks in the US, and offers more FlexFuel vehicles models than any other automaker.
GM Defense is the GM division leveraging GM's advanced technology propulsion systems, including Hydrotec Fuel Cell and Jouletec batteries for a variety of military applications including autonomous electric platforms and flex-fuel cell pickups converted for military use.
Since 1994, General Motors has donated over $23 million in cash and vehicles to the Nature Conservancy, and funding from GM supports many conservation projects.
In 1996, GMC partnered with the fashion industry as a part of the "GM/CFDA Concept: Cure", a collaboration between General Motors and the Fashion industry bringing awareness to and raising funds for breast cancer. The program involved five designers, each lending their artistic talents to customize five different vehicles. Nicole Miller, Richard Tyler, Anna Sui, Todd Oldham and Mark Eisen were tasked with transforming a Cadillac STS, Buick Riviera, GMC Yukon, Oldsmobile Bravada and Chevrolet Camaro Z28, respectively. The cars were then auctioned with the proceeds presented to the Nina Hyde Center at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show in 1997.
Since 1997, the GM Foundation has been a source of funding for Safe Kids USA's "Safe Kids Buckle Up" program, a national initiative to ensure child automobile safety through education and inspection.
Through 2002, the PACE Awards program, led by GM, EDS, and SUN Microsystems, has given over $1.2 billion of in-kind contributions which includes computers to over 18 universities to support engineering education. In 2009, the GM led group has helped the Pace Awards program worldwide.
In 2004, GM gave $51,200,000 in cash contributions and $17,200,000 in-kind donations to charitable causes.
The General Motors Foundation (GM Foundation) receives philanthropic bequests from General Motors. It is a 501(c)(3) foundation incorporated in 1976.
On March 21, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, General Motors began working with Ventec Life Systems to produce ventilators. GM's CEO Mary Barra stated, "We are working closely with Ventec to rapidly scale up production of their critically important respiratory products to support our country's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic." According to the statement, Ventec will borrow GM's resources and use their expertise to rapidly build new ventilators.
As it emerged from bankruptcy and company reorganization in 2010, GM structured its brand portfolio (brand architecture). Some nameplates like Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, and service brands like Goodwrench were discontinued. Others, like Saab, were sold. The practice of putting the "GM Mark of Excellence" on every car, no matter what the brand, was discontinued in August 2009. The company has moved from a corporate-endorsed hybrid brand architecture structure, where GM underpinned every brand to a multiple brand corporate invisible brand architecture structure. The company's familiar square blue "badge" has been removed from the Web site and advertising, in favor of a new, subtle all-text logo treatment on its U.S. site; the Canadian site still retains the blue "badge". In 2011, GM discontinued the Daewoo brand in South Korea and replaced it with the Chevrolet brand. GM holds about 96% of GM Korea (2011–present) which mainly designs and produces Chevrolet and Holden branded vehicles. GM holds about 25% of
GM Uzbekistan (2008–present) which produces Ravon, Chevrolet and Daewoo branded vehicles.
In February 2020, GM announced the retirement of the Holden brand due to poor sales. The brand will be completely phased out of both Australia and New Zealand, with cars ceasing to be sold from mid-2020, finally going defunct from 1 January 2021. It also announced that operations, such as servicing and extended warranties will be honoured for the next ten years. GM also announced that they would pull the Chevrolet brand from Thailand.
The 1936–1937 Flint sit-down strike against General Motors changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the domestic United States automobile industry.
After the first convention of UAW in 1936, the union decided that it could not survive by piecemeal organizing campaigns at smaller plants, as it had in the past, but that it could organize the automobile industry only by going after its biggest and most powerful employer, General Motors Corporation, focusing on GM's production complex in Flint, Michigan.
Organizing in Flint was a difficult and dangerous plan. GM controlled city politics in Flint and kept a close eye on outsiders. According to Wyndham Mortimer, the UAW officer put in charge of the organizing campaign in Flint, he received a death threat by an anonymous caller when he visited Flint in 1936. GM also maintained an extensive network of spies throughout its plants. This forced UAW members to keep the names of new members in secret and meeting workers at their homes.
As the UAW studied its target, it discovered that GM had only two factories that produced the dies from which car body components were stamped: one in Flint that produced the parts for Buicks, Pontiacs, and Oldsmobiles, and another in Cleveland that produced Chevrolet parts.
While the UAW called for a sit-down strike in Flint, the police, armed with guns and tear gas, attempted to enter the Fisher Body 2 plant on January 11, 1937. The strikers inside the plant pelted them with hinges, bottles, and bolts. At the time, Vice President John Nance Garner supported federal intervention to break up the Flint Strike, but this idea was rejected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president urged GM to distinguish a union so the plants could re-open. The strike ended after 44 days.
That development forced GM to bargain with the union. John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers and founder and leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, spoke for the UAW in those negotiations; UAW President Homer Martin was sent on a speaking tour to keep him out of the way. GM's representatives refused to be in the same room as the UAW's, so Governor Frank Murphy acted as a courier and intermediary between the two groups. Governor Murphy sent in the U.S. National Guard, not to evict the strikers, but rather to protect them from the police and corporate strike-breakers. The two parties finally reached agreement on February 11, 1937, on a one-page agreement that recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative for GM's employees who were members of the union for the next six months.
The tool and die strike of 1939, also known as the "strategy strike", was an ultimately successful attempt by the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) to be recognized as the sole representative for General Motors workers. In addition to representation rights, the UAW, working jointly with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), sought to resolve existing grievances of skilled workers.
From November 21, 1945, until March 13, 1946 (113 days), CIO's United Automobile Workers (UAW), organized "320,000 hourly workers" to form a US-wide strike against the General Motors Corporation, workers used the tactic of the sit down strike. It was "the longest strike against a major manufacturer" that the UAW had yet seen, and it was also "the longest national GM strike in its history." As director of the UAW's General Motors Department (coordinator of union relations with GM), Walter Reuther suggested to his colleagues the idea of striking the GM manufacturing plants with a 'one-at-a-time' strategy, which was "intended to maximize pressure on the target company." Reuther also put forth the demands of the strikers: a 30 percent increase in wages and a hold on product prices. However, the strike ended to the dissatisfaction of Walter Reuther and the UAW, and the workers received only a 17.5-percent increase in wages.
The 2007 General Motors strike was a strike from September 24 to 26, 2007, by the United Auto Workers against General Motors.
On September 24, 2007, General Motors workers represented by the United Auto Workers union went on strike against the company. The first US-wide strike against GM since 1970 was expected to idle 59 plants and facilities for an indefinite period of time. Talks broke down after more than 20 straight days of bargaining failed to produce a new contract. Major issues that proved to be stumbling blocks for an agreement included wages, benefits, job security and investments in US facilities.
Within hours, the ripple effect was felt in Canada with closures of two car assembly plants in Oshawa, Ontario, and a transmission facility in Windsor on September 25. However, on September 26, a tentative agreement was reached, and the strike's end was announced by UAW officials in a news conference at 4 a.m. By the following day, all GM workers in both countries were back to work.
On the morning of September 15, 2019, the United Auto Workers announced in a press conference that General Motors employees would begin striking at 11:59 PM after talks broke down to renew their contract, which expired earlier that day at 12:01 AM. This strike shut down operations in nine states, including 33 manufacturing plants and 22 parts distribution warehouses.
After 40 days, the "longest strike by autoworkers in a decade" (and the longest against GM since 1970) came to an end on October 25, 2019, as United Auto Workers members voted to approve a new deal with GM, it cost GM more than $2bn and Union members have been getting by on $275 a week in strike pay.
Between 1938 and 1950, General Motors (GM) monopolized the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries. It has been alleged that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.
Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a pioneering book accusing car manufacturers of being slow to introduce safety features, and reluctant to spend money on improving safety. The subject for which the book is probably most widely known, the rear-engined GM Chevrolet Corvair, is covered in the first chapter. It relates to the first (1960–1964) models that had a swing-axle suspension design which was prone to 'tuck under' in certain circumstances. In substitution for the cost-cutting lack of a front stabilizer bar (anti-roll bar), Corvairs required tire pressures that were outside of the tire manufacturer's recommended tolerances. The Corvair relied on an unusually high front to rear pressure differential (15 psi front, 26 psi rear, when cold; 18 psi and 30 psi hot), and if one inflated the tires equally, as was standard practice for all other cars at the time, the result was dangerous over-steer.
In early March 1966, several media outlets, including "The New Republic" and "The New York Times", alleged that GM had tried to discredit Ralph Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past, and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations. Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $425,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance". Nader used the proceeds from the lawsuit to start the pro-consumer Center for Study of Responsive Law.
A 1972 safety commission report conducted by Texas A&M University concluded that the 1960–1963 Corvair possessed no greater potential for loss of control than its contemporary competitors in extreme situations. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a press release in 1972 describing the findings of NHTSA testing from the previous year. NHTSA had conducted a series of comparative tests in 1971 studying the handling of the 1963 Corvair and four contemporary cars — a Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, Volkswagen Beetle, and Renault Dauphine — along with a second-generation Corvair (with its completely redesigned, independent rear suspension). The 143-page report reviewed NHTSA's extreme-condition handling tests, national crash-involvement data for the cars in the test as well as General Motors' internal documentation regarding the Corvair's handling. NHTSA went on to contract an independent advisory panel of engineers to review the tests. This review panel concluded that 'the 1960–63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests [...] the handling and stability performance of the 1960–63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic'.
Former GM executive John DeLorean asserted, in his book "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors", that Nader's criticisms were valid.
Journalist David E. Davis, in a 2009 article in "Automobile Magazine", noted that despite Nader's claim that swing-axle rear suspension were dangerous, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen all used similar swing-axle concepts during that era.
In May 2014 the NHTSA fined the company $35 million for failing to recall cars with faulty ignition switches for a decade, despite knowing there was a problem with the switches. General Motors paid compensation for 124 deaths linked to the faulty switches. The $35 million fine was the maximum the regulator could impose. General Motors has announced that they are also facing 79 customer lawsuits asking for as much as $10 billion for economic losses attributed to the recall. As well as the Cobalts, the switches of concern had been installed in many other cars, such as the Pontiac G5, the Saturn Ion, the Chevrolet HHR, the Saturn Sky, and Pontiac Solstice. Eventually the recall involved about 2.6 million GM cars worldwide.
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Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula—to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco and California. It was initially designed by engineer Joseph Strauss in 1917. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world." At the time of its opening in 1937, it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of and a total height of .
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. A ferry service began as early as 1820, with a regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San Francisco.
The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito Ferry Terminal in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost $1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.
Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city's growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said that a bridge could not be built across the strait, which had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water deep at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.
Although the idea of a bridge spanning the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal that eventually took hold was made in a 1916 "San Francisco Bulletin" article by former engineering student James Wilkins. San Francisco's City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million (equivalent to $ billion today), and impractical for the time. He asked bridge engineers whether it could be built for less. One who responded, Joseph Strauss, was an ambitious engineer and poet who had, for his graduate thesis, designed a railroad bridge across the Bering Strait. At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges—most of which were inland—and nothing on the scale of the new project. Strauss's initial drawings were for a massive cantilever on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, which Strauss promised could be built for $17 million (equivalent to $ million today).
Local authorities agreed to proceed only on the assurance that Strauss would alter the design and accept input from several consulting project experts. A suspension-bridge design was considered the most practical, because of recent advances in metallurgy.
Strauss spent more than a decade drumming up support in Northern California. The bridge faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. The Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic. The US Navy feared that a ship collision or sabotage to the bridge could block the entrance to one of its main harbors. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the most powerful business interests in California, opposed the bridge as competition to its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit against the project, leading to a mass boycott of the ferry service.
In May 1924, Colonel Herbert Deakyne held the second hearing on the Bridge on behalf of the Secretary of War in a request to use federal land for construction. Deakyne, on behalf of the Secretary of War, approved the transfer of land needed for the bridge structure and leading roads to the "Bridging the Golden Gate Association" and both San Francisco County and Marin County, pending further bridge plans by Strauss. Another ally was the fledgling automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges to increase demand for automobiles.
The bridge's name was first used when the project was initially discussed in 1917 by M.M. O'Shaughnessy, city engineer of San Francisco, and Strauss. The name became official with the passage of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act by the state legislature in 1923, creating a special district to design, build and finance the bridge. San Francisco and most of the counties along the North Coast of California joined the Golden Gate Bridge District, with the exception being Humboldt County, whose residents opposed the bridge's construction and the traffic it would generate.
Strauss was chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project. However, because he had little understanding or experience with cable-suspension designs, responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture fell on other experts. Strauss's initial design proposal (two double cantilever spans linked by a central suspension segment) was unacceptable from a visual standpoint. The final graceful suspension design was conceived and championed by Leon Moisseiff, the engineer of the Manhattan Bridge in New York City.
Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements, such as the tower decorations, streetlights, railing, and walkways. The famous International Orange color was Morrow's personal selection, winning out over other possibilities, including the US Navy's suggestion that it be painted with black and yellow stripes to ensure visibility by passing ships.
Senior engineer Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project. Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers. Although the Golden Gate Bridge design has proved sound, a later Moisseiff design, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, collapsed in a strong windstorm soon after it was completed, because of an unexpected aeroelastic flutter. Ellis was also tasked with designing a "bridge within a bridge" in the southern abutment, to avoid the need to demolish Fort Point, a pre–Civil War masonry fortification viewed, even then, as worthy of historic preservation. He penned a graceful steel arch spanning the fort and carrying the roadway to the bridge's southern anchorage.
Ellis was a Greek scholar and mathematician who at one time was a University of Illinois professor of engineering despite having no engineering degree. He eventually earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois prior to designing the Golden Gate Bridge and spent the last twelve years of his career as a professor at Purdue University. He became an expert in structural design, writing the standard textbook of the time. Ellis did much of the technical and theoretical work that built the bridge, but he received none of the credit in his lifetime. In November 1931, Strauss fired Ellis and replaced him with a former subordinate, Clifford Paine, ostensibly for wasting too much money sending telegrams back and forth to Moisseiff. Ellis, obsessed with the project and unable to find work elsewhere during the Depression, continued working 70 hours per week on an unpaid basis, eventually turning in ten volumes of hand calculations.
With an eye toward self-promotion and posterity, Strauss downplayed the contributions of his collaborators who, despite receiving little recognition or compensation, are largely responsible for the final form of the bridge. He succeeded in having himself credited as the person most responsible for the design and vision of the bridge. Only much later were the contributions of the others on the design team properly appreciated. In May 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge District issued a formal report on 70 years of stewardship of the famous bridge and decided to give Ellis major credit for the design of the bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, authorized by an act of the California Legislature, was incorporated in 1928 as the official entity to design, construct, and finance the Golden Gate Bridge. However, after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the District was unable to raise the construction funds, so it lobbied for a $30 million bond measure (equivalent to $ million today). The bonds were approved in November 1930, by votes in the counties affected by the bridge. The construction budget at the time of approval was $27 million ($ million today). However, the District was unable to sell the bonds until 1932, when Amadeo Giannini, the founder of San Francisco–based Bank of America, agreed on behalf of his bank to buy the entire issue in order to help the local economy.
Construction began on January 5, 1933. The project cost more than $35 million ($ in dollars), and was completed ahead of schedule and $1.3 million under budget (equivalent to $ million today).
The Golden Gate Bridge construction project was carried out by the McClintic-Marshall Construction Co., a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation founded by Howard H. McClintic and Charles D. Marshall, both of Lehigh University.
Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he placed a brick from his alma mater's demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected ironworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed on February 17, 1937, when the bridge was near completion and the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. The workers' platform that was attached to a rolling hanger on a track collapsed when the bolts that were connected to the track were too small and the amount of weight was too great to bear. The platform fell into the safety net, but was too heavy and the net gave way. Two out of the twelve workers survived the fall into the icy waters, including the 37-year-old foreman, Slim Lambert. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became members of the Half Way to Hell Club.
The project was finished and opened May 27, 1937. The Bridge Round House diner was then included in the southeastern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, adjacent to the tourist plaza which was renovated in 2012. The Bridge Round House, an Art Deco design by Alfred Finnila completed in 1938, has been popular throughout the years as a starting point for various commercial tours of the bridge and an unofficial gift shop. The diner was renovated in 2012 and the gift shop was then removed as a new, official gift shop has been included in the adjacent plaza.
During the bridge work, the Assistant Civil Engineer of California Alfred Finnila had overseen the entire iron work of the bridge as well as half of the bridge's road work. With the death of Jack Balestreri in April 2012, all workers involved in the original construction are now deceased.
In 1953 and 1954, the bridge was retrofitted with lateral and diagonal bracing that connected the lower chords of the two side trusses. This bracing stiffened the bridge deck in torsion so that it would better resist the types of twisting that had destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.
The bridge-opening celebration began on May 27, 1937, and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed either on foot or on roller skates. On opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial "barriers," the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass. An official song, "There's a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate," was chosen to commemorate the event. Strauss wrote a poem that is now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled "The Mighty Task is Done." The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, D.C. signaling the official start of vehicle traffic over the Bridge at noon. As the celebration got out of hand there was a small riot in the uptown Polk Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural activities called "the Fiesta" followed. A statue of Strauss was moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.
In May 1987, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the Golden Gate Bridge district again closed the bridge to automobile traffic and allowed pedestrians to cross the bridge. However, this celebration attracted 750,000 to 1,000,000 people, and ineffective crowd control meant the bridge became congested with roughly 300,000 people, causing the center span of the bridge to flatten out under the weight. Although the bridge is designed to flex in that way under heavy loads, and was estimated not to have exceeded 40% of the yielding stress of the suspension cables, bridge officials stated that uncontrolled pedestrian access was not being considered as part of the 75th anniversary on Sunday, May 27, 2012, because of the additional law enforcement costs required "since 9/11."
Until 1964, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at . Since 1964 its main span length has been surpassed by fifteen bridges; it now has the second-longest main span in the United States, after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. The total length of the Golden Gate Bridge from abutment to abutment is .
The Golden Gate Bridge's clearance above high water averages while its towers, at above the water, were the world's tallest on a suspension bridge until 1993 when it was surpassed by the Mezcala Bridge, in Mexico.
The weight of the roadway is hung from 250 pairs of vertical suspender ropes, which are attached to two main cables. The main cables pass over the two main towers and are fixed in concrete at each end. Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. The total length of galvanized steel wire used to fabricate both main cables is estimated to be . Each of the bridge's two towers has approximately 600,000 rivets.
In the 1960s, when the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) was being planned, the engineering community had conflicting opinions about the feasibility of running train tracks north to Marin County over the bridge. In June 1961, consultants hired by BART completed a study that determined the bridge's suspension section was capable of supporting service on a new lower deck. In July 1961, one of the bridge's consulting engineers, Clifford Paine, disagreed with their conclusion. In January 1962, due to more conflicting reports on feasibility, the bridge's board of directors appointed an engineering review board to analyze all the reports. The review board's report, released in April 1962, concluded that running BART on the bridge was not advisable.
Aesthetics was the foremost reason why the first design of Joseph Strauss was rejected. Upon re-submission of his bridge construction plan, he added details, such as lighting, to outline the bridge's cables and towers. In 1999, it was ranked fifth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects.
The color of the bridge is officially an orange vermilion called "international orange". The color was selected by consulting architect Irving Morrow because it complements the natural surroundings and enhances the bridge's visibility in fog.
The bridge was originally painted with red lead primer and a lead-based topcoat, which was touched up as required. In the mid-1960s, a program was started to improve corrosion protection by stripping the original paint and repainting the bridge with zinc silicate primer and vinyl topcoats. Since 1990, acrylic topcoats have been used instead for air-quality reasons. The program was completed in 1995 and it is now maintained by 38 painters who touch up the paintwork where it becomes seriously corroded.
The ongoing maintenance task of painting the bridge is continuous.
Most maps and signage mark the bridge as part of the concurrency between U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1. Although part of the National Highway System, the bridge is not officially part of California's Highway System. For example, under the , Route 101 ends at "the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge" and then resumes at "a point in Marin County opposite San Francisco". The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District has jurisdiction over the segment of highway that crosses the bridge instead of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).
The movable median barrier between the lanes is moved several times daily to conform to traffic patterns. On weekday mornings, traffic flows mostly southbound into the city, so four of the six lanes run southbound. Conversely, on weekday afternoons, four lanes run northbound. During off-peak periods and weekends, traffic is split with three lanes in each direction.
From 1968 to 2015, opposing traffic was separated by small, plastic pylons; during that time, there were 16 fatalities resulting from 128 head-on collisions. To improve safety, the speed limit on the Golden Gate Bridge was reduced from on October 1, 1983. Although there had been discussion concerning the installation of a movable barrier since the 1980s, only in March 2005 did the Bridge Board of Directors commit to finding funding to complete the $2 million study required prior to the installation of a movable median barrier. Installation of the resulting barrier was completed on January 11, 2015, following a closure of 45.5 hours to private vehicle traffic, the longest in the bridge's history. The new barrier system, including the zipper trucks, cost approximately $30.3 million to purchase and install.
The bridge is popular with pedestrians and bicyclists, and was built with walkways on either side of the six vehicle traffic lanes. Initially, they were separated from the traffic lanes by only a metal curb, but railings between the walkways and the traffic lanes were added in 2003, primarily as a measure to prevent bicyclists from falling into the roadway.
The bridge carries about 112,000 vehicles per day according to the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District.
The main walkway is on the eastern side, and is open for use by both pedestrians and bicycles in the morning to mid-afternoon during weekdays (5:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.), and to pedestrians only for the remaining daylight hours (until 6:00 p.m., or 9:00 p.m. during DST). The eastern walkway is reserved for pedestrians on weekends (5:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., or 9:00 p.m. during DST), and is open exclusively to bicyclists in the evening and overnight, when it is closed to pedestrians. The western walkway is open only for bicyclists and only during the hours when they are not allowed on the eastern walkway.
Bus service across the bridge is provided by two public transportation agencies: San Francisco Muni and Golden Gate Transit. Muni offers Saturday and Sunday service on the Marin Headlands Express bus line, and Golden Gate Transit runs numerous bus lines throughout the week. The southern end of the bridge, near the toll plaza and parking lot, is also accessible daily from 5:30 a.m. to midnight by Muni line 28. The Marin Airporter, a private company, also offers service across the bridge between Marin County and San Francisco International Airport.
A visitor center and gift shop, originally called the "Bridge Pavilion" (since renamed the “Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center”), is located on the San Francisco side of the bridge, adjacent to the southeast parking lot. It opened in 2012, in time for the bridge's 75th anniversary celebration. A cafe, outdoor exhibits, and restroom facilities are located nearby. On the Marin side of the bridge, only accessible from the northbound lanes, is the H. Dana Bower Rest Area and Vista Point, named after the first landscape architect for the California Division of Highways.
Lands and waters under and around the bridge are homes to varieties of wildlife such as bobcats and sea lions. Three species of cetaceans (whales) that had been absent in the area for many years have shown recent recoveries/(re)colonizations in the vicinity of the bridge; researchers studying them have encouraged stronger protections and recommended that the public watch them from the bridge or from land, or use a local whale watching operator.
When the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, the toll was 50cents per car (equivalent to $ in ), collected in each direction. In 1950 it was reduced to 40cents each way ($ in ), then lowered to 25cents in 1955 ($ in ). In 1968, the bridge was converted to only collect tolls from southbound traffic, with the toll amount reset back to 50cents ($ in ).
The last of the construction bonds were retired in 1971, with $35 million (equivalent to $M in ) in principal and nearly $39 million ($M in ) in interest raised entirely from bridge tolls. Tolls continued to be collected and subsequently incrementally raised; by 1991, the toll was $3.00 (equivalent to $ in ).
The bridge began accepting tolls via the FasTrak electronic toll collection system in 2002, with $4 tolls for FasTrak users and $5 for those paying cash (equivalent to $ and $ respectively in ). In November 2006, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District recommended a corporate sponsorship program for the bridge to address its operating deficit, projected at $80 million over five years. The District promised that the proposal, which it called a "partnership program", would not include changing the name of the bridge or placing advertising on the bridge itself. In October 2007, the Board unanimously voted to discontinue the proposal and seek additional revenue through other means, most likely a toll increase. The District later increased the toll amounts in 2008 to $5 for FasTrak users and $6 to those paying cash (equivalent to $ and $ respectively in ).
In an effort to save $19.2 million over the following 10 years, the Golden Gate District voted in January 2011 to eliminate all toll takers by 2012 and use only open road tolling. Subsequently, this was delayed and toll taker elimination occurred in March 2013. The cost savings have been revised to $19 million over an eight-year period. In addition to FasTrak, the Golden Gate District implemented the use of license plate tolling (branded as "Pay-by-Plate"), and also a one time payment system for drivers to pay before or after their trip on the bridge. Twenty-eight positions were eliminated as part of this plan.
On April 7, 2014, the toll for users of FasTrak was increased from $5 to $6 (equivalent to $ in ), while the toll for drivers using either the license plate tolling or the one time payment system was raised from $6 to $7 (equivalent to $ in ). Bicycle, pedestrian, and northbound motor vehicle traffic remain toll free. For vehicles with more than two axles, the toll rate was $7 per axle for those using license plate tolling or the one time payment system, and $6 per axle for FasTrak users. During peak traffic hours, carpool vehicles carrying two or more people and motorcycles paid a discounted toll of $4 (equivalent to $ in ); drivers must have had Fastrak to take advantage of this carpool rate. The Golden Gate Transportation District then planned to increase the tolls by 25cents in July 2015, and then by another 25cents each of the next three years.
In March 2008, the Golden Gate Bridge District board approved a resolution to start congestion pricing at the Golden Gate Bridge, charging higher tolls during the peak hours, but rising and falling depending on traffic levels. This decision allowed the Bay Area to meet the federal requirement to receive $158 million in federal transportation funds from USDOT Urban Partnership grant. As a condition of the grant, the congestion toll was to be in place by September 2009.
The first results of the study, called the Mobility, Access and Pricing Study (MAPS), showed that a congestion pricing program is feasible. The different pricing scenarios considered were presented in public meetings in December 2008.
In August 2008, transportation officials ended the congestion pricing program in favor of varying rates for metered parking along the route to the bridge including on Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue.
The Golden Gate Bridge is the second-most used suicide site/suicide bridge in the world, after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The deck is about above the water. After a fall of four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around . Most of the jumpers die from impact trauma. About 5% of the jumpers survive the initial impact but generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water.
After years of debate and over an estimated 1,500 deaths, suicide barriers began to be installed in April 2017. Construction was first estimated to take approximately four years at a cost of over $200 million. In December 2019, it was reported that construction of the suicide prevention net is two years behind schedule because of issues with the lead contractor, Shimmick Construction Co. Shimmick was sold in 2017, leading to the slowdown of several existing projects. As of December 2019, the completion date for the Golden Gate Bridge net was set for 2023.
Construction has already started.
From its completion until 2008, the Golden Gate Bridge was closed because of weather conditions only three times: on December 1, 1951, because of gusts of ; on December 23, 1982, because of winds of ; and on December 3, 1983, because of wind gusts of .
An anemometer, placed midway between the two towers on the west side of the bridge, has been used to measure wind speeds. Another anemometer was placed on one of the towers.
In June 2020, newly installed sidewalk railing slats created unintended and audible harmonic resonances from strong westerly winds. Under these conditions, this noise can be heard miles from the bridge itself.
Modern knowledge of the effect of earthquakes on structures led to a program to retrofit the Golden Gate to better resist seismic events. The proximity of the bridge to the San Andreas Fault places it at risk for a significant earthquake. Once thought to have been able to withstand any magnitude of foreseeable earthquake, the bridge was actually vulnerable to complete structural failure (i.e., collapse) triggered by the failure of supports on the arch over Fort Point. A $392 million program was initiated to improve the structure's ability to withstand such an event with only minimal (repairable) damage. One challenging undertaking is completing this program without disrupting traffic. A complex electro-hydraulic synchronous lift system was custom built for construction of temporary support towers and a series of intricate lifts, transferring the loads from the existing bridge onto the temporary supports. This was completed with engineers from Balfour Beatty and Enerpac, accomplishing this task without disrupting day-to-day San Francisco commuter traffic. Although the retrofit was initially planned to be completed in 2012, as of 2017, it was expected to take several more years to complete all of the necessary work.
The former elevated approach to the Golden Gate Bridge through the San Francisco Presidio, known as Doyle Drive, dated to 1933 and was named after Frank P. Doyle. Doyle, the president of the Exchange Bank in Santa Rosa and son of the bank's founder, was the man who, more than any other person, made it possible to build the Golden Gate Bridge. The highway carried about 91,000 vehicles each weekday between downtown San Francisco and the North Bay and points north. The road was deemed "vulnerable to earthquake damage," had a problematic 4-lane design, and lacked shoulders; a San Francisco County Transportation Authority study recommended that it be replaced. Construction on the $1 billion replacement, temporarily known as the Presidio Parkway, began in December 2009.
The elevated Doyle Drive was demolished on the weekend of April 27–30, 2012, and traffic used a part of the partially completed Presidio Parkway, until it was switched onto the finished Presidio Parkway on the weekend of July 9–12, 2015. , an official at Caltrans said there is no plan to permanently rename the portion known as Doyle Drive.
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Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission, development of Marconi's law, and a radio telegraph system. He is credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
Marconi was also an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom in 1897 (which became the Marconi Company). He succeeded in making an engineering and commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists. In 1929, Marconi was ennobled as a Marchese (marquis) by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and, in 1931, he set up Vatican Radio for Pope Pius XI.
Marconi was born into the Italian nobility as Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi in Bologna on 25 April 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi (an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme) and his Irish wife Annie Jameson (daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford, Ireland and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons). Marconi had a brother, Alfonso, and a stepbrother, Luigi. Between the ages of two and six, Marconi and his elder brother Alfonso lived with their mother in the English town of Bedford.
Marconi did not attend school as a child and did not go on to formal higher education. Instead, he learned chemistry, math, and physics at home from a series of private tutors hired by his parents. His family hired additional tutors for Guglielmo in the winter when they would leave Bologna for the warmer climate of Tuscany or Florence. Marconi noted an important mentor was professor Vincenzo Rosa, a high school physics teacher in Livorno. Rosa taught the 17-year-old Marconi the basics of physical phenomena as well as new theories on electricity. At the age of 18 and back in Bologna, Marconi became acquainted with University of Bologna physicist Augusto Righi, who had done research on Heinrich Hertz's work. Righi permitted Marconi to attend lectures at the university and also to use the University's laboratory and library.
From youth, Marconi was interested in science and electricity. In the early 1890s, he began working on the idea of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e., the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. This was not a new idea; numerous investigators and inventors had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies and even building systems using electric conduction, electromagnetic induction and optical (light) signalling for over 50 years, but none had proven technically and commercially successful. A relatively new development came from Heinrich Hertz, who, in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation. At the time, this radiation was commonly called "Hertzian" waves, and is now generally referred to as radio waves.
There was a great deal of interest in radio waves in the physics community, but this interest was in the scientific phenomenon, not in its potential as a communication method. Physicists generally looked on radio waves as an invisible form of light that could only travel along a line of sight path, limiting its range to the visual horizon like existing forms of visual signaling. Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries including a demonstration on the transmission and detection of radio waves by the British physicist Oliver Lodge and an article about Hertz's work by Augusto Righi. Righi's article renewed Marconi's interest in developing a wireless telegraphy system based on radio waves, a line of inquiry that Marconi noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing.
At the age of 20, Marconi began to conduct experiments in radio waves, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio (now an administrative subdivision of Sasso Marconi), Italy with the help of his butler Mignani. Marconi built on Hertz's original experiments and, at the suggestion of Righi, began using a coherer, an early detector based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and used in Lodge's experiments, that changed resistance when exposed to radio waves. In the summer of 1894, he built a storm alarm made up of a battery, a coherer, and an electric bell, which went off when it picked up the radio waves generated by lightning.
Late one night, in December 1894, Marconi demonstrated a radio transmitter and receiver to his mother, a set-up that made a bell ring on the other side of the room by pushing a telegraphic button on a bench. Supported by his father, Marconi continued to read through the literature and picked up on the ideas of physicists who were experimenting with radio waves. He developed devices, such as portable transmitters and receiver systems, that could work over long distances, turning what was essentially a laboratory experiment into a useful communication system. Marconi came up with a functional system with many components:
In the summer of 1895, Marconi moved his experiments outdoors on his father's estate in Bologna. He tried different arrangements and shapes of antenna but even with improvements he was able to transmit signals only up to one half mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as the maximum transmission distance for radio waves.
A breakthrough came in the summer of 1895, when Marconi found that much greater range could be achieved after he raised the height of his antenna and, borrowing from a technique used in wired telegraphy, grounded his transmitter and receiver. With these improvements, the system was capable of transmitting signals up to and over hills. The monopole antenna reduced the frequency of the waves compared to the dipole antennas used by Hertz, and radiated vertically polarized radio waves which could travel longer distances. By this point, he concluded that a device could become capable of spanning greater distances, with additional funding and research, and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily. Marconi's experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineering-complete, commercially successful radio transmission system.
Marconi wrote to the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, then under the direction of Pietro Lacava, explaining his wireless telegraph machine and asking for funding. He never received a response to his letter, which was eventually dismissed by the Minister, who wrote "to the Longara" on the document, referring to the insane asylum on Via della Lungara in Rome.
In 1896, Marconi spoke with his family friend Carlo Gardini, Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in Bologna, about leaving Italy to go to England. Gardini wrote a letter of introduction to the Ambassador of Italy in London, Annibale Ferrero, explaining who Marconi was and about his extraordinary discoveries. In his response, Ambassador Ferrero advised them not to reveal Marconi's results until after a patent was obtained. He also encouraged Marconi to come to England where he believed it would be easier to find the necessary funds to convert his experiments into practical use.
Finding little interest or appreciation for his work in Italy, Marconi travelled to London in early 1896 at the age of 21, accompanied by his mother, to seek support for his work. (He spoke fluent English in addition to Italian.) Marconi arrived at Dover, and the Customs officer opened his case to find various apparatus. The customs officer immediately contacted the Admiralty in London. While there, Marconi gained the interest and support of William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office. During this time Marconi decided he should patent his system, which he applied for on 2 June 1896, British Patent number 12039 titled "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor", which would become the first patent for a radio wave based communication system.
Marconi made the first demonstration of his system for the British government in July 1896. A further series of demonstrations for the British followed, and, by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about across Salisbury Plain. On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea – a message was transmitted over the Bristol Channel from Flat Holm Island to Lavernock Point in Penarth, a distance of . The message read "Are you ready". The transmitting equipment was almost immediately relocated to Brean Down Fort on the Somerset coast, stretching the range to .
Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December 1896; and "Signalling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal Institution on 4 June 1897.
Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to receive international attention. In July 1897, he carried out a series of tests at La Spezia, in his home country, for the Italian government. A test for Lloyds between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland, was conducted on 6 July 1898. A transmission across the English channel was accomplished on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse, England. Marconi set up an experimental base at the Haven Hotel, Sandbanks, Poole Harbour, Dorset, where he erected a 100-foot high mast. He became friends with the van Raaltes, the owners of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, and his sailing boat, the Elettra, was often moored on Brownsea or at the Haven Hotel when he was not conducting experiments at sea.
In December 1898, the British lightship service authorized the establishment of wireless communication between the South Foreland lighthouse at Dover and the East Goodwin lightship, twelve miles distant. On 17 March 1899, the East Goodwin lightship sent the first SOS message, a signal on behalf of the merchant vessel "Elbe" which had run aground on Goodwin Sands. The message was received by the radio operator of the South Foreland lighthouse, who summoned the aid of the Ramsgate lifeboat.
In the autumn of 1899, the first demonstrations in the United States took place. Marconi had sailed to the U.S. at the invitation of the New York Herald newspaper to cover the America's Cup international yacht races off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The transmission was done aboard the SS "Ponce", a passenger ship of the "Porto Rico Line". Marconi left for England on 8 November 1899 on the American Line's , and he and his assistants installed wireless equipment aboard during the voyage. On 15 November "Saint Paul" became the first ocean liner to report her imminent return to Great Britain by wireless when Marconi's Royal Needles Hotel radio station contacted her 66 nautical miles off the English coast.
At the turn of the 20th century, Marconi began investigating a means to signal across the Atlantic in order to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables. Marconi established a wireless transmitting station at Marconi House, Rosslare Strand, Co. Wexford in 1901 to act as a link between Poldhu in Cornwall, England and Clifden in Co. Galway, Ireland. He soon made the announcement that the message was received at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland (now part of Canada) on 12 December 1901, using a kite-supported antenna for reception—signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about . It was heralded as a great scientific advance, yet there also was—and continues to be—considerable scepticism about this claim. The exact wavelength used is not known, but it is fairly reliably determined to have been in the neighbourhood of 350 meters (frequency ≈ 850 kHz). The tests took place at a time of day during which the entire transatlantic path was in daylight. It is now known (although Marconi did not know then) that this was the worst possible choice. At this medium wavelength, long-distance transmission in the daytime is not possible because of heavy absorption of the skywave in the ionosphere. It was not a blind test; Marconi knew in advance to listen for a repetitive signal of three clicks, signifying the Morse code letter "S". The clicks were reported to have been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no independent confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmissions were difficult to distinguish from atmospheric noise. A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995. The Poldhu transmitter was a two-stage circuit.
Feeling challenged by skeptics, Marconi prepared a better organised and documented test. In February 1902, the SS "Philadelphia" sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced coherer-tape reception up to , and audio reception up to . The maximum distances were achieved at night, and these tests were the first to show that radio signals for medium wave and longwave transmissions travel much farther at night than in the day. During the daytime, signals had been received up to only about , less than half of the distance claimed earlier at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the Newfoundland claims, although he did prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres, despite some scientists' belief that they were limited essentially to line-of-sight distances.
On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada became the world's first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. In 1901, Marconi built a station near South Wellfleet, Massachusetts that sent a message of greetings on 18 January 1903 from United States President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. However, consistent transatlantic signalling was difficult to establish.
Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate with ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904, he established a commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907 between Clifden, Ireland and Glace Bay, but even after this the company struggled for many years to provide reliable communication to others.
The role played by Marconi Co. wireless in maritime rescues raised public awareness of the value of radio and brought fame to Marconi, particularly the sinking of the RMS "Titanic" on 15 April 1912 and the RMS "Lusitania" on 7 May 1915.
RMS "Titanic" radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were not employed by the White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. After the sinking of the ocean liner on 15 April 1912, survivors were rescued by the RMS "Carpathia" of the Cunard Line. Also employed by the Marconi Company was David Sarnoff, who later headed RCA. Wireless communications were reportedly maintained for 72 hours between "Carpathia" and Sarnoff, but Sarnoff's involvement has been questioned by some modern historians. When "Carpathia" docked in New York, Marconi went aboard with a reporter from "The New York Times" to talk with Bride, the surviving operator.
On 18 June 1912, Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry into the loss of "Titanic" regarding the marine telegraphy's functions and the procedures for emergencies at sea. Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the "Titanic" disaster: "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi ... and his marvellous invention." Marconi was offered free passage on "Titanic" before she sank, but had taken "Lusitania" three days earlier. As his daughter Degna later explained, he had paperwork to do and preferred the public stenographer aboard that vessel.
Over the years, the Marconi companies gained a reputation for being technically conservative, in particular by continuing to use inefficient spark-transmitter technology, which could be used only for radio-telegraph operations, long after it was apparent that the future of radio communication lay with continuous-wave transmissions which were more efficient and could be used for audio transmissions. Somewhat belatedly, the company did begin significant work with continuous-wave equipment beginning in 1915, after the introduction of the oscillating vacuum tube (valve). The New Street Works factory in Chelmsford was the location for the first entertainment radio broadcasts in the United Kingdom in 1920, employing a vacuum tube transmitter and featuring Dame Nellie Melba. In 1922, regular entertainment broadcasts commenced from the Marconi Research Centre at Great Baddow, forming the prelude to the BBC, and he spoke of the close association of aviation and wireless telephony in that same year at a private gathering with Florence Tyzack Parbury, and even spoke of interplanetary wireless communication.
In 1914, Marconi was made a Senator in the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. During World War I, Italy joined the Allied side of the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army and of commander in the Regia Marina. In 1929, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III.
Marconi joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923. In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy, which made Marconi a member of the Fascist Grand Council.
While helping to develop microwave technology, Marconi suffered nine heart attacks in the span of 3 years preceding his death. Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937 at age 63, following the ninth, fatal, heart attack, and Italy held a state funeral for him. As a tribute, shops on the street where he lived were "Closed for national mourning". In addition, at 6 pm the next day, the time designated for the funeral, all BBC transmitters and wireless Post Office transmitters in the British Isles observed two minutes of silence in his honour. The British Post Office also sent a message requesting that all broadcasting ships honour Marconi with two minutes of broadcasting silence as well. His remains are housed in the Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna, which assumed that name in his honour in 1938.
In 1943, Marconi's elegant sailing yacht, the "Elettra", was commandeered and re-fitted as a warship by the German Navy. She was sunk by the RAF on 22 January 1944. After the war, the Italian Government tried to retrieve the wreckage, to rebuild the boat, and the wreckage was removed to Italy. Eventually, the idea was abandoned, and the wreckage was cut into pieces which were distributed amongst Italian museums.
In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision on Marconi's radio patents restoring some of the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone Stone, and Nikola Tesla. The decision was not about Marconi's original radio patents and the court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi's claim to certain patents was questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents. There are claims the high court was trying to nullify a World War I claim against the United States government by the Marconi Company via simply restoring the non-Marconi prior patent.
Marconi was a friend of Charles van Raalte and his wife Florence, the owners of Brownsea Island; and of Margherita, their daughter, and in 1904 he met her friend, Beatrice O'Brien (1882–1976), a daughter of The 14th Baron Inchiquin. On 16 March 1905, Beatrice O'Brien and Marconi were married, and spent their honeymoon on Brownsea Island. They had three daughters, Degna (1908–1998), Gioia (1916–1996), and Lucia (born and died 1906), and a son, Giulio, 2nd Marchese Marconi (1910–1971). In 1913, the Marconis returned to Italy and became part of Rome society. Beatrice served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elena. At Marconi's request, his marriage to Beatrice was annulled on 27 April 1927, so he could remarry. Marconi and Beatrice had divorced on 12 February 1924 in the free city of Fiume (Rijeka).
Marconi went on to marry Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali (2 April 1900–15 July 1994), the only daughter of Francesco, Count Bezzi-Scali. To do this he had to be confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a devout member of the Church. He was baptised Catholic but had been brought up as a member of the Anglican Church. On 12 June 1927 Marconi married Maria Cristina in a civil service, with a religious ceremony performed on 15 June. Marconi was 53 years old and his second wife, Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali, was 26 years old, just under half her new husband's age. They had one daughter, Maria Elettra Elena Anna (born 1930), who married Prince Carlo Giovannelli (1942–2016) in 1966; they later divorced. For unexplained reasons, Marconi left his entire fortune to his second wife and their only child, and nothing to the children of his first marriage.
Later in life, Marconi was an active Italian Fascist and an apologist for their ideology and actions such as the attack by Italian forces in Ethiopia.
In his lecture he stated: "I reclaim the honor of being the first fascist in the field of radiotelegraphy, the first who acknowledged the utility of joining the electric rays in a bundle, as Mussolini was the first in the political field who acknowledged the necessity of merging all the healthy energies of the country into a bundle, for the greater greatness of Italy".
Marconi wanted to personally introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a Pope, Pius XI, and did announce at the microphone: "With the help of God, who places so many mysterious forces of nature at man's disposal, I have been able to prepare this instrument which will give to the faithful of the entire world the joy of listening to the voice of the Holy Father".
The asteroid 1332 Marconia is named in his honour. A large crater on the far side of the moon is also named after him.
As of 2016 the Canadian Marconi Company and CMC Electronics no longer exist. Most bought up by Esterline in Ottawa. The Marine Service Group was acquired by MacKay Marine but many of the employees left the group at transition.
"vs Tesla"
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Göta älv
The Göta älv (; "River of (the) Geats") is a river that drains lake Vänern into the Kattegat, at the city of Gothenburg, on the western coast of Sweden. It was formed at the end of the last glaciation, as an outflow channel from the Baltic Ice Lake to the Atlantic Ocean and nowadays it has the largest drainage basin in Scandinavia.
The Göta älv is located in Götaland, with the river itself being a site of early Geatish settlement. Its length is . The Bohus Fortress is located by the river at Kungälv. There the river splits into two, with the northern part being the Nordre älv and the southern part keeping the name Göta älv.
At Trollhättan there is a dam, canal locks and a hydropower station in the river. The locks make the river navigable, even for large cargo vessels ( long). The artificial parts are called Trollhätte Canal. The river and the canal is part of a mostly inland waterway, Göta Canal, which spans the width of Sweden to the Baltic Sea south of Stockholm.
The power station supplied electric power to the heavy steel industry concentrated around Trollhättan Falls, contributing to its industrial revolution. In the summer months the spillway of the dam is opened for a few minutes daily and tourists gather to see the water rushing down the river (picture).
There are concerns about whether the maximum permitted discharge of is enough in a scenario where heavy rain floods the lake Vänern, causing considerable damage. Previously this was thought not to be possible in reality, but in 2001 the lake was flooded almost above maximum level (and some upstream lakes like Glafsfjorden flooded ). In this situation, Göta älv was allowed a discharge of for months causing a big risk of landslides. Now a water tunnel between Vänersborg and Uddevalla is considered as a rescue solution.
There is a large risk of landslides along the river and historical records of 15 landslides exist. The largest occurred in the years 1150, 1648, 1950, 1957 and 1977 (Tuve landslide).
In Old Norse the river was called the "Gautelfr"; in Icelandic it is "Gautelfur"; and in Norwegian it is sometimes rendered as "Gøtelv".
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Greece
Greece (, , ), officially the Hellenic Republic, known also as Hellas, is a country located in Southeast Europe. Its population is approximately 10.7 million as of 2018; Athens, the nation's capital, is its largest city, followed by Thessaloniki.
Situated on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, Greece is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at in length, featuring many islands, of which 227 are inhabited. Eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at . The country consists of nine traditional geographic regions: Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands (including the Dodecanese and Cyclades), Thrace, Crete, and the Ionian Islands.
Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, Western drama and the Olympic Games. From the eighth century B.C., the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as "poleis" (singular "polis"), which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Philip of Macedon united most of the Greek mainland in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great rapidly conquering much of the ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century B.C., becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, which adopted the Greek language and culture. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century A.D., helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World. After falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, Greece emerged as a modern nation state in 1830 following a war of independence. The country's rich historical legacy is reflected in part by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Greece is a unitary parliamentary republic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. Its economy is the largest in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the tenth member to join the European Communities (precursor to the European Union) and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. It is also a member of numerous other international institutions, including the Council of Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). Greece's unique cultural heritage, large tourism industry, prominent shipping sector and geostrategic importance classify it as a middle power.
The native name of the country in Modern Greek is ("", pronounced ). The corresponding form in Ancient Greek and conservative formal Modern Greek (Katharevousa) is (, classical: , modern: ). This is the source of the English alternate name "Hellas", which is mostly found in archaic or poetic contexts today. The Greek adjectival form (, ) is sometimes also translated as "Hellenic" and is often rendered in this way in the formal names of Greek institutions, as in the official name of the Greek state, the "Hellenic Republic" (, ).
The English names "Greece" and "Greek" are derived, via the Latin ' and ', from the name of the Graeci (, ; singular , ), who were among the first ancient Greek tribes to settle Magna Graecia in southern Italy. The term is ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root "", "to grow old".
The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, in the Greek province of Macedonia. The Apidima Cave in Mani, in southern Greece, contains the oldest remains of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa, dated to 210,000 years ago. All three stages of the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic) are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which farming spread from the Near East to Europe.
Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilisation, beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC, the Minoan civilization in Crete (2700–1500 BC), and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland (1600–1100 BC). These civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans using an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans writing the earliest attested form of Greek in Linear B. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, along with other civilizations, during the regional event known as the Bronze Age collapse. This ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. Though the unearthed Linear B texts are too fragmentary for the reconstruction of the political landscape and can't support the existence of a larger state, contemporary Hittite and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a "Great King" based in mainland Greece.
The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games. The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy ("Magna Graecia") and Asia Minor. These states and their colonies reached great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science, mathematics and philosophy. In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.
By 500 BC, the Persian Empire controlled the Greek city states in Asia Minor and Macedonia. Attempts by some of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule failed, and Persia invaded the states of mainland Greece in 492 BC, but was forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. In response, the Greek city-states formed the Hellenic League in 481 BC, led by Sparta, which was the first historically recorded union of Greek states since the mythical union of the Trojan War. A second invasion by the Persians followed in 480 BC. Following decisive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BC at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, the Persians were forced to withdraw for a second time, marking their eventual withdrawal from all of their European territories. Led by Athens and Sparta, the Greek victories in the Greco-Persian Wars are considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as the Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greek development that laid many of the foundations of Western civilization.
Lack of political unity within Greece resulted in frequent conflict between Greek states. The most devastating intra-Greek war was the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), won by Sparta and marking the demise of the Athenian Empire as the leading power in ancient Greece. Both Athens and Sparta were later overshadowed by Thebes and eventually Macedon, with the latter uniting most of the city-states of the Greek hinterland in the League of Corinth (also known as the "Hellenic League" or "Greek League") under the control of Phillip II. Despite this development, the Greek world remained largely fragmented and would not be united under a single power until the Roman years. Sparta did not join the League and actively fought against it, raising an army led by Agis III to secure the city-states of Crete for Persia.
Following the assassination of Phillip II, his son Alexander III ("The Great") assumed the leadership of the League of Corinth and launched an invasion of the Persian Empire with the combined forces of the League in 334 BC. Undefeated in battle, Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire in its entirety by 330 BC. By the time of his death in 323 BC, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to India. Upon his death, his empire split into several kingdoms, the most famous of which were the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia, and the many other new Hellenistic cities in Asia and Africa. Although the political unity of Alexander's empire could not be maintained, it resulted in the Hellenistic civilization and spread the Greek language and Greek culture in the territories conquered by Alexander. Greek science, technology, and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period.
After a period of confusion following Alexander's death, the Antigonid dynasty, descended from one of Alexander's generals, established its control over Macedon and most of the Greek city-states by 276 BC. From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon. Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC signalled the end of Antigonid power in Greece. In 146 BC, Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and the rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate.
The process was completed in 27 BC when the Roman Emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace's famous statement: "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit" ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive"). The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors such as Seneca the younger wrote using Greek styles. Roman heroes such as Scipio Africanus, tended to study philosophy and regarded Greek culture and science as an example to be followed. Similarly, most Roman emperors maintained an admiration for things Greek in nature. The Roman Emperor Nero visited Greece in AD 66, and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation. Hadrian was also particularly fond of the Greeks. Before becoming emperor, he served as an eponymous archon of Athens.
Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenised East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably St Paul) were mostly Greek-speaking, though generally not from Greece itself. The New Testament was written in Greek, and some of its sections (Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians, Revelation of St. John of Patmos) attest to the importance of churches in Greece in early Christianity. Nevertheless, much of Greece clung tenaciously to paganism, and ancient Greek religious practices were still in vogue in the late 4th century AD, when they were outlawed by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in 391–392. The last recorded Olympic games were held in 393, and many temples were destroyed or damaged in the century that followed. In Athens and rural areas, paganism is attested well into the sixth century AD and even later. The closure of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by the Emperor Justinian in 529 is considered by many to mark the end of antiquity, although there is evidence that the Academy continued its activities for some time after that. Some remote areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remained pagan until well into the 10th century AD.
The Roman Empire in the east, following the fall of the Empire in the west in the 5th century, is conventionally known as the Byzantine Empire (but was simply called "Roman Empire" in its own time) and lasted until 1453. With its capital in Constantinople, its language and literary culture was Greek and its religion was predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian.
From the 4th century, the Empire's Balkan territories, including Greece, suffered from the dislocation of barbarian invasions. The raids and devastation of the Goths and Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries and the Slavic invasion of Greece in the 7th century resulted in a dramatic collapse in imperial authority in the Greek peninsula. Following the Slavic invasion, the imperial government retained formal control of only the islands and coastal areas, particularly the densely populated walled cities such as Athens, Corinth and Thessalonica, while some mountainous areas in the interior held out on their own and continued to recognise imperial authority. Outside of these areas, a limited amount of Slavic settlement is generally thought to have occurred, although on a much smaller scale than previously thought. However, the view that Greece in late antiquity underwent a crisis of decline, fragmentation and depopulation is now considered outdated, as Greek cities show a high degree of institutional continuity and prosperity between the 4th and 6th centuries AD (and possibly later as well). In the early 6th century, Greece had approximately 80 cities according to the Synecdemus chronicle, and the period from the 4th to the 7th century AD is considered one of high prosperity not just in Greece but in the entire Eastern Mediterranean.
Until the 8th century almost all of modern Greece was under the jurisdiction of the Holy See of Rome according to the system of Pentarchy. Byzantine Emperor Leo III moved the border of the Patriarchate of Constantinople westward and northward in the 8th century.
The Byzantine recovery of lost provinces began toward the end of the 8th century and most of the Greek peninsula came under imperial control again, in stages, during the 9th century. This process was facilitated by a large influx of Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor to the Greek peninsula, while at the same time many Slavs were captured and re-settled in Asia Minor and the few that remained were assimilated. During the 11th and 12th centuries the return of stability resulted in the Greek peninsula benefiting from strong economic growth – much stronger than that of the Anatolian territories of the Empire. During that time, the Greek Orthodox Church was also instrumental in the spread of Greek ideas to the wider Orthodox world.
Following the Fourth Crusade and the fall of Constantinople to the "Latins" in 1204 mainland Greece was split between the Greek Despotate of Epirus (a Byzantine successor state) and French rule (known as the "Frankokratia"), while some islands came under Venetian rule. The re-establishment of the Byzantine imperial capital in Constantinople in 1261 was accompanied by the empire's recovery of much of the Greek peninsula, although the Frankish Principality of Achaea in the Peloponnese and the rival Greek Despotate of Epirus in the north both remained important regional powers into the 14th century, while the islands remained largely under Genoese and Venetian control. During the Paleologi dynasty (1261–1453) a new era of Greek patriotism emerged accompanied by a turning back to ancient Greece.
As such prominent personalities at the time also proposed changing the imperial title to "Emperor of the Hellenes", and, in late fourteenth century, the emperor was frequently referred to as the "Emperor of the Hellenes". Similarly, in several international treaties of that time the Byzantine emperor is styled as "Imperator Graecorum".
In the 14th century, much of the Greek peninsula was lost by the Byzantine Empire at first to the Serbs and then to the Ottomans. By the beginning of the 15th century, the Ottoman advance meant that Byzantine territory in Greece was limited mainly to its then-largest city, Thessaloniki, and the Peloponnese (Despotate of the Morea). After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the Morea was one of the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire to hold out against the Ottomans. However, this, too, fell to the Ottomans in 1460, completing the Ottoman conquest of mainland Greece. With the Turkish conquest, many Byzantine Greek scholars, who up until then were largely responsible for preserving Classical Greek knowledge, fled to the West, taking with them a large body of literature and thereby significantly contributing to the Renaissance.
While most of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands was under Ottoman control by the end of the 15th century, Cyprus and Crete remained Venetian territory and did not fall to the Ottomans until 1571 and 1670 respectively. The only part of the Greek-speaking world that escaped long-term Ottoman rule was the Ionian Islands, which remained Venetian until their capture by the First French Republic in 1797, then passed to the United Kingdom in 1809 until their unification with Greece in 1864.
While some Greeks in the Ionian Islands and Constantinople lived in prosperity, and Greeks of Constantinople (Phanariotes) achieved positions of power within the Ottoman administration, much of the population of mainland Greece suffered the economic consequences of the Ottoman conquest. Heavy taxes were enforced, and in later years the Ottoman Empire enacted a policy of creation of hereditary estates, effectively turning the rural Greek populations into serfs.
The Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople were considered by the Ottoman governments as the ruling authorities of the entire Orthodox Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, whether ethnically Greek or not. Although the Ottoman state did not force non-Muslims to convert to Islam, Christians faced several types of discrimination intended to highlight their inferior status in the Ottoman Empire. Discrimination against Christians, particularly when combined with harsh treatment by local Ottoman authorities, led to conversions to Islam, if only superficially. In the 19th century, many "crypto-Christians" returned to their old religious allegiance.
The nature of Ottoman administration of Greece varied, though it was invariably arbitrary and often harsh. Some cities had governors appointed by the Sultan, while others (like Athens) were self-governed municipalities. Mountainous regions in the interior and many islands remained effectively autonomous from the central Ottoman state for many centuries.
When military conflicts broke out between the Ottoman Empire and other states, Greeks usually took up arms against the Ottomans, with few exceptions. Prior to the Greek Revolution of 1821, there had been a number of wars which saw Greeks fight against the Ottomans, such as the Greek participation in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Epirus peasants' revolts of 1600–1601 (led by the Orthodox bishop Dionysios Skylosophos), the Morean War of 1684–1699, and the Russian-instigated Orlov Revolt in 1770, which aimed at breaking up the Ottoman Empire in favour of Russian interests. These uprisings were put down by the Ottomans with great bloodshed. On the other side, many Greeks were conscripted as Ottoman citizens to serve in the Ottoman army (and especially the Ottoman navy), while also the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, responsible for the Orthodox, remained in general loyal to the empire.
The 16th and 17th centuries are regarded as something of a "dark age" in Greek history, with the prospect of overthrowing Ottoman rule appearing remote with only the Ionian islands remaining free of Turkish domination. Corfu withstood three major sieges in 1537, 1571 and 1716 all of which resulted in the repulsion of the Ottomans. However, in the 18th century, due to their mastery of shipping and commerce, a wealthy and dispersed Greek merchant class arose. These merchants came to dominate trade within the Ottoman Empire, establishing communities throughout the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Western Europe. Though the Ottoman conquest had cut Greece off from significant European intellectual movements such as the Reformation and the Enlightenment, these ideas together with the ideals of the French Revolution and romantic nationalism began to penetrate the Greek world via the mercantile diaspora. In the late 18th century, Rigas Feraios, the first revolutionary to envision an independent Greek state, published a series of documents relating to Greek independence, including but not limited to a national anthem and the first detailed map of Greece, in Vienna. Feraios was murdered by Ottoman agents in 1798.
In the late eighteenth century, an increase in secular learning during the Modern Greek Enlightenment led to the revival among Greeks of the diaspora of the notion of a Greek nation tracing its existence to ancient Greece, distinct from the other Orthodox peoples, and having a right to political autonomy. One of the organizations formed in this intellectual milieu was the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization formed by merchants in Odessa in 1814. Appropriating a long-standing tradition of Orthodox messianic prophecy aspiring to the resurrection of the eastern Roman empire and creating the impression they had the backing of Tsarist Russia, they managed amidst a crisis of Ottoman trade, from 1815 onwards, to engage traditional strata of the Greek Orthodox world in their liberal nationalist cause. The Filiki Eteria planned to launch revolution in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities and Constantinople. The first of these revolts began on 6 March 1821 in the Danubian Principalities under the leadership of Alexandros Ypsilantis, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. The events in the north spurred the Greeks of the Peloponnese into action and on 17 March 1821 the Maniots declared war on the Ottomans.
By the end of the month, the Peloponnese was in open revolt against the Ottomans and by October 1821 the Greeks under Theodoros Kolokotronis had captured Tripolitsa. The Peloponnesian revolt was quickly followed by revolts in Crete, Macedonia and Central Greece, which would soon be suppressed. Meanwhile, the makeshift Greek navy was achieving success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea. In 1822 and 1824 the Turks and Egyptians ravaged the islands, including Chios and Psara, committing wholesale massacres of the population. Approximately three-quarters of the Chios' Greek population of 120,000 were killed, enslaved or died of disease. This had the effect of galvanizing public opinion in western Europe in favour of the Greek rebels.
Tensions soon developed among different Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Sultan negotiated with Mehmet Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in return for territorial gain. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and had immediate success: by the end of 1825, most of the Peloponnese was under Egyptian control, and the city of Missolonghi—put under siege by the Turks since April 1825—fell in April 1826. Although Ibrahim was defeated in Mani, he had succeeded in suppressing most of the revolt in the Peloponnese and Athens had been retaken.
After years of negotiation, three great powers, France, Russian Empire, and the United Kingdom, decided to intervene in the conflict and each nation sent a navy to Greece. Following news that combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleets were going to attack the Greek island of Hydra, the allied fleet intercepted the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at Navarino. A week-long standoff ended with the Battle of Navarino which resulted in the destruction of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet. A French expeditionary force was dispatched to supervise the evacuation of the Egyptian army from the Peloponnese, while the Greeks proceeded to the captured part of Central Greece by 1828. As a result of years of negotiation, the nascent Greek state was finally recognised under the London Protocol in 1830.
In 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias, from Corfu, was chosen by the Third National Assembly at Troezen as the first governor of the First Hellenic Republic. Kapodistrias established a series of state, economic and military institutions. Soon tensions appeared between him and local interests. Following his assassination in 1831 and the subsequent London conference a year later, the Great Powers of Britain, France and Russia installed Bavarian Prince Otto von Wittelsbach as monarch. Otto's reign was despotic, and in its first 11 years of independence Greece was ruled by a Bavarian oligarchy led by Joseph Ludwig von Armansperg as Prime Minister and, later, by Otto himself, who held the title of both King and Premier. Throughout this period Greece remained under the influence of its three protecting Great Powers, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, as well as Bavaria. In 1843 an uprising forced the king to grant a constitution and a representative assembly.
Despite the absolutism of Otto's reign, the early years proved instrumental in creating institutions which are still the bedrock of Greek administration and education. Important steps were taken in the creation of the education system, maritime and postal communications, effective civil administration and, most importantly, the legal code. Historical revisionism took the form of de-Byzantinification and de-Ottomanisation, in favour of promoting the country's Ancient Greek heritage. In this spirit, the national capital was moved from Nafplio, where it had been since 1829, to Athens, which was at the time a village. Religious reform also took place, and the Church of Greece was established as Greece's national church, although Otto remained a Catholic. 25 March, the day of Annunciation, was chosen as the anniversary of the Greek War of Independence in order to reinforce the link between Greek identity and Orthodoxy. Pavlos Karolidis called the Bavarian efforts to create a modern state in Greece as "not only appropriate for the peoples' needs, but also based on excellent administrative principles of the era".
Otto was deposed in the 23 October 1862 Revolution. Multiple causes led to his deposition and exile, including the Bavarian-dominated government, heavy taxation, and a failed attempt to annex Crete from the Ottoman Empire. The catalyst for the revolt was Otto's dismissal of Konstantinos Kanaris from the Premiership. A year later, he was replaced by Prince Wilhelm (William) of Denmark, who took the name George I and brought with him the Ionian Islands as a coronation gift from Britain. A new Constitution in 1864 changed Greece's form of government from constitutional monarchy to the more democratic crowned republic. In 1875 the concept of parliamentary majority as a requirement for the formation of a government was introduced by Charilaos Trikoupis, curbing the power of the monarchy to appoint minority governments of its preference.
Corruption, coupled with Trikoupis' increased spending to fund infrastructure projects like the Corinth Canal, overtaxed the weak Greek economy and forced the declaration of public insolvency in 1893. Greece also accepted the imposition of an International Financial Control authority to pay off the country's debtors. Another political issue in 19th-century Greece was uniquely Greek: the language question. The Greek people spoke a form of Greek called Demotic. Many of the educated elite saw this as a peasant dialect and were determined to restore the glories of Ancient Greek.
Government documents and newspapers were consequently published in "Katharevousa" (purified) Greek, a form which few ordinary Greeks could read. Liberals favoured recognising Demotic as the national language, but conservatives and the Orthodox Church resisted all such efforts, to the extent that, when the New Testament was translated into Demotic in 1901, riots erupted in Athens and the government fell (the "Evangeliaka"). This issue would continue to plague Greek politics until the 1970s.
All Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Hellenic lands under Ottoman rule. Especially in Crete, a prolonged revolt in 1866–1869 had raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russia and the Ottomans in 1877, Greek popular sentiment rallied to Russia's side, but Greece was too poor, and too concerned about British intervention, to officially enter the war. Nevertheless, in 1881, Thessaly and small parts of Epirus were ceded to Greece as part of the Treaty of Berlin, while frustrating Greek hopes of receiving Crete.
Greeks in Crete continued to stage regular revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government under Theodoros Deligiannis, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated by the Ottomans. Through the intervention of the Great Powers, however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece. With state coffers empty, fiscal policy came under International Financial Control. Alarmed by the abortive Ilinden uprising of the autonomist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1903, the Greek government, aiming to quell Komitadjis (IMRO bands) and detach the Slavophone peasants of the region from Bulgarian influence, sponsored a guerrilla campaign in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia, led by Greek officers and known as the Macedonian Struggle, which ended with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908.
Amidst general dissatisfaction with the seeming inertia and unattainability of national aspirations under the premiership of the cautious reformist Theotokis, a group of military officers organised a coup in August 1909 and shortly thereafter called to Athens Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos, who conveyed a vision of national regeneration. After winning two elections and becoming Prime Minister in 1910, Venizelos initiated wide-ranging fiscal, social, and constitutional reforms, reorganised the military, made Greece a member of the Balkan League, and led the country through the Balkan Wars. By 1913, Greece's territory and population had almost doubled, annexing Crete, Epirus, and Macedonia. In the following years, the struggle between King Constantine I and charismatic Venizelos over the country's foreign policy on the eve of First World War dominated the country's political scene, and divided the country into two opposing groups. During parts of the WW1, Greece had two governments: A royalist pro-German one in Athens and a Venizelist pro-Entente one in Thessaloniki. The two governments were united in 1917, when Greece officially entered the war on the side of the Entente.
In the aftermath of World War I, Greece attempted further expansion into Asia Minor, a region with a large native Greek population at the time, but was defeated in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, contributing to a massive flight of Asia Minor Greeks. These events overlapped, with both happening during the Greek genocide (1914–1922), a period during which, according to various sources, Ottoman and Turkish officials contributed to the death of several hundred thousand Asia Minor Greeks, along with similar numbers of Assyrians and a rather larger number of Armenians. The resultant Greek exodus from Asia Minor was made permanent, and expanded, in an official Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The exchange was part of the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne which ended the war.
The following era was marked by instability, as over 1.5 million propertyless Greek refugees from Turkey had to be integrated into Greek society. Cappadocian Greeks, Pontian Greeks, and non-Greek followers of Greek Orthodoxy were all subject to the exchange as well. Some of the refugees could not speak the language, and were from what had been unfamiliar environments to mainland Greeks, such as in the case of the Cappadocians and non-Greeks. The refugees also made a dramatic post-war population boost, as the number of refugees was more than a quarter of Greece's prior population.
Following the catastrophic events in Asia Minor, the monarchy was abolished via a referendum in 1924 and the Second Hellenic Republic was declared. In 1935, a royalist general-turned-politician Georgios Kondylis took power after a coup d'état and abolished the republic, holding a rigged referendum, after which King George II returned to Greece and was restored to the throne.
An agreement between Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas and the head of state George II followed in 1936, which installed Metaxas as the head of a dictatorial regime known as the 4th of August Regime, inaugurating a period of authoritarian rule that would last, with short breaks, until 1974. Although a dictatorship, Greece remained on good terms with Britain and was not allied with the Axis.
On 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy demanded the surrender of Greece, but the Greek administration refused, and, in the following Greco-Italian War, Greece repelled Italian forces into Albania, giving the Allies their first victory over Axis forces on land. The Greek struggle and victory against the Italians received exuberant praise at the time. Most prominent is the quote attributed to Winston Churchill: "Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but we will say that heroes fight like Greeks." French general Charles de Gaulle was among those who praised the fierceness of the Greek resistance. In an official notice released to coincide with the Greek national celebration of the Day of Independence, De Gaulle expressed his admiration for the Greek resistance:In the name of the captured yet still alive French people, France wants to send her greetings to the Greek people who are fighting for their freedom. The 25 March 1941 finds Greece in the peak of their heroic struggle and in the top of their glory. Since the Battle of Salamis, Greece had not achieved the greatness and the glory which today holds. The country would eventually fall to urgently dispatched German forces during the Battle of Greece, despite the fierce Greek resistance, particularly in the Battle of the Metaxas Line. Adolf Hitler himself recognised the bravery and the courage of the Greek army, stating in his address to the Reichstag on 11 December 1941, that: "Historical justice obliges me to state that of the enemies who took up positions against us, the Greek soldier particularly fought with the highest courage. He capitulated only when further resistance had become impossible and useless."
The Nazis proceeded to administer Athens and Thessaloniki, while other regions of the country were given to Nazi Germany's partners, Fascist Italy and Bulgaria. The occupation brought about terrible hardships for the Greek civilian population. Over 100,000 civilians died of starvation during the winter of 1941–1942, tens of thousands more died because of reprisals by Nazis and collaborators, the country's economy was ruined, and the great majority of Greek Jews (tens of thousands) were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. The Greek Resistance, one of the most effective resistance movements in Europe, fought vehemently against the Nazis and their collaborators. The German occupiers committed numerous atrocities, mass executions, and wholesale slaughter of civilians and destruction of towns and villages in reprisals. In the course of the concerted anti-guerrilla campaign, hundreds of villages were systematically torched and almost 1 million Greeks left homeless. In total, the Germans executed some 21,000 Greeks, the Bulgarians 40,000, and the Italians 9,000.
Following liberation and the Allied victory over the Axis, Greece annexed the Dodecanese Islands from Italy and regained Western Thrace from Bulgaria. The country almost immediately descended into a bloody civil war between communist forces and the anti-communist Greek government, which lasted until 1949 with the latter's victory. The conflict, considered one of the earliest struggles of the Cold War, resulted in further economic devastation, mass population displacement and severe political polarisation for the next thirty years.
Although the post-war decades were characterised by social strife and widespread marginalisation of the left in political and social spheres, Greece nonetheless experienced rapid economic growth and recovery, propelled in part by the U.S.-administered Marshall Plan. In 1952, Greece joined NATO, reinforcing its membership in the Western Bloc of the Cold War.
King Constantine II's dismissal of George Papandreou's centrist government in July 1965 prompted a prolonged period of political turbulence, which culminated in a coup d'état on 21 April 1967 by the Regime of the Colonels. Under the junta, civil rights were suspended, political repression was intensified, and human rights abuses, including state-sanctioned torture, were rampant. Economic growth remained rapid before plateauing in 1972. The brutal suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November 1973 set in motion the events that caused the fall of the Papadopoulos regime, resulting in a counter-coup which overthrew Georgios Papadopoulos and established brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis as the new junta strongman. On 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in response to a Greek-backed Cypriot coup, triggering a political crisis in Greece that led to the regime's collapse and the restoration of democracy through Metapolitefsi.
The former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was invited back from Paris where he had lived in self-exile since 1963, marking the beginning of the Metapolitefsi era. The first multiparty elections since 1964 were held on the first anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising. A democratic and republican constitution was promulgated on 11 June 1975 following a referendum which chose to not restore the monarchy.
Meanwhile, Andreas Papandreou, George Papandreou's son, founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in response to Karamanlis's conservative New Democracy party, with the two political formations dominating in government over the next four decades. Greece rejoined NATO in 1980. Greece became the tenth member of the European Communities (subsequently subsumed by the European Union) on 1 January 1981, ushering in a period of sustained growth. Widespread investments in industrial enterprises and heavy infrastructure, as well as funds from the European Union and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, and a fast-growing service sector raised the country's standard of living to unprecedented levels. Traditionally strained relations with neighbouring Turkey improved when successive earthquakes hit both nations in 1999, leading to the lifting of the Greek veto against Turkey's bid for EU membership.
The country adopted the euro in 2001 and successfully hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. More recently, Greece has suffered greatly from the late-2000s recession and has been central to the related European sovereign debt crisis. Due to the adoption of the euro, when Greece experienced financial crisis, it could no longer devalue its currency to regain competitiveness. Youth unemployment was especially high during the 2000s. The Greek government-debt crisis, and subsequent austerity policies, have resulted in protests and social strife.
Located in Southern and Southeast Europe, Greece consists of a mountainous, peninsular mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans, ending at the Peloponnese peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth) and strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Due to its highly indented coastline and numerous islands, Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world with ; its land boundary is . The country lies approximately between latitudes 34° and 42° N, and longitudes 19° and 30° E, with the extreme points being:
Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains or hills, making the country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Mount Olympus, the mythical abode of the Greek Gods, culminates at Mytikas peak , the highest in the country. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. The Pindus, a continuation of the Dinaric Alps, reaches a maximum elevation of at Mt. Smolikas (the second-highest in Greece) and historically has been a significant barrier to east–west travel.
The Pindus range continues through the central Peloponnese, crosses the islands of Kythera and Antikythera and finds its way into southwestern Aegean, in the island of Crete where it eventually ends. The islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that once constituted an extension of the mainland. Pindus is characterised by its high, steep peaks, often dissected by numerous canyons and a variety of other karstic landscapes. The spectacular Vikos Gorge, part of the Vikos-Aoos National Park in the Pindus range, is listed by the Guinness book of World Records as the deepest gorge in the world. Another notable formation are the Meteora rock pillars, atop which have been built medieval Greek Orthodox monasteries.
Northeastern Greece features another high-altitude mountain range, the Rhodope range, spreading across the region of East Macedonia and Thrace; this area is covered with vast, thick, ancient forests, including the famous Dadia Forest in the Evros regional unit, in the far northeast of the country.
Extensive plains are primarily located in the regions of Thessaly, Central Macedonia and Thrace. They constitute key economic regions as they are among the few arable places in the country. Rare marine species such as the pinniped seals and the loggerhead sea turtle live in the seas surrounding mainland Greece, while its dense forests are home to the endangered brown bear, the Eurasian lynx, the roe deer and the wild goat.
Greece features a vast number of islands - between 1,200 and 6,000, depending on the definition, 227 of which are inhabited - and is considered a non-contiguous transcontinental country. Crete is the largest and most populous island; Euboea, separated from the mainland by the 60 m-wide Euripus Strait, is the second largest, followed by Lesbos and Rhodes.
The Greek islands are traditionally grouped into the following clusters: the Argo-Saronic Islands in the Saronic gulf near Athens, the Cyclades, a large but dense collection occupying the central part of the Aegean Sea, the North Aegean islands, a loose grouping off the west coast of Turkey, the Dodecanese, another loose collection in the southeast between Crete and Turkey, the Sporades, a small tight group off the coast of northeast Euboea, and the Ionian Islands, located to the west of the mainland in the Ionian Sea.
The climate of Greece is primarily Mediterranean, featuring mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. This climate occurs at all coastal locations, including Athens, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, Crete, the Peloponnese, the Ionian Islands and parts of the Central Continental Greece region. The Pindus mountain range strongly affects the climate of the country, as areas to the west of the range are considerably wetter on average (due to greater exposure to south-westerly systems bringing in moisture) than the areas lying to the east of the range (due to a rain shadow effect).
The mountainous areas of Northwestern Greece (parts of Epirus, Central Greece, Thessaly, Western Macedonia) as well as in the mountainous central parts of Peloponnese – including parts of the regional units of Achaea, Arcadia and Laconia – feature an Alpine climate with heavy snowfalls. The inland parts of northern Greece, in Central Macedonia and East Macedonia and Thrace feature a temperate climate with cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers with frequent thunderstorms. Snowfalls occur every year in the mountains and northern areas, and brief snowfalls are not unknown even in low-lying southern areas, such as Athens.
Phytogeographically, Greece belongs to the Boreal Kingdom and is shared between the East Mediterranean province of the Mediterranean Region and the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the European Environment Agency, the territory of Greece can be subdivided into six ecoregions: the Illyrian deciduous forests, Pindus Mountains mixed forests, Balkan mixed forests, Rhodope montane mixed forests, Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests, and Crete Mediterranean forests.
Greece is a unitary parliamentary republic. The current Constitution was drawn up and adopted by the Fifth Revisionary Parliament of the Hellenes and entered into force in 1975 after the fall of the military junta of 1967–1974. It has been revised three times since, in 1986, 2001 and 2008. The Constitution, which consists of 120 articles, provides for a separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and grants extensive specific guarantees (further reinforced in 2001) of civil liberties and social rights. Women's suffrage was guaranteed with an amendment to the 1952 Constitution.
The nominal head of state is the President of the Republic, who is elected by the Parliament for a five-year term. According to the Constitution, executive power is exercised by the President and the Government. However, the Constitutional amendment of 1986 curtailed the President's duties and powers to a significant extent, rendering the position largely ceremonial; most political power is thus vested in the Prime Minister, Greece's head of government. The position is filled by the current leader of the political party that can obtain a vote of confidence by the Parliament. The President of the Republic formally appoints the Prime Minister and, on his recommendation, appoints and dismisses the other members of the Cabinet.
Legislative powers are exercised by a 300-member elective unicameral Parliament. Statutes passed by the Parliament are promulgated by the President of the Republic. Parliamentary elections are held every four years, but the President of the Republic is obliged to dissolve the Parliament earlier on the proposal of the Cabinet, in view of dealing with a national issue of exceptional importance. The President is also obliged to dissolve the Parliament earlier, if the opposition manages to pass a motion of no confidence. The voting age is 17.
According to a 2016 report by the OECD, Greeks display a moderate level of civic participation compared to most other developed countries; voter turnout was 64 percent during recent elections, lower than the OECD average of 69 percent.
Since the restoration of democracy, the Greek party system was dominated by the liberal-conservative New Democracy (ND) and the social-democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). Other parties represented in the Hellenic Parliament include the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution and MeRA25.
PASOK and New Democracy largely alternated in power until the outbreak of the government-debt crisis in 2009. From that time, the two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, experienced a sharp decline in popularity. In November 2011, the two major parties joined the smaller Popular Orthodox Rally in a grand coalition, pledging their parliamentary support for a government of national unity headed by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos. Panos Kammenos voted against this government and he split off from ND forming the right-wing populist Independent Greeks.
The coalition government led the country to the parliamentary elections of May 2012. The power of the traditional Greek political parties, PASOK and New Democracy, declined from 43% to 13% and from 33% to 18%, respectively. The left-wing party of SYRIZA became the second major party, with an increase from 4% to 16%. No party could form a sustainable government, which led to the parliamentary elections of June 2012. The result of the second elections was the formation of a coalition government composed of New Democracy (29%), PASOK (12%) and Democratic Left (6%) parties.
SYRIZA has since overtaken PASOK as the main party of the centre-left . Alexis Tsipras led SYRIZA to victory in the general election held on 25 January 2015, falling short of an outright majority in Parliament by just two seats. The following morning, Tsipras reached an agreement with Independent Greeks party to form a coalition, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister of Greece. Tsipras called snap elections in August 2015, resigning from his post, which led to a month-long caretaker administration headed by judge Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, Greece's first female prime minister. In the September 2015 general election, Alexis Tsipras led SYRIZA to another victory, winning 145 out of 300 seats and re-forming the coalition with the Independent Greeks. However, he was defeated in the July 2019 general election by Kyriakos Mitsotakis who leads New Democracy.
Greece's foreign policy is conducted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its head, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, currently Nikos Dendias. Officially, the main aims of the Ministry are to represent Greece before other states and international organizations; safeguard the interests of the Greek state and of its citizens abroad; promote Greek culture; foster closer relations with the Greek diaspora; and encourage international cooperation. The Ministry identifies two issues of particular importance to the Greek state: Turkish challenges to Greek sovereignty rights in the Aegean Sea and corresponding airspace and the Cyprus dispute involving the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus.
Additionally, due to its political and geographical proximity to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Greece is a country of significant geostrategic importance, which it has leveraged to develop a regional policy to help promote peace and stability in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. This has accorded the country middle power status in global affairs.
Greece is a member of numerous international organizations, including the Council of Europe, the European Union, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation internationale de la francophonie and the United Nations, of which it is a founding member.
The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature and comprises three Supreme Courts: the Court of Cassation (Άρειος Πάγος), the Council of State (Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας) and the Court of Auditors (Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο). The Judiciary system is also composed of civil courts, which judge civil and penal cases and administrative courts, which judge disputes between the citizens and the Greek administrative authorities.
The Hellenic Police () is the national police force of Greece. It is a very large agency with its responsibilities ranging from road traffic control to counter-terrorism. It was established in 1984 under Law 1481/1-10-1984 (Government Gazette 152 A) as the result of the fusion of the Gendarmerie (Χωροφυλακή, "Chorofylaki") and the Cities Police (Αστυνομία Πόλεων, "Astynomia Poleon") forces.
The Hellenic Armed Forces are overseen by the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (Greek: Γενικό Επιτελείο Εθνικής Άμυνας – ΓΕΕΘΑ), with civilian authority vested in the Ministry of National Defence. It consists of three branches:
Moreover, Greece maintains the Hellenic Coast Guard for law enforcement at sea, search and rescue, and port operations. Though it can support the navy during wartime, it resides under the authority of the Ministry of Shipping.
Greek military personnel total 367,450, of whom 142,950 are active and 220,500 are reserve. Greece ranks 15th in the world in the number of citizens serving in the armed forces, due largely to compulsory military service for males between the ages of 19 and 45 (females are exempted from conscription but may otherwise serve in the military). Mandatory military service is nine months for the Army and one year for the Navy and Air Force. Additionally, Greek males between the ages of 18 and 60 who live in strategically sensitive areas may be required to serve part-time in the National Guard. However, as the military has sought to become a completely professional force, the government has promised to reduce mandatory military service or abolish it completely.
As a member of NATO, the Greek military participates in exercises and deployments under the auspices of the alliance, although its involvement in NATO missions is minimal. Greece spends over US$7 billion annually on its military, or 2.3 percent of GDP, the 24th-highest in the world in absolute terms, the seventh-highest on a per capita basis, and the second-highest in NATO after the United States. Moreover, Greece is one of only five NATO countries to meet or surpass the minimum defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP.
Since the Kallikratis programme reform entered into effect on 1 January 2011, Greece has consisted of thirteen regions subdivided into a total of 325 municipalities. The 54 old prefectures and prefecture-level administrations have been largely retained as "sub-units" of the regions. Seven decentralised administrations group one to three regions for administrative purposes on a regional basis. There is also one autonomous area, Mount Athos (, "Holy Mountain"), which borders the region of Central Macedonia.
According to World Bank statistics for the year 2013, the economy of Greece is the 43rd largest by nominal gross domestic product at $242 billion and 52nd largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) at $284 billion. Additionally, Greece is the 15th largest economy in the 27-member European Union. In terms of per capita income, Greece is ranked 38th or 40th in the world at $21,910 and $25,705 for nominal GDP and PPP respectively. The Greek economy is classified as advanced and high-income.
Greece is a developed country with a high standard of living and a high ranking in the Human Development Index. Its economy mainly comprises the service sector (85.0%) and industry (12.0%), while agriculture makes up 3.0% of the national economic output. Important Greek industries include tourism (with 14.9 million international tourists in 2009, it is ranked as the 7th most visited country in the European Union and 16th in the world by the United Nations World Tourism Organization) and merchant shipping (at 16.2% of the world's total capacity, the Greek merchant marine is the largest in the world), while the country is also a considerable agricultural producer (including fisheries) within the union.
Greek unemployment stood at 21.7% in April 2017. The youth unemployment rate (42.3% in March 2018) is extremely high compared to EU standards.
With an economy larger than all the other Balkan economies combined, Greece is the largest economy in the Balkans, and an important regional investor. Greece is the number-two foreign investor of capital in Albania, the number-three foreign investor in Bulgaria, at the top-three of foreign investors in Romania and Serbia and the most important trading partner and largest foreign investor of North Macedonia. Greek banks open a new branch somewhere in the Balkans on an almost weekly basis. The Greek telecommunications company OTE has become a strong investor in Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries.
Greece was a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). In 1979 the accession of the country in the European Communities and the single market was signed, and the process was completed in 1982. Greece was accepted into the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union on 19 June 2000, and in January 2001 adopted the Euro as its currency, replacing the Greek drachma at an exchange rate of 340.75 drachma to the Euro. Greece is also a member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, and is ranked 24th on the KOF Globalization Index for 2013.
The Greek economy had fared well for much of the 20th century, with high growth rates and low public debt). Even until the eve of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, it featured high rates of growth, which, however, were coupled with high structural deficits, thus maintaining a (roughly unchanged throughout this period) public debt to GDP ratio of just over 100%. The Greek crisis was triggered by the turmoil of the 2007–2009 Great Recession, which led the budget deficits of several Western nations to reach or exceed 10% of GDP. What was exceptional for Greece, was that the high budget deficit (which, after several corrections and revisions, was revealed that it had been allowed to reach 10.2% and 15.1% of GDP in 2008 and 2009, respectively) was simultaneously coupled with a high public debt to GDP ratio (relatively stable, at just over 100% until 2007 - as calculated after all corrections). Thus, the country appeared to lose control of its public debt to GDP ratio, which already reached 127% of GDP in 2009. In addition, being a member of the Eurozone, the country had essentially no autonomous monetary policy flexibility.
Finally, there was an effect of controversies about Greek statistics (due the aforementioned drastic budget deficit revisions which led to an increase in the calculated value of the Greek public debt by about 10%, i.e., a public debt to GDP of about 100% until 2007), while there have been arguments about a possible effect of media reports. Consequently, Greece was "punished" by the markets which increased borrowing rates, making it impossible for the country to finance its debt since early 2010.
The above revisions were largely connected with the fact that in the years before the crisis Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and numerous other banks had developed financial products which enabled the governments of Greece, Italy, and many other European countries to hide their borrowing. Dozens of similar agreements were concluded across Europe whereby banks supplied cash in advance in exchange for future payments by the governments involved; in turn, the liabilities of the involved countries were "kept off the books". These conditions had enabled Greece as well as other European governments to spend beyond their means, while meeting the deficit targets set out in the Maastricht Treaty.
In May 2010, the Greece's deficit was again revised and estimated to be 13.6% which was the second highest in the world relative to GDP, with Iceland in first place at 15.7% and the United Kingdom in third with 12.6%. Public debt was forecast, according to some estimates, to hit 120% of GDP in the same year, causing a crisis of confidence in Greece's ability pay back loans.
To avert a sovereign default, Greece, the other Eurozone members, and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a rescue package which involved giving Greece an immediate € in loans, with additional funds to follow, totaling €. To secure the funding, Greece was required to adopt harsh austerity measures to bring its deficit under control. A second bail-out amounting to € ($) was agreed in 2012, subject to strict conditions, including financial reforms and further austerity measures. A debt haircut was also agreed as part of the deal. Greece achieved a primary government budget surplus in 2013, while in April 2014, it returned to the global bond market. Greece returned to growth after six years of economic decline in the second quarter of 2014, and was the Eurozone's fastest-growing economy in the third quarter. A third bailout was agreed in July 2015, after a confrontation with the newly-elected government of Alexis Tsipras.
There was a 25% drop in Greece's GDP, connected with the bailout programmes. This had a critical effect: the Debt-to-GDP ratio, the key factor defining the severity of the crisis, would jump from its 2009 level of 127% to about 170%, solely due to the shrinking economy. In a 2013 report, the IMF admitted that it had underestimated the effects of so extensive tax hikes and budget cuts on the country's GDP and issued an informal apology. The Greek programmes imposed a very rapid improvement in structural primary balance (at least two times faster than for other Eurozone bailed-out countries). The policies have been blamed for worsening the crisis, while Greece's president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, stressed the creditors' share in responsibility for the depth of the crisis. Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, asserted that errors in the design of the first two programmes which led to a loss of 25% of the Greek economy due to the harsh imposition of excessive austerity.
Between 2009 and 2017 the Greek government debt rose from €300 bn to €318 bn, i.e. by only about 6% (thanks, in part, to the 2012 debt restructuring); however, during the same period, the critical debt-to-GDP ratio shot up from 127% to 179% basically due to the severe GDP drop during the handling of the crisis.
Greece's bailouts successfully ended (as declared) on 20 August 2018.
In 2010, Greece was the European Union's largest producer of cotton (183,800 tons) and pistachios (8,000 tons) and ranked second in the production of rice (229,500 tons) and olives (147,500 tons), third in the production of figs (11,000 tons), almonds (44,000 tons), tomatoes (1,400,000 tons), and watermelons (578,400 tons) and fourth in the production of tobacco (22,000 tons). Agriculture contributes 3.8% of the country's GDP and employs 12.4% of the country's labor force.
Greece is a major beneficiary of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. As a result of the country's entry to the European Community, much of its agricultural infrastructure has been upgraded and agricultural output increased. Between 2000 and 2007, organic farming in Greece increased by 885%, the highest change percentage in the EU.
Electricity production in Greece is dominated by the state-owned Public Power Corporation (known mostly by its acronym ΔΕΗ, transliterated as DEI). In 2009 DEI supplied for 85.6% of all electric energy demand in Greece, while the number fell to 77.3% in 2010. Almost half (48%) of DEI's power output is generated using lignite, a drop from the 51.6% in 2009.
Twelve percent of Greece's electricity comes from hydroelectric power plants and another 20% from natural gas. Between 2009 and 2010, independent companies' energy production increased by 56%, from 2,709 Gigawatt hour in 2009 to 4,232 GWh in 2010.
In 2012, renewable energy accounted for 13.8% of the country's total energy consumption, a rise from the 10.6% it accounted for in 2011, a figure almost equal to the EU average of 14.1% in 2012. 10% of the country's renewable energy comes from solar power, while most comes from biomass and waste recycling. In line with the European Commission's Directive on Renewable Energy, Greece aims to get 18% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
In 2013, according to the independent power transmission operator in Greece (ΑΔΜΗΕ) more than 20% of the electricity in Greece has been produced from renewable energy sources and hydroelectric powerplants. This percentage in April reached 42%. Greece currently does not have any nuclear power plants in operation; however, in 2009 the Academy of Athens suggested that research in the possibility of Greek nuclear power plants begin.
The shipping industry has been a key element of Greek economic activity since ancient times. Shipping remains one of the country's most important industries, accounting for 4.5 percent of GDP, employing about 160,000 people (4 percent of the workforce), and representing a third of the trade deficit.
According to a 2011 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Greek Merchant Navy is the largest in the world at 16.2 percent of total global capacity, up from 15.96 percent in 2010 but below the peak of 18.2 percent in 2006. The country's merchant fleet ranks first in total tonnage (202 million dwt), fourth in total number of ships (at 3,150), first in both tankers and dry bulk carriers, fourth in the number of containers, and fifth in other ships. However, today's fleet roster is smaller than an all-time high of 5,000 ships in the late 1970s. Additionally, the total number of ships flying a Greek flag (includes non-Greek fleets) is 1,517, or 5.3 percent of the world's dwt (ranked fifth globally).
During the 1960s, the size of the Greek fleet nearly doubled, primarily through the investment undertaken by the shipping magnates, Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. The basis of the modern Greek maritime industry was formed after World War II when Greek shipping businessmen were able to amass surplus ships sold to them by the U.S. government through the Ship Sales Act of the 1940s.
Greece has a significant shipbuilding and ship maintenance industry. The six shipyards around the port of Piraeus are among the largest in Europe. In recent years, Greece has also become a leader in the construction and maintenance of luxury yachts.
Tourism has been a key element of the economic activity in the country and one of the country's most important sectors, contributing 20.6% of the gross domestic product as of 2018. Greece welcomed over 28 million visitors in 2016, which is an increase from the 26.5 million tourists it welcomed in 2015 and the 19.5 million in 2009, and the 17.7 million tourists in 2007, making Greece one of the most visited countries in Europe in the recent years.
The vast majority of visitors in Greece in 2007 came from the European continent, numbering 12.7 million, while the most visitors from a single nationality were those from the United Kingdom, (2.6 million), followed closely by those from Germany (2.3 million). In 2010, the most visited region of Greece was that of Central Macedonia, with 18% of the country's total tourist flow (amounting to 3.6 million tourists), followed by Attica with 2.6 million and the Peloponnese with 1.8 million. Northern Greece is the country's most-visited geographical region, with 6.5 million tourists, while Central Greece is second with 6.3 million.
In 2010, Lonely Planet ranked Greece's northern and second-largest city of Thessaloniki as the world's fifth-best party town worldwide, comparable to other cities such as Dubai and Montreal. In 2011, Santorini was voted as "The World's Best Island" in "Travel + Leisure". Its neighboring island Mykonos, came in fifth in the European category. There are 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Greece, and Greece is ranked 16th in the world in terms of total sites. 14 further sites are on the tentative list, awaiting nomination.
Since the 1980s, the road and rail network of Greece has been significantly modernised. Important works include the A2 (Egnatia Odos) motorway, that connects northwestern Greece (Igoumenitsa) with northern Greece (Thessaloniki) and northeastern Greece (Kipoi); the Rio–Antirrio bridge, the longest suspension cable bridge in Europe ( long), connecting the Peloponnese (Rio, from Patras) with Aetolia-Akarnania (Antirrio) in western Greece.
Also completed are the A5 (Ionia Odos) motorway that connects northwestern Greece (Ioannina) with western Greece (Antirrio); the last sections of the A1 motorway, connecting Athens to Thessaloniki and Evzonoi in northern Greece; as well as the A8 motorway (part of the Olympia Odos) in Peloponnese, connecting Athens to Patras. The remaining section of Olympia Odos, connecting Patras with Pyrgos, is under planning.
Other important projects that are currently underway, include the construction of the Thessaloniki Metro.
The Athens Metropolitan Area in particular is served by some of the most modern and efficient transport infrastructure in Europe, such as the Athens International Airport, the privately run A6 (Attiki Odos) motorway network and the expanded Athens Metro system.
Most of the Greek islands and many main cities of Greece are connected by air mainly from the two major Greek airlines, Olympic Air and Aegean Airlines. Maritime connections have been improved with modern high-speed craft, including hydrofoils and catamarans.
Railway connections play a somewhat lesser role in Greece than in many other European countries, but they too have also been expanded, with new suburban/commuter rail connections, serviced by Proastiakos around Athens, towards its airport, Kiato and Chalkida; around Thessaloniki, towards the cities of Larissa and Edessa; and around Patras. A modern intercity rail connection between Athens and Thessaloniki has also been established, while an upgrade to double lines in many parts of the network is underway; along with a new double track, standard gauge railway between Athens and Patras (replacing the old metre-gauge Piraeus–Patras railway) which is currently under construction and opening in stages. International railway lines connect Greek cities with the rest of Europe, the Balkans and Turkey.
Modern digital information and communication networks reach all areas. There are over of fiber optics and an extensive open-wire network. Broadband internet availability is widespread in Greece: there were a total of 2,252,653 broadband connections , translating to 20% broadband penetration. According to 2017 data, around 82% of the general population used the internet regularly.
Internet cafés that provide net access, office applications and multiplayer gaming are also a common sight in the country, while mobile internet on 3G and 4G- LTE cellphone networks and Wi-Fi connections can be found almost everywhere. 3G/4G mobile internet usage has been on a sharp increase in recent years. Based on 2016 data 70% of Greek internet users have access via 3G/4G mobile. The United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks Greece among the top 30 countries with a highly developed information and communications infrastructure.
The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Ministry of Development and Competitiveness is responsible for designing, implementing and supervising national research and technological policy. In 2017, spending on research and development (R&D) reached an all-time high of €2 billion, equal to 1.14 percent of GDP.
Although lower than the EU average of 1.93 percent, between 1990 and 1998, total R&D expenditure in Greece enjoyed the third-highest increase in Europe, after Finland and Ireland. Because of its strategic location, qualified workforce, and political and economic stability, many multinational companies such as Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola, Coca-Cola, and Tesla have their regional R&D headquarters in Greece.
Greece has several major technology parks with incubator facilities and has been a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2005. Cooperation between ESA and the Hellenic National Space Committee began in 1994 with the signing of the first cooperation agreement. After applying for full membership in 2003, Greece became the ESA's sixteenth member on 16 March 2005. The country participates in the ESA's telecommunication and technology activities, and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Initiative.
The National Centre of Scientific Research "Demokritos" was founded in 1959. The original objective of the center was the advancement of nuclear research and technology. Today, its activities cover several fields of science and engineering.
Greece has one of the highest rates of tertiary enrollment in the world, while Greeks are well represented in academia worldwide; numerous leading Western universities employ a disproportionately high number of Greek faculty. Greek scientific publications have grown significantly in terms of research impact, surpassing both the EU and global average from 2012 to 2016.
Notable Greek scientists of modern times include Georgios Papanikolaou (inventor of the Pap test), mathematician Constantin Carathéodory (known for the Carathéodory theorems and Carathéodory conjecture), astronomer E. M. Antoniadi, archaeologists Ioannis Svoronos, Valerios Stais, Spyridon Marinatos, Manolis Andronikos (discovered the tomb of Philip II of Macedon in Vergina), Indologist Dimitrios Galanos, botanist Theodoros G. Orphanides, such as Michael Dertouzos, Nicholas Negroponte, John Argyris, John Iliopoulos (2007 Dirac Prize for his contributions on the physics of the charm quark, a major contribution to the birth of the Standard Model, the modern theory of Elementary Particles), Joseph Sifakis (2007 Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize" of Computer Science), Christos Papadimitriou (2002 Knuth Prize, 2012 Gödel Prize), Mihalis Yannakakis (2005 Knuth Prize) and physicist Dimitri Nanopoulos.
According to the official statistical body of Greece, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the country's total population in 2011 was 10,816,286. Eurostat places the current population at 10.7 million in 2018.
Greek society has changed rapidly over the last several decades, coinciding with the wider European trend of declining fertility and rapid aging. The birth rate in 2003 stood at 9.5 per 1,000 inhabitants, significantly lower than the rate of 14.5 per 1,000 in 1981. At the same time, the mortality rate increased slightly from 8.9 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 to 9.6 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2003. Estimates from 2016 show the birth rate decreasing further still to 8.5 per 1,000 and mortality climbing to 11.2 per 1,000.
The fertility rate of 1.41 children per woman is well below the replacement rate of 2.1, and is one of the lowest in the world, considerably below the high of 5.47 children born per woman in 1900. Subsequently, Greece's median age is 44.2 years, the seventh-highest in the world. In 2001, 16.71 percent of the population were 65 years old and older, 68.12 percent between the ages of 15 and 64 years old, and 15.18 percent were 14 years old and younger. By 2016, the proportion of the population age 65 and older had risen to 20.68 percent, while the proportion of those aged 14 and younger declined to slightly below 14 percent.
Marriage rates began declining from almost 71 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 until 2002, only to increase slightly in 2003 to 61 per 1,000 and then fall again to 51 in 2004. Moreover, divorce rates have seen an increase from 191.2 per 1,000 marriages in 1991 to 239.5 per 1,000 marriages in 2004.
As a result of these trends, the average Greek household is smaller and older than in previous generations. The economic crisis has exacerbated this development, with 350,000-450,000 Greeks, predominantly young adults, emigrating since 2010.
Almost two-thirds of the Greek people live in urban areas. Greece's largest and most influential metropolitan centres are those of Athens and Thessaloniki—that latter commonly referred to in Greek as the "συμπρωτεύουσα" (lit. "co-capital")—with metropolitan populations of approximately 4 million and 1 million inhabitants respectively. Other prominent cities with urban populations above 100,000 inhabitants include Patras, Heraklion, Larissa, Volos, Rhodes, Ioannina, Agrinio, Chania, and Chalcis.
The table below lists the largest cities in Greece, by population contained in their respective contiguous built up urban areas, which are either made up of many municipalities, evident in the cases of Athens and Thessaloniki, or are contained within a larger single municipality, case evident in most of the smaller cities of the country. The results come from the preliminary figures of the population census that took place in Greece in May 2011.
The Greek Constitution recognises Eastern Orthodoxy as the 'prevailing' faith of the country, while guaranteeing freedom of religious belief for all. The Greek government does not keep statistics on religious groups and censuses do not ask for religious affiliation. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated 97% of Greek citizens identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, which uses the Byzantine rite and the Greek language, the original language of the New Testament. The administration of the Greek territory is shared between the Church of Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
In a 2010 Eurostat–Eurobarometer poll, 79% of Greek citizens responded that they "believe there is a God". According to other sources, 15.8% of Greeks describe themselves as "very religious", which is the highest among all European countries. The survey also found that just 3.5% never attend a church, compared to 4.9% in Poland and 59.1% in the Czech Republic.
Estimates of the recognised Greek Muslim minority, which is mostly located in Thrace, range around 100,000, (about 1% of the population). Some of the Albanian immigrants to Greece come from a nominally Muslim background, although most are secular in orientation. Following the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Greece and Turkey agreed to a population transfer based on cultural and religious identity. About 500,000 Muslims from Greece, predominantly those defined as Turks, but also Greek Muslims like the Vallahades of western Macedonia, were exchanged with approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Turkey. However, many refugees who settled in former Ottoman Muslim villages in Central Macedonia, and were defined as Christian Orthodox Caucasus Greeks, arrived from the former Russian Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast, after it had been retroceded to Turkey prior to the official population exchange.
Judaism has been present in Greece for more than 2,000 years.
The ancient community of Greek Jews are called Romaniotes, while the Sephardi Jews were once a prominent community in the city of Thessaloniki, numbering some 80,000, or more than half of the population, by 1900. However, after the German occupation of Greece and the Holocaust during World War II, is estimated to number around 5,500 people.
The Roman Catholic community is estimated to be around 250,000 of which 50,000 are Greek citizens. Their community is nominally separate from the smaller Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, which recognises the primacy of the Pope but maintains the liturgy of the Byzantine Rite. Old Calendarists account for 500,000 followers. Protestants, including the Greek Evangelical Church and Free Evangelical Churches, stand at about 30,000. Other Christian minorities, such as Assemblies of God, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and various Pentecostal churches of the Greek Synod of Apostolic Church total about 12,000 members. The independent Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost is the biggest Protestant denomination in Greece with 120 churches. There are no official statistics about Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost, but the Orthodox Church estimates the followers as 20,000. The Jehovah's Witnesses report having 28,874 active members.
Since 2017, Hellenic Polytheism, or Helenism has been legally recognised as an actively practiced religion in Greece, with estimates of 2,000 active practitioners and an additional 100,000 "sympathisers". Hellenism refers to various religious movements that continue, revive, or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices.
The first textual evidence of the Greek language dates back to 15th century BC and the Linear B script which is associated with the Mycenaean Civilization. Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond during Classical Antiquity, and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire.
During the 19th and 20th centuries there was a major dispute known as the Greek language question, on whether the official language of Greece should be the archaic Katharevousa, created in the 19th century and used as the state and scholarly language, or the Dimotiki, the form of the Greek language which evolved naturally from Byzantine Greek and was the language of the people. The dispute was finally resolved in 1976, when Dimotiki was made the only official variation of the Greek language, and Katharevousa fell to disuse.
Greece is today relatively homogeneous in linguistic terms, with a large majority of the native population using Greek as their first or only language. Among the Greek-speaking population, speakers of the distinctive Pontic dialect came to Greece from Asia Minor after the Greek genocide and constitute a sizable group. The Cappadocian dialect came to Greece due to the genocide as well, but is endangered and is barely spoken now. Indigenous Greek dialects include the archaic Greek spoken by the Sarakatsani, traditionally transhument mountain shepherds of Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece. The Tsakonian language, a distinct Greek language deriving from Doric Greek instead of Koine Greek, is still spoken in some villages in the southeastern Peloponnese.
The Muslim minority in Thrace, which amounts to approximately 0.95% of the total population, consists of speakers of Turkish, Bulgarian (Pomaks) and Romani. Romani is also spoken by Christian Roma in other parts of the country. Further minority languages have traditionally been spoken by regional population groups in various parts of the country. Their use has decreased radically in the course of the 20th century through assimilation with the Greek-speaking majority.
Today they are only maintained by the older generations and are on the verge of extinction. This goes for the Arvanites, an Albanian-speaking group mostly located in the rural areas around the capital Athens, and for the Aromanians and Moglenites, also known as Vlachs, whose language is closely related to Romanian and who used to live scattered across several areas of mountainous central Greece. Members of these groups ethnically identify as Greeks and are today all at least bilingual in Greek.
Near the northern Greek borders there are also some Slavic–speaking groups, locally known as "Slavomacedonian"-speaking, most of whose members identify ethnically as Greeks. It is estimated that after the population exchanges of 1923, Macedonia had 200,000 to 400,000 Slavic speakers. The Jewish community in Greece traditionally spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), today maintained only by a few thousand speakers. Other notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, and the Greco-Turkic dialect spoken by the Urums, a community of Caucasus Greeks from the Tsalka region of central Georgia and ethnic Greeks from southeastern Ukraine who arrived in mainly Northern Greece as economic migrants in the 1990s.
Throughout the 20th century, millions of Greeks migrated to the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany, creating a large Greek diaspora. Net migration started to show positive numbers from the 1970s, but until the beginning of the 1990s, the main influx was that of returning Greek migrants or of Pontic Greeks and others from Russia, Georgia, Turkey the Czech Republic, and elsewhere in the former Soviet Bloc.
A study from the Mediterranean Migration Observatory maintains that the 2001 census recorded 762,191 persons residing in Greece without Greek citizenship, constituting around 7% of total population. Of the non-citizen residents, 48,560 were EU or European Free Trade Association nationals and 17,426 were Cypriots with privileged status. The majority come from Eastern European countries: Albania (56%), Bulgaria (5%) and Romania (3%), while migrants from the former Soviet Union (Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, etc.) comprise 10% of the total. Some of the immigrants from Albania are from the Greek minority in Albania centred on the region of Northern Epirus. In addition the total Albanian national population which includes temporary migrants and undocumented persons is around 600,000.
The 2011 census recorded 9,903,268 Greek citizens (91,56%), 480,824 Albanian citizens (4,44%), 75,915 Bulgarian citizens (0,7%), 46,523 Romanian citizenship (0,43%), 34,177 Pakistani citizens (0,32%), 27,400 Georgian citizens (0,25%) and 247,090 people had other or unidentified citizenship (2,3%). 189,000 people of the total population of Albanian citizens were reported in 2008 as ethnic Greeks from Southern Albania, in the historical region of Northern Epirus.
The greatest cluster of non-EU immigrant population are the larger urban centers, especially the Municipality of Athens, with 132,000 immigrants comprising 17% of the local population, and then Thessaloniki, with 27,000 immigrants reaching 7% of the local population. There is also a considerable number of co-ethnics that came from the Greek communities of Albania and the former Soviet Union.
Greece, together with Italy and Spain, is a major entry point for illegal immigrants trying to enter the EU. Illegal immigrants entering Greece mostly do so from the border with Turkey at the Evros River and the islands of the eastern Aegean across from Turkey (mainly Lesbos, Chios, Kos, and Samos). In 2012, the majority of illegal immigrants entering Greece came from Afghanistan, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. In 2015, arrivals of refugees by sea had increased dramatically mainly due to the ongoing Syrian civil war. There were 856,723 arrivals by sea in Greece, an almost fivefold increase to the same period of 2014, of which the Syrians represent almost 45%. The majority of refugees and migrants use Greece as a transit country, while their intended destinations are northern European Nations such as Austria, Germany and Sweden.
Greeks have a long tradition of valuing and investing in "paideia" (education), which was upheld as one of the highest societal values in the Greek and Hellenistic world. The first European institution described as a university was founded in fifth-century Constantinople and continued operating in various incarnations until the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453. The University of Constantinople was Christian Europe's first secular institution of higher learning, and by some measures was the world's first university.
Compulsory education in Greece comprises primary schools (Δημοτικό Σχολείο, "Dimotikó Scholeio") and gymnasium (Γυμνάσιο). Nursery schools (Παιδικός σταθμός, "Paidikós Stathmós") are popular but not compulsory. Kindergartens (Νηπιαγωγείο, "Nipiagogeío") are now compulsory for any child above four years of age. Children start primary school aged six and remain there for six years. Attendance at gymnasia starts at age 12 and lasts for three years.
Greece's post-compulsory secondary education consists of two school types: unified upper secondary schools (Γενικό Λύκειο, "Genikό Lykeiό") and technical–vocational educational schools (Τεχνικά και Επαγγελματικά Εκπαιδευτήρια, "TEE"). Post-compulsory secondary education also includes vocational training institutes (Ινστιτούτα Επαγγελματικής Κατάρτισης, "IEK") which provide a formal but unclassified level of education. As they can accept both "Gymnasio" (lower secondary school) and "Lykeio" (upper secondary school) graduates, these institutes are not classified as offering a particular level of education.
According to the Framework Law (3549/2007), Public higher education "Highest Educational Institutions" (Ανώτατα Εκπαιδευτικά Ιδρύματα, "Anótata Ekpaideytiká Idrýmata", "ΑΕΙ") consists of two parallel sectors:the University sector (Universities, Polytechnics, Fine Arts Schools, the Open University) and the Technological sector (Technological Education Institutions (TEI) and the School of Pedagogic and Technological Education). There are also State Non-University Tertiary Institutes offering vocationally oriented courses of shorter duration (2 to 3 years) which operate under the authority of other Ministries. Students are admitted to these Institutes according to their performance at national level examinations taking place after completion of the third grade of "Lykeio". Additionally, students over twenty-two years old may be admitted to the Hellenic Open University through a form of lottery. The Capodistrian University of Athens is the oldest university in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Greek education system also provides special kindergartens, primary, and secondary schools for people with special needs or difficulties in learning. There are also specialist gymnasia and high schools offering musical, theological, and physical education.
Seventy-two percent of Greek adults aged 25–64 have completed upper secondary education, which is slightly less than the OECD average of 74 percent. The average Greek pupil scored 458 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD's 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This score is lower than the OECD average of 486. On average, girls outperformed boys by 15 points, much more than the average OECD gap of two points.
Greece has universal health care. The system is mixed, combining a national health service with social health insurance (SHI). 2000 World Health Organization report, its health care system ranked 14th in overall performance of 191 countries surveyed. In a 2013 Save the Children report, Greece was ranked the 19th out of 176 countries for the state of mothers and newborn babies. In 2010, there were 138 hospitals with 31,000 beds, but in 2011, the Ministry of Health announced plans to decrease the number to 77 hospitals with 36,035 beds to reduce expenses and further enhance healthcare standards. However, as of 2014, there were 124 public hospitals, of which 106 were general hospitals and 18 specialised hospitals, with a total capacity of about 30,000 beds.
Greece's healthcare expenditures as a percentage of GDP were 9.6% in 2007, just above the OECD average of 9.5%. By 2015, spending declined to 8.4% of GDP (compared with the EU average of 9.5%), a decline of one-fifth since 2010. Nevertheless, the country maintains the highest doctor-to-population ratio of any OECD country and the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the EU.
Life expectancy in Greece is among the highest in the world; a 2011 OECD report placed it at 80.3 years, above the OECD average of 79.5, while a more recent 2017 study found life expectancy in 2015 to be 81.1 years, slightly above the EU average of 80.6. The island of Icaria has the highest percentage of nonagenarians in the world; approximately 33% of islanders are 90 or older. Icaria is subsequently classified as a "blue zone", a region where people allegedly live longer than average and have lower rates of cancer, heart disease, or other chronic illnesses.
The 2011 OECD report showed that Greece had the largest percentage of adult daily smokers of any of the 34 OECD members. The country's obesity rate is 18.1%, which is above the OECD average of 15.1%, but considerably lower than the American rate of 27.7%. In 2008, Greece had the highest rate of perceived good health in the OECD, at 98.5%. Infant mortality, with a rate of 3.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, was below the 2007 OECD average of 4.9.
The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece and continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern continuation, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. Other cultures and nations, such as the Latin and Frankish states, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Genoese Republic, and the British Empire have also left their influence on modern Greek culture, although historians credit the Greek War of Independence with revitalising Greece and giving birth to a single, cohesive entity of its multi-faceted culture.
In ancient times, Greece was the birthplace of Western culture. Modern democracies owe a debt to Greek beliefs in government by the people, trial by jury, and equality under the law. The ancient Greeks pioneered in many fields that rely on systematic thought, including biology, geometry, history, philosophy, physics and mathematics. They introduced such important literary forms as epic and lyric poetry, history, tragedy, and comedy. In their pursuit of order and proportion, the Greeks created an ideal of beauty that strongly influenced Western art.
Artistic production in Greece began in the prehistoric pre-Greek Cycladic and the Minoan civilizations, both of which were influenced by local traditions and the art of ancient Egypt.
There were several interconnected traditions of painting in ancient Greece. Due to their technical differences, they underwent somewhat differentiated developments. Not all painting techniques are equally well represented in the archaeological record. The most respected form of art, according to authors like Pliny or Pausanias, were individual, mobile paintings on wooden boards, technically described as panel paintings. Also, the tradition of wall painting in Greece goes back at least to the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age, with the lavish fresco decoration of sites like Knossos, Tiryns and Mycenae. Much of the figural or architectural sculpture of ancient Greece was painted colourfully. This aspect of Greek stonework is described as polychrome.
Ancient Greek sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze; with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century. Both marble and bronze are easy to form and very durable. Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold, most often in leaf form and ivory for all or parts (faces and hands) of the figure, and probably gems and other materials, but were much less common, and only fragments have survived. By the early 19th century, the systematic excavation of ancient Greek sites had brought forth a plethora of sculptures with traces of notably multicolored surfaces. It was not until published findings by German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann in the late 20th century, that the painting of ancient Greek sculptures became an established fact.
The art production continued also during the Byzantine era. The most salient feature of this new aesthetic was its "abstract", or anti-naturalistic character. If classical art was marked by the attempt to create representations that mimicked reality as closely as possible, Byzantine art seems to have abandoned this attempt in favour of a more symbolic approach. The Byzantine painting concentrated mainly on icons and hagiographies. The Macedonian art (Byzantine) was the artistic expression of Macedonian Renaissance, a label sometimes used to describe the period of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire (867–1056), especially the 10th century, which some scholars have seen as a time of increased interest in classical scholarship and the assimilation of classical motifs into Christian artwork.
Post Byzantine art schools include the Cretan School and Heptanese School. The first artistic movement in the Greek Kingdom can be considered the Greek academic art of the 19th century ("Munich School"). Notable modern Greek painters include Nikolaos Gyzis, Georgios Jakobides, Theodoros Vryzakis, Nikiforos Lytras, Konstantinos Volanakis, Nikos Engonopoulos and Yannis Tsarouchis, while some notable sculptors are Pavlos Prosalentis, Ioannis Kossos, Leonidas Drosis, Georgios Bonanos and Yannoulis Chalepas.
The architecture of ancient Greece was produced by the ancient Greeks ("Hellenes"), whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Aegean Islands and their colonies, for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC. The formal vocabulary of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the division of architectural style into three defined orders: the Doric Order, the Ionic Order and the Corinthian Order, was to have profound effect on Western architecture of later periods.
Byzantine architecture is the architecture promoted by the Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, which dominated Greece and the Greek speaking world during the Middle Ages. The empire endured for more than a millennium, dramatically influencing Medieval architecture throughout Europe and the Near East, and becoming the primary progenitor of the Renaissance and Ottoman architectural traditions that followed its collapse.
After the Greek Independence, the modern Greek architects tried to combine traditional Greek and Byzantine elements and motives with the western European movements and styles. Patras was the first city of the modern Greek state to develop a city plan. In January 1829, Stamatis Voulgaris, a Greek engineer of the French army, presented the plan of the new city to the Governor Kapodistrias, who approved it. Voulgaris applied the orthogonal rule in the urban complex of Patras.
Two special genres can be considered the Cycladic architecture, featuring white-coloured houses, in the Cyclades and the Epirotic architecture in the region of Epirus.
After the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, the architecture of Athens and other cities was mostly influenced by the Neoclassical architecture. For Athens, the first King of Greece, Otto of Greece, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state. As for Thessaloniki, after the fire of 1917, the government ordered for a new city plan under the supervision of Ernest Hébrard. Other modern Greek architects include Anastasios Metaxas, Panagis Kalkos, Ernst Ziller, Dimitris Pikionis and Georges Candilis.
Theatre in its western form was born in Greece. The city-state of Classical Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was institutionalised as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (486 BC), and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there.
During the Byzantine period, the theatrical art was heavily declined. According to Marios Ploritis, the only form survived was the folk theatre ("Mimos" and "Pantomimos"), despite the hostility of the official state. Later, during the Ottoman period, the main theatrical folk art was the "Karagiozis". The renaissance which led to the modern Greek theatre, took place in the Venetian Crete. Significal dramatists include Vitsentzos Kornaros and Georgios Chortatzis.
The modern Greek theatre was born after the Greek independence, in the early 19th century, and initially was influenced by the Heptanesean theatre and melodrama, such as the Italian opera. The Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù was the first theatre and opera house of modern Greece and the place where the first Greek opera, Spyridon Xyndas' "The Parliamentary Candidate" (based on an exclusively Greek libretto) was performed. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the Athenian theatre scene was dominated by revues, musical comedies, operettas and nocturnes and notable playwrights included Spyridon Samaras, Dionysios Lavrangas, Theophrastos Sakellaridis and others.
The National Theatre of Greece was opened in 1900 as "Royal Theatre". Notable playwrights of the modern Greek theatre include Gregorios Xenopoulos, Nikos Kazantzakis, Pantelis Horn, Alekos Sakellarios and Iakovos Kambanelis, while notable actors include Cybele Andrianou, Marika Kotopouli, Aimilios Veakis, Orestis Makris, Katina Paxinou, Manos Katrakis and Dimitris Horn. Significant directors include Dimitris Rontiris, Alexis Minotis and Karolos Koun.
Greek literature can be divided into three main categories: Ancient, Byzantine and modern Greek literature.
Athens is considered the birthplace of Western literature. At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two monumental works of Homer: the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". Though dates of composition vary, these works were fixed around 800 BC or after. In the classical period many of the genres of western literature became more prominent. Lyrical poetry, odes, pastorals, elegies, epigrams; dramatic presentations of comedy and tragedy; historiography, rhetorical treatises, philosophical dialectics, and philosophical treatises all arose in this period. The two major lyrical poets were Sappho and Pindar. The Classical era also saw the dawn of drama.
Of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors have survived: those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The surviving plays by Aristophanes are also a treasure trove of comic presentation, while Herodotus and Thucydides are two of the most influential historians in this period. The greatest prose achievement of the 4th century was in philosophy with the works of the three great philosophers.
Byzantine literature refers to literature of the Byzantine Empire written in Atticizing, Medieval and early Modern Greek, and it is the expression of the intellectual life of the Byzantine Greeks during the Christian Middle Ages. Although "popular" Byzantine literature and early Modern Greek literature both began in the 11th century, the two are indistinguishable.
Modern Greek literature refers to literature written in common Modern Greek, emerging from late Byzantine times in the 11th century. The Cretan Renaissance poem "Erotokritos" is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this period of Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553–1613). Later, during the period of Greek enlightenment (Diafotismos), writers such as Adamantios Korais and Rigas Feraios prepared with their works the Greek Revolution (1821–1830).
Leading figures of modern Greek literature include Dionysios Solomos, Andreas Kalvos, Angelos Sikelianos, Emmanuel Rhoides, Demetrius Vikelas, Kostis Palamas, Penelope Delta, Yannis Ritsos, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Nikos Kazantzakis, Andreas Embeirikos, Kostas Karyotakis, Gregorios Xenopoulos, Constantine P. Cavafy, Nikos Kavvadias, Kostas Varnalis and Kiki Dimoula. Two Greek authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: George Seferis in 1963 and Odysseas Elytis in 1979.
Most western philosophical traditions began in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC. The first philosophers are called "Presocratics," which designates that they came before Socrates, whose contributions mark a turning point in western thought. The Presocratics were from the western or the eastern colonies of Greece and only fragments of their original writings survive, in some cases merely a single sentence.
A new period of philosophy started with Socrates. Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point. Aspects of Socrates were first united from Plato, who also combined with them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system.
Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism.
Byzantine philosophy refers to the distinctive philosophical ideas of the philosophers and scholars of the Byzantine Empire, especially between the 8th and 15th centuries. It was characterised by a Christian world-view, but one which could draw ideas directly from the Greek texts of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists.
On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople, Gemistus Pletho tried to restore the use of the term "Hellene" and advocated the return to the Olympian Gods of the ancient world. After 1453 a number of Greek Byzantine scholars who fled to western Europe contributed to the Renaissance.
In modern period, Diafotismos (Greek: Διαφωτισμός, "enlightenment", "illumination") was the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment and its philosophical and political ideas. Some notable representatives were Adamantios Korais, Rigas Feraios and Theophilos Kairis.
Other modern era Greek philosophers or political scientists include Cornelius Castoriadis, Nicos Poulantzas and Christos Yannaras.
Greek vocal music extends far back into ancient times where mixed-gender choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual reasons. Instruments during that period included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music played an important role in the education system during ancient times. Boys were taught music from the age of six. Later influences from the Roman Empire, Middle East, and the Byzantine Empire also had effect on Greek music.
While the new technique of polyphony was developing in the West, the Eastern Orthodox Church resisted any type of change. Therefore, Byzantine music remained monophonic and without any form of instrumental accompaniment. As a result, and despite certain attempts by certain Greek chanters (such as Manouel Gazis, Ioannis Plousiadinos or the Cypriot Ieronimos o Tragoudistis), Byzantine music was deprived of elements of which in the West encouraged an unimpeded development of art. However, this method which kept music away from polyphony, along with centuries of continuous culture, enabled monophonic music to develop to the greatest heights of perfection. Byzantium presented the monophonic Byzantine chant; a melodic treasury of inestimable value for its rhythmical variety and expressive power.
Along with the Byzantine (Church) chant and music, the Greek people also cultivated the Greek folk song ("Demotiko") which is divided into two cycles, the akritic and klephtic. The akritic was created between the 9th and 10th centuries and expressed the life and struggles of the akrites (frontier guards) of the Byzantine empire, the most well known being the stories associated with Digenes Akritas. The klephtic cycle came into being between the late Byzantine period and the start of the Greek War of Independence. The klephtic cycle, together with historical songs, "paraloghes" (narrative song or ballad), love songs, mantinades, wedding songs, songs of exile and dirges express the life of the Greeks. There is a unity between the Greek people's struggles for freedom, their joys and sorrow and attitudes towards love and death.
The Heptanesean kantádhes (καντάδες 'serenades'; sing.: καντάδα) became the forerunners of the Greek modern urban popular song, influencing its development to a considerable degree. For the first part of the next century, several Greek composers continued to borrow elements from the Heptanesean style. The most successful songs during the period 1870–1930 were the so-called Athenian serenades, and the songs performed on stage (επιθεωρησιακά τραγούδια 'theatrical revue songs') in revue, operettas and nocturnes that were dominating Athens' theater scene.
Rebetiko, initially a music associated with the lower classes, later (and especially after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey) reached greater general acceptance as the rough edges of its overt subcultural character were softened and polished, sometimes to the point of unrecognizability. It was the base of the later laïkó (song of the people). The leading performers of the genre include Vassilis Tsitsanis, Grigoris Bithikotsis, Stelios Kazantzidis, George Dalaras, Haris Alexiou and Glykeria.
Regarding the classical music, it was through the Ionian islands (which were under western rule and influence) that all the major advances of the western European classical music were introduced to mainland Greeks. The region is notable for the birth of the first School of modern Greek classical music (Heptanesean or Ionian School, Greek: "Επτανησιακή Σχολή"), established in 1815. Prominent representatives of this genre include Nikolaos Mantzaros, Spyridon Xyndas, Spyridon Samaras and Pavlos Carrer. Manolis Kalomiris is considered the founder of the Greek National School of Music.
In the 20th century, Greek composers have had a significant impact on the development of avant garde and modern classical music, with figures such as Iannis Xenakis, Nikos Skalkottas, and Dimitri Mitropoulos achieving international prominence. At the same time, composers and musicians such as Mikis Theodorakis, Manos Hatzidakis, Eleni Karaindrou, Vangelis and Demis Roussos garnered an international following for their music, which include famous film scores such as Zorba the Greek, Serpico, Never on Sunday, America America, Eternity and a Day, Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, among others. Greek American composers known for their film scores include also Yanni and Basil Poledouris. Notable Greek opera singers and classical musicians of the 20th and 21st century include Maria Callas, Nana Mouskouri, Mario Frangoulis, Leonidas Kavakos, Dimitris Sgouros and others.
During the dictatorship of the Colonels, the music of Mikis Theodorakis was banned by the junta and the composer was jailed, internally exiled, and put in a concentration camp, before finally being allowed to leave Greece due to international reaction to his detention. Released during the junta years, "Anthrope Agapa, ti Fotia Stamata" (Make Love, Stop the Gunfire), by the pop group Poll is considered the first anti-war protest song in the history of Greek rock. The song was echoing the hippie slogan Make love, not war and was inspired directly by the Vietnam War, becoming a "smash hit" in Greece.
Greece participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 35 times after its debut at the 1974 Contest. In 2005, Greece won with the song "My Number One", performed by Greek-Swedish singer Elena Paparizou. The song received 230 points with 10 sets of 12 points from Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Albania, Cyprus, Serbia & Montenegro, Sweden and Germany and also became a smash hit in different countries and especially in Greece. The 51st Eurovision Song Contest was held in Athens at the Olympic Indoor Hall of the Athens Olympic Sports Complex in Maroussi, with hosted by Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas.
Greek cuisine is characteristic of the healthy Mediterranean diet, which is epitomised by dishes of Crete. Greek cuisine incorporates fresh ingredients into a variety of local dishes such as moussaka, pastitsio, classic Greek salad, fasolada, spanakopita and souvlaki. Some dishes can be traced back to ancient Greece like skordalia (a thick purée of walnuts, almonds, crushed garlic and olive oil), lentil soup, retsina (white or rosé wine sealed with pine resin) and pasteli (candy bar with sesame seeds baked with honey). Throughout Greece people often enjoy eating from small dishes such as meze with various dips such as tzatziki, grilled octopus and small fish, feta cheese, dolmades (rice, currants and pine kernels wrapped in vine leaves), various pulses, olives and cheese. Olive oil is added to almost every dish.
Some sweet desserts include melomakarona, diples and galaktoboureko, and drinks such as ouzo, metaxa and a variety of wines including retsina. Greek cuisine differs widely from different parts of the mainland and from island to island. It uses some flavorings more often than other Mediterranean cuisines: oregano, mint, garlic, onion, dill and bay laurel leaves. Other common herbs and spices include basil, thyme and fennel seed. Many Greek recipes, especially in the northern parts of the country, use "sweet" spices in combination with meat, for example cinnamon and cloves in stews.
Cinema first appeared in Greece in 1896, but the first actual cine-theatre was opened in 1907 in Athens. In 1914 the "Asty Films Company" was founded and the production of long films began. "Golfo" (Γκόλφω), a well known traditional love story, is considered the first Greek feature film, although there were several minor productions such as newscasts before this. In 1931 Orestis Laskos directed "Daphnis and Chloe" ("Δάφνις και Χλόη"), containing one of the first nude scene in the history of European cinema; it was also the first Greek movie which was played abroad. In 1944 Katina Paxinou was honoured with the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
The 1950s and early 1960s are considered by many to be a "golden age" of Greek cinema. Directors and actors of this era were recognised as important figures in Greece and some gained international acclaim: George Tzavellas, Irene Papas, Melina Mercouri, Mihalis Kakogiannis, Alekos Sakellarios, Nikos Tsiforos, Iakovos Kambanelis, Katina Paxinou, Nikos Koundouros, Ellie Lambeti and others. More than sixty films per year were made, with the majority having film noir elements. Some notable films include "The Drunkard" (1950, directed by George Tzavellas), "The Counterfeit Coin" (1955, by Giorgos Tzavellas), "Πικρό Ψωμί" (1951, by Grigoris Grigoriou), "O Drakos" (1956, by Nikos Koundouros), "Stella" (1955, directed by Cacoyannis and written by Kampanellis), "Woe to the Young" (1961, by Alekos Sakellarios), "Glory Sky" (1962, by Takis Kanellopoulos) and "The Red Lanterns" (1963, by Vasilis Georgiadis)
Cacoyannis also directed "Zorba the Greek" with Anthony Quinn which received Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film nominations. Finos Film also contributed in this period with movies such as "Λατέρνα, Φτώχεια και Φιλότιμο", "Madalena", "I theia ap' to Chicago", "Το ξύλο βγήκε από τον Παράδεισο" and many more.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Theo Angelopoulos directed a series of notable and appreciated movies. His film "Eternity and a Day" won the Palme d'Or and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
There are also internationally renowned filmmakers in the Greek diaspora, such as the Greek-French Costa-Gavras and the Greek-Americans Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and Alexander Payne.
More recently Yorgos Lanthimos (film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter) has received four Academy Award nominations for his work, including Best Foreign Language Film for "Dogtooth" (2009), Best Original Screenplay for "The Lobster" (2015), and Best Picture and Best Director for "The Favourite" (2018).
Greece is the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, first recorded in 776 BC in Olympia, and hosted the modern Olympic Games twice, the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics. During the parade of nations Greece is always called first, as the founding nation of the ancient precursor of modern Olympics. The nation has competed at every Summer Olympic Games, one of only four countries to have done so. Having won a total of 110 medals (30 gold, 42 silver and 38 bronze), Greece is ranked 32nd by gold medals in the all-time Summer Olympic medal count. Their best ever performance was in the 1896 Summer Olympics, when Greece finished second in the medal table with 10 gold medals.
The Greek national football team, ranking 12th in the world in 2014 (and having reached a high of 8th in the world in 2008 and 2011), were crowned European Champions in Euro 2004 in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport. The Greek Super League is the highest professional football league in the country, comprising sixteen teams. The most successful are Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and AEK Athens.
The Greek national basketball team has a decades-long tradition of excellence in the sport, being considered among the world's top basketball powers. , it ranked 4th in the world and 2nd in Europe. They have won the European Championship twice in 1987 and 2005, and have reached the final four in two of the last four FIBA World Championships, taking the second place in the world in 2006 FIBA World Championship, after a 101–95 win against Team USA in the tournament's semifinal. The domestic top basketball league, A1 Ethniki, is composed of fourteen teams. The most successful Greek teams are Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki, AEK Athens and P.A.O.K. Greek basketball teams are the most successful in European basketball the last 25 years, having won 9 Euroleagues since the establishment of the modern era Euroleague Final Four format in 1988, while no other nation has won more than 4 Euroleague championships in this period. Besides the 9 Euroleagues, Greek basketball teams (Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki, AEK Athens, P.A.O.K, Maroussi) have won 3 Triple Crowns, 5 Saporta Cups, 2 Korać Cups and 1 FIBA Europe Champions Cup. After the 2005 European Championship triumph of the Greek national basketball team, Greece became the reigning European Champion in both football and basketball.
The Greece women's national water polo team have emerged as one of the leading powers in the world, becoming World Champions after their gold medal win against the hosts China at the 2011 World Championship. They also won the silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the gold medal at the 2005 World League and the silver medals at the 2010 and 2012 European Championships. The Greece men's national water polo team became the third best water polo team in the world in 2005, after their win against Croatia in the bronze medal game at the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Canada. The domestic top water polo leagues, Greek Men's Water Polo League and Greek Women's Water Polo League are considered amongst the top national leagues in European water polo, as its clubs have made significant success in European competitions. In men's European competitions, Olympiacos has won the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Triple Crown in 2002 becoming the first club in water polo history to win every title in which it has competed within a single year (National championship, National cup, Champions League and European Super Cup), while NC Vouliagmeni has won the LEN Cup Winners' Cup in 1997. In women's European competitions, Greek water polo teams (NC Vouliagmeni, Glyfada NSC, Olympiacos, Ethnikos Piraeus) are amongst the most successful in European water polο, having won 4 LEN Champions Cups, 3 LEN Trophies and 2 European Supercups.
The Greek men's national volleyball team has won two bronze medals, one in the European Volleyball Championship and another one in the Men's European Volleyball League, a 5th place in the Olympic Games and a 6th place in the FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship. The Greek league, the A1 Ethniki, is considered one of the top volleyball leagues in Europe and the Greek clubs have had significant success in European competitions. Olympiacos is the most successful volleyball club in the country having won the most domestic titles and being the only Greek club to have won European titles; they have won two CEV Cups, they have been CEV Champions League runners-up twice and they have played in 12 Final Fours in the European competitions, making them one of the most traditional volleyball clubs in Europe. Iraklis have also seen significant success in European competitions, having been three times runners-up of the CEV Champions League.
In handball, AC Diomidis Argous is the only Greek club to have won a European Cup.
Apart from these, cricket is relatively popular in Corfu.
The numerous gods of the ancient Greek religion as well as the mythical heroes and events of the ancient Greek epics ("The Odyssey" and "The Iliad") and other pieces of art and literature from the time make up what is nowadays colloquially referred to as Greek mythology. Apart from serving a religious function, the mythology of the ancient Greek world also served a cosmological role as it was meant to try to explain how the world was formed and operated.
The principal gods of the ancient Greek religion were the Dodekatheon, or the "Twelve Gods", who lived on the top of Mount Olympus. The most important of all ancient Greek gods was Zeus, the king of the gods, who was married to his sister, Hera. The other Greek gods that made up the Twelve Olympians were Ares, Poseidon, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Hermes. Apart from these twelve gods, Greeks also had a variety of other mystical beliefs, such as nymphs and other magical creatures.
According to Greek law, every Sunday of the year is a public holiday. Since the late '70s, Saturday also is a non-school and not working day. In addition, there are four mandatory official public holidays: 25 March ("Greek Independence Day"), Easter Monday, 15 August ("Assumption or Dormition of the Holy Virgin"), and 25 December ("Christmas"). 1 May ("Labour Day") and 28 October ("Ohi Day") are regulated by law as being optional but it is customary for employees to be given the day off. There are, however, more public holidays celebrated in Greece than are announced by the Ministry of Labour each year as either obligatory or optional. The list of these non-fixed national holidays rarely changes and has not changed in recent decades, giving a total of eleven national holidays each year.
In addition to the national holidays, there are public holidays that are not celebrated nationwide, but only by a specific professional group or a local community. For example, many municipalities have a "Patron Saint" parallel to "Name Days", or a "Liberation Day". On such days it is customary for schools to take the day off.
Notable festivals, beyond the religious fests, include Patras Carnival, Athens Festival and various local wine festivals. The city of Thessaloniki is also home of a number of festivals and events. The Thessaloniki International Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in Southern Europe.
Trade
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Demographics of Greece
The Demographics of Greece refer to the demography of the population that inhabits the Greek peninsula. The population of Greece was estimated by the United Nations to be in (including displaced refugees).
Greece was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic period. Prior to the 2nd millennium BC, the Greek peninsula was inhabited by various pre-Hellenic peoples, the most notable of which were the Pelasgians. The Greek language ultimately dominated the peninsula and Greece's mosaic of small city-states became culturally similar. The population estimates on the Greeks during the 4th century BC, is approximately 3.5 million on the Greek peninsula and 4 to 6.5 million in the rest of the entire Mediterranean Basin, including all colonies such as those in Magna Graecia, Asia Minor and the shores of the Black Sea.
During the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek peninsula was occasionally invaded by the foreign peoples like Goths, Avars, Slavs, Normans, Franks and other Romance-speaking peoples who had betrayed the Crusades. The only group, however, that planned to establish permanent settlements in the region were the Slavs. They settled in isolated valleys of the Peloponnese and Thessaly, establishing segregated communities that were referred by the Byzantines as Sclaveni. Traces of Slavic culture in Greece are very rare and by the 9th century, the Sclaveni in Greece were largely assimilated. However, some Slavic communities managed to survive in rural Macedonia. At the same time a large Sephardi Jewish emigrant community from the Iberian peninsula established itself in Thessaloniki, while there were population movements of Arvanites and Vlachs, who established communities in several parts of the Greek peninsula. The Byzantine Empire ultimately fell to Ottoman Turks in the 15th century and as a result Ottoman colonies were established in the Balkans, notably in Macedonia, the Peloponnese and Crete. Many Greeks either fled to other European nations or to geographically isolated areas (i.e. mountains and heavily forested territories) in order to escape foreign rule. For those reasons, the population decreased in the plains, while increasing on the mountains. The population transfers with Bulgaria and Turkey that took place in the early 20th century, added in total some two million Greeks to the demography of the Greek Kingdom.
According to the 2001 census the population of Greece was 10,964,020. Eurostat estimations as of January 2008 gave the number of 11,214,992 inhabitants in the Greek peninsula. According to the official 2011 census, which used sophisticated methodology, the population of Greece was 10,816,286.
Greece is divided into nine geographic regions. The population of each region according to the 2001 census:
The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation.
Source: "UN World Population Prospects"
Vital statistics for population change, 1921 to present:
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
population: Greek 93%, other (foreign citizens) 7% (2001 census)
Note: data represent citizenship, since Greece does not collect data on ethnicity
Greek Orthodox (official) 81-90%, Muslim 2%, other 3%, none 4-15%, unspecified 1% (2015 est.)
Greece has received a large number of immigrants since the early 1990s. The majority of them come from the neighbouring countries. As of 2011, the number of foreigners in an enumerated total of 10,815,197 people was 911,299.
Foreign-born by country (Eurostat):
Greece has received many illegal immigrants beginning in the 1990s and continuing during the 2000s and 2010s. Migrants make use of the many islands in the Aegean Sea, directly west of Turkey. A spokesman for the European Union's border control agency said that the Greek-Albanian border is "one of Europe's worst-affected external land borders." Migrants across the Evros region bordering Turkey face land-mines. Principal illegal immigrants include Albanians, Indians, Kurds, Afghans, Iraqis and Somalis.
Being part of the phenomenon of the aging of Europe, the Greek population shows a rapid increase of the percentage of the elderly people. Greece's population census of 1961 found that 10.9% of the total population was above the age of 65, while the percentage of this group age increased to 19.0% in 2011. On the contrary, the percentage of the population of the ages 0–14 had a total decrease of 10.2% between 1961 and 2011.
The population of northern Greece has primarily been ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse.
The Muslim minority of Greece is the only explicitly recognized minority in Greece by the government. The officials define it as a group of Greek Muslims numbering 98,000 people, consisting of Turks (50%), Pomaks (35%) and Romani (15%). No other minorities are officially acknowledged by the government. There is no official information for the size of the ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities because asking the population questions pertaining to the topic have been abolished since 1951.
Minorities in Greece according to Minority Rights Group International:
The official language of Greece is Greek, spoken by almost all as a second language at least. Additionally, there are a number of linguistic minority groups that are bilingual in a variety of non-Greek languages, and parts of these groups identify ethnically as Greeks.
Languages spoken in Greece:
According to the Greek constitution, Eastern Orthodox Christianity is recognized as the "prevailing religion" in Greece. During the centuries that Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire, besides its spiritual mandate, the Orthodox Church, based in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), also functioned as an official representative of the Christian population of the empire. The Church is often credited with the preservation of the Greek language, values, and national identity during Ottoman times. The Church was also an important rallying point in the war for independence against the Ottoman Empire, although the official Church in Constantinople initially condemned the breakout of the armed struggle in fear of retaliation from the Ottoman side. The Church of Greece was established shortly after the formation of a Greek national state. Its authority to this day extends only to the areas included in the independent Greek state before the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. There is a Muslim minority concentrated in Thrace and officially protected by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). Besides Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarian speakers) and Roma, it consists mainly of ethnic Turks, who speak Turkish and receive instruction in Turkish at special government-funded schools. There are also a number of Jews in Greece, most of whom live in Thessaloniki. There are also some Greeks who adhere to a reconstruction of the ancient Greek religion. A place of worship has been recognized as such by court.
Greek education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 15. English study is compulsory from first grade through high school. University education, including books, is also free, contingent upon the student's ability to meet stiff entrance requirements. A high percentage of the student population seeks higher education. More than 100,000 students are registered at Greek universities, and 15% of the population currently holds a university degree. Admission in a university is determined by state-administered exams, the candidate's grade-point average from high school, and his/her priority choices of major. About one in four candidates gains admission to Greek universities.
Greek law does not currently offer official recognition to the graduates of private universities that operate in the country, except for those that offer a degree valid in another European Union country, which is automatically recognized by reciprocity. As a result, a large and growing number of students are pursuing higher education abroad. The Greek Government decides through an evaluation procedure whether to recognize degrees from specific foreign universities as qualification for public sector hiring. Other students attend private, post-secondary educational institutions in Greece that are not recognized by the Greek Government. At the moment extensive public talk is made for the reform of the Constitution in order to recognize private higher education in Greece as equal with public and to place common regulations for both.
The number of Greek students studying at European institutions is increasing along with EU support for educational exchange. In addition, nearly 5,000 Greeks are studying in the United States, about half of whom are in graduate school. Greek per capita student representation in the US (one every 2,200) is among the highest in Europe.
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Politics of Greece
Greece is a parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the President of Greece is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Greece is the head of government within a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Hellenic Parliament. Between the restoration of democracy in 1974 and the Greek government-debt crisis the party system was dominated by the liberal-conservative New Democracy and the social-democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Constitution of Greece, which describes Greece as a "presidential parliamentary republic", includes extensive specific guarantees of civil liberties and vests the powers of the head of state in a president elected by parliament. The Greek governmental structure is similar to that found in many other Western democracies, and has been described as a compromise between the French and German models. The prime minister and cabinet play the central role in the political process, while the president performs some executive and legislative functions in addition to ceremonial duties. Voting in Greece is compulsory but is not enforced.
The Cabinet of Greece, which is the main organ of the government, includes the heads of all executive ministries, appointed by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister.
The President of the Republic is elected by the Parliament for a five-year term (election last held 15 January 2020), and a maximum of two terms in office. When a presidential term expires, Parliament votes to elect the new President. In the first two votes, a majority (200 votes) is necessary. The third and final vote requires a (180 votes) majority.
If the third vote is fruitless, Parliament is dissolved and elections are proclaimed by the outgoing President within the next 30 days. In the new Parliament, the election for President is repeated immediately with a majority required for the initial vote, an absolute majority for the second one (151 votes) and a simple majority for the third and final one. The system is so designed as to promote consensus presidential candidates among the main political parties.
The president has the power to declare war, to grant pardon (forgiveness) and to conclude agreements of peace, alliance, and participation in international organizations; upon the request of the government a simple parliamentary majority is required to confirm such actions, agreements, or treaties. An absolute or a three-fifths majority is required in exceptional cases (for example, the accession into the EU needed a majority).
The president can also exercise certain emergency powers, which must be countersigned by the appropriate cabinet minister. The president may not dissolve parliament, dismiss the government, suspend certain articles of the constitution, issue a proclamation or declare a state of siege without countersigning by the prime minister or the appropriate cabinet minister. To call a referendum, he must obtain approval from parliament.
The prime minister is elected by the Parliament and he or she is usually the leader of the party controlling the absolute majority of MPs. According to the Constitution, the prime minister safeguards the unity of the government and directs its activities. He or she is the most powerful person of the Greek political system and recommends ministers to the President for appointment or dismissal.
Greek parliamentary politics hinge upon the principle of the "" (pronounced "dhedhilomeni"), the "declared confidence" of Parliament to the Prime Minister and his/her administration. This means that the President of the Republic is bound to appoint, as Prime Minister, a person who will be approved by a majority of the Parliament's members (i.e. 151 votes). With the current electoral system, it is the leader of the party gaining a plurality of the votes in the Parliamentary elections who gets appointed Prime Minister.
An administration may at any time seek a "vote of confidence". Conversely a number of Members of Parliament may ask that a "vote of reproach" be taken. Both are rare occurrences with usually predictable outcomes as voting outside the party line happens very seldom.
On 4 October 2009, George Papandreou, president of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement party and son and grandson of Prime Ministers, was elected as the new Prime Minister of Greece, following five years of government under New Democracy leader Kostas Karamanlis, the nephew of long-time Prime Minister and President Konstantinos Karamanlis.
Greece elects a legislature by universal suffrage of all citizens over the age of 18. The Greek Parliament (Βουλή των Ελλήνων) has 300 members, elected for a four-year term by a system of reinforced proportional representation in 48 multi-seat constituencies, 8 single-seat constituencies and a single nationwide list. 288 of the 300 seats are determined by constituency voting, and voters may select the candidate or candidates of their choice by marking their name on the party ballot. The remaining 12 seats are filled from nationwide party lists on a top-down basis and based on the proportion of the total vote each party received.
Greece uses a complex reinforced proportional representation electoral system which discourages splinter parties and makes a parliamentary majority possible even if the leading party falls short of a majority of the popular vote. Under the current electoral law, any single party must receive at least a 3% nationwide vote tally in order to elect Members of Parliament (the so-called "3% threshold"). The largest party gets a 50-seat bonus (out of 300 seats) ostensibly to ensure elections return viable governing majorities.
The law in its current form favors the first past the post party to achieve an absolute (151 parliamentary seats) majority, provided it receives a 41%+ nationwide vote. This is touted to enhance governmental stability. These electoral laws can be changed by simple parliamentary majority, but a law so changed will not come into effect for two election cycles unless passed by a majority in the Hellenic Parliament.
In Greece the judicial branch is divided into civil, and administrative courts. Civil courts judge civil and penal cases, whereas administrative courts judge administrative cases, namely disputes between the citizens and the State.
The judicial system of Greece comprises three Supreme Courts: the Court of Cassation (Greece) (Άρειος Πάγος), the Council of State (Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας) and the Chamber of Accounts (Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο). These high courts are composed of professional judges, graduates of the National School of Judges. The way the judges are gradually promoted, until they become members of the Supreme Courts, is defined by the Constitution and the existing laws. The presidents and the vice-presidents of the three Supreme Courts are chosen by the Cabinet of Greece among the serving members of each of the Supreme Courts.
The Court of Cassation is the supreme civil and penal court, whereas the Council of State is the supreme administrative court. The Chamber of Accounts has an exclusive jurisdiction over certain administrative areas (for example it judges disputes arising from the legislation regulating the pensions of civil servants) and its decisions are irrevocable. This means that they are not judged at second instance by the Council of State.
Sometimes, the Supreme Courts take contradictory decisions or they judge differently the constitutionality of a legal provision. These disputes are resolved by the Supreme Special Court, whose composition and jurisdiction is regulated by the Constitution (article 100). As its name reveals, this court is not permanent and it sits when a special case belonging to its jurisdiction arises. When the Supreme Special Court sits, it comprises eleven members: the Presidents of the three Supreme Courts, four members of the Court of Cassation and four members of the Council of State.
When it judges the constitutionality of a law or resolves the disputes between Supreme Courts, its composition comprises two more members: two professors of the Law Schools of Greece. The Supreme Special Court is the only court which can declare an unconstitutional legal provision as "powerless" (something like "null and void"), while the three Supreme Courts can only declare an unconstitutional legal provision as "inapplicable" to that particular case. The Supreme Special Court is also the Supreme Electoral Court, judging pleas against the legality of the legislative elections.
Greece is divided in 13 Administrative Regions which are further divided into 74 Regional Units. The 13 Administrative Regions (Περιφέρειες, Periféries) are each headed by a popularly elected Governor (Περιφερειάρχης, Periferiárhis) and presided over by the popularly elected Regional Council (Περιφερειακό Συμβούλιο, Periferiakó Simvoúlio). Each of the 74 Regional Units (Περιφερειακές Ενότητες, Periferiakés Enóti̱tes) are headed by a Vice Governor (Αντιπεριφερειάρχης, Antiperiferiárhis), who is taken from the same political party as the elected Governor.
Greece's 74 Regional Units are divided into 325 Municipalities (Δήμοι, Dhími) which are lead by a popularly elected Mayor (Δήμαρχος, Dhímarhos) and Municipal Council (Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο, Dhimotikó Simvoúlio). Each Municipality is divided into small Municipal Units (Δημοτικές Ενότητες, Dhimotikés Enótites) which in turn contain Municipal Communities (relatively urban communities) and Local Communities (relatively rural communities). Municipal Councils select community members to serve on more local Town Hall Councils which focus on local needs in the Municipality's communities and give local feedback to the Municipal Government.
Although Municipalities and villages have elected officials, they often do not have an adequate independent revenue base and must depend on the central government budget for a large part of their financial needs. Consequently, they are subject to numerous central government controls. This also leads to extremely low municipal taxes (usually around 0.2% or less).
Greece also includes one autonomous region, the Monastic Community of the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos.
As one of the oldest Euro-Atlantic member states in the region of Southeast Europe, Greece enjoys a prominent geopolitical role, due to its political and geographical proximity to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Its main allies are France, United Kingdom, Italy, Bulgaria, United States, the other NATO countries and the European Union.
Greece also maintains strong diplomatic relations with Cyprus, Albania, Russia, Serbia, Armenia and Israel, while at the same time focuses at improving further the good relations with Egypt and the Arab World, Caucasus, India and China. As member of both the EU and the Union for the Mediterranean, Greece is a key player in the eastern Mediterranean region and has encouraged the collaboration between neighbors, as well as promoting the Energy Triangle, for gas exports to Europe. Greece also has the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor.
Prominent issues in Hellenic foreign policy include the claims in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean by Turkey and the Turkish occupation of Cyprus.
Under the Greek constitution, education is the responsibility of the state. Most Greeks attend public primary and secondary schools. There are a few private schools, which must meet the standard curriculum of and are supervised by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education oversees and directs every aspect of the public education process at all levels, including hiring all teachers and professors and producing all required textbooks.
A recent issue concerning education in Greece is the institutionalisation of private universities. According to the constitution only state-run universities operate on the land. However, in the recent years many foreign private universities have established branches in Greece, offering Bachelor's level degrees, thus creating a legal contradiction between the Greek constitution and the EU laws allowing foreign companies to operate anywhere in the Union. Additionally, every year, tens of thousands of Greek students are not accepted to the state-run University system and become "educational immigrants" to other countries' Higher Education institutions, where they move to study.
This has created a chronic problem for Greece, in terms of loss of capital as well as human resources, since many of those students opt to seek employment in the countries they studied, after completing their studies. It is characteristic that in 2006, Greece, with 11.5 million inhabitants, was fourth in the world in terms of student export in absolute numbers, with 60,000 students abroad, while the first country in this regard, People's Republic of China of over 1,3 billion inhabitants, had 100,000 students abroad. In terms of students abroad as a percent of the general population, Greece is by far the leading country, with 5,250 students per million, compared to second Malaysia's 1,780 students per million inhabitants.
Citing these problems as a result of the state's monopoly on Higher Education, New Democracy (ND) committed to amending the constitution, in order to allow private universities to operate in Greece on a non-profit basis. This proposal was rejected by then-ruling Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in the late nineties, and thus could not muster the support necessary to be put to vote on the constitutional amendment of 2001. However, PASOK has since changed its stance, and now also supports a constitutional provision for the creation of private Universities on a non-profit basis. This proposal continues to encounter the fierce opposition of the Left parties and part of the academic community, both professors and students.
At the outset of 2006, prime minister Kostas Karamanlis announced the initiative of his government for a new amendment of the Constitution. According to his assertion one of the main issues of this amendment (the second within less than 10 years) is going to be the creation of "non-state owned" universities.
Greece has problems with illegal immigration, especially from or via Turkey. Greek authorities believe that 90% of illegal immigrants in the EU enter through Greece, many fleeing because of unrest and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Several European courts have held that Greece is not complying with minimum standards of treatment for asylum seekers, so that illegal migrants who reach other countries cannot be sent back to Greece.
Numerous solutions have been proposed by the Greek government such as building a fence on the Turkish border and setting up detention camps.
One of the main problems of the system is the long-time process needed, even for a simple case, something that negatively impacts investment, entrepreneurship, social relations, corporate governance, and public governance. Also corruption cases have appeared during the last years, such as the "Paradikastiko" organization scandal.
Manipulation of the judicial system and its decisions by each government, is another common phenomenon which violates the independency of the system.
There are three prison types in Greece: general, special, and therapeutic prisons. General prisons include three different types of inmates: type A inmates, type B inmates, and type C inmates. Special prisons include rural units, juvenile institutions, and semi-liberty centers. One example of a special prison would be an Agricultural Prison. The last prison type is a therapeutic prison; which includes hospitals and rehab centers for inmates. Within these centers the percentage of female prisoners is 5.5%, which amounts to around 538 female prisoners. The percentage of juveniles in Greek prison is 2.9%. Greece’s occupancy rate in prisons is 99%, which means that Greece’s prisons are near full capacity. With some exceptions occupancy exceeds 100%, and in some establishments, it reaches, or surpasses, 300%. Because of this the Greek Justice Ministry and the European Council want to improve Greek prison conditions. These improvements include training for guards, improving of medical facilities, and better treatment of prisoners. These selected improvements are three human rights that the Greek correctional system would like to tackle.
The Greek media, collectively, is a very influential institution – usually aggressive, sensationalist. As with many countries, most of the media are owned by businesses with commercial interests in other sectors of the economy. There are often accusations of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television channels being used to promote their commercial enterprises as well as to seek political influence.
In 1994, the Ministry of Press and Media was established to deal with media and communication issues. ERT S.A., a public corporation supervised by the Minister of Press, operates three national television channels and five national radio channels. The Minister of Press also serves as the primary government spokesperson.
The Secretary General of Press and Information prepares the semi-official Athens News Agency (ANA) Bulletin. Along with AP and Reuters, this is a primary source of information for the Greek press. The Ministry of Press and Information also issues the semi-official Macedonian News Agency (MPE) Bulletin, which is distributed throughout the Balkan region. For international news, CNN is a particular influence in the Greek market; the major television channels often use it as a source. State and private television stations also use Eurovision and Visnews as sources. While few papers and stations have overseas correspondents, those few correspondents abroad can be very influential.
In 1988, a new law provided the legal framework for the establishment of private radio stations and, in 1989, private television stations. According to the law, supervision of radio and television is exercised by the National Radio and Television Council. In practice, however, official licensing has been delayed for many years. Because of this, there has been a proliferation of private radio and television stations, as well as European satellite channels, including Euronews. More than 1,000 radio stations were operating before March 2002, when the government implemented plans to reallocate television frequencies and issue licenses as authorized by the 1993 Media Law, effectively reducing this number.
In 2011, the government proposed new measures that will restrict the freedom of speech in the internet. According to some proposals, every individual who would like to use free platforms, such like Blogspot or WordPress.com will be forced to get officially registered in the courts, as due to tough austerity measures web sites that criticize the government and the political system in general have been multiplied.
Press freedom sharply eroded in Greece during the economic and financial crisis of 2010–2015, passing from the 35th place in 2009 in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index to the 99th place in 2014, well below all Western Balkans countries as well as states with repressive media policies such as Gabon, Kuwait or Liberia. Greece is today the EU member state "where journalism and the media face their most acute crisis".
Nine months for all males of 18 years of age; Compulsory with fines and imprisonment if denied, but neither fine nor imprisonment has been imposed since 1994, where the last warrant against a draft-dodger was issued. Members of families with three children serve a reduced time of six months. Military service can also be substituted with a longer public service, which by the standards of Amnesty International, ought to be considered punitive as it is twice as long as the regular tour of duty.
Limited steps have been taken to turn the Greek military into a semi-professional army in the last years, leading to the gradual reduction of the service from 18 to 12 to 9 months and the inclusion of a greater number of professional military personnel in most vertices of the force. Recent developments, though, within the anti-conscription movement in Greece, such as the high death rate from suicides during service and work-related accidents, such as the Manitsa incident, combined with a high rate of draft-dodging, have advanced the idea that mandatory conscription should be abolished and an all-professional/all-volunteer army should be put in place.
Greece directs approximately 1.7% of its GDP to military expenditures, the 7th highest percentage in Europe. In absolute numbers the Greek military budget ranked 28th in the world in 2005. By the same measure, Greek military budget ranked 6th in the Mediterranean basin (behind France, Italy, Turkey, Israel and Spain) and 2nd (behind Turkey) in its immediate vicinity, the Balkans. Greek arms purchasing is among the highest in the world: Greece ranked 3rd in the world in 2004.
These figures are explained in the light of the arms race between Greece and Turkey with key issues being the Cyprus dispute and disagreement over sovereignty of certain islets of the Aegean. For more information see Greco-Turkish relations. Conversely, the foreign relations of Greece as well as many internal policy decisions are largely affected by its arms purchases. The United States, being the major arms seller to Greece has been known to actively intervene in military spending decisions made by the Greek government. The US has at times actively stepped in to help avoid large scale crisis, as in the case of the Imia-Kardak crisis.
The reduction of military spending has long been an issue in Greek politics. The former prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis had proposed a reduction to military spending through a "Defence Eurozone", referring to the European Security and Defence Policy. The previous PASOK administration, also planned on reducing military spending prior to its failure to be re-elected in 2004, while PASOK politicians usually refer to money saved from reducing military spending as a "peace dividend" ("μέρισμα ειρήνης").
Some of the parties on the left, such as the Communist Party of Greece and Synaspismos, have been vocal in condemning military spending. Regarding the purchase of 30 F-16 and 333 Leopard tanks in 2005, both parties criticized the New Democracy administration for spending money on weapons while doing nothing to relieve the lower classes and said that high military spending "does not correspond to the real needs of the country but is carried out according to NATO planning and to serve weapon manufacturers and the countries that host them".
The Greek Orthodox Church is under the protection of the State, which pays the clergy's salaries, and Orthodox Christianity is the "'prevailing" religion of Greece according to the Constitution. The Greek Orthodox Church is self-governing but under the spiritual guidance of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Freedom of religious beliefs is guaranteed by the Constitution, but "proselytism" is officially illegal. According to the most recent Eurostat "Eurobarometer" poll, in 2005, 81% of Greek citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", whereas 16% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and only 3% that "they do not believe there is a God, spirit, nor life force". This would make Greece one of the most religious countries in the European Union of 25 members, after Malta and Cyprus.
The Muslim minority, concentrated in Thrace, was given legal status by provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and is Greece's only officially recognized religious minority. There are small Roman Catholic communities on some of the Cyclades and the Ionian Islands, remnants of the long Venetian rule over the islands. The recent influx of (mostly illegal) immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Third World has an expectedly varied multi-religious profile (Roman Catholic, Muslim, Hindu etc.).
During the 2001 constitutional amendment, complete separation of church and state was proposed, but the two major parties, ND and PASOK, decided not to open this controversial matter, which clashes with both the population and the clergy. For example, numerous protests occurred over the removal of the Religious Denomination entry from the National ID card in 2000.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12112
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Economy of Greece
The economy of Greece is the 51st largest in the world with a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $218.032 billion per annum. In terms of purchasing power parity, Greece is the world's 55th largest economy, at $317.455 billion per annum. As of 2019, Greece is the sixteenth-largest economy in the 27-member European Union. According to IMF figures for 2018, Greece's GDP per capita was $20,317 at nominal value and $29,072 at purchasing power parity.
Greece is a developed country with an economy based on the service (80%) and industrial sectors (16%), with the agricultural sector contributing an estimated 4% of national economic output in 2017. Important Greek industries include tourism and shipping. With 18 million international tourists in 2013, Greece was the 7th most visited country in the European Union and 16th in the world. The Greek Merchant Navy is the largest in the world, with Greek-owned vessels accounting for 15% of global deadweight tonnage as of 2013. The increased demand for international maritime transportation between Greece and Asia has resulted in unprecedented investment in the shipping industry.
The country is a significant agricultural producer within the EU. Greece has the largest economy in the Balkans and is as an important regional investor. Greece was the largest foreign investor in Albania in 2013, the third in Bulgaria, in the top-three in Romania and Serbia and the most important trading partner and largest foreign investor in North Macedonia. The Greek telecommunications company OTE has become a strong investor in certain former Yugoslav and other Balkan countries.
Greece is classified as an advanced, high-income economy, and was a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). The country joined what is now the European Union in 1981. In 2001 Greece adopted the euro as its currency, replacing the Greek drachma at an exchange rate of 340.75 drachmae per euro. Greece is a member of the International Monetary Fund and of the World Trade Organization, and ranked 34th on Ernst & Young's Globalization Index 2011.
World War II (1939-1945) devastated the country's economy, but the high levels of economic growth that followed from 1950 to 1980 have been called the Greek economic miracle. From 2000 Greece saw high levels of GDP growth above the Eurozone average, peaking at 5.8% in 2003 and 5.7% in 2006. The subsequent Great Recession and Greek government-debt crisis, a central focus of the wider European debt crisis, plunged the economy into a sharp downturn, with real GDP growth rates of −0.3% in 2008, −4.3% in 2009, −5.5% in 2010, −9.1% in 2011, −7.3% in 2012 and −3.2% in 2013. In 2011, the country's public debt reached €356 billion (172% of nominal GDP). After negotiating the biggest debt restructuring in history with the private sector, a loss of 100 billions for bonds private investors, Greece reduced its sovereign debt burden to €280 billion (137% of GDP) in the first quarter of 2012. Greece achieved a real GDP growth rate of 0.7% in 2014—after 6 years of economic decline—but contracted by 0.4% in 2015 and by 0.2% in 2016. The country returned to modest growth rates of 1.5% in 2017 and 1.9% in 2018 and 2019, but is expected to suffer a severe recession ranging from 5.8% to 10% of GDP in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The evolution of the Greek economy during the 19th century (a period that transformed a large part of the world because of the Industrial Revolution) has been little researched. Recent research from 2006 examines the gradual development of industry and further development of shipping in a predominantly agricultural economy, calculating an average rate of per capita GDP growth between 1833 and 1911 that was only slightly lower than that of the other Western European nations. Industrial activity, (including heavy industry like shipbuilding) was evident, mainly in Ermoupolis and Piraeus. Nonetheless, Greece faced economic hardships and defaulted on its external loans in 1826, 1843, 1860 and 1893.
Other studies support the above view on the general trends in the economy, providing comparative measures of standard of living. The per capita income (in purchasing power terms) of Greece was 65% that of France in 1850, 56% in 1890, 62% in 1938, 75% in 1980, 90% in 2007, 96.4% in 2008 and 97.9% in 2009.
The country's post-World War II development has largely been connected with the Greek economic miracle. During that period, Greece saw growth rates second only to those of Japan, while ranking first in Europe in terms of GDP growth. It is indicative that between 1960 and 1973 the Greek economy grew by an average of 7.7%, in contrast to 4.7% for the EU15 and 4.9% for the OECD. Also during that period, exports grew by an average annual rate of 12.6%.
Greece enjoys a high standard of living and very high Human Development Index, ranking 32nd in the world in 2018. However, the severe recession of recent years saw GDP per capita fall from 94% of the EU average in 2009 to 67% in 2017, with a slight improvement to 68% in 2018. Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) per capita fell from 104% of the EU average to 76% between 2009 and 2017, before rising slightly to 77% in 2018.
Greece's main industries are tourism, shipping, industrial products, food and tobacco processing, textiles, chemicals, metal products, mining and petroleum. Greece's GDP growth has also, as an average, since the early 1990s been higher than the EU average. However, the Greek economy continues to face significant problems, including high unemployment levels, an inefficient public sector bureaucracy, tax evasion, corruption and low global competitiveness.
Greece is ranked 60th in the world on the Corruption Perceptions Index, above Croatia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria among EU member states. It has the EU's lowest Index of Economic Freedom and second lowest Global Competitiveness Index, ranking 106th and 59th in the world respectively.
After fourteen consecutive years of economic growth, Greece went into recession in 2008. By the end of 2009, the Greek economy faced the highest budget deficit and government debt-to-GDP ratio in the EU. After several upward revisions, the 2009 budget deficit is now estimated at 15.7% of GDP. This, combined with rapidly rising debt levels (127.9% of GDP in 2009) led to a precipitous increase in borrowing costs, effectively shutting Greece out of the global financial markets and resulting in a severe economic crisis.
Greece was accused of trying to cover up the extent of its massive budget deficit in the wake of the global financial crisis. The allegation was prompted by the massive revision of the 2009 budget deficit forecast by the new PASOK government elected in October 2009, from "6–8%" (estimated by the previous New Democracy government) to 12.7% (later revised to 15.7%). However, the accuracy of the revised figures has also been questioned, and in February 2012 the Hellenic Parliament voted in favor of an official investigation following accusations by a former member of the Hellenic Statistical Authority that the deficit had been artificially inflated in order to justify harsher austerity measures.
The Greek labor force, which amount around workers, average 2,032 hours of work per worker annually in 2011, is ranked fourth among OECD countries, after Mexico, South Korea and Chile. The Groningen Growth & Development Centre has published a poll revealing that between 1995 and 2005, Greece was the country whose workers have the most hours/year work among European nations; Greeks worked an average of 1,900 hours per year, followed by Spaniards (average of 1,800 hours/year).
As a result of the ongoing economic crisis, industrial production in the country went down by 8% between March 2010 and March 2011, The volume of building activity saw a reduction of 73% in 2010. Additionally, the turnover in retail sales saw a decline of 9% between February 2010 and February 2011.
Between 2008 and 2013 unemployment skyrocketed, from a generational low of 7.2% in the second and third quarters of 2008 to a high of 27.9% in June 2013, leaving over a million jobless. Youth unemployment peaked at 64.9% in May 2013. Unemployment figures have steadily improved in recent years, with the overall rate falling to 14.4% and youth unemployment dropping to 32.4% in March 2020.
Greece was accepted into the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union by the European Council on 19 June 2000, based on a number of criteria (inflation rate, budget deficit, public debt, long-term interest rates, exchange rate) using 1999 as the reference year. After an audit commissioned by the incoming New Democracy government in 2004, Eurostat revealed that the statistics for the budget deficit had been under-reported.
Most of the differences in the revised budget deficit numbers were due to a temporary change of accounting practices by the new government, i.e., recording expenses when military material was ordered rather than received. However, it was the retroactive application of ESA95 methodology (applied since 2000) by Eurostat, that finally raised the reference year (1999) budget deficit to 3.38% of GDP, thus exceeding the 3% limit. This led to claims that Greece (similar claims have been made about other European countries like Italy)
had not actually met all five accession criteria, and the common perception that Greece entered the Eurozone through "falsified" deficit numbers.
In the 2005 OECD report for Greece, it was clearly stated that "the impact of new accounting rules on the fiscal figures for the years 1997 to 1999 ranged from 0.7 to 1 percentage point of GDP; this retroactive change of methodology was responsible for the revised deficit exceeding 3% in 1999, the year of [Greece's] EMU membership qualification". The above led the Greek minister of finance to clarify that the 1999 budget deficit was below the prescribed 3% limit when calculated with the ESA79 methodology in force at the time of Greece's application, and thus the criteria had been met.
The original accounting practice for military expenses was later restored in line with Eurostat recommendations, theoretically lowering even the ESA95-calculated 1999 Greek budget deficit to below 3% (an official Eurostat calculation is still pending for 1999).
An error sometimes made is the confusion of discussion regarding Greece's Eurozone entry with the controversy regarding usage of derivatives' deals with U.S. Banks by Greece and other Eurozone countries to artificially reduce their reported budget deficits. A currency swap arranged with Goldman Sachs allowed Greece to "hide" 2.8 billion Euros of debt, however, this affected deficit values after 2001 (when Greece had already been admitted into the Eurozone) and is not related to Greece's Eurozone entry.
A study of the period 1999–2009 by forensic accountants has found that data submitted to Eurostat by Greece, among other countries, had a statistical distribution indicative of manipulation; "Greece with a mean value of 17.74, shows the largest deviation from Benford's law among the members of the eurozone, followed by Belgium with a value of 17.21 and Austria with a value of 15.25".
Greece, like other European nations, had faced debt crises in the 19th century, as well as a similar crisis in 1932 during the Great Depression. In general, however, during the 20th century it enjoyed one of the highest GDP growth rates on the planet
(for a quarter century from the early 1950s to mid 1970s, second in the world after Japan). Average Greek government debt-to-GDP for the entire century before the crisis (1909-2008) was lower than that for the UK, Canada, or France, while for the 30-year period (1952-1981) until entrance into the European Economic Community, the Greek government debt-to-GDP ratio averaged only 19.8%.
Between 1981 and 1993 it steadily rose, surpassing the average of what is today the Eurozone in the mid-1980s (see chart right).
For the next 15 years, from 1993 to 2007 (i.e., before the Financial crisis of 2007–2008), Greece's government debt-to-GDP ratio remained roughly unchanged (the value was not affected by the 2004 Athens Olympics), averaging 102% - a value lower than that for Italy (107%) and Belgium (110%) during the same 15-year period, and comparable to that for the U.S. or the OECD average in 2017.
During the latter period, the country's annual budget deficit usually exceeded 3% of GDP, but its effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio was counterbalanced by high GDP growth rates. The debt-to-GDP values for 2006 and 2007 (about 105%) were established after audits resulted in corrections according to Eurostat methodology, of up to 10 percentage points for the particular years (as well as similar corrections for the years 2008 and 2009). These corrections, although altering the debt level by a maximum of about 10%, resulted in a popular notion that "Greece was previously hiding its debt".
The Greek crisis was triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession, which lead the budget deficits of several Western nations to reach or exceed 10% of GDP. What was exceptional for Greece, was that the high budget deficit (which, after several corrections, was revealed that it had been allowed to reach 10.2% and 15.1% of GDP in 2008 and 2009, respectively) was simultaneously coupled with a high public debt to GDP ratio (which, until then, was relatively stable for several years, at just above 100% of GDP - as calculated after all corrections). Thus, the country appeared to lose control of its public debt to GDP ratio, which already reached 127% of GDP in 2009. In addition, being a member of the Eurozone, the country had essentially no autonomous monetary policy flexibility.
Finally, there was an effect of controversies about Greek statistics (due the aforementioned drastic budget deficit revisions which lead to an increase in the calculated value of the Greek public debt by about 10%, i.e., a public debt to GDP of about 100% until 2007), while there have been arguments about a possible effect of media reports. Consequently, Greece was "punished" by the markets which increased borrowing rates, making impossible for the country to finance its debt since early 2010.
Thus, the Greek economy faced its most-severe crisis since the restoration of democracy in 1974 as the Greek government revised its deficit forecasts from 3.7% in early 2009 and 6% in September 2009, to 12.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) in October 2009.
The aforementioned budget deficit and debt revisions were connected with findings that, through the assistance of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and numerous other banks, financial products were developed which enabled the governments of Greece, Italy and many other European countries to hide parts of their borrowing. Dozens of similar agreements were concluded across Europe whereby banks supplied cash in advance in exchange for future payments by the governments involved; in turn, the liabilities of the involved countries were "kept off the books".
According to "Der Spiegel", credits given to European governments were disguised as "swaps" and consequently did not get registered as debt because Eurostat at the time ignored statistics involving financial derivatives. A German derivatives dealer had commented to "Der Spiegel" that "The Maastricht rules can be circumvented quite legally through swaps," and "In previous years, Italy used a similar trick to mask its true debt with the help of a different US bank." These conditions had enabled Greek as well as many other European governments to spend beyond their means, while meeting the deficit targets of the European Union and the monetary union guidelines. In May 2010, the Greek government deficit was again revised and estimated to be 13.6% which was among the highest relative to GDP, with Iceland in first place at 15.7% and the United Kingdom third with 12.6%. Public debt was forecast, according to some estimates, to hit 120% of GDP during 2010.
As a consequence, there was a crisis in international confidence in Greece's ability to repay its sovereign debt, as reflected by the rise of the country's borrowing rates (although their slow rise – the 10-year government bond yield only exceeded 7% in April 2010 – coinciding with a large number of negative articles, has led to arguments about the role of international news media in the evolution of the crisis). In order to avert a default (as high borrowing rates effectively prohibited access to the markets), in May 2010 the other Eurozone countries, and the IMF, agreed to a "rescue package" which involved giving Greece an immediate € in bail-out loans, with more funds to follow, totaling €. In order to secure the funding, Greece was required to adopt harsh austerity measures to bring its deficit under control. Their implementation was to be monitored and evaluated by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
The financial crisis – particularly the austerity package put forth by the EU and the IMF – has been met with anger by the Greek public, leading to riots and social unrest, while there have been theories about the effect of international media. Despite - others say because of - the long range of austerity measures, the government deficit has not been reduced accordingly, mainly, according to many economists, because of the subsequent recession.
Public sector workers have come out on strike in order to resist job cuts and reductions to salaries as the government promises that a large scale privatisation programme will be accelerated. Immigrants are sometimes treated as scapegoats for economic problems by far-right extremists.
In 2013, Greece became the first developed market to be reclassified as an emerging market by financial services companies MSCI and S&P Dow Jones Indices.
By July 2014 there were still anger and protests about the austerity measures, with a 24-hour strike among government workers timed to coincide with an audit by inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and European Central Bank in advance of a decision on a second bailout of one billion euros ($1.36 billion), due in late July.
Greece exited its six-year recession in the second quarter of 2014, but the challenges of securing political stability and debt sustainability remain.
A third bailout was agreed in July, 2015, after a confrontation with the newly elected leftist government of Alexis Tsipras. In June 2017, news reports indicated that the "crushing debt burden" had not been alleviated and that Greece was at the risk of defaulting on some payments. The International Monetary Fund stated that the country should be able to borrow again "in due course". At the time, the Euro zone gave Greece another credit of $9.5-billion, $8.5 billion of loans and brief details of a possible debt relief with the assistance of the IMF. On 13 July, the Greek government sent a letter of intent to the IMF with 21 commitments it promised to meet by June 2018. They included changes in labour laws, a plan to cap public sector work contracts, to transform temporary contracts into permanent agreements and to recalculate pension payments to reduce spending on social security.
Greece's bailouts successfully ended (as declared) on 20 August 2018.
There was a 25% drop in Greece's GDP, connected with the bailout programmes. This had a critical effect: the Debt-to-GDP ratio, the key factor defining the severity of the crisis, would jump from its 2009 level of 127% to about 170%, solely due to the GDP drop (i.e., for the same Debt). Such a level is considered unsustainable.
In a 2013 report, the IMF admitted that it had underestimated the effects of so extensive tax hikes and budget cuts on the country's GDP and issued an informal apology
.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2018. Inflation under 2% is in green.
In 2010, Greece was the European Union's largest producer of cotton (183,800 tons) and pistachios (8,000 tons) and ranked second in the production of rice (229,500 tons) and olives (147,500 tons), third in the production of figs (11,000 tons) and almonds (44,000 tons), tomatoes (1,400,000 tons) and watermelons (578,400 tons) and fourth in the production of tobacco (22,000 tons). Agriculture contributes 3.8% of the country's GDP and employs 12.4% of the country's labor force.
Greece is a major beneficiary of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. As a result of the country's entry to the European Community, much of its agricultural infrastructure has been upgraded and agricultural output increased. Between 2000 and 2007 organic farming in Greece increased by 885%, the highest change percentage in the EU.
In 2007, Greece accounted for 19% of the EU's fishing haul in the Mediterranean Sea, ranked third with 85,493 tons, and ranked first in the number of fishing vessels in the Mediterranean between European Union members. Additionally, the country ranked 11th in the EU in total quantity of fish caught, with 87,461 tons.
Between 2005 and 2011, Greece has had the highest percentage increase in industrial output compared to 2005 levels out of all European Union members, with an increase of 6%. Eurostat statistics show that the industrial sector was hit by the Greek financial crisis throughout 2009 and 2010, with domestic output decreasing by 5.8% and industrial production in general by 13.4%. Currently, Greece is ranked third in the European Union in the production of marble (over 920,000 tons), after Italy and Spain.
Between 1999 and 2008, the volume of retail trade in Greece increased by an average of 4.4% per year (a total increase of 44%), while it decreased by 11.3% in 2009. The only sector that did not see negative growth in 2009 was administration and services, with a marginal growth of 2.0%.
In 2009, Greece's labor productivity was 98% that of the EU average, but its productivity-per-hour-worked was 74% that the Eurozone average. The largest industrial employer in the country (in 2007) was the manufacturing industry (407,000 people), followed by the construction industry (305,000) and mining (14,000).
Greece has a significant shipbuilding and ship maintenance industry. The six shipyards around the port of Piraeus are among the largest in Europe. In recent years, Greece has become a leader in the construction and maintenance of luxury yachts.
Shipping has traditionally been a key sector in the Greek economy since ancient times. In 1813, the Greek merchant navy was made up of 615 ships. Its total tonnage was 153,580 tons and was manned with 37,526 crewmembers and 5,878 cannons. In 1914 the figures stood at 449,430 tons and 1,322 ships (of which 287 were steam boats).
During the 1960s, the size of the Greek fleet nearly doubled, primarily through the investment undertaken by the shipping magnates Onassis, Vardinoyannis, Livanos and Niarchos. The basis of the modern Greek maritime industry was formed after World War II when Greek shipping businessmen were able to amass surplus ships sold to them by the United States Government through the Ship Sales Act of the 1940s.
Greece has the largest merchant navy in the world, accounting for more than 15% of the world's total deadweight tonnage (dwt) according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The Greek merchant navy's total dwt of nearly 245 million is comparable only to Japan's, which is ranked second with almost 224 million. Additionally, Greece represents 39.52% of all of the European Union's dwt. However, today's fleet roster is smaller than an all-time high of 5,000 ships in the late 1970s.
Greece is ranked fourth in the world by number of ships (3,695), behind China (5,313), Japan (3,991), and Germany (3,833). A European Community Shipowners' Associations report for 2011–2012 reveals that the Greek flag is the seventh-most-used internationally for shipping, while it ranks second in the EU.
In terms of ship categories, Greek companies have 22.6% of the world's tankers and 16.1% of the world's bulk carriers (in dwt). An additional equivalent of 27.45% of the world's tanker dwt is on order, with another 12.7% of bulk carriers also on order. Shipping accounts for an estimated 6% of Greek GDP, employs about 160,000 people (4% of the workforce), and represents 1/3 of the country's trade deficit. Earnings from shipping amounted to €14.1 billion in 2011, while between 2000 and 2010 Greek shipping contributed a total of €140 billion (half of the country's public debt in 2009 and 3.5 times the receipts from the European Union in the period 2000–2013). The 2011 ECSA report showed that there are approximately 750 Greek shipping companies in operation.
The latest available data from the Union of Greek Shipowners show that "the Greek-owned ocean-going fleet consists of 3,428 ships, totaling 245 million deadweight tonnes in capacity. This equals 15.6 percent of the carrying capacity of the entire global fleet, including 23.6 percent of the world tanker fleet and 17.2 percent of dry bulk".
Counting shipping as quasi-exports and in terms of monetary value, Greece ranked 4th globally in 2011 having exported shipping services worth 17,704.132 million $; only Denmark, Germany and South Korea ranked higher during that year. Similarly counting shipping services provided to Greece by other countries as quasi-imports and the difference between exports and imports as a trade balance, Greece in 2011 ranked in the latter second behind Germany, having imported shipping services worth 7,076.605 million US$ and having run a trade surplus of 10,712.342 million US$.
Between 1949 and the 1980s, telephone communications in Greece were a state monopoly by the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, better known by its acronym, OTE. Despite the liberalization of telephone communications in the country in the 1980s, OTE still dominates the Greek market in its field and has emerged as one of the largest telecommunications companies in Southeast Europe. Since 2011, the company's major shareholder is Deutsche Telekom with a 40% stake, while the Greek state continues to own 10% of the company's shares. OTE owns several subsidiaries across the Balkans, including Cosmote, Greece's top mobile telecommunications provider, Cosmote Romania and Albanian Mobile Communications.
Other mobile telecommunications companies active in Greece are Wind Hellas and Vodafone Greece. The total number of active cellular phone accounts in the country in 2009 based on statistics from the country's mobile phone providers was over 20 million, a penetration of 180%. Additionally, there are 5.745 million active landlines in the country.
Greece has tended to lag behind its European Union partners in terms of Internet use, with the gap closing rapidly in recent years. The percentage of households with Internet access more than doubled between 2006 and 2013, from 23% to 56% respectively (compared with an EU average of 49% and 79%). At the same time, there was a massive increase in the proportion of households with a broadband connection, from 4% in 2006 to 55% in 2013 (compared with an EU average of 30% and 76%). By 2019, the percentage of Greek households with Internet access and a broadband connection had reached 78.5% and 78.1% respectively.
Tourism in the modern sense has only started to flourish in Greece in the years post-1950, although tourism in ancient times is also documented in relation to religious or sports festivals such as the Olympic Games. Since the 1950s, the tourism sector saw an unprecedented boost as arrivals went from 33,000 in 1950 to 11.4 million in 1994.
Greece attracts more than 16 million tourists each year, thus contributing 18.2% to the nation's GDP in 2008 according to an OECD report. The same survey showed that the average tourist expenditure while in Greece was $1,073, ranking Greece 10th in the world. The number of jobs directly or indirectly related to the tourism sector were 840,000 in 2008 and represented 19% of the country's total labor force. In 2009, Greece welcomed over 19.3 million tourists, a major increase from the 17.7 million tourists the country welcomed in 2008.
Among the member states of the European Union, Greece was the most popular destination for residents of Cyprus and Sweden in 2011.
The ministry responsible for tourism is the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, while Greece also owns the Greek National Tourism Organization which aims in promoting tourism in Greece.
In recent years a number of well-known tourism-related organizations have placed Greek destinations in the top of their lists. In 2009 Lonely Planet ranked Thessaloniki, the country's second-largest city, the world's fifth best "Ultimate Party Town", alongside cities such as Montreal and Dubai, while in 2011 the island of Santorini was voted as the best island in the world by Travel + Leisure. The neighbouring island of Mykonos was ranked as the 5th best island Europe. Thessaloniki was the European Youth Capital in 2014.
Since the fall of communism, Greece has invested heavily in neighbouring Balkan countries. Between 1997 and 2009, 12.11% of foreign direct investment capital in North Macedonia was Greek, ranking fourth. In 2009 alone, Greeks invested €380 million in the country, with companies such as Hellenic Petroleum having made important strategic investments.
Greece invested €1.38 billion in Bulgaria between 2005 and 2007 and many important companies (including Bulgarian Postbank, United Bulgarian Bank Coca-Cola Bulgaria) are owned by Greek financial groups. In Serbia, 250 Greek companies are active with a total investment of over €2 billion. Romanian statistics from 2016 show that Greek investment in the country exceeded €4 billion, ranking Greece fifth or sixth among foreign investors. Greece has been the largest investor in Albania since the fall of communism with 25% of foreign investments in 2016 coming from Greece, in addition business relations between both are extremely strong and continuously rising.
Since the start of the debt crisis, Greece's negative balance of trade has decreased significantly—from €44.3 billion in 2008 to €21.9 billion in 2019. In 2019, exports increased by 1.1% and imports rose by 2.9%.
Greece is also the largest import partner of Cyprus (18.0%) and the largest export partner of Palau (82.4%).
As of 2012, Greece had a total of 82 airports, of which 67 were paved and six had runways longer than 3,047 meters. Of these airports, two are classified as "international" by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority, but 15 offer international services. Additionally Greece has 9 heliports. Greece does not have a flag carrier, but the country's airline industry is dominated by Aegean Airlines and its subsidiary Olympic Air.
Between 1975 and 2009, Olympic Airways (known after 2003 as Olympic Airlines) was the country's state-owned flag carrier, but financial problems led to its privatization and relaunch as Olympic Air in 2009. Both Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air have won awards for their services; in 2009 and 2011, Aegean Airlines was awarded the "Best regional airline in Europe" award by Skytrax, and also has two gold and one silver awards by the ERA, while Olympic Air holds one silver ERA award for "Airline of the Year" as well as a ""Condé Nast Traveller 2011 Readers Choice Awards: Top Domestic Airline"" award.
The Greek road network is made up of 116,986 km of roads, of which 1863 km are highways, ranking 24th worldwide, as of 2016. Since the entry of Greece to the European Community (now the European Union), a number of important projects (such as the Egnatia Odos and the Attiki Odos) have been co-funded by the organization, helping to upgrade the country's road network. In 2007, Greece ranked 8th in the European Union in goods transported by road at almost 500 million tons.
Greece's rail network is estimated to be at 2,548 km. Rail transport in Greece is operated by TrainOSE, a current subsidiary of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane after the Hellenic Railways Organisation had sold its 100% stake on the operator. Most of the country's network is standard gauge (1,565 km), while the country also has 983 km of narrow gauge. A total of 764 km of rail are electrified. Greece has rail connections with Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Turkey. A total of three suburban railway systems (Proastiakos) are in operation (in Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras), while one metro system, the Athens Metro, is operational in Athens with another, the Thessaloniki Metro, under construction.
According to Eurostat, Greece's largest port by tons of goods transported in 2010 is the port of Aghioi Theodoroi, with 17.38 million tons. The Port of Thessaloniki comes second with 15.8 million tons, followed by the Port of Piraeus, with 13.2 million tons, and the port of Eleusis, with 12.37 million tons. The total number of goods transported through Greece in 2010 amounted to 124.38 million tons, a considerable drop from the 164.3 million tons transported through the country in 2007. Since then, Piraeus has grown to become the Mediterranean's third-largest port thanks to heavy investment by Chinese logistics giant COSCO. In 2013, Piraeus was declared the fastest-growing port in the world.
In 2010 Piraeus handled 513,319 TEUs, followed by Thessaloniki, which handled 273,282 TEUs. In the same year, 83.9 million people passed through Greece's ports, 12.7 million through the port of Paloukia in Salamis, another 12.7 through the port of Perama, 9.5 million through Piraeus and 2.7 million through Igoumenitsa. In 2013, Piraeus handled a record 3.16 million TEUs, the third-largest figure in the Mediterranean, of which 2.52 million were transported through Pier II, owned by COSCO and 644,000 were transported through Pier I, owned by the Greek state.
Energy production in Greece is dominated by the Public Power Corporation (known mostly by its acronym ΔΕΗ, or in English DEI). In 2009 DEI supplied for 85.6% of all energy demand in Greece, while the number fell to 77.3% in 2010. Almost half (48%) of DEI's power output is generated using lignite, a drop from the 51.6% in 2009. Another 12% comes from Hydroelectric power plants and another 20% from natural gas. Between 2009 and 2010, independent companies' energy production increased by 56%, from 2,709 Gigawatt hour in 2009 to 4,232 GWh in 2010.
In 2008 renewable energy accounted for 8% of the country's total energy consumption, a rise from the 7.2% it accounted for in 2006, but still below the EU average of 10% in 2008. 10% of the country's renewable energy comes from solar power, while most comes from biomass and waste recycling. In line with the European Commission's Directive on Renewable Energy, Greece aims to get 18% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. In 2013 and for several months, Greece produced more than 20% of its electricity from renewable energy sources and hydroelectric power plants. Greece currently does not have any nuclear power plants in operation, however in 2009 the Academy of Athens suggested that research in the possibility of Greek nuclear power plants begin.
Greece had 10 million barrels of proven oil reserves as of 1 January 2012. Hellenic Petroleum is the country's largest oil company, followed by Motor Oil Hellas. Greece's oil production stands at 1,751 barrels per day (bbl/d), ranked 95th worldwide, while it exports 19,960 bbl/d, ranked 53rd, and imports 355,600 bbl/d, ranked 25th.
In 2011 the Greek government approved the start of oil exploration and drilling in three locations within Greece, with an estimated output of 250 to 300 million barrels over the next 15 to 20 years. The estimated output in euros of the three deposits is €25 billion over a 15-year period, of which €13–€14 billion will enter state coffers. Greece's dispute with Turkey over the Aegean poses substantial obstacles to oil exploration in the Aegean Sea.
In addition to the above, Greece is also to start oil and gas exploration in other locations in the Ionian Sea, as well as the Libyan Sea, within the Greek exclusive economic zone, south of Crete. The Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change announced that there was interest from various countries (including Norway and the United States) in exploration, and the first results regarding the amount of oil and gas in these locations were expected in the summer of 2012. In November 2012, a report published by Deutsche Bank estimated the value of natural gas reserves south of Crete at €427 billion.
A number of oil and gas pipelines are currently under construction or under planning in the country. Such projects include the "Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy" (ITGI) and "South Stream" gas pipelines.
EuroAsia Interconnector will electrically connect Attica and Crete in Greece with Cyprus and Israel with 2000 MW HVDC undersea power cable. EuroAsia Interconnector is specially important for isolated systems, like Cyprus and Crete. Crete is energetically isolated from mainland Greece and Hellenic Republic covers for Crete electricity costs difference of around €300 million per year.
Greece has a tiered tax system based on progressive taxation. Greek law recognizes six categories of taxable income: immovable property, movable property (investment), income from agriculture, business, employment, and income from professional activities. Greece's personal income tax rate, until recently, ranged from 0% for annual incomes below €12,000 to 45% for annual incomes over €100,000. Under the new 2010 tax reform, tax exemptions have been abolished.
Also under the new austerity measures and among other changes, the personal income tax-free ceiling has been reduced to €5,000 per annum while further future changes, for example abolition of this ceiling, are already being planned.
Greece's corporate tax dropped from 40% in 2000 to 20% in 2010. For 2011 only, corporate tax will be at 24%. Value added tax (VAT) has gone up in 2010 compared to 2009: 23% as opposed to 19%.
The lowest VAT possible is 6.5% (previously 4.5%) for newspapers, periodicals and cultural event tickets, while a tax rate of 13% (from 9%) applies to certain service sector professions. Additionally, both employers and employees have to pay social contribution taxes, which apply at a rate of 16% for white collar jobs and 19.5% for blue collar jobs, and are used for social insurance.Now(2017) the VAT tax rate is 24% with minor exceptions, 13% Reduced for some basic foodstuffs which will be soon abolished and everything, as it seems, will soon go to 24% in order to fight the phantom of tax evasion.
The Ministry of Finance expected tax revenues for 2012 to be €52.7 billion (€23.6 billion in direct taxes and €29.1 billion in indirect taxes), an increase of 5.8% from 2011. In 2012, the government was expected to have considerably higher tax revenues than in 2011 on a number of sectors, primarily housing (an increase of 217.5% from 2011).
Greece suffers from very high levels of tax evasion. In the last quarter of 2005, tax evasion reached 49%, while in January 2006 it fell to 41.6%. It is worth noting that the newspaper Ethnos which published these figures went bankrupt; it is no longer published and some sources suggest that the information it had published was highly debatable. A study by researchers from the University of Chicago concluded that tax evasion in 2009 by self-employed professionals alone in Greece (accountants, dentists, lawyers, doctors, personal tutors and independent financial advisers) was €28 billion or 31% of the budget deficit that year.
Greece's "shadow economy" was estimated at 24.3% of GDP in 2012, compared with 28.6% for Estonia, 26.5% for Latvia, 21.6% for Italy, 17.1% for Belgium, 14.7% for Sweden, 13.7% for Finland, and 13.5% for Germany, and is certainly related to the fact that the percentage of Greeks that are self-employed is more than double the EU average (2013 est.).
The Tax Justice Network estimated in 2011 that there were over 20 billion euros in Swiss bank accounts held by Greeks. The former Finance Minister of Greece, Evangelos Venizelos, was quoted as saying, "Around 15,000 individuals and companies owe the taxman 37 billion euros". Additionally, the TJN put the number of Greek-owned off-shore companies at over 10,000.
In 2012, Swiss estimates suggested that Greeks had some 20 billion euros in Switzerland of which only one percent had been declared as taxable in Greece. Estimates in 2015 were even more dramatic. They indicated that the amount due to the government of Greece from Greeks' accounts in Swiss banks totaled around 80 billion euros.
A mid-2017 report indicated Greeks have been "taxed to the hilt" and many believed that the risk of penalties for tax evasion were less serious than the risk of bankruptcy. One method of evasion is the so-called black market, grey economy or shadow economy: work is done for cash payment which is not declared as income; as well, VAT is not collected and remitted. A January 2017 report by the DiaNEOsis think-tank indicated that unpaid taxes in Greece at the time totaled approximately 95 billion euros, up from 76 billion euros in 2015, much of it was expected to be uncollectable. Another early 2017 study estimated that the loss to the government as a result of tax evasion was between 6% and 9% of the country's GDP, or roughly between 11 billion and 16 billion euros per annum.
The shortfall in the collection of VAT (sales tax) is also significant. In 2014, the government collected 28% less than was owed to it; this shortfall was about double the average for the EU. The uncollected amount that year was about 4.9 billion euros. The DiaNEOsis study estimated that 3.5% of GDP is lost due to VAT fraud, while losses due to smuggling of alcohol, tobacco and petrol amounted to approximately another 0.5% of the country's GDP.
Following similar actions by the United Kingdom and Germany, the Greek government was in talks with Switzerland in 2011, attempting to force Swiss banks to reveal information on the back accounts of Greek citizens. The Ministry of Finance stated that Greeks with Swiss bank accounts would either be required to pay a tax or reveal information such as the identity of the bank account holder to the Greek internal revenue services. The Greek and Swiss governments were to reach a deal on the matter by the end of 2011.
The solution demanded by Greece still had not been effected as of 2015. That year, estimates indicated that the amount of evaded taxes stored in Swiss banks was around 80 billion euros. By then, however, a tax treaty to address this issue was under serious negotiation between the Greek and Swiss governments. An agreement was finally ratified by Switzerland on 1 March 2016 creating a new tax transparency law that would allow for a more effective battle against tax evasion. Starting in 2018, banks in both Greece and Switzerland will exchange information about the bank accounts of citizens of the other country to minimize the possibility of hiding untaxed income.
In 2016 and 2017, the government was encouraging the use of credit cards or debit cards to pay for goods and services in order to reduce cash only payments. By January 2017, taxpayers were only granted tax-allowances or deductions when payments were made electronically, with a "paper trail" of the transactions that the government could easily audit. This was expected to reduce the problem of businesses taking payments but not issuing an invoice; that tactic had been used by various companies to avoid payment of VAT (sales) tax as well as income tax.
By 28 July 2017, numerous businesses were required by law to install a point of sale device to enable them to accept payment by credit or debit card. Failure to comply with the electronic payment facility can lead to fines of up to 1,500 euros. The requirement applied to around 400,000 firms or individuals in 85 professions. The greater use of cards was one of the factors that had already achieved significant increases in VAT collection in 2016.
Greece's most economically important regions are Attica, which contributed €87.378 billion to the economy in 2018, and Central Macedonia, which contributed €25.558 billion. The smallest regional economies were those of the North Aegean (€2.549 billion) and Ionian Islands (€3.257 billion).
In terms of GDP per capita, Attica (€23,300) far outranks any other Greek region. The poorest regions in 2018 were the North Aegean (€11,800), Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (€11,900) and Epirus (€12,200). At the national level, GDP per capita in 2018 was €17,200.
Greece is a welfare state which provides a number of social services such as quasi-universal health care and pensions. In the 2012 budget, expenses for the welfare state (excluding education) stand at an estimated €22.487 billion (€6.577 billion for pensions and €15.910 billion for social security and health care expenses), or 31.9% of the all state expenses.
According to the 2018 Forbes Global 2000 index, Greece's largest publicly traded companies are:
In 2011, 53.3 percent of employed persons worked more than 40 to 49 hours a week and 24.8 percent worked more than 50 hours a week, totaling up to 78.1 percent of employed persons working 40 or more hours a week. When accounting for varying age groups, the percentage of employees working 40 to 49 hours a week peaked in the 25 to 29 age range. As workers got older, they gradually decreased in percentage working 40 to 49 hours, but increased in working 50+ hours, suggesting a correlation that as employees grow older, they work more hours. Of different occupation groups, skilled agricultural, forestry, and fishery workers and managers were the most likely to work 50+ hours; however, they do not take up a significant portion of the labor force, only 14.3 percent. In 2014, the average number of working hours for Greek employees was 2124 hours, ranking as the third highest among OECD countries and the highest in the Eurozone.
Recent trends in employment indicate that the number of workings hours will decrease in the future due to the rise of part-time work. Since 2011, average workings hours have decreased. In 1998, Greece passed legislation introducing part-time employment in public services with the goal of reducing unemployment, increasing the total, but decreasing the average number of hours worked per employee. Whether the legislation was successful in increasing public-sector part-time work, labor market trends show that part-time employment has increased from 7.7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2016 of total employment. Both men and women have had the part-time share of employment increase over this period. While women still constitute a majority of part-time workers, recently men have been taking a larger share of part-time employment.
Between 1832 and 2002 the currency of Greece was the drachma. After signing the Maastricht Treaty, Greece applied to join the eurozone. The two main convergence criteria were a maximum budget deficit of 3% of GDP and a declining public debt if it stood above 60% of GDP. Greece met the criteria as shown in its 1999 annual public account. On 1 January 2001, Greece joined the eurozone, with the adoption of the euro at the fixed exchange rate ₯340.75 to €1. However, in 2001 the euro only existed electronically, so the physical exchange from drachma to euro only took place on 1 January 2002. This was followed by a ten-year period for eligible exchange of drachma to euro, which ended on 1 March 2012.
Prior to the adoption of the euro, 64% of Greek citizens viewed the new currency positively, but in February 2005 this figure fell to 26% and by June 2005 it fell further to 20%. Since 2010 the figure has risen again, and a survey in September 2011 showed that 63% of Greek citizens viewed of the euro positively.
IMF's forecast said that Greece's unemployment rate would hit the highest 14.8 percent in 2012 and decrease to 14.1 in 2014. But in fact, the Greek economy suffered a prolonged high unemployment. The unemployment figure was between 9 per cent and 11 per cent in 2009, and it soared to 28 per cent in 2013. In 2018, Greece's jobless rate was around 20.1 per cent. It is thought that Greece's potential output has been eroded by this prolonged massive unemployment due to the associated hysteresis effects.
As a result of the recession sparked by the public debt crisis, poverty has increased. The rate of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion was 30% in 2019. Those living in extreme poverty rose to 15% in 2015, up from 8.9% in 2011, and a huge increase from 2009 when it was not more than 2.2%. The rate among children 0-17 is 17.6% and for young people 18-29 the rate is 24.4%. With unemployment on the rise, those without jobs are at the highest risk of poverty (70–75%), up from less than 50% in 2011. Those out of work lose their health insurance after two years, further exacerbating the poverty rate. Younger unemployed people tend to rely on the older generations of their families for financial support. However, long-term unemployment has depleted pension funds due to fewer workers making social security contributions, resulting in higher poverty rates in intergenerational households reliant on the reduced pensions received by their retired members. Over the course of the economic crisis, Greeks have endured significant job losses and wage cuts, as well as deep cuts to workers' compensation and welfare benefits. From 2008 to 2013, Greeks became 40% poorer on average, and in 2014 saw their disposable household income drop below 2003 levels.
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Telecommunications in Greece
The telecommunications and postal services market in Greece is regulated by the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT).
COSMOTE, the former state monopoly, is the main player in fixed-line telephony. Since the liberalization of the telecommunications market, COSMOTE (OTE) has been slowly losing market share to "alternative", competing telecom operators, such as Vodafone, WIND, Nova. As of 2005, COSMOTE's share on the market hovered around 76%.
Telephones – main lines in use: 6,348,800 (2004).
Telephone system:
Greece has three mobile telecom companies; COSMOTE, Vodafone, and WIND.
Number of active lines: 20,285,000 (September 2009), which means 180% penetration.
Greece owns one Telecommunications Satellite, named Hellas-sat, which provides telecommunication services in a major part of Eastern Europe and Western Asia.
4,893,840 IP addresses, 1.6638e+30 IPv6 addresses, 5,920,000 Internet Users,
2,396,700 broadband connections,
23 Internet Service Providers.
Radio broadcast stations:
Until the Greek government closed the company down on 11 June 2013, the state radio and television broadcasting agency was ERT (Elliniki Radiofonia kai Tileorasi - Greek Radio & Television). The station owned 3 national television stations, ET-1, NET (Nea Elliniki Tileorasi) and ET-3 which was based out of Thessaloniki. In January 2006, ERT launched Digital Terrestrial Television with 3 channels. By March 2006, at least 65% of the Greek population was able to view Digital TV for free with the use of set-top boxes. ERT also operated 7 national radio stations, including ERA 5, the Voice of Greece, which broadcast internationally via shortwave. ERT was based in Athens.
As above, the Greek government announced the closure of ERT on 11 June 2013 with effect from midnight that evening. Since its official closure, employees of ERT have continued broadcasting with their feed being retransmitted online by various websites both inside and outside of Greece notably the CYBC in Cyprus and via the website of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union). The closure of ERT has had political implications in Greece with the smallest party of the Greek coalition government, the Democratic Left withdrawing from government leaving Greece with a New Democracy / PASOK coalition government which has a majority of only three seats.
The first non-pirate private radio station to broadcast in Greece was Athena 98.4 FM, in 1987. Private television began in November, 1989 when Mega Channel began operating. Today, over 1,000 radio stations and approximately 150 television stations broadcast in Greece. Digital satellite broadcasting began in 1999 by the South-African conglomerate Naspers which uses the trademark Nova.
The Broadcasting Media in Greece is considerably free and fair. Established state-run and commercial TV networks broadcast nationally and compete actively against each other, and hundreds of thousands of viewers subscribe to satellite pay-TV services. Domestically made variety programmes, comedies and game shows dominate the peak-time TV schedules and are highly popular and widely shown in Greece.
Private: ANT1 TV, Star Channel, Alpha TV, Open Beyond TV, Makedonia TV, Skai TV and several other regional and local stations.
Public: ΕΡΤ1, ΕΡΤ2, ΕΡΤ3, ΕΡΤ HD (now ΕΡΤ SPORTS HD) (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation).
Radios: 5.02 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations: 64 (plus about 1,000 low-power repeaters); also two stations in the US Armed Forces Network (1999)
Televisions: 2.54 million (1997)
Hellenic Post is the state-owned postal service provider of Greece. A number of private courier services, such as DHL, ACS, United Parcel Service and FedEx (Speedex), also operate in Greece.
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Transport in Greece
Transport in Greece have undergone significant changes in the past two decades, vastly modernizing the country's infrastructure and transportation. Although ferry transport between islands remains the prominent method of transport between the nation's islands, improvements to the road infrastructure, rail, urban transport, and airports have all led to a vast improvement in transportation. These upgrades have played a key role in supporting Greece's economy, which in the past decade has come to rely heavily on the construction industry.
The state owned company that owns and maintains Greece's railway network is called OSE, while TrainOSE is the company responsible for operating all passenger and freight trains.
Cities with a rapid transit railway network:
Cities with a commuter rail network (Proastiakos):
Roads:
KTEL is the common name for every company which is responsible for intercity and regional bus transit. Most of the regional units, though, have their own regional network of buses, and have their regional unit names labeled on KTEL vehicles that operate there. (e.g. KTEL Argolidas).
The 80 km system consists of three coastal canals including the Corinth Canal (6 km) and three unconnected rivers.
The Corinth Canal crosses the Isthmus of Corinth, connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf; and shortens the sea voyage from the Adriatic to Piraeus by 325 km.
under 914 m: 10 (2005)
Pireaus Port
Rafina Port
Lavrion Port
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Hellenic Armed Forces
The Hellenic Armed Forces (, ) are the combined ground, naval and air forces of Greece. They consist of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff, the Hellenic Army, the Hellenic Navy, and the Hellenic Air Force.
The civilian authority overseeing the Hellenic Armed Forces is the Ministry of National Defense.
Greece currently has universal compulsory military service for males from and over 18 years of age. Under Greek law, all men over 18 years of age must serve in the Armed Forces for a period of 9 months. Women can serve in the Greek military on a voluntary basis, but cannot be conscripted.
According to NATO sources in 2008, Greece spent 2.8% of GDP on its military, which translated to approximately €6.9 billion (US$9.3 billion). In 2008, Greece was the largest importer of conventional weapons in Europe and its military spending was the highest in the European Union relative to the country's GDP, reaching twice the European average.
Data for the 2017 fiscal year showed an estimated expense of €4.3 billion in constant 2010 prices, or €4.2 billion in current prices, equivalent to 2.38% of GDP (+0.01 change since 2016). For the 2018 fiscal year, the expenditure was estimated at €4.3 billion in constant 2010 prices or €4.1 billion in current prices, equivalent to 2.27% of GDP (-0.11% change since 2017).
Military personnel was estimated at approximately 106,000 for year 2017 and 105,000 for year 2018.
Greece is an EU and NATO member and currently participates primarily in peacekeeping operations. Such operations are ISAF in Afghanistan, EUFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chad, and KFOR in Kosovo.
The Hellenic National Defense General Staff has the operational command of the Joint Armed Forces Headquarters and the units that operate under them. It is also responsible for organising and implementing routine operations and exercises of the Joint Armed Forces, coordinating and implementing operations during the management of wartime and peacetime crises and overseeing operations of the Hellenic Armed Forces outside Greek national territory.
The basic components of the Hellenic Army are Arms and Corps. The former is responsible for combat missions and the latter for logistical support. It is organized in Commands, Formations, and Units with the main being brigade, division and corps. Its main mission is to guarantee the territorial integrity and independence of the country.
The Hellenic Navy incorporates a modern fleet consisting of strike units, such as frigates, gunboats, submarines and fast attack guided missile vessels and multiple types of support vessels, in order to be able to conduct naval operations that protect Greek national interests and guarantee the integrity of Greek territorial waters, the mainland and the islands.
The Hellenic Air Force incorporates a modern aircraft fleet and congruent structure, combined with a comprehensive air defense system that consists of a widespread network of anti-aircraft weapons. The structure, which is overseen by the Air Force General Staff, includes the Tactical Air Force Command, the Air Force Support Command, the Air Force Training Command and a number of other independent defense units and services. Its main mission is to defend Greek airspace and to provide combat support to the Hellenic Army and the Hellenic Navy.
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Geography of Greenland
Greenland is located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Canada and northwest of Iceland. The territory comprises the island of Greenland—the largest island in the world—and more than a hundred other smaller islands (see ). As an island, Greenland has no land boundaries and 44,087 km of coastline. A sparse population is confined to small settlements along certain sectors of the coast. Greenland possesses the world's second largest ice sheet.
Greenland sits atop the Greenland plate, a subplate of the North American plate. The Greenland craton is made up of some of the oldest rocks on the face of the earth. The Isua greenstone belt in southwestern Greenland contains the oldest known rocks on Earth, dated at 3.7–3.8 billion years old.
The vegetation is generally sparse, with the only patch of forested land being found in Nanortalik Municipality in the extreme south near Cape Farewell.
The climate is arctic to subarctic, with cool summers and cold winters. The terrain is mostly a flat but gradually sloping icecap that covers all land except for a narrow, mountainous, barren, rocky coast. The lowest elevation is sea level and the highest elevation is the summit of Gunnbjørn Fjeld, the highest point in the Arctic at . The northernmost point of the island of Greenland is Cape Morris Jesup, discovered by Admiral Robert Peary in 1900. Natural resources include zinc, lead, iron ore, coal, molybdenum, gold, platinum, uranium, hydropower and fish.
"Total area:"
2,166,086 km²
"Land area:"
2,166,086 km² (410,449 km² ice-free, 1,755,637 km² ice-covered)
Maritime claims:
"Territorial sea:"
"Exclusive fishing zone:"
"Arable land:"
approximately 6%; some land is used to grow silage.
"Permanent crops:"
Approximately 0%
"Other:"
100% (2012 est.)
The total population comprises around 56,000 inhabitants, of whom approximately 18,000 live in the capital, Nuuk.
Continuous ice sheet covers 84% of the country; the rest is permafrost.
Protection of the Arctic environment, climate change, pollution of the food chain, excessive hunting of endangered species (walrus, polar bears, narwhal, beluga whale and several sea birds).
Greenland's climate is a tundra climate on and near the coasts and an ice cap climate in inland areas. It typically has short, cool summers and long, moderately cold winters.
Due to Gulf Stream influences, Greenland's winter temperatures are very mild for its latitude. In Nuuk, the capital, average winter temperatures are only . In comparison, the average winter temperatures for Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, are around . Conversely, summer temperatures are very low, with an average high around . This is too low to sustain trees, and the land is treeless tundra.
On the Greenland ice sheet, the temperature is far below freezing throughout the year, and record high temperatures have peaked only slightly above freezing. The record high temperature at Summit Camp is .
In the far south of Greenland, there is a very small forest in the Qinngua Valley, due to summer temperatures being barely high enough to sustain trees. There are mountains over high surrounding the valley, which protect it from cold, fast winds travelling across the ice sheet. It is the only natural forest in Greenland, but is only long.
The Greenland ice sheet is thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico. The ice is so massive that its weight presses the bedrock of Greenland below sea level and is so all-concealing that not until recently did scientists discover Greenland's Grand Canyon or the possibility that Greenland might actually be three islands.
If the ice melted, the interior bedrock below sea level would be covered by water. It is not clear whether this water would be at sea level or a lake above sea level. If it would be at sea level it could connect to the sea at Ilulissat Icefjord, in Baffin Bay and near Nordostrundingen, creating three large islands. But it is most likely that it would be a lake with one drain.
It is thought that before the Ice Age, Greenland had mountainous edges and a lowland (and probably very dry) center which drained to the sea via one big river flowing out westwards, past where Disko Island is now.
There is concern about sea level rise caused by ice loss (melt and glaciers falling into the sea) on Greenland. Between 1997 and 2003 ice loss was , compared to about for 1993/4-1998/9. Half of the increase was from higher summer melting, with the rest caused by the movements of some glaciers exceeding the speeds needed to balance upstream snow accumulation. A complete loss of ice on Greenland would cause a sea level rise of as much as .
Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February 2006 that the glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago. By 2005, Greenland was beginning to lose more ice volume than anyone expected – an annual loss of up to per year, according to more recent satellite gravity measurements released by JPL. The increased ice loss may be partially offset by increased snow accumulation due to increased precipitation.
Between 1991 and 2006, monitoring of the weather at one location (Swiss Camp) found that the average winter temperature had risen almost .
Recently, Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers have started moving faster, satellite data show. These are the Jakobshavn Isbræ at Ilulissat on the western edge of Greenland, and the Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim glaciers on the eastern edge of Greenland. The two latter accelerated greatly during the years 2004–2005, but returned to pre-2004 velocities in 2006. The accelerating ice flow has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in seismic activity. In March 2006, researchers at Harvard University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University reported that the glaciers now generate swarms of earthquakes up to magnitude 5.0.
The retreat of Greenland's ice is revealing islands that were thought to be part of the mainland. In September 2005 Dennis Schmitt discovered an island north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland which he named Uunartoq Qeqertaq, Inuit for "warming island".
In the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. Greenland is losing 200 billion tonnes of ice per year. Research suggests that this could increase the sea levels' rise by 30 centimeters by the end of the century. These projections have the possibility of changing as satellite data only dates back to 40 years ago. This means that researchers must view old photographs of glaciers and compare them to ones taken today to determine the future of Greenland's ice.
The ice sheet covering Greenland varies significantly in elevation across the landmass, rising dramatically between the coastline at sea level and the East-Central interior, where elevations reach . The coastlines are rocky and predominantly barren with fjords. Numerous small islands spread from the Central to Southern coastlines.
Greenland's mountain ranges are partially or completely buried by ice. The highest mountains are in the Watkins Range, which runs along the eastern coast. Greenland's highest mountain is Gunnbjorn Fjeld with a height of .
Scientists discovered an asteroid impact crater in the northwestern region of Greenland, buried underneath the ice sheet. At a size larger than Washington, D.C., it is the first impact crater found beneath one of Earth's ice sheets.
This is a list of the extreme points of Greenland, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
Greenland has 18 towns – settlements with more than 500 inhabitants. Nuuk is the largest town – and the capital – with roughly one third of the country's urban population. Sisimiut with approximately 5,500 inhabitants is the second largest town, while Ilulissat is number three with around 5,000 inhabitants.
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Demographics of Greenland
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Greenland, including population density, ethnicity, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
On 1 July 2014, Greenland had 56,295 inhabitants. This represents an increase of 13 over 1 January but a decrease of 188 over 1 July 2013. The decrease in Greenland's population is due to emigration, as natural growth is positive.
0–6 years: 5,605
7–14 years: 6,531
15–17 years: 2,462
18–24 years: 6,491
25–64 years: 31,128
65- years: 4,153
(male 2,133 ; female 2,020)
Structure of the population (01.07.2013) (Estimates - Population statistics are compiled from registers) :
"total population:"
71.25 years
"male:"
68.6 years
"female:"
74.04 years (2012 est.)
The population of Greenland consists of Greenlandic Inuit (including mixed-race persons), Greenlandic Danes, Danish Greenlanders and other Europeans and North Americans. The Inuit population makes up approximately 85%-90% of the total (2009 est.). 6,792 people from Denmark live in Greenland, which is 12% of its total population.
In recent years, Greenland experienced a significant increase in immigration from Asia, especially from the Philippines, Thailand, and China.
The only official language of Greenland is Greenlandic. The number of speakers of Greenlandic is estimated at 50,000 (85-90% of the total population), divided in three main dialects, Kalaallisut (West-Greenlandic, 44,000 speakers and the dialect that is used as official language), Tunumiit (East-Greenlandic, 3,000 speakers) and Inuktun (North-Greenlandic, 800 speakers). The remainder of the population mainly speaks Danish; Inuit Sign Language is the language of the deaf community.
The nomadic Inuit people were traditionally shamanistic, with a well-developed mythology primarily concerned with propitiating a vengeful and fingerless sea goddess who controlled the success of the seal and whale hunts.
The first Norse colonists were pagan, but Erik the Red's son Leif was converted to Catholic Christianity by King Olaf Trygvesson on a trip to Norway in 990 and sent missionaries back to Greenland. These swiftly established sixteen parishes, some monasteries, and a bishopric at Garðar.
Rediscovering these colonists and spreading the Protestant Reformation among them was one of the primary reasons for the Danish recolonization in the 18th century. Under the patronage of the Royal Mission College in Copenhagen, Norwegian and Danish Lutherans and German Moravian missionaries searched for the missing Norse settlements and began converting the Inuit. The principal figures in the Christianization of Greenland were Hans and Poul Egede and Matthias Stach. The New Testament was translated piecemeal from the time of the very first settlement on Kangeq Island, but the first translation of the whole Bible was not completed until 1900. An improved translation using the modern orthography was completed in 2000.
Today, the major religion is Protestant Christianity, mostly members of the Lutheran Church of Denmark. While there is no official census data on religion in Greenland, the Lutheran Bishop of Greenland Sofie Petersen estimates that 85% of the Greenlandic population are members of its congregation.
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Politics of Greenland
The politics of Greenland, a constituent country (, ) of the Kingdom of Denmark, function in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic dependency, whereby the prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament "Inatsisartut". The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Greenland has full autonomy on most matters, except on policies and decisions affecting the region including negotiations with the devolved legislatures and the Folketing ().
Executive power rests with a high commissioner, and a prime minister heads the Cabinet. The high commissioner of Greenland is appointed by the monarch (on from 2011: Queen Margrethe II), and the prime minister is elected indirectly by parliament elections results for four-year terms.
The High Commissioner has a seat in the Inatsisartut, he or she is allowed to speak in the Inatsisartut regarding common Danish/Greenlandic affairs, but he or she is not allowed to vote. Following legislative elections, the leader of the party that wins the most seats is usually given the initiative to establish a new coalition by the Greenlandic Parliament, unless the current Naalakkersuisut Siulittaasuat ("Prime Minister" in English) is still in power. However, if he/she fails, the Chairman of the parliament asks all chairmen of the parties elected to the parliament, and asks them to point to another chairman who they feel can rightly form a new coalition. The chairman with the most votes is then handed the initiative. After forming the coalition, the Naalakkersuisut Siulittaasuat leads the Naalakkersuisut. The Naalakkersuisut will often consist of around 9 members. The coalition parties divide the various ministries among themselves and after this, the parties elect their representative to these ministries. Any other member of the cabinet is called a "Naalakkersuisoq".
Legislative power is shared by the government and the legislature. The legislature Greenlandic Parliament () is made up of 31 members elected by direct, popular vote to serve four-year terms by proportional representation. Election of 2 seats to the Danish Parliament () was last held on June 18, 2015. The current composition is shown below
Greenland's judicial system is based on the Danish civil law system, operates independently of the legislature and the executive. It has two court of first instance: the District Courts and the Court of Greenland depending on the type of case, whereas the High Court of Greenland hears cases as the second instance. Decisions made by the High Court of Greenland may be brought before the Supreme Court subject to the permission of the Appeals Permission Board. Appeals may be submitted to the Østre Landsret and the Supreme Court of Denmark (Højesteret).
Greenland has a multi-party system (disputing independence versus unionism as well as left versus right). Governments are usually coalition governments. The Greenlandic Parliament (Inatsisartut) has 31 seats. Members are elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms.
The island is administratively divided into 5 municipalities with about 74 cities and villages.
Along with diplomatic missions to the European Union and the United States, Greenland participates in the Nordic Council, Arctic Council, International Whaling Commission (Complete list of participation of Greenland in international organisations).
With Denmark having responsibility for Greenland's international affairs, other countries do not have direct diplomatic representation in Greenland — their embassies or consulates in Copenhagen are responsible for their relations with Greenland and their citizens staying or living there.
Greenland is represented internationally by the embassies and consulates of Denmark, although Greenland has an independent Representation to the European Union in Brussels since 1992 and in the United States in Washington D.C since 2014.
Greenland maintains economic and cultural relations with Taiwan via Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada.
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Economy of Greenland
The economy of Greenland can be characterized as small, mixed and vulnerable. Greenland's economy consists of a large public sector and comprehensive foreign trade. This has resulted in an economy with periods of strong growth, considerable inflation, unemployment problems and extreme dependence on capital inflow from the Kingdom Government.
GDP per capita is close to the average for European economies, but the economy is critically dependent upon substantial support from the Danish government, which supplies about half the revenues of the Self-rule Government, which in turn employs 10,307 Greenlanders out of 25,620 currently in employment (2015). Unemployment nonetheless remains high, with the rest of the economy dependent upon demand for exports of shrimp and fish.
Except for an abortive royal colony established under Major Claus Paarss between 1728 and 1730, colonial Greenland was administered by companies under royal charter until 1908. Hans Egede's Hope Colony was organized under the auspices of the Bergen Greenland Company prior to its bankruptcy in 1727; it was succeeded by the merchant Jacob Severin (1733–1749), the General Trade Company ("Det almindelige Handelskompagni"; 1749–1774), and finally the Royal Greenland Trading Department (KGH; 1776–1908).
Early hopes of mineral or agricultural wealth were dashed, and open trade proved a failure owing to other nations' better quality, lower priced goods and hostility. Kale, lettuce, and other vegetables were successfully introduced, but repeated attempts to cultivate wheat or clover failed throughout Greenland, limiting the ability to raise European livestock. After government-funded whaling failed, the KGH eventually settled on maintaining the native Greenlanders in their traditional pursuits of hunting and whaling and enforced a monopoly on trade between them and Europe. Repeated attempts to open trade were opposed on both commercial and humanitarian grounds, although minor reforms in the 1850s and 60s lowered the prices charged to the natives for "luxuries" like sugar and coffee; transferred more of the KGH's profits to local communities; and granted the important Ivigtut cryolite concession to a separate company.
During the years before World War I, the KGH's independence was curtailed and the company folded into the Ministry of the Interior. Climate change, apparent since the 1920s, disrupted traditional Kalaallit life as the milder weather reduced the island's seal populations but filled the waters offshore with cod. After World War II, reforms were finally enacted by the Danish Greenland Commission composed of Greenland Provincial Council members and Danish economists. The report outlined a program to end the KGH model and establish a modern welfare state on the Danish model and supported by the Kingdom Government. The KGH monopolies were ended in 1950; Greenland was made an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953 and Home Rule granted in 1979.
The KGH had long opposed urbanization of the Kalaallit Greenlanders, but during the 1950s and 1960s the Danish government introduced an urbanization and modernization program aimed at consolidating existing settlements. The program was intended to reduce costs, improve access to education and health care, and provide workers for modernized cod fisheries, which were growing rapidly at the time. The program faced a number of problems including the collapse of the fisheries and the shoddy construction of many of the buildings, particularly the infamous Blok P, and produced a number of problems of its own, including continuing unemployment and alcoholism.
Greenland left the European Economic Community in February 1985, principally due to EEC policies on fishing and sealskin. Most EU laws do not apply to Greenland; however, owing to its connection with Denmark, Greenland continues to enjoy preferential access to EU markets. In the same year, Greenland exercised its new control over the Royal Greenland Trading Company to reestablish it as KNI. Over the next few decades, divisions of the conglomerate were slowly spun off and competition within the Greenlandic economy somewhat increased.
Following the closure of the Maarmorilik lead and zinc mine in 1990 and the collapse of the cod fisheries amid colder ocean currents, Greenland faced foreign trade deficits and a shrinking economy, but it has been growing since 1993.
The Greenland economy is extremely dependent on exports of fish and on support from the Danish Government, which supplies about half of government revenues. The public sector, including publicly owned enterprises and the municipalities, plays the dominant role in the economy.
The largest employers in Greenland are the various levels of administration, including the central Kingdom Government in Denmark, the Local Greenland Self-Rule Government, and the municipalities. Most of these positions are in the capital Nuuk. In addition to this direct employment, the government heavily subsidizes other major employers in other areas of the economy, including Great Greenland's sealskin purchases, Pilersuisoq's rural stores, and some of Air Greenland and Royal Arctic's regional routes.
The second-largest sector by employment is Greenland's fishing industry. The commercial fishing fleet consists of approximately 5,000 dinghies, 300 cutters, and 25 trawlers. While cod was formerly the main catch, today the industry centers on cold-water shrimp and Greenland halibut.
The fish processing industry is almost entirely centered on Royal Greenland, the world's largest retailer of cold-water shrimp.
Whaling and seal hunting were once traditional mainstays of Greenland's economy. Greenlanders still kill an estimated 170,000 seals a year and 175 whales a year, ranking them second and third in the world respectively. Both whaling and sealing have become controversial, limiting the potential market for their products. As such, the only seal tannery in the country Great Greenland in Qaqortoq is heavily subsidized by the government to maintain the livelihood of smaller communities which are economically dependent on the hunt.
Reindeer or caribou are found in the northwest of the island, while muskoxen are found in the northeast and at Kangerlussuaq. Because the muskoxen's natural range favors the protected Northeast Greenland National Park, it is a less common object of hunting than in the past. Polar bear and reindeer hunting in Greenland still occur but are regulated to avoid endangering the populations.
Approximately half of total sales are conducted by KNI, the state-owned successor to the Royal Greenland Trade Department; its rural sales division Pilersuisoq; or its daughter company which has been purchased by the Danish Dagrofa Pisiffik. The third major chain is the Brugsen association of cooperatives.
Ivigtut used to be the world's premier source of natural cryolite, an important mineral in aluminum extraction, but the commercially viable reserves were depleted in the 1980s. Similarly, deposits of coal, diamonds, and many metals including silver, nickel, platinum, copper, molybdenum, iron, niobium, tantalum, uranium, and rare earths are known to exist, but not yet in commercially viable deposits. Greenland's Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum is working to promote Greenland as an attractive destination for prospectors. Improvements in technology and increases in mineral prices have led to some mines being reopened, such as the lead and zinc mine at Maarmorilik and the gold mine at Nalunaq.
Greenland is expected to be one of the world’s next great mining frontiers as global warming starts to uncover precious metals from the frozen surroundings. Substantial volumes of minerals are now within reach of geological land mapping technologies, according to research conducted by GlobalData, a natural resources business intelligence provider.
At 70%, Greenland has one of the highest shares of renewable energy in the world, mostly coming from hydropower.
While the Greenland Home Rule Government has primary sovereignty over mineral deposits on the mainland, oil resources are within the domain of the Danish exclusive economic zone. Nonetheless, prospecting takes place under the auspices of NUNAOIL, a partnership between the two governments. Some geologists believe Greenland has some of the world's largest remaining oil resources: in 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey found that the waters off north-eastern Greenland (north and south of the Arctic Circle) could contain up to of oil, and in 2010 the British petrochemical company Cairns Oil reported "the first firm indications" of commercially viable oil deposits. Nonetheless, all six wells drilled since the 1970s have been dry.
Greenland has offered eight license blocks for tender along its west coast by Baffin Bay. Seven of those blocks have been bid for by a combination of multinational oil companies and NUNAOIL. Companies that have participated successfully in the previous license rounds and have formed a partnership for the licenses with NUNAOIL are DONG Energy, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Husky Energy, and Cairn Energy. The area available known as the West Disko licensing round is of interest due to its relative accessibility compared to other Arctic basins, as the area remains largely free of ice and contains a number of promising geological leads and prospects from the Paleocene era.
Coal used to be mined at Qullissat but this has been suspended.
Electricity generation is controlled by the state-owned Nukissiorfiit. It is distributed at 220 V and 50 Hz and sockets of Danish type K are used. Electricity has historically been generated by oil or diesel power plants, even though there is a large surplus of potential hydropower. Because of rising oil prices, there is a program to build hydro power plants. Since the success of the 1993 Buksefjord dam, whose distribution path to Nuuk includes the Ameralik Span the long-term policy of the Greenland government is to produce the island's electricity from renewable domestic sources. A third turbine at Buksefjord brought its capacity up to 45 MW in 2008; in 2007, a second, 7.2 MW dam was constructed at Qorlortorsuaq; and in 2010, a third, 15 MW dam was constructed at Sisimiut. There is a plan for an Aluminium smelter plant, which requires multiple large (total 600-750 MW) hydropower plants. Domestic heating is provided by electricity at locations where there is a hydro power plant.
Tourism is limited by the short summers and high costs. Access is almost exclusively by air, mainly from Scandinavia and Iceland. Some tourists arrive by cruise ship (but they don't spend much locally, since the ship provides accommodation and meals). There have been tests with direct flights from the US East Coast from 2007 to 2008, but these were discontinued.
The state-owned tourism agency Visit Greenland has the web address Greenland.com.
Agriculture is of little importance in the economy but due to climate change in southern Greenland, the growing season averages about three weeks longer than a decade ago which has enabled expanded production of existing crops. At present, local production accounts for 10% of potatoes consumption in Greenland, but that is projected to grow to 15% by 2020. Similarly, it has enabled new crops like apples, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrots to be grown and for the cultivated areas of the country to be extended although even now only about 1% of Greenland is considered arable. Expanded production is subsidized by the government through purchase guarantees by the state-owned Neqi A/S grocery store chain.
The only forest in Greenland is in the Qinngua Valley near Nanortalik. It is protected and not used for timber production.
Animal husbandry consists mainly of sheep farming, with free-grazing flocks. Modern sheep farming methods were introduced in the early 20th century, with the first farm built in 1906. The farms provide meat for local consumption and wool mainly for export. Some 20,000 lambs are slaughtered annually in Narsaq by the state-owned Neqi A/S. The lack of private land ownership rights on Greenland forces farmers to jointly agree to terms of land usage. In the south, there is also a small cattle farm.
Reindeer herding has been introduced to Greenland in waves since 1952. Supervision by Scandinavian Sami ended in 1978 and subsequent results were dismal. Repeated attempts in mid-west Greenland in the 1980s and the 1990s failed due to the immobility of the herds, which destroyed their forage. In 1998, the remaining herd was sold to the Nuuk municipality and removed through hunting. At that point, only one Greenlander was still a deerherd; the rest about 20 people were still hired Norwegian Sami. Although the conclusion was drawn that reindeer herding was incompatible with the local culture, the southern herds continue to prosper. In 2008, there was still a strong herd at the Isortoq Reindeer Station maintained by the Icelander Stefán Magnússon and Norwegian Ole Kristiansen.
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Telecommunications in Greenland
Telecommunications in Greenland include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Greenland has, by law, only one service provider for telecommunications and the Internet, TELE Greenland, which is fully owned by the Greenlandic Home Rule government. TELE Greenland provides switched telephone and data, land mobile communications, and VHF and MF shore-to-ship communication. This type of monopoly is not uncommon in Greenland.
Television in Greenland began in the 1960s.
Privately owned transmitters were created to receive TV from Canada, Iceland, and mainland Denmark. This can date as far back when television was introduced to Greenland in the 1960s. It was possible to receive TV from Canada with a normal household TV antenna, but color transmissions were NTSC and signals were in very bad quality and however in some circumstances, television transmissions were not available at all due to factors such as weather conditions or time of day, even for the people who owned private transmitters. Greenland did not have any local TV service until 1982.
The state broadcaster is Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR, Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation), which provides one television and one radio service nationwide. Both broadcast in Greenlandic and Danish. Administered as an independent public corporation by the Greenlandic government, KNR has a seven-person board and management committee. They employ 100 people and are funded publicly and by advertising.
A few private local TV and radio stations are also available as Danish public radio rebroadcasts. An umbrella organization in Greenland, known as the STTK, operates local radio and TV stations throughout the country. There are also American Forces Network stations, operated by the United States Air Force.
Greenlanders owned an estimated 30,000 radios and 30,000 television sets, as of 2002.
There are no area codes in Greenland, and all telephone numbers have 6 digits.
There are adequate domestic and international telephone services, provided by cables and microwave radio relay. The system was totally digitized in 1995. The Greenland Connect submarine cable provides connectivity to Europe via Iceland and to North America via Newfoundland. TELE Greenland first used satellite communication in 1978 and currently uses 15 satellite earth stations (12 Intelsat, 1 Eutelsat, and 2 Americom GE-2), all over the Atlantic Ocean.
Today, Greenland has more mobile phones than landlines.
As of 2007 there are 66.400 active GSM (2G) and UMTS (3G) subscriptions in use in Greenland. In 2007, all NMT (1G) networks were shut down. Nova was first to offer 4G.
Mobile coverage extends to nearly all inhabited areas in Greenland, but there are some remote areas that do not have mobile coverage.
In Greenland, VHF radio-telephone is also used. Users make calls over a radio instead of a phone. Outside of Greenland, VHF phones are only used on ships, but in Greenland they can also used as regular phones. Greenland does not have telephone connection over the whole country, so sometimes it may be easier to use a VHF phone. In 2001, 42% of Greenlanders owned a portable VHF phone.
As a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland has a democratically elected home-rule government whose powers may encompass all matters except foreign and national security affairs, police services, and monetary matters. Greenlanders have the same rights throughout the kingdom as other citizens.
The Danish government places no restrictions on access to the Internet and there are no credible reports that e-mail or Internet chat rooms are monitored without appropriate legal authority. Authorities continue to employ an Internet filter designed to block child pornography. In no known cases did the filter affect legitimate sites. The Danish Constitution provides for freedom of speech and press with some limitations such as cases involving child pornography, libel, blasphemy, hate speech, and racism, and the government generally respects these rights in practice.
In April 2013, the registrar for the .gl domain unilaterally voluntarily suspended resolution of thepiratebay.gl, intended to be a new primary Domain Name for the famous Bittorrent search engine The Pirate Bay. This caused transient inconvenience to some File Sharing Internet users.
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Transport in Greenland
The transportation system in Greenland is very unusual in that Greenland has no railways, no inland waterways, and virtually no roads between towns. Historically the major means of transportation has been by boat around the coast in summer and by dog sled in winter, particularly in the north and east.
While Germany occupied Denmark during World War II, the United States controlled Greenland and built bases and airports. The airports were codenamed as Bluie West One through to Bluie West Eight on the west of the island and Bluie East One to Bluie East Four on the eastern side (some had only sea plane access, some no air access). The largest of those airports, Bluie West Eight, now renamed Kangerlussuaq Airport, remains the international hub for travel to Greenland, as it is the only airport that has a long enough runway to service jumbo jets. American authorities at one time entertained the idea of building a road from Kangerlussuaq to the second-largest airport, in Narsarsuaq, several hundred kilometres to the south. The idea was abandoned after feasibility studies failed to prove it was possible. These airbases are generally not located near settlements, so travellers need an air transfer by helicopter (small plane from Kangerlussuaq) to reach settlements. All civil aviation matters are handled by the Civil Aviation Administration Denmark or the Greenland Airport Authority.
Greenland now has 18 airstrips, 14 of which are paved. Some are based on US airbases, but most are built by the Greenlandic government. All domestic flights are operated by Air Greenland. The name was anglicized in 2002 from the Danish Grønlandsfly (Greenlandair in English). International flights are limited to four weekly flights from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, and to Reykjavik, Iceland.
Air Iceland flies from Reykjavík to Narsarsuaq. It offers also "day trips to the wilderness" from Reykjavík to Kulusuk on the east coast. Air Iceland flies to Ittoqqortoormiit over Kulusuk once or twice a week throughout the year. Flights from Reykjavik are flown throughout the year. Also, year-round flights from Reykjavik to Ilulissat will be offered after April 2011. From 2012 Air Greenland operates a route from Iqaluit in Canada to Nuuk during summer.
Air cargo is very important for Greenland. Most perishable foodstuff is imported from Denmark by air. It uses the Air Greenland Copenhagen–Kangerlussuaq passenger aircraft, and this is a reason why such a large aircraft is used. The air containers are then transported to the other airports by the small planes that can use the small runways. Some air cargo is transported by boat from Kangerlussuaq, but not in the winter when the Kangerlussuaq Fjord freezes (one of the reasons to build the Sisimiut–Kangerlussuaq road).
A state-owned firm called Kalaallit Airports is currently tasked with operating and updating the airports in Nuuk and Ilulissat. This process has been contentious as Chinese firms bid for the contract, with one Danish PM stating "We don't want a communist dictatorship in our backyard,".
There are no roads between settlements, only within them and around them.
There are 150 km (90 mi) of roads in the whole country; 60 km (40 mi) of the roads are paved. The roads are primary or local roads, there are no highways in Greenland.
Speed limit ranges from for local roads to on primary roads.
Some farms in the south have fairly extensive very simple roads for all-terrain vehicles (not included in above figure), used for sheep farming and hay collection. There are some other short simple gravel roads, such as leading from the shore to hydropower plants.
There are plans for a road between Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq, discussed for several years. In 2015 the cost of it (500 MDKK) caused it to be replanned as a one-lane road for terrain capable vehicles, costing a tenth as much (50 MDKK). It was decided including financing in 2019, and is expected to be built in 2020.
There are ports at Ilulissat, Kangerlussuaq (also known by its Danish name Søndre Strømfjord), Qaqortoq, Narsaq, Nuuk (Godthåb), Aasiaat and Sisimiut. Several other towns have also small ports. The only two users of the harbors are Royal Arctic Line and Arctic Umiaq Line. Royal Arctic Line organises freight ships, for example container ships, with regular sailings from Denmark. Arctic Umiaq Line runs a passenger ship which also carries freight. The distance from Denmark to Nuuk by ship is 3,800 kilometres (2,400 mi/2,000 nmi/4 days at 20 knot), so more perishable foodstuff is imported by air.
There are no car ferries in Greenland or to Greenland. It is possible to transport cars as container freight with Royal Arctic Line (both domestic and from Denmark). Passengers must travel with another method. This is done mostly when moving or buying a car, not normally when travelling, as there is no large road network anywhere.
Historically, special-purpose narrow gauge railways, such as the gauge Qoornoq X-press in the village of Qoornoq in the Nuuk fjord, have operated. The Qoornoq X-press was used for transporting fish from the harbour to scaffolds for drying. The railway cars were only flatbed wagon cars with no locomotives to move them.
Built in 1955, the railway was abandoned shortly before the village around 1971.
Besides Qoornoq there are several other railways that existed in Greenland:
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Military of Greenland
The defence of Greenland is the responsibility of the Kingdom of Denmark. The government of Greenland does not have control of Greenland's military or foreign affairs. The most important part of Greenland's defensive territory remains the 12 maritime zones. In recent years there has been a significant increase in the presence of new challenges. In the history of Greenland there have been many changes of presence regarding who is in charge of the security of Greenlandic people and its land.
Danish military history on Greenland has its origins in the early 18th century. In 1721 Hans Egede, a Danish-Norwegian missionary first colonized the region. Soldiers were stationed on Greenland to protect the Danish colony from looting, especially against foreign whalers. Denmark and Norway split a century later in 1814, leaving Greenland under complete Danish rule.
In 1932, the Navy Flyvevæsen (Naval Air Force) made its first appearance. The Air Force contributed aerial photography to the Geodætisk Institute, a cartographic institute under the Ministry of Defence. All military work was carried out during the summer months, from May to September, after which the ships were transferred to Iceland or Denmark during the winter months.
The Danish Navy was actively involved in exploring Greenland through expeditions until the beginning of the Second World War. The armed forces were also responsible for surveying and cartography. Greenland took its first step toward independence in 1953 when representation in the Danish Parliament was gained. "“The Folketing shall consist of one assembly of not more than one hundred and seventy-nine Members of whom two Members shall be elected in the Faroe Islands and two Members in Greenland."”
Due to the military occupation (operation Weserübung) of the Wehrmacht, on the 9th of April 1940, Denmark was prompted to sign an agreement with the United States in order to maintain control of the Greenlandic territory in allied hands. The Thulesag 1 agreement signed on the 9th of April 1941, gave the US military authority over the defence of Greenland. The US-built airfields, harbors, anti-aircraft fortifications, radio, and meteorological sites. The allies feared that Nazi Germany could use Greenland as a base of operations to conduct offensive attacks on Washington, D.C. via bombing and submarine attacks. The United States' entry into the war meant that Greenland would become much more valuable to the allied war efforts as airfields and harbors in Greenland were used for important transatlantic links. As per the Thulesag 1 agreement, these facilities fell entirely under US jurisdiction while at the same time Danish sovereignty over Greenland was maintained.
Article 10 of the agreement contained a repeal clause. The treaty was to remain in force until "existing threats to the peace and security of the American continent no longer exist". This prompted the United States to build a number of military bases during the Second World War, including Thule Air Base, airfields, and a military hospital. The agreement was finally ratified by the Danish Parliament (Today’s Folketing) after the end of the war on 16 May 1945. By the end of World War II, the U.S. had built or expanded 17 facilities, including air bases such as Narsarsuaq and Kangerlussuaq.
As a countermeasure against the Germans, a permanent patrol service with sledge dogs was established with the Sirius Patrol, which still exists today. The first offensive against the Germans took place on 13 May 1943, when the German weather patrol was discovered by members of the Sledge Patrol. Eli Knudsen, a Danish corporal, was killed during the battle. A second battle took place on 22 April 1944. The Sledge Patrol of Greenland was defunct after the end of the war. In 1953, a new dog unit was named as Sirius Patrol, after the star constellation Canis Major. It contains Sirius, also well known as the brightest star in the night sky, called “dog-star”.Prince Frederik of Denmark took part in a Sirius expedition from 11 February to 31 May 2000, which gave the Unit a new value in the story of Greenland.
Following the Second World War, the sovereignty and defence of Greenland once again returned to Denmark. The United States continued to be interested in a permanent military presence due to the increasing tensions of the Cold War; however, Greenland was expected to remain under sole Danish control by the public. A US sale proposal of Greenland was rejected by the Danish government, with regard to the Soviet Union.
Since overseas territories, such as Greenland, could hardly be protected by a Scandinavian defence alliance, Denmark's integration into NATO was prone to happen. In 1949, new opportunities for both countries opened up as the Danish membership into the military alliance was in place. The USA hoped to solve the question of a navy presence through multilateral negotiations. However, Denmark saw itself in a position to circumvent agreements with the American superpower, which was based solely on bilateral negotiations, and to guarantee Greenland's sovereignty for the future. On 27 April 1951, Thulesag 2 was signed. This meant that the United States would assist Denmark in necessary defence of Greenland within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty. For this purpose, more American military bases were to be established. Article 5, paragraph 3, guaranteed the USA and its troops unrestricted freedom of operation between these bases, on land, air, and sea, throughout the entire national territory. Article 6 obliged the US "to show due respect for all regulations and customs affecting the population and the administration of Greenland". The military airbase in Narsarsuaq was developed into a joint base of Danish and American troops.
At the end of 1953, the secret of a scientifically used weather station 140 km from the army base in Kangerlussuaq came to light. The station had been built by US forces without the knowledge of the Danish government.
Nevertheless, on March 15, 1954, the expansion of Thule Air Base was set into motion. This included the installation of a new generation air defense system that was equipped with nuclear weapons. The expansion also involved the forced resettlement of local Inuit habitants.
A referendum on the law on self-government was held in Greenland on 25 November 2008. A large majority of 75.5% voted in favour of extended self-government. The law is to be seen as a step towards independence from Denmark. On 21 June 2009, an extended agreement on autonomy came into force. Only foreign and defence policy remained in Danish responsibility. The Greenlandic government took over responsibilities for the police, justice, and coastal protection. Those that affect Navy provision include:
There are many new challenges that Greenland has to face today. In many respects these are political discussions in the various institutions and organisations, but there are also physical tasks that need to be tackled. New sea routes lead past Greenland that require special protection. The melting ice brings to light true treasures, valuable raw materials that must be protected. The emerging military units from Russia, China, and the USA need an opponent who knows how to defend himself. The likelihood of war on Greenland is unlikely, and yet the army has an essential role to play. A relevant defence in the Arctic region is at the core of Danish defence priorities. The Kingdom of Denmark covers a significant part of the Arctic. Military developments in the Arctic are therefore of naturally vital importance to the Danish realm. The country’s Navy presence and tasks are based on close relationships with the local populations and authorities of both Greenland and the Faroe Islands. It is in no doubt important to the armed forces' future presence in the Arctic to continue to strengthen and develop this relationship. Within these last few years major changes are taking place in the Arctic Region. The consequences of climate change not only bring better maritime accessibility but also an increased interest in the extraction of natural resources, as well as intensified scientific and commercial activity. There is also a significant increase in military activity in the region. These factors mean that the geopolitical importance of the Arctic will become increasingly significant in the years to come.
Military efforts in the Arctic are strengthened by:
New military vessels solve environmental protection and pollution control tasks. The Parties note that the tender for new pollution control ships will be reconsidered in order to further examine a solution where new military vessels, in addition to their operational military tasks, when necessary, can also solve environmental protection and pollution control tasks. Denmark does not have a specific coast guard entity, as the Royal Danish Navy (Søværnet) is responsible for providing the services that would normally fall to a coast guard. The Navy is thus used by various agencies to carry out search and rescue, navigation assistance, environmental protection, and fisheries inspections, in addition to sovereignty and maritime surveillance. Today, the Danish Navy is divided into the First and Second Squadrons. While the Second Squadron is focused on foreign operations, the first squadron has responsibility for internal affairs, which includes the northern Atlantic (Greenland) and the North Sea (Faroe Islands). Responsibility for coast guard tasks, therefore, falls under the first squadron headquarters in Frederikshavn, as well as the newly established Arctic Command in Nuuk, Greenland (Danish Ministry of Defence 2011). The Arctic Command is responsible for overseeing all maritime activity in the waters around Greenland and the Faroe Islands so that the Danish Navy and the local authorities are in close coordination in crisis situations in the High North.
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History of Grenada
The recorded history of the Caribbean island of Grenada begins in the early 17th century. First settled by indigenous peoples, by the time of European contact it was inhabited by the Caribs. British colonists drove most of the Caribs off the island and established plantations on the island, eventually importing African slaves to work on the sugar plantations.
Control of the island was disputed by Great Britain and France in the 18th century, with the British ultimately prevailing. In 1795, Fédon's Rebellion, inspired by the Haitian Revolution, very nearly succeeded, taking significant military intervention to quell. Slavery was abolished in 1833, and in 1885, the island's capital, St. George's, became the capital of the British Windward Islands.
Grenada achieved independence from Britain in 1974. Following a coup by the Marxist New Jewel Movement in 1983, the island was invaded by United States troops and the government overthrown. The island's major crop, nutmeg, was significantly damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
About 2 million years ago, Grenada was formed as an underwater volcano.
The earliest potential evidence for human presence on Grenada comes from the increase of charcoal particulates and the decline of arboreal pollen from the original climax forests, around 3760-3525 BC, during the Archaic Age. This evidence remains controversial, as it could be natural (e.g., lightening fires, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Several shell fragments from archaeological sites have been dated 1700-1380 BC, but are from mixed, insecure contexts. More secure are the shell middens at Point Salines, dated between 765-535 BC. None of these dates are associated with definitively human artifacts, however. The earliest human-made artifacts that have been scientifically dated are from Early Ceramic Age settlements at Beausejour (260-410 AD) and Pearls (370-645 AD). Only one other known site (Grand Marquis) may have been occupied during this time as well.
Beginning around AD 750, the Amerindian population began to rise, probably as a result of continued migration from the South American mainland. Most of the 87 pre-Columbian sites identified in Grenada have a component during this period (AD 750-1200), marking the height Grenada's indigenous population. This period also represents major cultural and environmental changes throughout the Caribbean. Several waves of groups arrived in prehistory, often associated with Arawakan or Cariban languages, but linguistic reconstruction has shown the Cariban dialect to be fragmentary (as a trade language), the primary language family being Arawakan.
Christopher Columbus reportedly sighted the island on his third voyage in 1498, but he did not land and the name he gave ("La Concepcion") was never used. By the 1520s, it was known as "La Granada," after the recently conquered city in Andalusia (and thus the Grenadines were "Los Granadillos"—or "little Granadas"). By the beginning of the 18th century, the name "la Grenade" in French, was in common use, eventually Anglicized to "Grenada".
Partly because of indigenous resistance, Grenada (and much of the Windwards) remained uncolonized for nearly 150 years after Columbus passed by. When the French finally settled Grenada in 1649 (see below), there were at least two, separate indigenous groups: “Caraibe” (Caribs) in the north and “Galibis” in the southeast. Evidence suggests the “Galibis” were more recent arrivals from the mainland (arriving around AD 1250), whereas the group the French called “Caraibe” were living in villages that had been (in some cases) continuously occupied for over millennium, per archaeological evidence. That is, the indigenous names were somewhat reversed in Grenada: the people the French called “Caribs” were likely descendants of the earliest peoples on Grenada, whereas the Galibis appear to have been more recent arrivals from the mainland (and thus, closer to the Carib stereotype).
In June 1609, the first attempt at settlement by Europeans was made by an English expedition of 24 colonizers led by Mossis Goldfry, Hall, Lull, and Robincon, who arrived in the ships "Diana", the "Penelope", and the "Endeavour". The settlement was attacked and destroyed by the indigenous islanders and many tortured and killed. The few survivors were evacuated when the ships returned on 15 December 1609.
On 17 March 1649, a French expedition of 203 men from Martinique, led by Jacques Dyel du Parquet who had been the Governor of Martinique on behalf of the Compagnie des Iles de l'Amerique (Company of the Isles of America) since 1637, landed at St. Georges Harbour and constructed a fortified settlement, which they named Fort Annunciation. A treaty was swiftly agreed between du Parquet and the indigenous Chief Kairouane to peacefully partition the island between the two communities. Du Parquet returned to Martinique leaving his cousin Jean Le Comte as Governor of Grenada. Conflict broke out between the French and the indigenous islanders in November 1649 and fighting lasted for five years until 1654, when the last opposition to the French on Grenada was crushed. Rather than surrender, Kairouane and his followers chose to throw themselves off a cliff, a fact celebrated in the poetry of Jan Carew. The island continued for some time after to suffer raids by war canoe parties from St. Vincent, whose inhabitants had aided the local Grenadian islanders in their struggle and continued to oppose the French.
On 27th Sep 1650, du Parquet bought Grenada, Martinique, and St. Lucia from the Compagnie des Iles de l'Amerique, which was dissolved, for the equivalent of £1160. In 1657 du Parquet sold Grenada to the Comte de Cerrillac for the equivalent of £1890. In 1664, King Louis XIV bought out the independent island owners and established the French West India Company. In 1674 the French West India Company was dissolved. Proprietary rule ended in Grenada, which became a French colony as a dependency of Martinique.
In 1675, Dutch privateers captured Grenada, but a French man-of-war arrived unexpectedly and recaptured the island.
In 1700, Grenada had a population of 257 whites, 53 coloureds, and 525 slaves. There were 3 sugar estates, 52 indigo plantations, 64 horses, and 569 head of cattle. Between 1705 and 1710 the French built Fort Royal at St. George's which is now known as Fort George. The collapse of the sugar estates and the introduction of cocoa and coffee in 1714 encouraged the development of smaller land holdings, and the island developed a land-owning yeoman farmer class. In 1738 the first hospital was constructed.
Grenada was captured by the British during the Seven Years' War on 4 March 1762 by Commodore Swanton without a shot being fired. Grenada was formally ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763. In 1766 the island was rocked by a severe earthquake. In 1767 a slave uprising was put down. In 1771 and again in 1775 the town of St. George, which was constructed solely of wood, was burnt to the ground – after which it was sensibly rebuilt using stone and brick. France recaptured Grenada between 2–4 July 1779 during the American War of Independence, after Comte d'Estaing stormed Hospital Hill. A British relief force was defeated in the naval Battle of Grenada on 6 July 1779. However the island was restored to Britain with the Treaty of Versailles four years later on 3 September 1783. In 1784 the first newspaper, the "Grenada Chronicle", began publication.
Julien Fédon, a mixed race owner of the Belvedere estate in the St. John Parish, launched a rebellion against British rule on the night of 2 March 1795, with coordinated attacks on the towns of Grenville, La Baye and Gouyave. Fédon was clearly influenced by the ideas emerging from the French Revolution, especially the Convention's abolition of slavery in 1794: he stated that he intended to make Grenada a "Black Republic just like Haiti". Fédon and his troops controlled all of Grenada except the parish of St George's, the seat of government, between March 1795 and June 1796. During those insurgent months 14,000 of Grenada's 28,000 slaves joined the revolutionary forces in order to write their own emancipation and transform themselves into "citizens"; some 7,000 of these self-liberated slaves would perish in the name of freedom. The British defeated Fédon's forces in late 1796, but they never caught Fédon himself, and his fate is unknown.
In 1833, Grenada became part of the British Windward Islands Administration and remained so until 1958. Slavery was abolished in 1834. Nutmeg was introduced in 1843, when a merchant ship called in on its way to England from the East Indies.
In 1857, the first East Indian immigrants arrived. In 1871 Grenada was connected to the telegraph. In 1872 the first secondary school was built. On 3 December 1877 the pure Crown colony model replaced Grenada's old representative system of government. On 3 December 1882, the largest wooden jetty ever built in Grenada was opened in Gouyave. In 1885, after Barbados left the British Windward Islands, the capital of the colonial confederation was moved from Bridgetown to St. George on Grenada. From 1889–1894 the 340 foot Sendall Tunnel was built for horse carriages.
The 1901 census showed that the population of the colony was 63,438. In 1917 T.A. Marryshow founded the Representative Government Association (RGA) to agitate for a new and participative constitutional dispensation for the Grenadian people. Partly as a result of Marryshow's lobbying the Wood Commission of 1921–1922 concluded that Grenada was ready for constitutional reform in the form of a 'modified' Crown Colony government. This modification granted Grenadians from 1925 the right to elect 5 of the 15 members of the Legislative Council, on a restricted property franchise enabling the wealthiest 4% of Grenadian adults to vote. In 1928 electricity was installed in St. George's. In 1943 Pearls Airport was opened. On 5 August 1944 the "Island Queen" schooner disappeared with the loss of all 56 passengers and 11 crew.
In 1950, Grenada had its constitution amended to increase the number of elected seats on the Legislative Council from 5 to 8, to be elected by full adult franchise at the 1951 election. In 1950 Eric Gairy founded the Grenada United Labour Party, initially as a trade union, which led the 1951 general strike for better working conditions. This sparked great unrest – so many buildings were set ablaze that the disturbances became known as the 'red sky' days – and the British authorities had to call in military reinforcements to help regain control of the situation. On 10 October 1951 Grenada held its first general elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage. United Labour won 6 of the 8 elected seats on the Legislative Council in both the 1951 and 1954 elections. However the Legislative Council had few powers at this time, with government remaining fully in the hands of the colonial authorities.
On 22 September 1955, Hurricane Janet hit Grenada, killing 500 people and destroying 75% of the nutmeg trees. A new political party, the Grenada National Party led by Herbert Blaize, contested the 1957 general election and with the cooperation of elected independent members took control of the Legislative Council from the Grenada United Labour Party. In 1958, the Windward Islands Administration was dissolved, and Grenada joined the Federation of the West Indies.
In 1960, another constitutional evolution established the post of Chief Minister, making the leader of the majority party in the Legislative Council, which at that time was Herbert Blaize, effective head of government. In March 1961 the Grenada United Labour Party won the general election and George E.D. Clyne became chief minister until Eric Gairy was elected in a by-election and took the role in August 1961. Also in 1961 the cruise liner sank off Point Salines, although thankfully there was only a single fatality. In April 1962 Grenada's Administrator, the Queens representative on the island, James Lloyd suspended the constitution, dissolved the Legislative Council, and removed Eric Gairy as Chief Minister, following allegations concerning the Gairy's financial impropriety. At the 1962 general election the Grenada National Party won a majority and Herbert Blaize became Chief Minister for the second time.
After the Federation of the West Indies collapsed in 1962, the British government tried to form a small federation out of its remaining dependencies in the Eastern Caribbean. Following the failure of this second effort, the British and the islanders developed the concept of "associated statehood". Under the Associated Statehood Act on 3 March 1967 Grenada was granted full autonomy over its internal affairs. Herbert Blaize was the first Premier of the Associated State of Grenada from March to August 1967. Eric Gairy served as Premier from August 1967 until February 1974, as the Grenada United Labour Party won majorities in both the 1967 and 1972 general elections.
On 7 February 1974, Grenada became a fully independent state. Grenada continued to practise a modified Westminster parliamentary system based on the British model with a governor general appointed by and representing the British monarch (head of state) and a prime minister who is both leader of the majority party and the head of government. Eric Gairy was independent Grenada's first prime minister serving from 1974 until his overthrow in 1979. Gairy won re-election in Grenada's first general election as an independent state in 1976; however, the opposition New Jewel Movement refused to recognize the result, claiming the poll was fraudulent, and so began working towards the overthrow of the Gairy regime by revolutionary means. In 1976 St. George's University was established.
On March 13, 1979, the New Jewel Movement launched an armed revolution which removed Gairy, suspended the constitution, and established a People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), headed by Maurice Bishop who declared himself prime minister. His Marxist-Leninist government established close ties with Cuba, Nicaragua, and other communist bloc countries. All political parties except for the New Jewel Movement were banned and no elections were held during the four years of PRG rule.
On 14 October 1983, a power struggle within Bishop's ruling party ended with his house arrest. His erstwhile friend and rival, Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard, briefly became Head of Government. This coup precipitated demonstrations in various parts of the island which eventually led to Bishop being freed from arrest by an impassioned crowd of his loyal supporters on Oct. 19, 1983. Bishop was soon recaptured by Grenadian soldiers loyal to the Coard faction and executed along with seven others, including three members of the cabinet.
That same day the Grenadian military under Gen. Hudson Austin took power in a second coup and formed a military government to run the country. A four-day total curfew was declared under which any civilian outside their home was subject to summary execution.
A U.S.–Caribbean force invaded Grenada on October 25, 1983, in an action called Operation Urgent Fury, and swiftly defeated the Grenadian forces and their Cuban allies. During the fighting 45 Grenadians, 25 Cubans, and 19 Americans were killed. This action was taken in response to an appeal obtained from the governor general and to a request for assistance from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, without consulting the island's head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, Commonwealth institutions or other usual diplomatic channels (as had been done in Anguilla). Furthermore, United States government military strategists feared that Soviet use of the island would enable the Soviet Union to project tactical power over the entire Caribbean region. U.S. citizens were evacuated, and constitutional government was resumed. The United States gave $48.4 million in economic assistance to Grenada in 1984.
In 1986, members of the PRG and the PRA were criminally tried for civilian killings associated with the Oct. 19 coup. Fourteen, including Coard and his wife, Phyllis, were sentenced to death for actions related to the murder of 11 people including Maurice Bishop. Three other defendants, all PRA soldiers, were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 30 or more years. The convicted prisoners came to be known as the Grenada 17, and the subject of an ongoing international campaign for their release. In 1991, all the murder sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. In October 2003 Amnesty International issued a report which stated that their trial had been "gross violation of international standards governing the fairness of trials." In 2009, the last seven prisoners were released after serving 26 years.
When US troops withdrew from Grenada in December 1983, Nicholas Braithwaite was appointed Prime Minister of an interim administration by the Governor General Sir Paul Scoon until elections could be organized.
On 28 October 1984, the new Point Salines International Airport was opened, which enabled Grenada to receive large commercial jets for the first time.
The first democratic elections since 1976 were held in December 1984 and were won by the Grenada National Party under Herbert Blaize who won 14 out of 15 seats in elections and served as Prime Minister until his death in December 1989. The NNP continued in power until 1989 but with a reduced majority. Five NNP parliamentary members, including two cabinet ministers, left the party in 1986–87 and formed the National Democratic Congress (NDC) which became the official opposition. In August 1989, Prime Minister Blaize broke with the GNP to form another new party, The National Party (TNP), from the ranks of the NNP. This split in the NNP resulted in the formation of a minority government until constitutionally scheduled elections in March 1990. Prime Minister Blaize died in December 1989 and was succeeded as prime minister by Ben Jones until after the 1990 elections.
The National Democratic Congress emerged from the 1990 elections as the strongest party, winning 7 of the fifteen available seats. Nicholas Brathwaite added 2 TNP members and 1 member of the Grenada United Labor Party (GULP) to create a 10-seat majority coalition. The governor general appointed him to be prime minister for a second time. Braithwaite resigned in Feb 1995 and was succeeded as Prime Minister by George Brizan who served until the Jun 1995 election.
In parliamentary elections on 20 June 1995, the NNP won 8 of the 15 seats and formed a government headed by Keith Mitchell. The NNP maintained and affirmed its hold on power when it took all 15 parliamentary seats in the January 1999 elections. Mitchell went on to win the 2003 elections with a reduced majority of 8 of the 15 seats and served as Prime Minister for a record 13 years until his defeat in 2008.
The 2001 census showed that the population of Grenada was 100,895.
The 2008 election was won by the National Democratic Congress under Tillman Thomas with 11 of the 15 seats.
In 2009, Point Salines International Airport was renamed Maurice Bishop International Airport in tribute to the former Prime Minister.
In 2000–02, much of the controversy of the late 1970s and early 1980s was once again brought into the public consciousness with the opening of the truth and reconciliation commission. The commission was chaired by a Catholic priest, Father Mark Haynes, and was tasked with uncovering injustices arising from the PRA, Bishop's regime, and before. It held a number of hearings around the country. The commission was formed because of a school project. Brother Robert Fanovich, head of Presentation Brothers' College (PBC) in St. George's tasked some of his senior students with conducting a research project into the era and specifically into the fact that Maurice Bishop's body was never discovered. Their project attracted a great deal of attention, including from the "Miami Herald" and the final report was published in a book written by the boys called "Big Sky, Little Bullet". It also uncovered that there was still a lot of resentment in Grenadian society resulting from the era, and a feeling that there were many injustices still unaddressed. The commission began shortly after the boys concluded their project.
On September 7, 2004, Grenada was hit directly by category four Hurricane Ivan. The hurricane destroyed about 85% of the structures on the island, including the prison and the prime minister's residence, killed thirty-nine people, and destroyed most of the nutmeg crop, Grenada's economic mainstay. Grenada's economy was set back several years by Hurricane Ivan's impact. Hurricane Emily ravaged the island's north end in June 2005.
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Demographics of Grenada
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Grenada, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
According to the 2011 census Grenada has 105,539 inhabitants. The estimated population of is ().
The fertility rate in Grenada was 2.21 in 2013.
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2014 est.)
The vast majority of the population of Grenada are of African descent (89.4% at the 2001 census). There is also a significant mixed population (8.2%), along with a small European origin minority (0.4%), East Indians (1.6%), and there are small numbers of Lebanese/Syrians (0.04%) and Chinese (0.02%).
Grenada has a small population of pre-Columbian native Caribs. According to the 2001 census there are only 125 Caribs remaining (0.12% of the total population).
Apart from a 114-year period of French occupancy (1649-1763) English has been the country's official language. However, over time the minority of the population use a colloquial spoken language considered to be either English-based creole languages or (Grenadian Creole English) and which is said reflects the African, European and Indian heritage of the nation.
The Grenadian creoles originally influenced by French, now contain elements from a variety of Grenadian Creole and a little of the African languages. Grenadian Creole French is mainly spoken in smaller rural areas, but today it can only be heard in a few small pockets of the society. Grenadian Creole French is mainly known as "Patois" and may have similarities to the Saint Lucian Creole French.
It is believed that the one-time native or indigenous languages were Iñeri and Karina.
Historically the religious makeup of the islands of Grenada covers the period from first European occupation in the 17th century. This has always been predominantly Christian and largely Roman Catholic (due to the first occupants being French) and from the 1891 census we get a snapshot of the population and its religious proclivities - over half were Roman Catholic (55%), a third were Church of England (36%), others listed were Wesleyan (6%) and Presbyterian (0.88%).
More recently, according to the 2001 census, 89.1% percent of the population of Grenada is considered Christian, 1.5% is non-Christian and 3.6% has no religion or stated "other" (5.7%).
Roughly one half of Christians are Roman Catholics (44.6% of the total population), a reflection of early French influence on the island, and one half are Protestant. Anglicanism constitutes the largest Protestant group, with 11.5% of the population. Pentecostals are the second largest group (11.3%), followed by Seventh-day Adventists (10.5% of the population). Other Christians include Baptists (2.9%), Church of God (2.6%), Methodists (1.8%), Evangelicals (1.6%) Jehovah's Witnesses (1.1%), and Brethren Christian (0.5%).
The number of non-Christians is small. These religious groups include the Rastafarian Movement (1.1% of the population), Hinduism (0.2%) and Muslims (0.3%).
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Politics of Grenada
The politics of Grenada takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democracy, whereby the Prime Minister is the head of government. Grenada is an independent Commonwealth realm. It is governed under a multi-party parliamentary system whose political and legal traditions closely follow those of the United Kingdom; it has a prime minister and a cabinet, and a bicameral Parliament with an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, motion, and association. Grenada is a member of the eastern Caribbean court system. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law.
Citizens enjoy a wide range of civil and political rights guaranteed by the constitution. Grenada's constitution provides citizens with the right to change their government peacefully. Citizens exercise this right through periodic, free, and fair elections held on the basis of universal suffrage.
Grenada has two significant political parties, both moderate: the National Democratic Congress (liberal) and the New National Party (conservative). Minor parties include the left-of-center Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (MBPM, organized by the pro-Bishop survivors of the October 1983 anti-Bishop coup) and the populist GULP of former Prime Minister Gairy.
At the July 2008, election the NDC won a comfortable 7 seat majority over the government of former Prime Minister Keith Mitchell. New Prime Minister Tillman Thomas formed a government after narrowly losing by one seat to Mitchell's NNP in the November 2003 election. In elections held on February 19, 2013, Keith Mitchell's NNP swept all fifteen parliamentary seats. This historic victory was a repeat of the 1999 elections in which the NNP also swept all 15 seats. Prime Minister Mitchell has the distinction as being the only Caribbean politician to sweep all seats on two separate occasions. Constitutionally, this development means that there is no official opposition in Parliament. As such, Governor General Carlye Glean, who is the titular head of state, will appoint 5 Senators to the Upper House, who will serve as the de facto opposition.
Security in Grenada is maintained by the 650 members of the Royal Grenada Police Force (RGPF), which included an 80-member paramilitary special services unit (SSU) and a 30-member coast guard. The U.S. Army and the U.S. Coast Guard provide periodic training and material support for the SSU and the coast guard.
As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is represented in Grenada by a governor general who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet. The leader of the majority party serves as Prime Minister and head of government. The cabinet consists of members, including the Prime Minister and ministers of executive departments. They answer politically to the House of Assembly. The Governor General appoints the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on the advice of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The Governor General appoints the other justices with the advice of a judicial commission. The Privy Council of the United Kingdom serves as the highest appellate court.
The Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 15 members, elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies. The Senate has 13 appointed members, 10 appointed by the government and three by the leader of the opposition).
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was the highest court until 1979, when People's Law No. 84 was passed terminating appeals from the Grenadian courts. Appeals to the J.C.P.C. was restored in 1991.
West Indies Associated States Supreme Court or Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court is the judiciary of Grenada since 1986. An associate judge resides in Grenada.
From 1979 to 1986 the court system comprises the High Court and the Court of Appeals, which replaced the Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court established under the West Indies Act of 1967. Grenada was readmitted into the Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court in 1986.
6 parishes and 1 dependency*; Carriacou and Petit Martinique*, Saint Andrew, Saint David, Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mark, Saint Patrick
ACP, C, Caricom, CDB, ECLAC, FAO, G-77, IBRD, ICAO, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, ISO (subscriber), ITU, LAES, NAM, OAS, OECS, OPANAL, OPCW, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WHO, WIPO, WToO, WTrO,frat
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Economy of Grenada
The economy of Grenada is a largely tourism-based, small and open economy. Over the past two decades, the main thrust of Grenada's economy has shifted from agriculture to services, with tourism serving as the leading foreign currency earning sector. The country's principal export crops are the spices nutmeg and mace (Grenada is the world’s second largest producer of nutmeg after Indonesia). Other crops for export include cocoa, citrus fruits, bananas, cloves, and cinnamon. Manufacturing industries in Grenada operate mostly on a small scale, including production of beverages and other foodstuffs, textiles, and the assembly of electronic components for export.
Economic growth picked up in the late 1990s following slow growth and domestic fiscal adjustment in early years of the decade. Despite an expansionary fiscal policy, the public debt remained moderate at around 50 percent of GDP as deficits were financed partly by privatization receipts. Since 2001, economic growth declined caused by adverse shocks such as a slowdown in the global economy and natural disasters. To deal with the shocks, fiscal policy became more expansionary while privatization receipts declined. As a result, public debt increased sharply to near 110 percent of GDP in 2003. Economic conditions worsened when Hurricane Ivan hit the country in September 2004; progress in fiscal consolidation was impeded as government revenues fell and policy priority was shifted to post-hurricane relief.
Although reconstruction has proceeded quickly with significant aid from the international community, tourism and agricultural activities remain weak and nearly offset the stimulus from the reconstruction boom. The country is still facing the difficult task of reconstruction and recovery, while public debt is unsustainable and the government faces large financing gaps. In the years ahead, reinvigorating growth will be a high priority, and continued efforts are needed to address vulnerabilities.
After experiencing GDP growth averaging nearly six percent a year in the late 1990s, economic growth declined considerably after 2001 as a result of a decline in the tourism industry following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and damages caused by several hurricanes.
The economy of Grenada was brought to a near standstill in September 2004 by Hurricane Ivan, which damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the country's buildings, including some tourist facilities. In July 2005 Hurricane Emily struck Grenada again as the country was still recovering from the impact of Hurricane Ivan. Besides the negative impacts to the tourism industry, the two devastating hurricanes destroyed or significantly damaged a large percentage of Grenada’s tree crops, which may take years to recover.
As the damage of Hurricane Ivan to the economy exceeded 200 percent of GDP, economic growth registered a negative growth of three percent in 2004, compared with a positive growth rate of 5.8 percent in 2003. Although signs of recovery have been seen in Grenada after the damage inflicted by Hurricanes Ivan and Emily, economic conditions remain difficult; GDP is projected at a growth rate of only one percent for 2005.
With the absence of sustained growth, the fiscal situation started to deteriorate after 2001 reflecting a continued expansionary policy with sharp increase in spending on social sectors, the wage bill, and goods and services. As a result, the fiscal deficit rose to 8.5 percent of GDP in 2001 from 3.2 percent in 2000. The fiscal situation remained shaky in 2002 with the deficit widening to 19.2 percent of GDP due to dampened output from Tropical Storm Lili. As the economic began to recover in 2003, the government began to take steps for fiscal consolidation, and the fiscal deficit fell to 4.8 percent of GDP. But progress in fiscal consolidation was impeded in 2004 as the government policy changed abruptly to post-hurricane relief. Meanwhile, government revenues decreased as a result of the impact of the hurricanes on the economy.
While economic growth has declined since 2001 due to adverse shocks, including slowdown in the global economy and natural disasters, fiscal policy became more expansionary when privatization receipts declined. As a result, public debt has increased sharply to over 100 percent of GDP since 2002; it remained as high as near 130 percent of GDP in 2004.
Grenada is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), which manages monetary policy and issues a common currency for all the member countries. Inflation has remained low and stable within the framework of the currency board arrangement, with inflation averaging at two percent over the past 15 years.
Grenada's current account balance has remained in large deficit due to its heavy dependence on import of most consumer goods and domestic investment. Following an average deficit of around 44 percent of GDP from 1997 to 2000, the current account deficit has increased to over 35 percent of GDP since 2001 due to higher import demand combined with lower receipts from tourism and nutmeg exports. The current account deficits are financed by inflows of foreign direct investment, official grants and loans, and commercial borrowing by the private sector.
Grenada’s economy is vulnerable to external shocks considering its high dependence on tourism, exports, and imports of most of the goods that are consumed or invested domestically. It is also prone to other adverse shocks such as natural disasters.
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Ivan and Emily, the priority now for Grenada is to continue the recovery process necessary to restore the infrastructure that was devastated by the hurricanes. The international community has disbursed significant amounts of aid, including financial help under the International Monetary Fund's emergency assistance policy for natural disasters and assistance from the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank.
In the context of regional economic development, further integration into the Eastern Caribbean regional economy will help enhance Grenada’s competitiveness and increase its scale of economy in production, marketing and distribution.
GDP:
purchasing power parity - $1.401 billion (2015 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
4.6% (2015 est.)
GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $13,100 (2015 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
"agriculture:" 6.2%
"industry:" 14.3%
"services:" 79.5% (2015 est.)
Population below poverty line:
38% (2008 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
"lowest 10%:" NA%
"highest 10%:" NA%
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
1.3% (2015)
Labor force:
59,900 (2013)
Labor force - by occupation:
services 69%, agriculture 11%, industry 20% (2008 est.)
Unemployment rate:
33.5% (2013)
Budget:
"revenues:" $191.8 million
"expenditures:" $230.9 million (2012 est)
Industries:
food and beverages, textiles, light assembly operations, tourism, construction
Industrial production growth rate:
-1% (2015 est.)
Electricity - production:
193 GWh (2012 est.)
Electricity - production by source:
"fossil fuel:" 98.2%
"hydro:" 0%
"nuclear:" 0%
"other:" 1.4% (2012 est.)
Electricity - consumption:
178 GWh (2012 est.)
Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2013 est.)
Electricity - imports:
0 kWh (2013 est.)
Agriculture - products:
bananas, cocoa, nutmeg, mace, citrus, avocados, root crops, sugarcane, maize, vegetables
Exports:
$43.8 million (2015 est.)
Exports - commodities:
nutmeg, bananas, cocoa, fruit and vegetables, clothing, mace
Exports - partners:
Nigeria 44.7%, St. Lucia 10.8%, Antigua and Barbuda 7.3%, St. Kitts and Nevis 6.6%, Dominica 6.6%, United States 5.8% (2015)
Imports:
$310.4 million (2015 est.)
Imports - commodities:
food, manufactured goods, machinery, chemicals, fuel
Imports - partners:
Trinidad and Tobago 49.6%, United States 16.4% (2015)
Debt - external:
$679 million (2013 est.)
Economic aid - recipient:
$8.3 million (1995)
Currency:
1 East Caribbean dollar (EC$) = 100 cents
Exchange rates:
East Caribbean dollars (EC$) per US$1 – 2.7000 (fixed rate since 1976)
Fiscal year:
calendar year
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Transport in Grenada
Transport in Grenada consists of a network of highways connecting major population centres, airports and ports and harbours along the coast. Grenada has no merchant marine.
There is one industrial railway, used by a rum distillery.
Highways:
"total:"
1,127 km
"paved:"
687 km
Drivers in Grenada drive on the left hand side of the road. Visitors not accustomed to this should be extra cautious when driving on the island's highways and roads.
"unpaved:"
440 km (1999 est.)
Grenada's roads can pose hazardous driving conditions, including aggressive drivers and sharp curves.
Grenada has several ports of entry including seaports, bays and harbours:
Airports:
3 (1999 est.)
Airports - with paved runways:
"total:"
3
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"
1
"914 to 1,523 m:"
1
"under 914 m:"
1 (2006 est.)
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History of Guam
The history of Guam involves phases including the early arrival of Austronesian people known today as the Chamorros around 2000 BC, the development of "pre-contact" society, Spanish colonization in the 17th century and the present American rule of the island since the 1898 Spanish–American War. Guam's history of colonialism is the longest among the Pacific islands.
It is believed that Guam was first discovered by seafaring people who migrated from Southeast Asia around 2000 BC.
The original inhabitants of Guam are believed to be descendants of Austronesian people originating from Southeast Asia as early as 2000 BC, having linguistic and cultural similarities to Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These people evolved into the Chamorro people. They flourished as an advanced, horticultural and hunting society. They were expert seafarers and skilled craftsmen familiar with intricate weaving and detailed pottery who built unique houses and canoes suited to this region of the world.
Most of what is known about Pre-Contact ("Ancient") Chamorros comes from legends and myths, archaeological evidence, Jesuit missionary accounts, and observations from visiting scientists like Otto von Kotzebue and Louis de Freycinet.
When Europeans first arrived on Guam, Chamorro society roughly fell into three classes: matao (upper class), achaot (middle class), and mana'chang (lower class). The matao were located in the coastal villages, which meant they had the best access to fishing grounds while the mana'chang were located in the interior of the island. Matao and mana'chang rarely communicated with each other, and matao often used achaot as a go-between.
There were also "makhanas" (shamans) and "suruhanus" (herb doctors), skilled in healing and medicine.Belief in spirits of ancient Chamorros called "Taotao Mona" still persists as remnant of pre-European society. Early European explorers noted the Chamorros' fast sailing vessels used for trading with other islands of Micronesia.
The "latte stones" familiar to Guam residents and visitors alike were in fact a recent development in Pre-Contact Chamorro society. The latte stone consists of a head and a base shaped out of limestone. Like the Easter Island statues, there is plenty of speculation over how this was done by a society without machines or metal, but the generally accepted view is that the head and base were etched out of the ground by sharp adzes and picks (possibly with the use of fire), and carried to the assembly area by an elaborate system of ropes and logs. The latte stone was used as a part of the raised foundation for a magalahi (matao chief) house, although they may have also been used for canoe sheds.
Archaeologists using carbon-dating have broken Pre-Contact Guam (i.e. Chamorro) history into three periods: "Pre-Latte" (BC 2000? to AD 1) "Transitional Pre-Latte" (AD 1 to AD 1000), and "Latte" (AD 1000 to AD 1521). Archaeological evidence also suggests that Chamorro society was on the verge of another transition phase by 1521, as latte stones became bigger.
Assuming the stones were used for chiefly houses, it can be argued that Chamorro society was becoming more stratified, either from population growth or the arrival of new people. The theory remains tenuous, however, due to lack of evidence, but if proven correct, will further support the idea that Pre-Contact Chamorros lived in a vibrant and dynamic environment.
The first known contact between Guam and Western Europe occurred when a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for the Holy Roman Emperor King Charles I of Spain, arrived with his 3-ship fleet in Guam on March 6, 1521 after a long voyage across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, from Spain. History credits the village of Umatac as his landing place, but drawings from the navigator's diary suggest that Magellan may have landed in Tumon in northern Guam. The expedition had started out in Spain with five ships. By the time they reached the Marianas they were down to three ships and nearly half the crew, due to storms, diseases and the mutiny in one ship which destroyed the expedition. Tired and hungry from their long discovery voyage, the crew prepared to go ashore and restore provisions in Guam. However, the excited native Chamorros who had a different concept of ownership, based on subsistence living, canoed out to the ships and began helping themselves to everything that was not nailed down to the deck of the galleons. "The aboriginals were willing to engage in barter... Their love of gain overcame every other consideration." As the Chamorros took everything they found on the ship without asking, Magellan and his crew remembered the island as the ""Isla de Ladrones"" (Island of Thieves). After a few shots were fired from the Trinidad's big guns, the natives were frightened off from the ship and retreated into the surrounding jungle. Magellan was eventually able to obtain rations and offered iron, a highly prized material, in exchange for fresh fruits, vegetables, and water. Details of this visit, the first in history between Westerners and a Pacific island people, come from the journal of Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's scribe and one of only 18 crew members to eventually survive the circumnavigation of the globe, completed by Juan Sebastian Elcano.
Despite Magellan's visit, Guam was not officially claimed by Spain until 1565 by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. However, the island was not actually colonized until the 17th century. On June 15, 1668, the galleon San Diego arrived at the shore of the island of Guam. Jesuit missionaries led by Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores arrived on Guam to introduce Christianity and develop trade. The Spanish taught the Chamorros to cultivate maize (corn), raise cattle, and tan hides, as well as to adopt western-style clothing. They also introduced the Spanish language and culture. Once Christianity was established, the Catholic Church became the focal point for village activities, as in other Spanish cities. Since 1565, Guam became a regular port-of-call for the Spanish galleons that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to the Philippines.
Chief Quipuha was the maga'lahi, or high ranking male, in the area of Hagåtña when the Spanish landed off its shores in 1668. Quipuha welcomed the missionaries and consented to be baptized by San Vitores as Juan Quipuha. Quipuha granted the lands on which the first Catholic Church in Guam, the Dulce Nombre de Maria {Sweet Name of Mary} Cathedral Basilica, was constructed in 1669. The original cathedral was destroyed during World War II and the present Cathedral, was constructed on the original site in 1955. Chief Quipuha died in 1669 but his policy of allowing the Spanish to establish a base on Guam had important consequences for the future of the island. It also facilitated the Manila Galleon trade.
A few years later, Jesuit priest Diego Luis de San Vitores and his assistant, Pedro Calungsod, were brutally killed by Chief Mata'pang of Tomhom (Tumon), allegedly for baptizing the Chief's baby girl without the Chief's consent. This was in April 1672. Many Chamorros at the time believed baptisms killed babies: because priests would baptize infants already near death (in the belief that this was the only way to save such children's souls), baptism seemed to many Chamorros to be the cause of death. San Vitores carried out his mission in a peaceful manner, preaching Christianity and moral values to the indigenous population. So when San Vitores was assassinated by Mata'pang, the Spanish forces attempted to capture the guilty. This led to a number of battles in which many Spanish and Chamorros died. Mata'pang himself was killed in a final battle on the Island of Rota in 1680.
During the course of the Spanish administration of Guam, lower birth rates and diseases reduced the population from 12,000 to roughly 5,000 by 1741. After 1695, Chamorros settled in five villages: Hagåtña, Agat, Umatac, Pago, and Fena. During this historical period, Spanish language and customs were introduced in the island and Catholicism became the predominant religion. The Spanish built infrastructures such as roads and ports, as well as schools and hospitals. Spanish and Filipinos, mostly men, increasingly intermarried with the Chamorros, particularly the new cultured or "high" people ("manak'kilo") or gentry of the towns. In 1740, Chamorros of the Northern Mariana Islands, except Rota, were moved from some of their home islands to Guam. Documents from the Spanish period are the only historical sources about colonial and pre-colonial times in the island. As in the Philippines, Spanish scholars wrote about Chamorro culture and language, including dictionaries and anthropological reports which are of great historical value today.
The Galleon Era ended in 1815 following the Mexican Independence. Guam later was host to a number of scientists, voyagers, and whalers from Russia, France, and England who also provided detailed accounts of the daily life on Guam under Spanish rule. Through the Spanish colonial period, Guam inherited food, language, and surnames from Spain and Spanish America.
On June 21, 1898, the United States captured Guam in a bloodless landing during the Spanish–American War. By the Treaty of Paris, Spain officially ceded the island to the United States. Guam became part of an American telegraph line to the Philippines, also ceded by the treaty; a way station for American ships traveling to and from there; and an important part of the United States' War Plan Orange against Japan. Although Alfred Thayer Mahan, Robert Coontz, and others envisioned the island as "a kind of Gibraltar" in the Pacific, Congress repeatedly failed to fulfill the military's requests to fortify Guam; when a German warship was interned in 1914 before America's entry into World War I, its crew of 543 outnumbered their American custodians.
The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia said of Guam, "of its total population of 11,490 (11,159 natives), Hagåtña, the capital, contains about 8,000. Possessing a good harbor, the island serves as a United States naval station, the naval commandant acting also as governor. The products of the island are maize, copra, rice, sugar, and valuable timber." Military officers governed the island as "USS "Guam"", and the United States Navy opposed proposals for civilian government until 1950.
During World War II, Guam was invaded by the Imperial Japanese Army on December 8, 1941 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese immediately renamed the island "Omiya Jima" (Great Shrine Island).
The Japanese military occupation of Guam lasted from 1941 to 1944. It was a coercive experience for the Chamorro people, whose loyalty to the United States became a point of contention with the Japanese. Several American servicemen remained on the island, however, and were hidden by the Chamorro people. All of these servicemen were found and executed by Japanese forces in 1942; only one escaped.
The second Battle of Guam began on July 21, 1944 with American troops landing on western side of the island after several weeks of pre-invasion bombardment by the U.S. Navy. After several weeks of heavy fighting, Japanese forces officially surrendered on August 10, 1944.
Guam was subsequently converted into a forward operations base for the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Airfields were constructed in the northern part of the island (including Andersen Air Force Base), the island's pre-WWII Naval Station was expanded, and numerous facilities and supply depots were constructed throughout the island.
Guam's two largest pre-war communities (Sumay and Hagåtña) were virtually destroyed during the 1944 battle. Many Chamorro families lived in temporary re-settlement camps near the beaches before moving to permanent homes constructed in the island's outer villages. Guam's southern villages largely escaped damage, however.
The immediate years after World War II saw the U.S. Navy attempting to resume its predominance in Guam affairs. This eventually led to resentment, and thus increased political pressure from Chamorro leaders for greater autonomy.
The result was the Guam Organic Act of 1950 which established Guam as an unincorporated organized territory of the United States and, for the first time in Guam history, provided for a civilian government.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, section 307, granted U.S. citizenship to "all persons born in the island of Guam on or after April 11, 1899. In the 1960s, the island's required security clearance for visitors was lifted.
On September 11, 1968, eighteen years after passage of the Organic Act, Congress passed the "Elective Governor Act" (Public Law 90-497), which allowed the people of Guam to elect their own governor and lieutenant governor. Nearly four years later, Congress passed the "Guam-Virgin Islands Delegate" Act that allowed for one Guam delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. The delegate has a voice in debates and a vote in committees, but no vote on the floor of the House.
Although Public Law 94-584 established the formation of a "locally drafted" constitution (later known as the "Guam Constitution"), the proposed document was rejected by Guam residents in an August 4, 1979 referendum.
In the meantime, Guam's local government had formed several political status commissions to address possible options for self-determination. The following year after passage of the Guam Delegate Act saw the creation of the "Status Commission" by the Twelfth Guam Legislature.
This was followed by the establishment of the "Second Political Status Commission" in 1975 and the Guam "Commission on Self-Determination" (CSD) in 1980. The Twenty-Fourth Guam Legislature established the "Commission on Decolonization" in 1996 to enhance CSD's ongoing studies of various political status options and public education campaigns.
These efforts enabled the CSD, barely two years after its creation, to organize a status referendum on January 12, 1982. 49% of voters chose a closer relationship with the United States via Commonwealth.
Twenty-six percent voted for Statehood, while ten percent voted for the Status Quo (as an Unincorporated territory). A subsequent run-off referendum held between Commonwealth and Statehood saw 73% of Guam voters choosing Commonwealth over Statehood (27%). Today, Guam remains an unincorporated territory despite referendums and a United Nations mandate to establish a permanent status for the island.
Guam's U.S. military installations remain among the most strategically vital in the Pacific Ocean. When the United States closed its Naval and Air Force bases in the Philippines after the expiration of their leases in the early 1990s, many of the forces stationed there were relocated to Guam.
The removal of Guam's security clearance by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 allowed for the development of a tourism industry. The island's rapid economic development was fueled both by rapid growth in this industry as well as increased U.S. Federal Government spending during the 1980s and 1990s.
On August 6, 1997, Korean Air Flight 801, a Boeing 747-300 bound for Guam crashed into Nimitz Hill while on final approach to the airport, killing 228 of the 254 people on board.
The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which hit Japan particularly hard, severely affected Guam's tourism industry. Military cutbacks in the 1990s also disrupted the island's economy. Economic recovery was further hampered by devastation from Supertyphoons Paka in 1997 and Pongsona in 2002, as well as the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks on tourism.
There are signs that Guam is recovering from these setbacks. The increased arrivals of Japanese and Korean tourists reflect that country's economic recovery, as well as Guam's enduring appeal as a weekend tropical retreat. U.S. military spending has dramatically increased as part of the War on Terrorism.
Recent proposals to strengthen U.S. military facilities, including negotiations to transfer 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa, also indicate a renewed interest in Guam by the U.S. military. American forces were originally scheduled to relocate from Okinawa to Guam beginning in 2012 or 2013. However, that has been set back due to budget constrains and local resistance to the additional military presence.
"Cosmopolitan" Guam poses particular challenges for Chamorros struggling to preserve their culture and identity in the face of acculturation. The increasing numbers of Chamorros, especially Chamorro youth, relocating to the U.S. Mainland has further complicated both the definition and preservation of Chamorro identity.
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Demographics of Guam
The demographics of Guam include the demographic features of the population of Guam, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Guam had a population of 159,358, representing an increase of 2.9 percent from the population of 154,805 reported in the 2000 Census.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook.
According to the Pew Research Center, 2010:
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Communications in Guam
Though Guam is a United States territory, some U.S. long-distance plans and courier services list Guam as an international location. As a result of Guam's being added to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1997, calls made to the U.S., Canada, or other participating countries from Guam (or to Guam from other NANP locations) only require the caller to dial a 1 followed by the area code.
In this way, only domestic charges are incurred between the US and Guam on most carriers. Before Guam's inclusion, calling the U.S. required dialing the international 011 first, thus resulting in higher long-distance rates and less frequent calls to the U.S. by relatives in Guam. Prices of long-distance calls to these destinations have dropped significantly to the point where now calling the U.S. from Guam or calling Guam from the U.S. costs the same.
Some companies in the U.S. mainland still treat Guam as a foreign country and refuse to sell and ship items to Guam. However, if an item is shipped via USPS, shipping costs to Guam are the same as coast-to-coast shipping costs within the US. Many others will ship to Guam but will charge the shipping as an international destination. This is mainly because the company is using a private shipping company like UPS, FedEx, or DHL for its shipping.
Much of the mail to and from Guam routes through Hawaii and awaits cargo space on United Airlines which is contracted to deliver mail between Hawaii and Guam.
Telephones - main lines in use:
85,000 (2007)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
98,000 (2007)
Telephone system:
Radio broadcast stations:
AM 4, FM 7, shortwave 2 (2005)
Radios:
300,000 (2007)
Television broadcast stations:
8 (2007)
Televisions:
200,000 (2007)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):
4 (2013)
Country code (Top-level domain): GU
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History of Guatemala
The history of Guatemala begins with the Maya civilization (2,000 BC – 250 AD), which was among those that flourished in their country. The country's modern history began with the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in 1524.
Most of the great Classic-era (250 – 900 AD) Maya cities of the Petén Basin region, in the northern lowlands, had been abandoned by the year 1000 AD. The states in the Belize central highlands flourished until the 1525 arrival of Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. Called "The Invader" by the Maya peoples, he immediately began subjugating the Indian states.
Guatemala was part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala for nearly 330 years.This Captaincy included what is now Chiapas in Mexico and the modern countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The "Capitation" became independent in 1821 and became a part of the First Mexican Empire until 1823. From 1824 it was a part of the Federal Republic of Central America. When the Republic dissolved in 1841, Guatemala became fully independent.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Guatemala's potential for agricultural exploitation attracted several foreign companies, most prominently the United Fruit Company (UFC). These companies, supported by the country's authoritarian rulers, and the United States government through their support for brutal labor regulations and massive concessions to wealthy landowners. In 1944, the policies of Jorge Rubicon led to a popular uprising that began the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution. The presidencies of Juan Jose Valor and Jacobi Benzene saw sweeping social and economic reforms, including a significant increase in literacy and a successful agrarian reform program.
The progressive policies of Arévalo and Árbenz led the United Fruit Company to lobby the United States government for their overthrow, and a US-engineered coup in 1954 ended the revolution and installed a military regime. This was followed by other military governments, and jolted off a civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996. The war saw human rights violations, including a genocide of the indigenous Maya population by the military. Following the war's end in 1997, Guatemala re-established a representative democracy. It has since struggled to enforce the rule of law and suffers a high crime rate and continued extrajudicial killings, often executed by security forces.
The earliest human settlements in Guatemala date back to the Paleo-Indian period and were made up of hunters and gatherers.Sites dating back to 6500 BC have been found in Quiché in the Highlands and Sipacate, Escuintla on the central Pacific coast.
Although it is unclear when these groups of hunters and gatherers turned to cultivation, pollen samples from Petén and the Pacific coast indicate maize cultivation as early as 3500 BC. By 2500 BC, small settlements were developing in Guatemala's Pacific lowlands in such places as Tilapa, La Blanca, Ocós, El Mesak, and Ujuxte, where the oldest pieces of ceramic pottery from Guatemala have been found. Excavations in the Antigua Guatemala Urías and Rucal, have yielded stratified materials from the Early and Middle Preclassic periods (2000 BC to 400 BC). Paste analyses of these early pieces of pottery in the Antigua Valley indicate they were made of clays from different environmental zones, suggesting people from the Pacific coast expanded into the Antigua Valley.
Guatemala's Pre-Columbian era can be divided into the Preclassic period (from 2000 BC to 250 AD), the Classic period (250 to 900 AD) and the Postclassic period (900 to 1500 AD). Until recently, the Preclassic was regarded as a formative period, consisting of small villages of farmers who lived in huts and few permanent buildings, but this notion has been challenged by recent discoveries of monumental architecture from that period, such as an altar in La Blanca, San Marcos, from 1000 BC; ceremonial sites at Miraflores and El Naranjo from 801 BC; the earliest monumental masks; and the Mirador Basin cities of Nakbé, Xulnal, El Tintal, Wakná and El Mirador.
In Monte Alto near La Democracia, Escuintla, giant stone heads and potbellies (or "barrigones") have been found, dating back to around 1800 BC. The stone heads have been ascribed to the Pre-Olmec Monte Alto Culture and some scholars suggest the Olmec Culture originated in the Monte Alto area. It has also been argued the only connection between the statues and the later Olmec heads is their size. The Monte Alto Culture may have been the first complex culture of Mesoamerica, and predecessor of all other cultures of the region. In Guatemala, some sites have unmistakable Olmec style, such as Chocolá in Suchitepéquez, La Corona in Peten, and Tak'alik A´baj, in Retalhuleu, the last of which is the only ancient city in the Americas with Olmec and Mayan features.
El Mirador was by far the most populated city in pre-Columbian America. Both the El Tigre and Monos pyramids encompass a volume greater than 250,000 cubic meters. Richard Hansen, the director of the archaeological project of the Mirador Basin, believes the Maya at Mirador Basin developed the first politically organized state in America around 1500 BC, named the Kan Kingdom in ancient texts. There were 26 cities, all connected by "sacbeob" (highways), which were several kilometers long, up to 40 meters wide, and two to four meters above the ground, paved with stucco. These are clearly distinguishable from the air in the most extensive virgin tropical rain forest in Mesoamerica.
Hansen believes the Olmec were not the mother culture in Mesoamerica. Due to findings at Mirador Basin in Northern Petén, Hansen suggests the Olmec and Maya cultures developed separately, and merged in some places, such as Tak'alik Abaj in the Pacific lowlands.
Northern Guatemala has particularly high densities of Late Pre-classic sites, including Naachtun, "Xulnal", El Mirador, Porvenir, Pacaya, La Muralla, Nakbé, El Tintal, "Wakná" (formerly "Güiro"), Uaxactún, and Tikal. Of these, El Mirador, Tikal, Nakbé, Tintal, Xulnal and Wakná are the largest in the Maya world, Such size was manifested not only in the extent of the site, but also in the volume or monumentality, especially in the construction of immense platforms to support large temples. Many sites of this era display monumental masks for the first time (Uaxactún, El Mirador, Cival, Tikal and Nakbé). Hansen's dating has been called into question by many other Maya archaeologists, and developments leading to probably extra-regional power by the Late Preclassic of Kaminaljuyu, in the southern Maya area, suggest that Maya civilization developed in different ways in the Lowlands and the SMA to produce what we know as the Classic Maya.
The Classic period of Mesoamerican civilization corresponds to the height of the Maya civilization, and is represented by countless sites throughout Guatemala. The largest concentration is found in Petén. This period is characterized by expanded city-building, the development of independent city-states, and contact with other Mesoamerican cultures.
This lasted until around 900 AD, when the Classic Maya civilization collapsed. The Maya abandoned many of the cities of the central lowlands or died in a drought-induced famine. Scientists debate the cause of the Classic Maya Collapse, but gaining currency is the Drought Theory discovered by physical scientists studying lake beds, ancient pollen, and other tangible evidence.
Second-in-command to Hernán Cortés, Pedro de Alvarado was sent to the Guatemala highlands with 300 Spanish foot soldiers, 120 Spanish horsemen and several hundred Cholula and Tlascala auxiliaries.
Alvarado entered Guatemala from Soconusco on the Pacific lowlands, headed for Xetulul Humbatz, Zapotitlán. He initially allied himself with the Cakchiquel nation to fight against their traditional rivals the K'iche'. The conquistador started his conquest in Xepau Olintepeque, defeating the K'iché's 72,000 men, led by Tecún Umán (now Guatemala's national hero). Alvarado went to Q'umarkaj, (Utatlan), the K'iche' capital, and burned it on 7 March 1524. He proceeded to Iximche, and made a base near there in Tecpan on 25 July 1524. From there he made several campaigns to other cities, including Chuitinamit, the capital of the Tzutuhils, (1524); Mixco Viejo, capital of the Poqomam; and Zaculeu, capital of the Mam (1525). He was named captain general in 1527.
Having secured his position, Alvarado turned against his allies the Cakchiquels, confronting them in several battles until they were subdued in 1530. Battles with other tribes continued up to 1548, when the Q'eqchi' in Nueva Sevilla, Izabal were defeated, leaving the Spanish in complete control of the region.
Not all native tribes were subdued by bloodshed. Bartolomé de las Casas pacified the Kekchí in Alta Verapaz without violence.
After more than a century of colonization, during which mutually independent Spanish authorities in Yucatán and Guatemala made various attempts to subjugate Petén and neighboring parts of what is now Mexico. In 1697, the Spanish finally conquered Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya, and Zacpetén, capital of the Kowoj Maya.
In 1821, Fernando VII's power in Spain was weakened by French invasions and other conflicts, and Mexico declared the Plan de Iguala; this led Mariano Aycinena y Piñol and other criollos to demand the weak Captain General Gabino Gaínza to declare Guatemala and the rest of Central America as an independent entity. Aycinena y Piñol was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire, and then lobbied strongly for the Central America annexation to the Mexican Empire of Agustín de Iturbide, due to its conservative and ecclesiastical nature. Aycinena remained in the legislature and was the advisor of the Governors of Guatemala in the next few years.
In October 1826, Central American Federation president Manuel José de Arce y Fagoaga dissolved the Legislature and tried to establish a Unitarian System for the region, switching from the Liberal to the Conservative party, that Aycinena led. The rest of Central America did not want this system; they wanted the Aycinena family out of power altogether, and therefore, the Central American Civil War (1826–1829) started. From this war emerged the dominant figure of the Honduran general Francisco Morazán. Mariano Aycinena y Piñol -leader of the Ayicena family and the conservative power- was appointed as Governor of Guatemala on 1 March 1827 by president Manuel José Arce; Aycinena regime was a dictatorship: he censored free press and any book with liberal ideology was forbidden. He also established Martial Law and the retroactive death penalty. He reinstated mandatory tithing for the secular clergy of the Catholic Church
Morazán and his liberal forces were fighting around San Miguel, in El Salvador beating any conservative federal forces sent by Guatemalan general Manuel Arzú from San Salvador. Then, Arzú decided to take matters in his own hands and left colonel Montúfar in charge of San Salvador and went after Morazán. After realizing that Arzu was after him, Morazán left for Honduras to look for more volunteers for his army. On 20 September, Manuel Arzá was close to the Lempa River with 500 men, when he was notified that the rest of his army had capitulated in San Salvador. Morazán then went back to El Salvador with a considerable army and general Arzú, feigning a sickness, fled to Guatemala, leaving lieutenant colonel Antonio de Aycinena in command. Aycinena and his 500 troops were going to Honduras when they were intercepted by Morazán troops in San Antonio, forcing Aycinena to concede defeat on 9 October. With Aycinena defeat, there were no more conservative federal troops in El Salvador. On 23 October, general Morazán marched triumphantly in San Salvador. A few days later, he went to Ahuachapán, to organize an army to take down the conservative aristocrats led by Mariano Aycinena y Piñol in Guatemala and establish a regime favorable to the central American Federation that was the dream of the liberal criollos.
Upon learning this, Aycinena y Piñol tried to negotiate with Morazán to no avail: Morazán was willing to take down the aristocrats at all costs.
After his victory in San Miguelito, Morazán's army increased in size given that a lot of voluntaries from Guatemala joined him. On 15 March, when Morazán and his army were on their way to occupy their previous positions, they were intercepted by federal troops in Las Charcas. However, Morazán had a better position and smashed the federal army. The battle field was left full of corpses, while the allies took a lot of prisoners and weaponry. the allies continued to recapture their old positions in San José Pinula and Aceituno, and place Guatemala City under siege once again. General Verveer, Ambassador from the King of Netherlands and Belgium before the Central American government and who was in Guatemala to negotiate the construction of a transoceanic Canal in Nicaragua, tried to mediate between the State of Guatemala and Morazán, but did not succeed. Military operations continued, with great success for the allies.
To prepare for the siege from Morazán troops, on 18 March 1829, Aycinena decreed Martial Law, but he was completely defeated. On 12 April 1829, Aycinena conceded defeat and he and Morazán signed an armistice pact; then, he was sent to prison, along with his Cabinet members and the Aycinena family was secluded in their Mansion. Morazán, however, annulled the pact on 20 April, since his real objective was to take power away from the conservatives and the regular clergy of the Catholic Church in Guatemala, whom the Central American leaders despised since they had had the commerce and power monopoly during the Spanish Colony.
A member of the liberal party, Mariano Gálvez was appointed the chief of state in 1831. This was during a period of turmoil that made governing difficult. After the expulsion of the conservative leader of the Aycinena family and the regular clergy in 1829, Gálvez was appointed by Francisco Morazán as Governor of Guatemala in 1831. According to liberal historians Ramón Rosa and Lorenzo Montúfar y Rivera, Gálvez promoted major innovations in all aspects of the administration to make it less dependent on the influence of the Catholic Church. He also made public education independent of the Church, fostered science and the arts, eliminated religious festivals as holidays, founded the National Library and the National Museum, promoted respect for the laws and the rights of citizens, guaranteed freedom of the press and freedom of thought, established civil marriage and divorce, respected freedom of association, and promulgated the Livingston Code (penal code of Louisiana). Gálvez did this against much opposition from the population who were not used to the fast pace of change; he also initiated judicial reform, reorganized municipal government and established a general head tax which severely impacted the native population. However, these were all changes that the liberals wanted to implement to completely eliminate the political and economic power of the aristocrats and of the Catholic Church -whose regular orders were expelled in 1829 and the secular clergy was weakened by means of abolishing mandatory tithing.
Among his major errors was a contract made with Michael Bennett -commercial partner of Francisco Morazán in the fine wood business- on 6 August 1834; the contract provided that the territories of Izabal, las Verapaces, Petén and Belize would be colonized within twenty years, but this proved impossible, plus made people irritated by having to deal with "heretics". In February 1835 Gálvez was re-elected for a second term, during which the Asiatic cholera afflicted the country. The secular clergy that was still in the country, persuaded the uneducated people of the interior that the disease was caused by the poisoning of the springs by order of the government and turned the complaints against Gálvez into a religious war. Peasant revolts began in 1837 and under chants of "Hurray for the true religion!" and "Down with the heretics!" started growing and spreading. Gálvez asked the National Assembly to transfer the capital of the Federation from Guatemala City to San Salvador.
His major opponents were Colonel and Juan de Dios Mayorga; also, José Francisco Barrundia and Pedro Molina, who had been his friends and party colleagues, came to oppose him in the later years of his government after he violently tried to repress the peasant revolt using a scorched earth approach against rural communities.
In 1838, Antigua Guatemala, Chiquimula and Salamá withdrew recognition of his government, and in February of that year Rafael Carrera's revolutionary forces entered Guatemala City asking for the Cathedral to be opened to restore order in the catholic communities, obliging Gálvez to relinquish power. Gálvez remained in the city after he lost power.
In 1838, the liberal forces of the Honduran leader Francisco Morazán and Guatemalan José Francisco Barrundia invaded Guatemala and reached San Sur, where they executed Pascual Alvarez, Carrera's father-in-law. They impaled his head on a pike as a warning to all followers of the Guatemalan caudillo. On learning this, Carrera and his wife Petrona – who had come to confront Morazán as soon as they learned of the invasion and were in Mataquescuintla – swore they would never forgive Morazán even in his grave; they felt it impossible to respect anyone who would not avenge family members.
After sending several envoys, whom Carrera would not receive – especially Barrundia whom Carrera did not want to murder in cold blood – Morazán began a scorched earth offensively, destroying villages in his path and stripping them of their few assets. The Carrera forces had to hide in the mountains. Believing that Carrera was totally defeated, Morazán and Barrundia marched on to Guatemala City, where they were welcomed as saviors by the state governor Pedro Valenzuela and members of the conservative Aycinena Clan, who proposed to sponsor one of the liberal battalions, while Valenzuela and Barrundia gave Morazán all the Guatemalan resources needed to solve any financial problem he had. The criollos of both parties celebrated until dawn that they finally had a criollo caudillo like Morazán, who was able to crush the peasant rebellion.
Morazán used the proceeds to support Los Altos and then replaced Valenzuela by Mariano Rivera Paz, member of the Aycinena clan, although he did not return to that clan any property confiscated in 1829; in revenge, Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol voted for the dissolution of the Central American Federation in San Salvador a little later, forcing Morazán to return to El Salvador to fight to save his federal mandate. Along the way, Morazán increased repression in eastern Guatemala, as punishment for helping Carrera. Knowing that Morazán had gone to El Salvador, Carrera tried to take Salamá with the small force that remained but was defeated, losing his brother Laureano in the combat. With just a few men left, he managed to escape, badly wounded, to Sanarate. After recovering to some extent, he attacked a detachment in Jutiapa and managed to get a small amount of booty which he handed to the volunteers who accompanied him and prepared to attack Petapa – near Guatemala City – where he was victorious, though with heavy casualties.
In September of that year, he attempted an assault on the capital of Guatemala, but the liberal general Carlos Salazar Castro defeated him in the fields of Villa Nueva and Carrera had to retreat. After an unsuccessful attempt to take the Quetzaltenango, Carrera was surrounded and wounded, and he had to capitulate to the Mexican General Agustin Guzman, who had been in Quetzaltenango since the time of Vicente Filísola's arrival in 1823. Morazán had the opportunity to shoot Carrera, but did not because he needed the support of the Guatemalan peasants to counter the attacks of Francisco Ferrera in El Salvador; instead, Morazán left Carrera in charge of a small fort in Mita, and without any weapons. Knowing that Morazán was going to attack El Salvador, Francisco Ferrera gave arms and ammunition to Carrera and convinced him to attack Guatemala City.
Meanwhile, despite insistent advice to definitely crush Carrera and his forces, Salazar tried to negotiate with him diplomatically; he even went as far as to show that he neither feared nor distrusted Carrera by removing the fortifications of the Guatemalan capital, in place in since the battle of Villa Nueva. Taking advantage of Salazar's good faith and Ferrera's weapons, Carrera took Guatemala City by surprise on 13 April 1839; Castro Salazar, Mariano Gálvez and Barrundia fled before the arrival of Carrera's militiamen. Salazar, in his nightshirt, vaulted roofs of neighboring houses and sought refuge; reaching the border disguised as a peasant. With Salazar gone, Carrera reinstated Rivera Paz as Head of State of Guatemala.
On 2 April 1838, in the city of Quetzaltenango, a secessionist group founded the independent State of Los Altos which sought independence from Guatemala. The most important members of the Liberal Party of Guatemala and liberal enemies of the conservative regime moved to Los Altos, leaving their exile in El Salvador. The liberals in Los Altos began severely criticizing the Conservative government of Rivera Paz; they had their own newspaper – "El Popular", which contributed to the harsh criticism.
Los Altos was the region with the main production and economic activity of the former state of Guatemala. without Los Altos, conservatives lost much of the resources that had given Guatemala hegemony in Central America. Then, the government of Guatemala tried to reach to a peaceful solution, but altenses, protected by the recognition of the Central American Federation Congress, did not accept; Guatemala's government then resorted to force, sending Carrera as commanding general of the Army to subdue Los Altos.
Carrera defeated General Agustin Guzman when the former Mexican officer tried to ambush him and then went on to Quetzaltenango, where he imposed a harsh and hostile conservative regime instead of the liberals. Calling all council members, he told them flatly that he was behaving leniently towards them as it was the first time they had challenged him, but sternly warned them that there would be no mercy if there was a second time. Finally, Guzmán, and the head of state of Los Altos, Marcelo Molina, were sent to the capital of Guatemala, where they were displayed as trophies of war during a triumphant parade on 17 February 1840; in the case of Guzman, shackled, still with bleeding wounds, and riding a mule.
On 18 March 1840, liberal caudillo Morazán invaded Guatemala with 1500 soldiers to avenge the insult done in Los Altos. Fearing that such action would end with liberal efforts to hold together the Central American Federation, Guatemala had a cordon of guards from the border with El Salvador; without a telegraph service, men ran carrying last-minute messages. With the information from these messengers, Carrera hatched a plan of defense leaving his brother Sotero in charge of troops who presented only slight resistance in the city. Carrera pretended to flee and led his ragtag army to the heights of Aceituno, with few men, few rifles and two old cannons. The city was at the mercy of the army of Morazán, with bells of the twenty churches ringing for divine assistance.
Once Morazán reached the capital, he took it very easyily and freed Guzman, who immediately left for Quetzaltenango to give the news that Carrera was defeated; Carrera then, taking advantage of what his enemies believed, applied a strategy of concentrating fire on the Central Park of the city and also employed surprise attack tactics which caused heavy casualties to the army of Morazán, finally forcing the survivors to fight for their lives. Morazán's soldiers lost the initiative and their previous numerical superiority. Furthermore, in unfamiliar surroundings in the city, they had to fight, carry their dead and care for their wounded while resentful and tired from the long march from El Salvador to Guatemala.
Carrera, by then an experienced military man, was able to defeat Morazán thoroughly. The disaster for the liberal general was complete: aided by Angel Molina -son of Guatemalan Liberal leader Pedro Molina Mazariegos- who knew the streets of the city, had to flee with his favorite men, disguised, shouting "Long live Carrera!" through the ravine of "El Incienso" to El Salvador. In his absence, Morazán had been supplanted as Head of State of his country, and had to embark for exile in Perú. In Guatemala, survivors from his troops were shot without mercy, while Carrera was out in unsuccessful pursuit of Morazán. This engagement sealed the status of Carrera and marked the decline of Morazán, and forced the conservative Aycinena clan criollos to negotiate with Carrera and his peasant revolutionary supporters.
Guzmán, who was freed by Morazán when the latter had seemingly defeated Carrera in Guatemala City, had gone back to Quetzaltenango to bring the good news. The city liberal criollo leaders rapidly reinstated the Los Altos State and celebrated Morazán's victory. However, as soon as Carrera and the newly reinstated Mariano Rivera Paz heard the news, Carrera went back to Quetzaltenango with his volunteer army to regain control of the rebel liberal state once and for all. On 2 April 1840, after entering the city, Carrera told the citizens that he had already warned them after he defeated them earlier that year. Then, he ordered the majority of the liberal city hall officials from Los Altos to be shot. Carrera then forcibly annexed Quetzaltenango and much of Los Altos back into conservative Guatemala.
After the violent and bloody reinstatement of the State of Los Altos by Carrera in April 1840, Luis Batres Juarros – conservative member of the Aycinena Clan, then secretary general of the Guatemalan government of recently reinstated Mariano Rivera Paz – obtained from the vicar Larrazabal authorization to dismantle the regionalist Church. Serving priests of Quetzaltenango – capital of the would-be-state of Los Altos, Urban Ugarte and his coadjutor, José Maria Aguilar, were removed from their parish and likewise the priests of the parishes of San Martin Jilotepeque and San Lucas Tolimán. Larrazabal ordered the priests Fernando Antonio Dávila, Mariano Navarrete and Jose Ignacio Iturrioz to cover the parishes of Quetzaltenango, San Martin Jilotepeque and San Lucas Toliman, respectively.
The liberal criollos' defeat and execution in Quetzaltenango enhanced Carrera's status with the native population of the area, whom he respected and protected.
In 1840, Belgium began to act as an external source of support for Carrera's independence movement, in an effort to exert influence in Central America. The "Compagnie belge de colonisation" (Belgian Colonization Company), commissioned by Belgian King Leopold I, became the administrator of Santo Tomas de Castilla replacing the failed British Eastern Coast of Central America Commercial and Agricultural Company. Even though the colony eventually crumbled, Belgium continued to support Carrera in the mid-19th century, although Britain continued to be the main business and political partner to Carrera's regime.
Rafael Carrera was elected Guatemalan Governor in 1844. On 21 March 1847, Guatemala declared itself an independent republic and Carrera became its first president.
During the first term as president, Carrera had brought the country back from extreme conservatism to a traditional moderation; in 1848, the liberals were able to drive him from office, after the country had been in turmoil for several months. Carrera resigned of his own free will and left for México. The new liberal regime allied itself with the Aycinena family and swiftly passed a law ordering Carrera's execution if he dared to return to Guatemalan soil. The liberal criollos from Quetzaltenango were led by general Agustín Guzmán who occupied the city after Corregidor general Mariano Paredes was called to Guatemala City to take over the Presidential office. They declared on 26 August 1848 that Los Altos was an independent state once again. The new state had the support of Vasconcelos' regime in El Salvador and the rebel guerrilla army of Vicente and Serapio Cruz who were sworn enemies of Carrera. The interim government was led by Guzmán himself and had Florencio Molina and the priest Fernando Davila as his Cabinet members. On 5 September 1848, the criollos altenses chose a formal government led by Fernando Antonio Martínez.
In the meantime, Carrera decided to return to Guatemala and did so entering by Huehuetenango, where he met with the native leaders and told them that they must remain united to prevail; the leaders agreed and slowly the segregated native communities started developing a new Indian identity under Carrera's leadership. In the meantime, in the eastern part of Guatemala, the Jalapa region became increasingly dangerous; former president Mariano Rivera Paz and rebel leader Vicente Cruz were both murdered there after trying to take over the Corregidor office in 1849.
When Carrera arrived to Chiantla in Huehuetenango, he received two altenses emissaries who told him that their soldiers were not going to fight his forces because that would lead to a native revolt, much like that of 1840; their only request from Carrera was to keep the natives under control. The altenses did not comply, and led by Guzmán and his forces, they started chasing Carrera; the caudillo hid helped by his native allies and remained under their protection when the forces of Miguel Garcia Granados – who arrived from Guatemala City were looking for him.
On learning that officer José Víctor Zavala had been appointed as Corregidor in Suchitepéquez Department, Carrera and his hundred jacalteco bodyguards crossed a dangerous jungle infested with jaguars to meet his former friend. When they met, Zavala not only did not capture him, but agreed to serve under his orders, thus sending a strong message to both liberal and conservatives in Guatemala City that they would have to negotiate with Carrera or battle on two fronts – Quetzaltenango and Jalapa. Carrera went back to the Quetzaltenango area, while Zavala remained in Suchitepéquez as a tactical maneuver. Carrera received a visit from a Cabinet member of Paredes and told him that he had control of the native population and that he assured Paredes that he would keep them appeased. When the emissary returned to Guatemala City, he told the president everything Carrera said, and added that the native forces were formidable.
Guzmán went to Antigua Guatemala to meet with another group of Paredes emissaries; they agreed that Los Altos would rejoin Guatemala, and that the latter would help Guzmán defeat his hated enemy and also build a port on the Pacific Ocean. Guzmán was sure of victory this time, but his plan evaporated when, in his absence, Carrera and his native allies had occupied Quetzaltenango; Carrera appointed Ignacio Yrigoyen as Corregidor and convinced him that he should work with the k'iche', mam, q'anjobal and mam leaders to keep the region under control. On his way out, Yrigoyen murmured to a friend: Now he is the King of the Indians, indeed!
Guzmán then left for Jalapa, where he struck a deal with the rebels, while Luis Batres Juarros convinced President Paredes to deal with Carrera. Back in Guatemala City within a few months, Carrera was commander-in-chief, backed by military and political support of the Indian communities from the densely populated western highlands. During the first presidency from 1844 to 1848, he brought the country back from excessive conservatism to a moderate regime, and – with the advice of Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol and Pedro de Aycinena – restored relations with the Church in Rome with a Concordat ratified in 1854. He also kept peace between natives and criollos, with the latter fearing a rising like the one that was taking place in Yucatán at the time.
In Yucatán, then an independent republic north of Guatemala, a war started between the natives and criollo people; this war seemed rooted in the defense of communal lands against the expansion of private ownership, which was accentuated by the boom in the production of henequen, which was an important industrial fiber used to make rope. After discovering the value of the plant, the wealthier Yucateco criollos started plantations, beginning in 1833, to cultivate it on a large scale; not long after the henequen boom, a boom in sugar production led to more wealth. The sugar and henequen plantations encroached on native communal land, and native workers recruited to work on the plantations were mistreated and underpaid.
However, rebel leaders in their correspondence with British Honduras -Belize- were more often inclined to cite taxation as the immediate cause of the war; Jacinto Pat, for example, wrote in 1848 that "what we want is liberty and not oppression, because before we were subjugated with the many contributions and taxes that they imposed on us." Pac's companion, Cecilio Chi added in 1849, that promises made by the rebel Santiago Imán, that he was "liberating the Indians from the payment of contributions" as a reason for resisting the central government, but in fact he continued levying them.
In June 1847, Méndez learned that a large force of armed natives and supplies had gathered at the Culumpich, a property owned by Jacinto Pat, the Maya "batab" (leader), near Valladolid. Fearing revolt, Mendez arrested Manuel Antonio Ay, the principal Maya leader of Chichimilá, accused of planning a revolt, and executed him at the town square of Valladolid. Furthermore, Méndez searching for other insurgents burned the town of Tepich and repressed its residents. In the following months, several Maya towns were sacked and many people arbitrarily killed. In his letter of 1849, Cecilio Chi noted that Santiago Mendez had come to "put every Indian, big and little, to death" but that the Maya had responded to some degree, in kind, writing "it has pleased God and good fortune that a much greater portion of them [whites] than of the Indians [have died].
Cecilio Chi, the native leader of Tepich, along with Jacinto Pat attacked Tepich on 30 July 1847, in reaction to the indiscriminate massacre of Mayas, ordered that all the non-Maya population be killed. By spring of 1848, the Maya forces had taken over most of the Yucatán, with the exception of the walled cities of Campeche and Mérida and the south-west coast, with Yucatecan troops holding the road from Mérida to the port of Sisal. The Yucatecan governor Miguel Barbachano had prepared a decree for the evacuation of Mérida, but was apparently delayed in publishing it by the lack of suitable paper in the besieged capital. The decree became unnecessary when the republican troops suddenly broke the siege and took the offensive with major advances.
Governor Barbachano sought allies anywhere he could find them, in Cuba (for Spain), Jamaica (for the United Kingdom) and the United States, but none of these foreign powers would intervene, although the matter was taken seriously enough in the United States to be debated in Congress. Subsequently, therefore, he turned to Mexico, and accepted a return to Mexican authority. Yucatán was officially reunited with Mexico on 17 August 1848. Yucateco forces rallied, aided by fresh guns, money, and troops from Mexico, and pushed back the natives from more than half of the state.
By 1850 the nativesoccupied two distinct regions in the southeast and they were inspired to continue the struggle by the apparition of the "Talking Cross". This apparition, believed to be a way in which God communicated with the Maya, dictated that the War continue. Chan Santa Cruz, or Small Holy Cross became the religious and political center of the Maya resistance and the rebellion came to be infused with religious significance. Chan Santa Cruz also became the name of the largest of the independent Maya states, as well as the name of the capital city which is now the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo. The followers of the Cross were known as the "Cruzob".
The government of Yucatán first declared the war over in 1855, but hopes for peace were premature. There were regular skirmishes, and occasional deadly major assaults into each other's territory, by both sides. The United Kingdom recognized the Chan Santa Cruz Maya as a "de facto" independent nation, in part because of the major trade between Chan Santa Cruz and British Honduras.
After Carrera returned from exile in 1849, Vasconcelos granted asylum to the Guatemalan liberals, who harassed the Guatemalan government in several different forms: José Francisco Barrundia did it through a liberal newspaper established with that specific goal; Vasconcelos gave support during a whole year to a rebel faction "La Montaña", in eastern Guatemala, providing and distributing money and weapons. By late 1850, Vasconcelos was getting impatient at the slow progress of the war with Guatemala and decided to plan an open attack. Under that circumstance, the Salvadorean head of state started a campaign against the conservative Guatemalan regime, inviting Honduras and Nicaragua to participate in the alliance; only the Honduran government led by Juan Lindo accepted.
Meanwhile, in Guatemala, where the invasion plans were perfectly well known, President Mariano Paredes started taking precautions to face the situation, while the Guatemalan Archbishop, Francisco de Paula García Peláez, ordered peace prayers in the archdiocese.
On 4 January 1851, Doroteo Vasconcelos and Juan Lindo met in Ocotepeque, Honduras, where they signed an alliance against Guatemala. The Salvadorean army had 4,000 men, properly trained and armed and supported by artillery; the Honduran army numbered 2,000 men. The coalition army was stationed in Metapán, El Salvador, due to its proximity with both the Guatemalan and Honduran borders.
On 28 January 1851, Vasconcelos sent a letter to the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Relations, in which he demanded that the Guatemalan president relinquish power, so that the alliance could designate a new head of state loyal to the liberals and that Carrera be exiled, escorted to any of the Guatemalan southern ports by a Salvadorean regiment. The Guatemalan government did not accept the terms and the Allied army entered Guatemalan territory at three different places. On 29 January, a 500-man contingent entered through Piñuelas, Agua Blanca and Jutiapa, led by General Vicente Baquero, but the majority of the invading force marched from Metapán. The Allied army was composed of 4,500 men led by Vasconcelos, as Commander in Chief. Other commanders were the generals José Santos Guardiola, Ramón Belloso, José Trinidad Cabañas and Gerardo Barrios. Guatemala was able to recruit 2,000 men, led by Lieutenant General Carrera as Commander in Chief, with several colonels.
Carrera's strategy was to feign a retreat, forcing the enemy forces to follow the "retreating" troops to a place he had previously chosen; on 1 February 1851, both armies were facing each other with only the San José river between them. Carrera had fortified the foothills of La Arada, its summit about above the level of the river. A meadow deep lay between the hill and the river, and boarding the meadow was a sugar cane plantation. Carrera divided his army in three sections: the left wing was led by Cerna and Solares; the right wing led by Bolaños. He personally led the central battalion, where he placed his artillery. Five hundred men stayed in Chiquimula to defend the city and to aid in a possible retreat, leaving only 1,500 Guatemalans against an enemy of 4,500.
The battle began at 8:30 AM, when Allied troops initiated an attack at three different points, with an intense fire opened by both armies. The first Allied attack was repelled by the defenders of the foothill; during the second attack, the Allied troops were able to take the first line of trenches. They were subsequently expelled. During the third attack, the Allied force advanced to a point where it was impossible to distinguish between Guatemalan and Allied troops. Then, the fight became a melée, while the Guatemalan artillery severely punished the invaders. At the height of the battle when the Guatemalans faced an uncertain fate, Carrera ordered that sugar cane plantation around the meadow to be set on fire. The invading army was now surrounded: to the front, they faced the furious Guatemalan firepower, to the flanks, a huge blaze and to the rear, the river, all of which made retreat very difficult. The central division of the Allied force panicked and started a disorderly retreat. Soon, all of the Allied troops started retreating.
The 500 men of the rearguard pursued what was left of the Allied army, which desperately fled for the borders of their respective countries. The final count of the Allied losses were 528 dead, 200 prisoners, 1,000 rifles, 13,000 rounds of ammunition, many pack animals and baggage, 11 drums and seven artillery pieces. Vasconcelos sought refuge in El Salvador, while two Generals mounted on the same horse were seen crossing the Honduran border. Carrera regrouped his army and crossed the Salvadorean border, occupying Santa Ana, before he received orders from the Guatemalan President, Mariano Paredes, to return to Guatemala, since the Allies were requesting a cease-fire and a peace treaty.
The Concordat of 1854 was an international treaty between Carrera and the Holy See, signed in 1852 and ratified by both parties in 1854. Through this, Guatemala gave the education of Guatemalan people to regular orders of the Catholic Church, committed to respect ecclesiastical property and monasteries, imposed mandatory tithing and allowed the bishops to censor what was published in the country; in return, Guatemala received dispensations for the members of the army, allowed those who had acquired the properties that the liberals had expropriated from the Church in 1829 to keep those properties, received the taxes generated by the properties of the Church, and had the right to judge certain crimes committed by clergy under Guatemalan law. The concordat was designed by Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol and not only reestablished but reinforced the relationship between Church and State in Guatemala. It was in force until the fall of the conservative government of Field Marshal Vicente Cerna y Cerna.
In 1854, by initiative of Manuel Francisco Pavón Aycinena, Carrera was declared "supreme and perpetual leader of the nation" for life, with the power to choose his successor. He was in that position until he died on 14 April 1865. While he pursued some measures to set up a foundation for economic prosperity to please the conservative landowners, military challenges at home and in a three-year war with Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua dominated his presidency. His rivalry with Gerardo Barrios, President of El Salvador, resulted in open war in 1863.
At Coatepeque the Guatemalans suffered a severe defeat, which was followed by a truce. Honduras joined with El Salvador, and Nicaragua and Costa Rica with Guatemala. The contest was finally settled in favor of Carrera, who besieged and occupied San Salvador, and dominated Honduras and Nicaragua. He continued to act in concert with the Clerical Party, and tried to maintain friendly relations with the European governments. Before his death, Carrera nominated his friend and loyal soldier, Army Marshall Vicente Cerna y Cerna, as his successor.
The Belize region in the Yucatán Peninsula was never occupied by either Spain or Guatemala. Spain made some exploratory expeditions in the 16th century that served as her basis to claim the area. Guatemala simply inherited that argument to claim the territory, even though it never sent an expedition to the area after independence from Spain, due to the ensuing Central American civil war that lasted until 1860.
The British had had a small settlement there since the middle of the 17th century, mainly as buccaneers' quarters and then for wood production. The settlements were never recognized as British colonies although they were somewhat under the jurisdiction of the British Jamaican government. In the 18th century, Belize became the main smuggling center for Central America, even though the British accepted Spain's sovereignty over the region via the 1783 and 1786 treaties, in exchange for a ceasefire and the authorization for British subjects to work with Belize's precious woods.
After 1821, Belize became the leading edge of Britain's commercial entrance in the isthmus. British commercial brokers established themselves and began prosperous commercial routes plying the Caribbean harbors of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
When Carrera came to power in 1840 he stopped the complaints over Belize and established a Guatemalan consulate in the region to oversee Guatemalan interests. Belize commerce boomed in the region until 1855, when the Colombians built a transoceanic railway that allowed commerce to flow more efficiently between the oceans. Thereafter Belize's commercial importance declined. When the Caste War of Yucatán began in the Yucatán Peninsula the Belize and Guatemala representatives were on high alert; Yucatán refugees fled into both Guatemala and Belize and Belize's superintendent came to fear that Carrera–given his strong alliance with Guatemalan natives–could support the native uprisings.
In the 1850s, the British employed goodwill to settle the territorial differences with Central American countries. They: withdrew from the Mosquito Coast in Nicaragua and began talks that would end by restoring the territory to Nicaragua in 1894: returned the Bay Islands to Honduras and negotiated with the American filibuster William Walker in an effort to avoid the invasion of Honduras. They signed a treaty with Guatemala regarding Belize's borders, which has been called by Guatemalans as the worst mistake made by the regime of Rafael Carrera.
Pedro de Aycinena y Piñol, as Foreign Secretary, made an extra effort to keep good relations with the British crown. In 1859, Walker again threatened Central America; in order to get the weapons needed to face the filibuster, Carrera's regime had to come to terms about Belize with the British Empire. On 30 April 1859, the Wyke-Aycinena treaty was signed, between the British and Guatemalan representatives. The controversial treaty had two parts:
Among those who signed the treaty was José Milla y Vidaurre, who worked with Aycinena in the Foreign Ministry at the time. Carrera ratified the treaty on 1 May 1859, while Charles Lennox Wyke, British consul in Guatemala, traveled to Great Britain and got royal approval on 26 September 1859. American consul Beverly Clarke objected with some liberal representatives, but the issue was settled.
As of 1850, it was estimated that Guatemala had a population of 600,000.
Guatemala's "Liberal Revolution" came in 1871 under the leadership of Justo Rufino Barrios, who worked to modernize the country, improve trade and introduce new crops and manufacturing. During this era coffee became an important crop for Guatemala. Barrios had ambitions of reuniting Central America and took the country to war in an unsuccessful attempt to attain it, losing his life on the battlefield in 1885 to forces in El Salvador.
The Conservative government in Honduras gave military backing to a group of Guatemalan Conservatives wishing to take back the government, so Barrios declared war on the Honduran government. At the same time, Barrios, together with President Luis Bogran of Honduras, declared an intention to reunify the old United Provinces of Central America.
During his time in office, Barrios continued with the liberal reforms initiated by García Granados, but he was more aggressive implementing them. A summary of his reforms is:
Barrios had a National Congress totally pledge to his will, and therefore he was able to create a new constitution in 1879, which allowed him to be reelected as president for another six-year term.
He also was intolerant with his political opponents, forcing a lot of them to flee the country and building the infamous Guatemalan Central penitentiary where he had numerous people incarcerated and tortured.
Appleton's guide for México and Guatemala from 1884, shows the twenty departments in which Guatemala was divided during Barrios' time in office:
During Barrios tenure, the "indian land" that the conservative regime of Rafael Carrera had so strongly defended was confiscated and distributed among those officers who had helped him during the Liberal Revolution in 1871. Decree # 170 (a.k.a. Census redemption decree) made it easy to confiscate those lands in favor of the army officers and the German settlers in Verapaz as it allowed to publicly sell those common Indian lots. Therefore, the fundamental characteristic of the productive system during Barrios regime was the accumulation of large extension of land among few owners and a sort of "farmland servitude", based on the exploitation of the native day laborers.
In order to make sure that there was a steady supply of day laborers for the coffee plantations, which required a lot of them, Barrios government decreed the "Day Laborer regulations", labor legislation that placed the entire native population at the disposition of the new and traditional Guatemalan landlords, except the regular clergy, who were eventually expelled form the country and saw their properties confiscated. This decree set the following for the native Guatemalans:
In 1879, a constitution was ratified for Guatemala (the Republic's first as an independent nation, as the old Conservador regime had ruled by decree). In 1880, Barrios was reelected President for a six-year term. Barrios unsuccessfully attempted to get the United States of America to mediate the disputed boundary between Guatemala and Mexico.
General Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián was able to become interim president of Guatemala after the death of President Justo Rufino Barrios in the Batalla of Chalchuapa in El Salvador in April 1885 and after the resignation of first designate Alejandro Manuel Sinibaldi Castro, by means of a clever scam: he went to the General Cemetery when Barrios was being laid to rest and told the Congress president: "please prepare room and board for the 5,000 troops that I have waiting for my orders in Mixco". The congress president was scared of this, and declared Barillas interim president on the spot. By the time he realized that it was all a lie, it was too late to change anything.
Instead of calling for elections, as he should have, Barillas Bercián was able to be declared President on 16 March 1886 and remained in office until 1892.
During the government of general Barillas Bercián, the Carrera theater was remodeled to celebrate the Discovery of America fourth centennial; the Italian community in Guatemala donated a statue of Christopher Columbus -Cristóbal Colón, in Spanish- which was placed next to the theater. Since then, the place was called "Colón Theater".
In 1892, Barillas called for elections as he wanted to take care of his personal business; it was the first election in Guatemala that allowed the candidates to make propaganda in the local newspapers. The candidates who ran for office were:
Barillas Bercian was unique among liberal presidents of Guatemala between 1871 and 1944: he handed over power to his successor peacefully. When election time approached, he sent for the three Liberal candidates to ask them what their government plan would be. Happy with what he heard from general Reyna Barrios, Barillas made sure that a huge column of Quetzaltenango and Totonicapán Indigenous people came down from the mountains to vote for general Reyna Barrios. Reyna was elected president. As to not to offend the losing candidates, Barillas gave them checks to cover the costs of their presidential campaigns. Reyna Barrios went on to become President on 15 March 1892.
In the 1890s, the United States began to implement the Monroe Doctrine, pushing out European colonial powers and establishing U.S. hegemony over resources and labor in Latin American nations. The dictators that ruled Guatemala during the late 19th and early 20th century were generally very accommodating to U.S. business and political interests; thus, unlike other Latin American nations such as Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba the U.S. did not have to use overt military force to maintain dominance in Guatemala. The Guatemalan military/police worked closely with the U.S. military and State Department to secure U.S. interests. The Guatemalan government exempted several U.S. corporations from paying taxes, especially the United Fruit Company, privatized and sold off publicly owned utilities, and gave away huge swaths of public land.
After the assassination of general José María Reina Barrios on 8 February 1898, the Guatemalan cabinet called an emergency meeting to appoint a new successor, but declined to invite Estrada Cabrera to the meeting, even though he was the First Designated to the Presidency. There are two versions on how he was able to get the Presidency: (a) Estrada Cabrera entered "with pistol drawn" to assert his entitlement to the presidency and (b) Estrada Cabrera showed up unarmed to the meeting and demanded to be given the presidency as he was the First Designated".
The first Guatemalan head of state taken from civilian life in over 50 years, Estrada Cabrera overcame resistance to his regime by August 1898 and called for September elections, which he won handily. At that time, Estrada Cabrera was 44 years old; he was stocky, of medium height, dark, and broad-shouldered. The mustache gave him plebeian appearance. Black and dark eyes, metallic sounding voice and was rather sullen and brooding. At the same time, he already showed his courage and character. This was demonstrated on the night of the death of Reina Barrios when he stood in front of the ministers, meeting in the Government Palace to choose a successor, "Gentlemen, let me please sign this decree. As First Designated, you must hand me the Presidency". "His first decree was a general amnesty and the second was to reopen all the elementary schools closed by Reyna Barrios, both administrative and political measures aimed to gain the public opinion. Estrada Cabrera was almost unknown in the political circles of the capital and one could not foresee the features of his government or his intentions.
In 1898, the Legislature convened for the election of President Estrada Cabrera, who triumphed thanks to the large number of soldiers and policemen who went to vote in civilian clothes and to the large number of illiterate family that they brought with them to the polls. Also, the effective propaganda that was written in the official newspaper "the Liberal Idea '. The latter was run by the poet Joaquin Mendez, and among the drafters were Enrique Gómez Carrillo, -a famous writer who had just returned to Guatemala from Paris, and who had confidence that Estrada Cabrera was the president that Guatemala needed- Rafael Spinola, Máximo Soto Hall and Juan Manuel Mendoza, who later would be Gómez Carrillo's biographer, and others. Gómez Carrillo received as a reward for his work as political propagandist the appointment as General Consul in Paris, with 250 gold pesos monthly salary and immediately went back to Europe
One of Estrada Cabrera's most famous and most bitter legacies was allowing the entry of the United Fruit Company into the Guatemalan economical and political arena. As a member of the Liberal Party, he sought to encourage development of the nation's infrastructure of highways, railroads, and sea ports for the sake of expanding the export economy. By the time Estrada Cabrera assumed the presidency, there had been repeated efforts to construct a railroad from the major port of Puerto Barrios to the capital, Guatemala City. Yet due to lack of funding exacerbated by the collapse of the internal coffee trade, the railway fell sixty miles short of its goal. Estrada Cabrera decided, without consulting the legislature or judiciary, that striking a deal with the United Fruit Company was the only way to get finish the railway. Cabrera signed a contract with UFCO's Minor Cooper Keith in 1904 that gave the company tax-exemptions, land grants, and control of all railroads on the Atlantic side.
Estrada Cabrera often employed brutal methods to assert his authority, as that was the school of government in Guatemala at the time. Like him, presidents Rafael Carrera y Turcios and Justo Rufino Barrios had led tyrannical governments in the country. Right at the beginning of his first presidential period, he started prosecuting his political rivals and soon established a well-organized web of spies. One American Ambassador returned to the United States after he learned the dictator had given orders to poison him. Former President Manuel Barillas was stabbed to death in Mexico City, on a street outside of the Mexican Presidential Residence on Cabrera's orders; the street now bears the name of Calle Guatemala. Also, Estrada Cabrera responded violently to workers' strikes against UFCO. In one incident, when UFCO went directly to Estrada Cabrera to resolve a strike (after the armed forces refused to respond), the president ordered an armed unit to enter the workers' compound. The forces "arrived in the night, firing indiscriminately into the workers' sleeping quarters, wounding and killing an unspecified number."
In 1906, Estrada faced serious revolts against his rule; the rebels were supported by the governments of some of the other Central American nations, but Estrada succeeded in putting them down. Elections were held by the people against the will of Estrada Cabrera and thus he had the president-elect murdered in retaliation. In 1907, the brothers Avila Echeverría and group of friends decided to kill the president using a bomb along his way. They came from prominent families in Guatemala and studied in foreign universities, but when they returned to their homeland, they found a situation where everybody live in constant fear and the president ruled without any opposition.
Everything was carefully planned. When Estrada Cabrera went for a ride in his carriage, the bomb exploded, killing the horse and the driver, but only slightly injuring the President. Since their attack failed and they were forced to take their own lives; their families also suffered, as they were jailed in the infamous "Penitenciaría Central". Conditions in the penitentiary were cruel and foul. Political offenses were tortured daily and their screams could be heard all over the penitentiary. Prisoners regularly died under these conditions since political crimes had no pardon. It has been suggested that the extreme despotic characteristics of Estrada did not emerge until after an attempt on his life in 1907.
Estrada Cabrera continued in power until forced to resign by new revolts in 1920. By that time, his power had declined drastically and he was reliant on the loyalty of a few generals. While the United States threatened intervention if he was removed through revolution, a bipartisan coalition came together to remove him from the presidency. He was removed from office after the national assembly charged that he was mentally incompetent, and appointed Carlos Herrera in his place on 8 April 1920.
In 1920, prince Wilhelm of Sweden visited Guatemala and made a very objective description of both Guatemalan society and Estrada Cabrera government in his book "Between two continents, notes from a journey in Central America, 1920". The prince explained the dynamics of the Guatemalan society at the time pointing out that even though it called itself a "Republic", Guatemala had three sharply defined classes:
In 1931, the dictator general Jorge Ubico came to power, backed by the United States, and initiated one of the most brutally repressive governments in Central American history. Just as Estrada Cabrera had done during his government, Ubico created a widespread network of spies and informants and had large numbers of political opponents tortured and put to death. A wealthy aristocrat (with an estimated income of $215,000 per year in 1930s dollars) and a staunch anti-communist, he consistently sided with the United Fruit Company, Guatemalan landowners and urban elites in disputes with peasants. After the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, the peasant system established by Barrios in 1875 to jump start coffee production in the country was not good enough anymore, and Ubico was forced to implement a system of debt slavery and forced labor to make sure that there was enough labor available for the coffee plantations and that the UFCO workers were readily available.
Allegedly, he passed laws allowing landowners to execute workers as a "disciplinary" measure. He also openly identified as a fascist; he admired Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler, saying at one point: "I am like Hitler. I execute first and ask questions later." Ubico was disdainful of the indigenous population, calling them "animal-like", and stated that to become "civilized" they needed mandatory military training, comparing it to "domesticating donkeys." He gave away hundreds of thousands of hectares to the United Fruit Company (UFCO), exempted them from taxes in Tiquisate, and allowed the U.S. military to establish bases in Guatemala.
Ubico considered himself to be "another Napoleon". He dressed ostentatiously and surrounded himself with statues and paintings of the emperor, regularly commenting on the similarities between their appearances. He militarized numerous political and social institutions—including the post office, schools, and symphony orchestras—and placed military officers in charge of many government posts. He frequently traveled around the country performing "inspections" in dress uniform, followed by a military escort, a mobile radio station, an official biographer, and cabinet members.
On the other hand, Ubico was an efficient administrator:
After 14 years, Ubico's repressive policies and arrogant demeanor finally led to pacific disobedience by urban middle-class intellectuals, professionals, and junior army officers in 1944. On 25 June, a peaceful demonstration of female schoolteachers culminated in its suppression by government troops and the assassination of María Chinchilla who became a national heroine. On 1 July 1944 Ubico resigned from office amidst a general strike and nationwide protests. Initially, he had planned to hand over power to the former director of police, General Roderico Anzueto, whom he felt he could control. But his advisors noted that Anzueto's pro-Nazi sympathies had made him very unpopular, and that he would not be able to control the military. So Ubico instead chose to select a triumvirate of Major General Bueneventura Piñeda, Major General Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, and General Federico Ponce Vaides. The three generals promised to convene the national assembly to hold an election for a provisional president, but when the congress met on 3 July, soldiers held everyone at gunpoint and forced them to vote for General Ponce rather than the popular civilian candidate, Dr. Ramón Calderón. Ponce, who had previously retired from military service due to alcoholism, took orders from Ubico and kept many of the officials who had worked in the Ubico administration. The repressive policies of the Ubico administration were continued.
Opposition groups began organizing again, this time joined by many prominent political and military leaders, who deemed the Ponce regime unconstitutional. Among the military officers in the opposition were Jacobo Árbenz and Major Francisco Javier Arana. Ubico had fired Árbenz from his teaching post at the "Escuela Politécnica", and since then Árbenz had been living in El Salvador, organizing a band of revolutionary exiles. On 19 October 1944 a small group of soldiers and students led by Árbenz and Arana attacked the National Palace in what later became known as the "October Revolution". Ponce was defeated and driven into exile; and Árbenz, Arana, and a lawyer name Jorge Toriello established a junta. They declared that democratic elections would be held before the end of the year.
The winner of the 1944 elections was a teaching major named Juan José Arévalo, PhD, who had earned a scholarship in Argentina during the government of general Lázaro Chacón due to his superb professor skills. Arévalo remained in South America during a few years, working as a university professor in several countries. Back in Guatemala during the early years of the Jorge Ubico regime, his colleagues asked him to present a project to the president to create the Faculty of Humanism at the National University, to which Ubico was strongly opposed. Realizing the dictatorial nature of Ubico, Arévalo left Guatemala and went back to Argentina. He went back to Guatemala after the 1944 Revolution and ran under a coalition of leftist parties known as the "Partido Acción Revolucionaria" ("Revolutionary Action Party", PAR), and won 85% of the vote in elections that are widely considered to have been fair and open.
Arévalo implemented social reforms, including minimum wage laws, increased educational funding, near-universal suffrage (excluding illiterate women), and labor reforms. But many of these changes only benefited the upper-middle classes and did little for the peasant agricultural laborers who made up the majority of the population. Although his reforms were relatively moderate, he was widely disliked by the United States government, the Catholic Church, large landowners, employers such as the United Fruit Company, and Guatemalan military officers, who viewed his government as inefficient, corrupt, and heavily influenced by communists. At least 25 coup attempts took place during his presidency, mostly led by wealthy liberal military officers.
Árbenz served as defense minister under President Arévalo. He was the first minister of this portfolio, since it was previously called the "Ministry of War". In 1947, Dr. Arévalo, in company with a friend and two Russian dancers who were visiting Guatemala, had a car accident on the road to Panajachel. Arévalo fell into a ravine and was seriously injured, while all his companions were killed. The official party leaders signed a pact with Lieutenant Colonel Arana, in which he pledged not to attempt any coup against the ailing president, in exchange for the revolutionary parties as the official candidate in the next election. However, the recovery of the sturdy president was almost miraculous and soon he was able to take over the government. Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Javier Arana had accepted this pact because he wanted to be known as a Democratic hero of the uprising against Ponce and believed that the "Barranco Pact" ensured his position when the time of the presidential elections came.
Arana was a very influential person in Arévalo's government, and had managed to be nominated as the next presidential candidate, ahead of Captain Arbenz, who was told that because of his young age he would have no problem in waiting turn to the next election. Arana died in a gun battle against military civilian who wanted to capture him on 18 July 1949, at the Bridge of Glory, in Amatitlán, where he and his assistant commander had gone to check on weapons and that had been seized at the Aurora Air Base a few days before There are different versions about who ambushed him, and those who ordered the attack; Arbenz and Arévalo have been accused of instigating an attempt to get Arana out of the presidential picture.
The death of Lieutenant Colonel Arana is of critical importance in the history of Guatemala, because it was a pivotal event in the history of the Guatemalan revolution: his death not only paved the way for the election of Colonel Arbenz as president of the republic in 1950 but also caused an acute crisis in the government of Dr. Arévalo Bermejo, who all of a sudden had against him an army that was more faithful to Arana than to him, and elite civilian groups that used the occasion to protest strongly against his government.
Before his death, Arana had planned to run in the upcoming 1950 presidential elections. His death left Árbenz without any serious contenders in the elections (leading some, including the CIA and U.S. military intelligence, to speculate that Árbenz personally had him eliminated for this reason). Árbenz got more than three times as many votes as the runner-up, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. Fuentes claimed that electoral fraud benefited Árbenz; however scholars have pointed out that while fraud may possibly have given Árbenz some of his votes, it was not the reason that he won the election. In 1950s Guatemala, only literate men were able to vote by secret ballot; illiterate men and literate women voted by open ballot. Illiterate women were not enfranchised at all.
For the campaign of 1950, Arbenz asked José Manuel Fortuny – a high-ranking member of the Guatemalan Communist party – to write some speeches. The central theme of these was the land reform, the "pet project" of Arbenz. They shared a comfortable victory in elections in late 1950 and, thereafter, the tasks of government. While many of the leaders of the ruling coalition fought hard closeness to the president seeking personal benefits, the leaders of the Guatemalan Labor Party, and especially Fortuny, were the closest advisers and Arbenz were his private practice.
The election of Árbenz alarmed U.S. State Department officials, who stated that Arana "has always represented [the] only positive conservative element in [the] Arévalo administration", that his death would "strengthen Leftist[sic] materially", and that "developments forecast sharp leftist trend within [the] government."
In his inaugural address, Árbenz promised to convert Guatemala from "a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state." He declared that he intended to reduce dependency on foreign markets and dampen the influence of foreign corporations over Guatemalan politics. He also stated that he would modernize Guatemala's infrastructure and do so without the aid of foreign capital.
Based on his plan of government, he did the following:
Árbenz was a Christian socialist and governed as a European-style democratic socialist, and took great inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. According to historian Stephen Schlesinger, while Árbenz did have a few communists in lower-level positions in his administration, he "was not a dictator, he was not a crypto-communist." Nevertheless, some of his policies, particularly those involving agrarian reform, would be branded as "communist" by the upper classes of Guatemala and the United Fruit Company.
Prior to Árbenz's election in 1950, a handful of U.S. corporations controlled Guatemala's primary electrical utilities, the nation's only railroad, and the banana industry, which was Guatemala's chief agricultural export industry. By the mid-1940s, Guatemalan banana plantations accounted for more than one quarter of all of United Fruit Company's production in Latin America. Land reform was the centerpiece of Árbenz's election campaign. The revolutionary organizations that had helped put Árbenz in power put constant pressure on him to live up to his campaign promises regarding land reform. Árbenz continued Arévalo's reform agenda and in June 1952, his government enacted an agrarian reform program. Árbenz set land reform as his central goal, as only 2% of the population owned 70% of the land.
On 17 June 1952 Árbenz's administration enacted an agrarian reform law known as Decree 900. The law empowered the government to create a network of agrarian councils which would be in charge of expropriating uncultivated land on estates that were larger than . The land was then allocated to individual families. Owners of expropriated land were compensated according to the worth of the land claimed in May 1952 tax assessments (which they had often dramatically understated to avoid paying taxes). Land was paid for in 25-year bonds with a 3 percent interest rate. The program was in effect for 18 months, during which it distributed to about 100,000 families. Árbenz himself, a landowner through his wife, gave up of his own land in the land reform program.
In 1953, the reform was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, however the democratically elected Congress later impeached four judges associated with the ruling.
Decree 900, for the Agrarian Reform in Guatemala created the possibility of gaining crops for those field workers who had no land of their own. The effect of this law was similar to what occurred in Europe after the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages: after the plague, which killed one third of Europe's population at the time, the number of landowners decreased, which released many of the terrestrial land, increased supply and lowered land price. At the same time, many farmers also died from the plague, so that the labor force declined; this shift in supply of workers increased wages. The economic effects of the plague are very similar to those caused by the land reform in Guatemala: During the first harvest after the implementation of the law, the average income of farmers increased from Q225.00/year TO Q700.00/year. Some analysts say that conditions in Guatemala improved after the reform and that there was a "fundamental transformation of agricultural technology as a result of the decrease labor supply." Rising living standards also happened in Europe in the fifteenth century, while large-scale technological advances occurred. Missing workforce after the plague was "the mother of invention." The benefits from the reform were not limited solely to the working class of fields: There were increases in consumption, production and domestic private investment.
In order to establish the necessary physical infrastructure to make possible the "independent" and national capitalist development that could get rid of extreme dependence on the United States and break the American monopolies operating in the country, basically the economy of the banana enclave, Arbenz and his government began the planning and construction of the Atlantic Highway, which was intended to compete in the market with the monopoly on land transport exerted by the United Fruit Company, through one of its subsidiaries: the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), which had the concession since 1904, when it was granted by then President Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Construction of the highway began by the Roads Department of the Ministry of Communications, with the help of the military engineering battalion. It was planned to be built parallel along the railway line, as much as possible. The construction of the new port was also aimed to break another UFCO monopoly: Puerto Barrios was owned and operated solely by The Great White Fleet, another UFCO's subsidiary.
The Jurun Marinalá electric power generation plant was planned as the first national hydroelectric power plant in Guatemala. The goal was to disrupt the monopoly of the Electric Company, a subsidiary of American Electric Bond and Share (Ebasco), which did not make use of indigenous water resources, but ran fossil fuel-powered plants, thus creating a drain on foreign currency reserves. Owing to its massive economic importance, construction continued beyond the Árbenz presidency. The plant was finally completed under President Julio César Méndez Montenegro in 1968. It is located in the village of Agua Blanca, inside El Salto, Escuintla.
The Catholic Church, who possessed a large share of power in Central America during the Colonial Era, was gradually losing it after the emancipation from Spain. First, it was the struggle of the liberals who overtook power from Guatemalan conservatives (among whom was included the Major Clergy of the Church); conservatives and the Church lost all of their power quota in the provinces of Central America, Guatemala remaining as their last bastion. In 1838, with the fall of the liberal President Mariano Galvez, the figure of Lieutenant General Rafael Carrera arose and became the country's conservative leader. He rallied his party and the Church back to power, at least in the province of Guatemala. With this state of affairs, the Central American Federation could not be carried out because it was liberal in nature and Guatemala's military power and that of its leader Carrera were invincible in his time; so much so, that Carrera eventually founded the Republic of Guatemala on 21 March 1847. After Carrera's death in 1865, Guatemalan Liberals saw their chance to seize power again, and conducted the Liberal Revolution in 1871. Since that time, the attacks on the senior clergy of the Catholic Church raged in Guatemala and secular education, freedom of religion, the expulsion of several religious orders and the expropriation of many church properties were decreed. This situation continued throughout all the liberal governments that followed, until October Revolution in 1944, in which the religious situation worsened: now the attacks towards the Church were not only economic, but also religious, as many revolutionaries began to declare themselves opposed to any kind of religion.
By 1951, Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano found that it was urgent to recover the elite position of the Catholic Church in Guatemala, and for that reason he allied himself to the interests of the United Fruit Company through the National Liberation Movement and aimed to overthrow the revolutionary governments, which he branded as atheists and communists. After the consecration of the Shrine of Esquipulas (1950), and as part of a smear campaign launched against the Arbenz government, he requested sculptor Julio Urruela Vásquez to carve a replica of the Christ of Esquipulas, which was transferred to bronze in 1952 and converted the following year in symbol and banner of the national pilgrimage against communism. This Christ was then appointed as "Commander in Chief" of the forces of the National Liberation Movement during the invasion of June 1954.
On 4 April 1954, Rossell Arellano issued a pastoral letter in which he criticized the progress of communism in the country, and made a call to Guatemalans to rise up and fight the common enemy of God and the homeland. This pastoral was distributed throughout the country.
In 1953, when the government implemented Agrarian Reform, it intended to redistribute large holdings of unused land to peasants, both Latino and Amerindian, for them to develop for subsistence farming. It expropriated 250,000 of 350,000 blocks held by the United Fruit Company (UFC) and, according to the government's Decree 900, it would redistribute this land for agricultural purposes. UFCO continued to hold thousands of acres in pasture as well as substantial forest reserves. The Guatemalan government had offered the company a Q 609,572 in compensation for the appropriated land. The company fought the land expropriation, making several legal arguments. It said the government had misinterpreted its own law. The Agrarian Reform Law was directed at redistributing unused land able to be developed for agricultural purposes. Thus land in pasture, specified forest cover and under cultivation was to be left with the owners and untouched by the expropriators. The company argued that most of the land taken from them was cultivated and in use, so it was illegal for the government to take it.
Secondly, they argued that the offered compensation was insufficient for the amount and value of the land taken. However, the valuations of United Fruit Company's rural property were based on the values declared by the company in its own tax filings. In 1945, Arevalo's administration ordered new assessments, to be complete by 1948. UFCo had submitted the assessment by the due date; but, when the Agrarian Reform was implemented, the company declared that they wanted the value of its property changed from the values the company had previously used to dodge taxes. The government had investigated in 1951, but a new assessment was never completed. UFCo said that the 1948 assessment was outdated, and claimed its land value was much greater. They had estimated just compensation would be as high as Q 15,854,849, nearly twenty times more than what the Guatemalan government had offered.
The U.S. State Department and the embassy actively began to support the position of UFCo, which was a major US company. The Guatemalan government had to fight the pressure. The US officially acknowledged that Guatemala had the right to conduct their own politics and business, but U.S. representatives said they were trying to protect UFCo, a US company that generated much revenue and contributed to the US economy. Arbenz's administration said that Guatemala needed Agrarian Reform to improve its own economy. Arbenz said he would adopt policies for a nationalist economic development if necessary. He argued that all foreign investment would be subject to Guatemalan laws. Arbenz was firm in promoting the Agrarian Reform and within a couple of years had acted quickly; he claimed that Guatemalan government was not prepared to make an exception for the U.S. concerning Decree 900 and that it was not Guatemalan's fault that the American corporation had lied in its tax forms and declared an artificially low value on their land.
Because Arbenz could not be pressured to take into consideration the arguments made to prevent expropriation from UFCo, his government was undermined with propaganda. For U.S. the national security was also highly important. They had combined both political and economic interests. The fear of allowing communist practices in Guatemala was shared by the urban elite and middle classes, who would not relinquish their privileges that easily. The local media-such as newspapers "El Imparcial" and "La Hora"- took advantage of the freedom of press of the regime, and with the sponsorship of UFCo were critical of communism and of the government's legal recognition of the party. The opposing political parties organized anticommunism campaigns; thousands of people appeared at the periodic rallies, and the membership in anticommunist organizations had grown steadily.
Between 1950 and 1955, during the government of General Eisenhower in the United States, a witch hunt for communists was conducted: McCarthyism. This was characterized by persecuting innocent people by mere suspicion, with unfounded accusations, interrogation, loss of labor, passport denial, and even imprisonment. These mechanisms of social control and repression in the United States skirted dangerously with the totalitarian and fascist methods.
One of the main characters of McCarthyism was John Peurifoy, who was sent as the ambassador of the United States to Guatemala, as this was the first country in the American sphere of influence after World War II that included elements openly communists in his government. He came from Greece, where he had already done considerable anticommunist activity, and was installed as ambassador in November 1953, when Carlos Castillo Armas was already organizing his tiny revolutionary army. After a long meeting, Peurifoy made it clear to President Arbenz that the US was worried about the communist elements in his government, and then reported to the Department of State that the Guatemalan leader was not a communist, but that surely a communist leader would come after him; furthermore, in January 1954 he told "Time" magazine: "American public opinion could force us to take some measures to prevent Guatemala from falling into the orbit of international communism".
The Communist Party was never the center of the communist movement in Guatemala until Jacobo Árbenz came to power in 1951. Prior to 1951, communism lived within the urban labor forces in small study groups during 1944 to 1953 which it had a tremendous influence on these urban labor forces. Despite its small size within Guatemala, many leaders were extremely vocal about their beliefs (for instance, in their protests and, more importantly, their literature). In 1949, in Congress, the Communist Party only had less than forty members, however, by 1953 it went up to nearly four thousand. Before Arbenz come to power in 1951, the communist movement preferred to carry out many of their activities through the so-called mass organization. In addition to Arbenz success, Guatemalan Communist Party moved forward its activities into public.
After Jacobo Arbenz came to power in 1951, he extended political freedom, allowing communists in Guatemala to participate in politics. This move by Arbenz let many opponents in Ubico's regime to recognize themselves as communists. By 1952, Arbenz supported a land reform, and took unused agricultural land, about , from owners who had large properties, and made it available to rural workers and farmers. These lands were to be taken from the United Fruit Company with compensation; however, the UFC believed the compensation was not enough. Meantime, Arbenz allowed the Communist Party to organize and include leaders notably his adviser who were leftist. The propaganda effort that was led by United Fruit Company against the revolution in Guatemala persuaded the U.S. government to fight against communism in Guatemala. The United States clutched on small details to prove the existence of widespread communism in Guatemala. The Eisenhower administration at the time in the U.S. were not happy about the Arbenz government, they considered Arbenz to be too close to communism; there have been reports that Arbenz's wife was a communist and part of the Communist Party in Guatemala. Even though it was impossible for the U.S. to gather evidence and information about Guatemala's relations to the Soviet Union, Americans wanted to believe that communism existed in Guatemala.
As Arbenz proceeded with land reform, the United Fruit Company, which had a practical monopoly on Guatemalan fruit production and some industry, lobbied the Eisenhower administration to remove Arbenz. Of still greater importance, though, was the widespread American concern about the possibility of a so-called "Soviet beachhead" opening up in the western hemisphere. Arbenz's sudden legalization of the Communist party and importing of arms from then Soviet-satellite state of Czechoslovakia, among other events, convinced major policy makers in the White House and CIA to try for Arbenz's forced removal, although his term was to end naturally in two years. This led to a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954, known as Operation PBSUCCESS, which saw Arbenz toppled and forced into exile by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. Despite most Guatemalans' attachment to the original ideals of the 1944 uprising, some private sector leaders and the military began to believe that Arbenz represented a communist threat and supported his overthrow, hoping that a successor government would continue the more moderate reforms started by Arevalo.
Many groups of Guatemalan exiles were armed and trained by the CIA, and commanded by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas they invaded Guatemala on 18 June 1954. The Americans called it an anti-communist coup against Arbenz. The coup was supported by CIA radio broadcasts and so the Guatemalan army refused to resist the coup, Arbenz was forced to resign. In 1954, a military government replaced Arbenz' government and disbanded the legislature and they arrested communist leaders, Castillo Armas became president.
After the CIA coup, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Documents obtained by the National Security Archive revealed that the CIA was involved in planning assassinations of enemies of the new military government, should the coup be successful.
The government, right-wing paramilitary organizations, and left-wing insurgents were all engaged in the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–96). A variety of factors contributed: social and economic injustice and racial discrimination suffered by the indigenous population, the 1954 coup which reversed reforms, weak civilian control of the military, the United States support of the government, and Cuban support of the insurgents. The Historical Clarification Commission (commonly known as the "Truth Commission") after the war estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed — the vast majority of whom were indigenous civilians. 93% of the human rights abuses reported to the Commission were attributed to the military or other government-supported forces. It also determined that in several instances, the government was responsible for acts of genocide.
In response to the increasingly autocratic rule of Gen. Ydígoras Fuentes, who took power in 1958 following the murder of Col. Castillo Armas, a group of junior military officers revolted in 1960. When they failed, several went into hiding and established close ties with Cuba. This group became the nucleus of the forces who mounted armed insurrection against the government for the next 36 years.
Shortly after President Julio César Méndez Montenegro took office in 1966, the army launched a major counterinsurgency campaign that largely broke up the guerrilla movement in the countryside.
The guerrillas concentrated their attacks in Guatemala City, where they assassinated many leading figures, including U.S. Ambassador John Gordon Mein in 1968. During the next nearly two decades, Méndez Montenegro was the only civilian to head Guatemala until the inauguration of Vinicio Cerezo in 1986.
The first settler project in the FTN was in Sebol-Chinajá in Alta Verapaz. Sebol, then regarded as a strategic point and route through Cancuén river, which communicated with Petén through the Usumacinta River on the border with Mexico and the only road that existed was a dirt one built by President Lázaro Chacón in 1928. In 1958, during the government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed infrastructure projects in Sebol, which finally adopted the name "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas', municipality created in 1983 in Alta Verapaz. In 1960, then Army captain Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia inherited Saquixquib and Punta de Boloncó farms in northeastern Sebol. In 1963 he bought the farm "San Fernando" El Palmar de Sejux and finally bought the "Sepur" farm near San Fernando. During those years, Lucas was in the Guatemalan legislature and lobbied in Congress to boost investment in that area of the country.
In those years, the importance of the region was in livestock, exploitation of precious export wood and archaeological wealth. Timber contracts were granted to multinational companies such as Murphy Pacific Corporation from California, which invested US$30 million for the colonization of southern Petén and Alta Verapaz, and formed the North Impulsadora Company. Colonization of the area was made through a process by which inhospitable areas of the FTN were granted to native peasants.
In 1962, the DGAA became the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INTA), by Decree 1551 which created the law of Agrarian Transformation. In 1964, INTA defined the geography of the FTN as the northern part of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz and Izabal and that same year priests of the Maryknoll order and the Order of the Sacred Heart began the first process of colonization, along with INTA, carrying settlers from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché.
The Northern Transversal Strip was officially created during the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio in 1970, by Decree 60–70 in the Congress, for agricultural development.
On 19 January 1972, members of a new Guatemalan guerrilla movement entered Ixcán, from Mexico, and were accepted by many farmers; in 1973, after an exploratory foray into the municipal seat of Cotzal, the insurgent group decided to set up camp underground in the mountains of Xolchiché, municipality of Chajul.
In 1974, the insurgent guerrilla group held its first conference, where it defined its strategy of action for the coming months and called itself Guerrilla Army of the Poor (-Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres -EGP-). In 1975, the organization had spread around the area of the mountains of northern municipalities of Nebaj and Chajul. As part of its strategy EGP agreed to perform acts that notoriety was obtained and through which also symbolize the establishment of a "social justice" against the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the judicial and administrative organs of the State. They saw also that with these actions the indigenous rural population of the region is identified with the insurgency, thus motivating joining their ranks. As part of this plan was agreed to so-called "executions". To determine who would be these people subject to "execution", the EGP attended complaints received from the public. For example, they selected two victims: Guillermo Monzón, who was a military Commissioner in Ixcán and José Luis Arenas, the largest landowner in the area of Ixcán, and who had been reported to the EGP for allegedly having land conflicts with neighboring settlements and abusing their workers.
On Saturday, 7 June 1975, José Luis Arenas was killed by unknowns when he was in the premises of his farm "La Perla" to pay wage workers. In front of his office there were approximately two to three hundred people to receive their payment and four members of EGP mixed among farmers. Subsequently, the guerrilla members destroyed the communication radio of the farm and executed Arenas. After having murdered José Luis Arenas, guerrilla members spoke in Ixil language to the farmers, informing them that they were members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and had killed the "Tiger Ixcán". They requested to prepare beasts to help the injured and were transported to Chajul to receive medical care. Then the attackers fled towards Chajul.
José Luis Arenas' son, who was in San Luis Ixcán at the time, seek refuge in a nearby mountain, waiting for a plane to arrive to take him to the capital, in order to immediately report the matter to the Minister of Defense. The defense minister replied, "You are mistaken, there are no guerrillas in the area".
Also located in the Northern Transversal Strip, the valley of the Polochic River was inhabited since ancient times by k'ekchí and P'okomchi people. In the second half of the nineteenth century, President Justo Rufino Barrios (1835–1885) began the allocation of land in the area to German farmers. Decree 170 (or decree of Census Redemption Decree) facilitated the expropriation of Indian land in favor of the Germans, because it promoted the auction of communal lands. Since that time, the main economic activity was export-oriented, especially coffee, bananas and cardamom. The communal property, dedicated to subsistence farming, became private property led to the cultivation and mass marketing of agricultural products. Therefore, the fundamental characteristic of the Guatemalan production system has since that time been the accumulation of property in few hands, and a sort of "farm servitude" based on the exploitation of "farmer settlers".
In 1951, the agrarian reform law that expropriated idle land from private hands was enacted, but in 1954, with the National Liberation Movement coup supported by the United States, most of the land that had been expropriated, was awarded back to its former landowners. Flavio Monzón was appointed mayor and in the next twenty years he became one of the largest landowners in the area. In 1964, several communities settled for decades on the shore of Polochic River claimed property titles to INTA which was created in October 1962, but the land was awarded to Monzón. A Mayan peasant from Panzós later said that Monzón "got the signatures of the elders before he went before INTA to talk about the land. When he returned, gathered the people and said that, by an INTA mistake, the land had gone to his name." Throughout the 1970s, Panzós farmers continued to claim INTA regularization of land ownership receiving legal advice from the FASGUA (Autonomous Trade Union Federation of Guatemala), an organization that supported the peasants' demands through legal procedures. However, no peasant received a property title, ever. Some obtained promises while other had provisional property titles, and there were also some that only had received permission to plant. The peasants began to suffer evictions from their land by farmers, the military and local authorities in favor of the economic interests of Izabal Mining Operations Company (EXMIBAL) and Transmetales. Another threat at that time for peasant proprietors were mining projects and exploration of oil: Exxon, Shenandoah, Hispanoil and Getty Oil all had exploration contracts; besides there was the need for territorial expansion of two mega-projects of that era: Northern Transversal Strip and Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant.
In 1978, a military patrol was stationed a few kilometers from the county seat of Panzós, in a place known as "Quinich". At this time organizational capacity of peasant had increased through committees who claimed titles to their land, a phenomenon that worried the landlord sector. Some of these owners, among them Monzón, stated: "Several peasants living in the villages and settlements want to burn urban populations to gain access to private property", and requested protection from Alta Verapaz governor.
On 29 May 1978, peasants from Cahaboncito, Semococh, Rubetzul, Canguachá, Sepacay villages, finca Moyagua and neighborhood La Soledad, decided to hold a public demonstration in the Plaza de Panzós to insist on the claim of land and to express their discontent caused by the arbitrary actions of the landowners and the civil and military authorities. Hundreds of men, women, indigenous children went to the square of the municipal seat of Panzós, carrying their tools, machetes and sticks. One of the people who participated in the demonstration states: "The idea was not to fight with anyone, what was required was the clarification of the status of the land. People came from various places and they had guns."
There are different versions on how the shooting began: some say it began when "Mama Maquín" -an important peasant leader- pushed a soldier who was in her way; others argue that it started because people kept pushing trying to get into the municipality, which was interpreted by the soldiers as an aggression. The mayor at the time, Walter Overdick, said that "people of the middle of the group pushed those who in front." A witness says one protester grabbed the gun from a soldier but did not use it and several people argue that a military voice yelled: One, two, three! Fire!" In fact, the lieutenant who led the troops gave orders to open fire on the crowd.
The shots that rang for about five minutes, were made by regulation firearms carried by the military as well as the three machine guns located on the banks of the square. 36 Several peasants with machetes wounded several soldiers. No soldier was wounded by gunfire. The square was covered with blood.
Immediately, the army closed the main access roads, despite that "indigenous felt terrified." An army helicopter flew over the town before picking up wounded soldiers.
Due to his seniority in both the military and economic elites in Guatemala, as well as the fact that he spoke perfectly the q'ekchi, one of the Guatemalan indigenous languages, Lucas García the ideal official candidate for the 1978 elections; and to further enhance his image, he was paired with the leftist doctor Francisco Villagrán Kramer as running mate. Villagrán Kramer was a man of recognized democratic trajectory, having participated in the Revolution of 1944, and was linked to the interests of transnational corporations and elites, as he was one of the main advisers of agricultural, industrial and financial chambers of Guatemala. Despite the democratic façade, the electoral victory was not easy and the establishment had to impose Lucas García, causing further discredit the electoral system -which had already suffered a fraud when General Laugerud was imposed in the 1974 elections.
In 1976, student group called "FRENTE" emerged in the University of San Carlos, which completely swept all student body positions that were up for election that year. FRENTE leaders were mostly members of the Patriotic Workers' Youth, the youth wing of the Guatemalan Labor Party (-Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo- PGT), the Guatemalan communist party who had worked in the shadows since it was illegalized in 1954. Unlike other Marxist organizations in Guatemala at the time, PGT leaders trusted the mass movement to gain power through elections.
FRENTE used its power within the student associations to launch a political campaign for the 1978 university general elections, allied with leftist Faculty members grouped in "University Vanguard". The alliance was effective and Oliverio Castañeda de León was elected as President of the Student Body and Saúl Osorio Paz as President of the University; plus they had ties with the University workers union (STUSC) thru their PGT connections. Osorio Paz gave space and support to the student movement and instead of having a conflicted relationship with students, different representations combined to build a higher education institution of higher social projection. In 1978, the University of San Carlos became one of the sectors with more political weight in Guatemala; that year the student movement, faculty and University Governing Board -Consejo Superior Universitario- united against the government and were in favor of opening spaces for the neediest sectors. In order to expand its university extension, the Student Body (AEU) rehabilitated the "Student House" in downtown Guatemala City; there, they welcomed and supported families of villagers and peasant already sensitized politically. They also organized groups of workers in the informal trade.
At the beginning of his tenure as President, Saúl Osorio founded the weekly "Siete Días en la USAC", which besides reporting on the activities of the University, constantly denounced the violation of human rights, especially the repression against the popular movement. It also told what was happening with revolutionary movements in both Nicaragua and El Salvador. For a few months, the state university was a united and progressive institution, preparing to confront the State head on.
Now, FRENTE had to face the radical left, represented then by the Student Revolutionary Front "Robin García" (FERG), which emerged during the Labor Day march of 1 May 1978. FERG coordinated several student associations on different colleges within University of San Carlos and public secondary education institutions. This coordination between legal groups came from the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), a guerrilla group that had appeared in 1972 and had its headquarters in the oil rich region of northern Quiché department -i.e., the Ixil Triangle of Ixcán, Nebaj and Chajul in Franja Transversal del Norte. Although not strictly an armed group, FERG sought confrontation with government forces all the time, giving prominence to measures that could actually degenerate into mass violence and paramilitary activity. Its members were not interested in working within an institutional framework and never asked permission for their public demonstrations or actions.
On 7 March 1978, Lucas Garcia was elected President; shortly after, on 29 May 1978 -in the late days of General Laugerud García government- in the central square of Panzós, Alta Verapaz, members of the Zacapa Military Zone attacked a peaceful peasant demonstration, killing a lot of people. The deceased, indigenous peasants who had been summoned in place, were fighting for the legalization of public lands they had occupied for years. Their struggle faced them directly with investors who wanted to exploit the mineral wealth of the area, particularly oil reserves -by Basic Resources International and Shenandoah Oil- and nickel -EXMIBAL. The Panzós Massacre caused a stir at the University by the high number of victims and conflicts arose from the exploitation of natural resources by foreign companies. In 1978, for example, Osorio Paz and other university received death threats for their outspoken opposition to the construction of an inter-oceanic pipeline that would cross the country to facilitate oil exploration. On 8 June the AEU organized a massive protest in downtown Guatemala City where speakers denounced the slaughter of Panzós and expressed their repudiation of Laugerud García regime in stronger terms than ever before.
After the "execution" of José Luis Arenas population of Hom, Ixtupil, Sajsivan and Sotzil villages, neighbors of La Perla and annexes, increased support for the new guerrilla movement, mainly due to the land dispute that peasants kept with the owners of the farm for several years and that the execution was seen as an act of "social justice".
The murder owner of the farm "La Perla", located in the municipality of Chajul, resulted in the escalation of violence in the area: part of the population moved closer to the guerrillas, while another part of the inhabitants of Hom kept out of the insurgency. In 1979, the owners of the farm "La Perla" established links with the army and for the first time a military detachment was installed within the property; in this same building the first civil patrol of the area was established. The Army high command, meanwhile, was very pleased with the initial results of the operation and was convinced it had succeeded in destroying most of the social basis of EGP, which had to be expelled from the "Ixil Triangle". At this time the presence of EGP in the area decreased significantly due to the repressive actions of the Army, who developed its concept of "enemy" without necessarily including the notion of armed combatants; the officers who executed the plan were instructed to destroy all towns suspect of cooperate with EGP and eliminate all sources of resistance. Army units operating in the "Ixil Triangle" belonged to the Mariscal Zavala Brigade, stationed in Guatemala City. Moreover, although the guerrillas did not intervene directly when the army attacked the civilian population allegedly because they lacked supplies and ammunition, it did support some survival strategies. It streamlined, for example, "survival plans" designed to give evacuation instructions in assumption that military incursions took place. Most of the population began to participate in the schemes finding that them represented their only alternative to military repression.
The election of Lucas García on 7 March 1978 marked the beginning of a full return to the counterinsurgency practices of the Arana period. This was compounded by the strong reaction of the Guatemalan military to the situation unfolding in Nicaragua at the time, where the popularly supported Sandinista insurgency was on the verge of toppling the Somoza regime. With the aim of preventing an analogous situation from unfolding in Guatemala, the government intensified its repressive campaign against the predominantly indigenous mass movement. The repression not only intensified, but became more overt.
On 4 August 1978, high school and university students, along with other popular movement sectors, organized the mass movement's first urban protest of the Lucas García period. The protests, intended as a march against violence, were attended by an estimated 10,000 people. The new minister of the interior under President Lucas García, Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, promised to break up any protests done without government permission. Having refused to ask for permission, the protesters were met by the Pelotón Modelo (Model Platoon) of the National Police. Employing new anti-riot gear donated by the United States Government, Platoon agents surrounded marchers and tear-gassed them. Students were forced to retreat and dozens of people, mostly school-aged adolescents, were hospitalized. This was followed by more protests and death squad killings throughout the later part of the year. In September 1978 a general strike broke out to protest sharp increases in public transportation fares; the government responded harshly, arresting dozens of protesters and injuring many more. However, as a result of the campaign, the government agreed to the protesters' demands, including the establishment of a public transportation subsidy. Fearful that this concession would encourage more protests, the military government, along with state-sponsored paramilitary death squads, generated an unsafe situation for public leaders.
The administrator of a large cemetery in Guatemala City informed the press that in the first half of 1978, more than 760 unidentified bodies had arrived at the cemetery, all apparent victims of death squads. Amnesty International stated that disappearances were an "epidemic" in Guatemala and reported more than 2,000 killings between mid-1978 and 1980. Between January and November 1979 alone the Guatemalan press reported 3,252 disappearances.
On 31 January 1980, a group of displaced K'iche' and Ixil peasant farmers occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City to protest the kidnapping and murder of peasants in Uspantán by elements of the Guatemalan Army. In the subsequent police raid, over the protests of the Spanish ambassador, the police attacked the building with incendiary explosives. A fire ensued as police prevented those inside of the embassy from exiting the building. In all, 36 people were killed in the fire. The funeral of the victims (including the hitherto obscure father of Rigoberta Menchú, Vicente Menchú) attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, and a new guerrilla group was formed commemorating the date, the "Frente patriotico 31 de enero" (Patriotic Front of 31 January). The incident has been called "the defining event" of the Guatemalan Civil War. The Guatemalan government issued a statement claiming that its forces had entered the embassy at the request of the Spanish Ambassador, and that the occupiers of the embassy, whom they referred to as "terrorists," had "sacrificed the hostages and immolated themselves afterward." Ambassador Cajal denied the claims of the Guatemalan government and Spain immediately terminated diplomatic relations with Guatemala, calling the action a violation of "the most elementary norms of international law." Relations between Spain and Guatemala were not normalized until 22 September 1984.
In the months following the Spanish Embassy Fire, the human rights situation continued to deteriorate. The daily number of killings by official and unofficial security forces increased from an average of 20 to 30 in 1979 to a conservative estimate of 30 to 40 daily in 1980. Human rights sources estimated 5,000 Guatemalans were killed by the government for "political reasons" in 1980 alone, making it the worst human rights violator in the hemisphere after El Salvador. In a report titled "Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder," Amnesty International stated, "Between January and November of 1980, some 3,000 people described by government representatives as "subversives" and "criminals" were either shot on the spot in political assassinations or seized and murdered later; at least 364 others seized in this period have not yet been accounted for."
The repression and excessive force used by the government against the opposition was such that it became source of contention within Lucas Garcia's administration itself. This contention within the government caused Lucas Garcia's Vice President Francisco Villagrán Kramer to resign from his position on 1 September 1980. In his resignation, Kramer cited his disapproval of the government's human rights record as one of the primary reasons for his resignation. He then went into voluntary exile in the United States, taking a position in the Legal Department of the Inter-American Development Bank.
The effects of state repression on the population further radicalized individuals within the mass movement and led to increased popular support for the insurgency. In late 1979, the EGP expanded its influence, controlling a large amount of territory in the Ixil Triangle in El Quiche and holding many demonstrations in Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal. At the same time the EGP was expanding its presence in the Altiplano, a new insurgent movement called the ORPA (Revolutionary Organization of Armed People) made itself known. Composed of local youths and university intellectuals, the ORPA developed out of a movement called the Regional de Occidente, which split from the FAR-PGT in 1971. The ORPA's leader, Rodrigo Asturias (a former activist with the PGT and first-born son of Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Ángel Asturias), formed the organization after returning from exile in Mexico. The ORPA established an operational base in the mountains and rain-forests above the coffee plantations of southwestern Guatemala and in the Atitlan where it enjoyed considerable popular support. On 18 September 1979, the ORPA made its existence publicly known when it occupied the Mujulia coffee farm in the coffee-growing region of the Quezaltenango province to hold a political education meeting with the workers.
Insurgent movements active in the initial phase of the conflict such as the FAR also began to reemerge and prepare for combat. In 1980, guerrilla operations on both the urban and rural fronts greatly intensified, with the insurgency carrying out a number of overt acts of armed propaganda and assassinations of prominent right-wing Guatemalans and landowners. In 1980, armed insurgents assassinated prominent Ixil landowner Enrique Brol, and president of the CACIF (Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations) Alberto Habie. Encouraged by guerrilla advances elsewhere in Central America, the Guatemalan insurgents, especially the EGP, began to quickly expand their influence through a wide geographic area and across different ethnic groups, thus broadening the appeal of the insurgent movement and providing it with a larger popular base. In October 1980, a tripartite alliance was formalized between the EGP, the FAR and the ORPA as a precondition for Cuban-backing.
In early 1981, the insurgency mounted the largest offensive in the country's history. This was followed by an additional offensive towards the end of the year, in which many civilians were forced to participate by the insurgents. Villagers worked with the insurgency to sabotage roads and army establishments, and destroy anything of strategic value to the armed forces. By 1981, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 members of Guatemala's indigenous community actively supported the insurgency. Guatemalan Army Intelligence (G-2) estimated a minimum 360,000 indigenous supporters of the EGP alone. Since late 1981 the Army applied a strategy of "scorched earth" in Quiché, to eliminate the guerrilla social support EGP. In some communities of the region's military forced all residents to leave their homes and concentrate in the county seat under military control. Some families obeyed; others took refuge in the mountains. K'iche's who took refuge in the mountains, were identified by the Army with the guerrillas and underwent a military siege, and continuous attacks that prevented them from getting food, shelter and medical care.
La Llorona, located about 18 kilometers from El Estor, department of Izabal (part of the Northern Transversal Strip), was a small village with no more than twenty houses. Most of the first settlers arrived from the areas of Senahú and Panzós, both in Alta Verapaz. In 1981, the total population was about 130 people, all belonging to the q'eqchi' ethnic group. Few people spoke Spanish and most worked in their own cornfields, sporadically working for the local landowners. In the vicinity are the villages of El Bongo, Socela, Benque, Rio Pita, Santa Maria, Big Plan and New Hope. Conflicts in the area were related to land tenure, highlighting the uncertainty about the boundaries between farms and communities, and the lack of titles. As in the National Institute of Agrarian Transformation (INTA) was not registered a legitimate owner of land occupied La Llorona, the community remained in the belief that the land belonged to the state, which had taken steps to obtain title property. However, a farmer with great influence in the area occupied part of the land, generating a conflict between him and the community; men of the village, on its own initiative, devised a new boundary between community land and the farmer, but the problem remained dormant.
The second half of the seventies gave rise to the first news about the presence of guerrillas in the villages. The commander aparacimiento Ramon, talked to people and said they were the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. They passed many villages asking what problems people had and offered to solve them. They told peasants that the land belonged to the poor and that they should trust them. In 1977, Ramon, a guerrilla commander, regularly visited the village of La Llorona and after finding that the issue of land was causing many problems in the community, taught people to practice new measurements, which spread fear among landowners. That same year, the group under Ramon arbitrarily executed the Spanish landowner José Hernández, near El Recreo, which he owned. Following this, a clandestine group of mercenaries, dubbed "fighters of the rich" was formed to protect the interests of landlords; public authority of El Estor organized the group and paid its members, stemming from the funding of major landowners. The group, irregular, was related to the military commissioners of the region and with commanders of the Army, although mutual rivalries also took place. The secret organization murdered several people, including victims who had no connection whatsoever with insurgent groups.
In December 1978, the EGP group leader, Ramon, was captured by soldiers of the military detachment in El Estor and transferred to the military zone of Puerto Barrios; after two years returned to El Estor; but this time as an officer in the Army G2 and joined a group of soldiers that came to the village. On the evening of 28 September 1981, an army officer accompanied by four soldiers and a military commissioner met with about thirty civilians. At seven o'clock, over thirty civilians, mostly from "Nueva Esperanza', including several 'informants' known to military intelligence, gathered around La Llorona along with some military commissioners and a small group of soldiers and army officers. Then they entered the village. Civilians and commissioners entered twelve houses, and each of them were pulling men and shot them dead outside their own homes; those who tried to escape were also killed. Women who tried to protect their husbands were beaten. While the military commissioners and civilians executed men, soldiers subtracted belongings of the victims; within half an hour, the authors of the assault left the village. The victims bodies, fourteen in all, were in front of houses. Women, despite having been threatened with death if they told what happened, ran to the nearest village, El Bongo, for help. After a few hours, women came back with people who helped to bury the bodies. Days later, widows, with almost 60 fatherless children were welcomed by the parish of El Estor for several days, until the soldiers forced them to return to their village. Two widows of those executed on 29 September established close relations with the military commissioners from Bongo. This situation led to divisions that still exist in the community.
The economic and social activity was disrupted in the village: widows had to take the jobs of their husbands; because of their lack of knowledge in the cultivation of land, harvested very little corn and beans. There were diseases, especially among children and the elderly, there was no food or clothing. The teacher of the village came only part-time, mostly out of fear, but left after he realized it was not worth to stay because young people had to work nor could they spend money on travel. The village had no teacher for the next four years. The events generated finally the breakup of the community. Some village women though that their husbands were killed because of three others who were linked with the guerrillas and were involved in a land dispute.
According to the Historical Clarification Commission, the landlord with whom the villagers had the land dispute took advantage of the situation to appropriate another twelve acres of land.
The report of the Recovery of Historical Memory lists 422 massacres committed by both sides in the conflict; however, it also states that they did the best they could in terms of obtaining information and therefore the list is incomplete; therefore here are the cases that have also been documented in other reports as well.
According to a report by the rightist magazine "Crónica", there were 1,258 guerrilla actions against civilians and infrastructure in Guatemala, including more than two hundred murders, sixty eight kidnappings, eleven bombs against embassies and three hundred twenty-nine attacks against civilians. Almost all guerrilla massacres occurred in 1982 when further militarization reigned and there was widespread presence of PAC in communities; many of them were victims of non-cooperation with the guerrillas and in some cases they came after a previous attack by the PAC. In the massacres perpetrated by the guerrillas there is no use of informants, or concentration of population, or separation of groups; also, there are no recounts of rape or repetitive slaughter. There are cases of razed villages and less tendency to mass flight, even thought it occurred in some cases. the use of lists was also more frequent.
In a publication of the Army of Guatemala, sixty massacres perpetrated by the EGP were reported, arguing that they were mostly ignored by REHMI and the Historical Clarification Commission reports. It is also reported that in mid-1982, 32 members of "Star Guerilla Front " were shot for not raising the EGP flag.
On 31 January 1980, Guatemala got worldwide attention when the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City was burnt down, resulting in 37 deaths, including embassy personnel and high ranked Guatemalan former government officials. A group of native people from El Quiché occupied the embassy in a desperate attempt to bring attention to the issues they were having with the Army in that region of the country, which was rich in oil and had been recently populated as part of the "Franja Transversal del Norte" agricultural program. In the end, thirty seven people died after a fire started within the embassy after the police force tried to occupy the building; after that, Spain broke its diplomatic relationships with Guatemala.
On 5 September 1980 a terrorist attack by Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) took place in front of the Guatemalan National Palace, then the headquarters of the Guatemalan government. The intention was to prevent the Guatemalan people to support a huge demonstration that the government of general Lucas Garcia had prepared for Sunday 7 September 1980. In the attack, six adults and a boy died after two bombs inside a vehicle went off.
There was an undetermined number of wounded and heavy material losses, not only from art pieces from the National Palace, but from all the surrounding buildings, particularly in the Lucky Building, which is right across from the Presidential Office. Among the deceased was Domingo Sánchez, Secretary of Agriculture driver; Joaquín Díaz y Díaz, car washer; and Amilcar de Paz, a security guard.
The attacks against private financial, commercial and agricultural targets increased in the Lucas Garcia years, as the leftist Marxist groups saw those institutions as "reactionaries" and "millionaire exploiters" that were collaborating with the genocidal government. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the terrorist attacks that occurred in Guatemala city and are presented in the UN Commission report:
Despite advances by the insurgency, the insurgency made a series of fatal strategic errors. The successes made by the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua against the Somoza regime combined with the insurgency's own successes against the Lucas government led rebel leaders to falsely conclude that a military equilibrium was being reached in Guatemala, thus the insurgency underestimated the military strength of the government. The insurgency subsequently found itself overwhelmed, and was unable to secure its advances and protect the indigenous civilian population from reprisals by the security forces.
In response to the guerrilla offensive in early 1981, the Guatemalan Army began mobilizing for a large-scale rural counter-offensive. The Lucas government instituted a policy of forced recruitment and began organizing a "task-force" model for fighting the insurgency, by which strategic mobile forces were drawn from larger military brigades. To curtail civilian participation in the insurgency and provide greater distinction between "hostile" and compliant communities in the countryside, the army resorted to a series of "civic action" measures. The army under Chief of Staff Benedicto Lucas García (the President's brother) began to search out communities in which to organize and recruit civilians into pro-government paramilitary patrols, who would combat the insurgents and kill their collaborators.
In 1980, and 1981, the United States under Reagan administration delivered $10.5 million worth of Bell 212 and Bell 412 helicopters and $3.2 million worth of military trucks and jeeps to the Guatemalan Army. In 1981, the Reagan administration also approved a $2 million covert CIA program for Guatemala.
On 15 April 1981, EGP rebels attacked a Guatemalan Army patrol from the village of Cocob near Nebaj, killing five personnel. On 17 April 1981, a reinforced company of Airborne troops was deployed to the village. They discovered fox holes, guerrillas and a hostile population. The local people appeared to fully support the guerrillas. "The soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The army killed 65 civilians, including 34 children, five adolescents, 23 adults and two elderly people.
In July 1981, the armed forces initiated a new phase of counterinsurgency operations under the code-name ""Operación Ceniza,"" or "Operation Ashes," which lasted through March 1982. The purpose of the operation was to "separate and isolate the insurgents from the civilian population." During ""Operación Ceniza"" some 15,000 troops were deployed on a gradual sweep through the predominantly indigenous Altiplano region, comprising the departments of El Quiché and Huehuetenango.
Large numbers of civilians were killed or displaced in the Guatemalan military's counterinsurgency operations. To alienate the insurgents from their civilian base, the army carried out large-scale mass killing of unarmed civilians, burned villages and crops, and butchered animals, destroying survivors' means of livelihood. Sources with the human rights office of the Catholic Church estimated the death toll from the counterinsurgency in 1981 at 11,000, with most of the victims indigenous peasants of the Guatemalan highlands. Other sources and observers put the death toll due to government repression in 1981 at between 9,000 and 13,500.
As army repression intensified in the countryside, relations between the Guatemalan military establishment and the Lucas Garcia regime worsened. Professionals within the Guatemalan military considered the Lucas approach counterproductive, on grounds that the Lucas government's strategy of military action and systematic terror overlooked the social and ideological causes of the insurgency while radicalizing the civilian population. Additionally, Lucas went against the military's interests by endorsing his defense minister, Angel Anibal Guevara, as a candidate in the March 1982 presidential elections.
The guerrilla organizations in 1982 combined to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). At the same time, extreme right-wing groups of self-appointed vigilantes, including the Secret Anti-Communist Army (ESA) and the White Hand ("La Mano Blanca"), tortured and murdered students, professionals, and peasants suspected of involvement in leftist activities.
On 23 March 1982, army troops commanded by junior officers staged a coup d'état to prevent the assumption of power by General Ángel Aníbal Guevara, the hand-picked candidate of outgoing President and General Romeo Lucas García. They denounced Guevara's electoral victory as fraudulent. The coup leaders asked retired Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to negotiate the departure of Lucas Guevara. Ríos Montt had been the candidate of the Christian Democracy Party in the 1974 presidential election and was widely regarded as having been denied his own victory through fraud.
Ríos Montt was by this time a lay pastor in the evangelical Protestant Church of the Word. In his inaugural address, he stated that his presidency resulted from the will of God. He was widely perceived as having strong backing from the Reagan administration in the United States. He formed a three-member military junta that annulled the 1965 constitution, dissolved Congress, suspended political parties and canceled the electoral law. After a few months, Montt dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the "de facto" title of "President of the Republic".
Guerrilla forces and their leftist allies denounced Montt, who sought to defeat them by a combination of military actions and economic reforms; in his words, "rifles and beans". In May 1982, the Conference of Catholic Bishops accused Montt of responsibility for growing militarization of the country and for continuing military massacres of civilians. An army officer was quoted in "The New York Times" of 18 July 1982 as telling an audience of indigenous Guatemalans in Cunén that: "If you are with us, we'll feed you; if not, we'll kill you."
The Plan de Sánchez massacre occurred on the same day.
The government began to form local civilian defense patrols (PACs). Participation was in theory voluntary, but in practice, many rural Guatemalan men (including young boys and the elderly), especially in the northwest, had no choice but to join either the PACs or be considered guerrillas. At their peak, the PACs are estimated to have included 1 million conscripts. Montt's conscript army and PACs recaptured essentially all guerrilla territory. The insurgents' activity lessened and was largely limited to hit-and-run operations. Montt won this partial victory at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.
Montt's brief presidency was probably the most violent period of the 36-year internal conflict, which resulted in thousands of deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians. Although leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads also engaged in summary executions, forced disappearances, and torture of noncombatants, the vast majority of human rights violations were carried out by the Guatemalan military and the PACs they controlled. The internal conflict is described in great detail in the reports of the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) and the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights (ODHAG). The CEH estimates that government forces were responsible for 93% of the violations; ODHAG earlier estimated that government forces were responsible for 80%.
On 8 August 1983, Montt was deposed by his Minister of Defense, General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, who succeeded him as "de facto" president of Guatemala. Mejía justified his coup, based on problems with "religious fanatics" in government and "official corruption". Seven people were killed in the coup. Montt survived to found a political party (the Guatemalan Republic Front) and to be elected President of Congress in 1995 and again in 2000.
Awareness in the United States of the conflict in Guatemala, and its ethnic dimension, increased with the 1983 publication of the "testimonial" account "I, Rigoberta Menchú", a memoir by a leading activist. Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in favor of broader social justice. In 1998, a book by U.S. anthropologist David Stoll challenged some of the details in Menchú's book, creating an international controversy. After the publication of Stoll's book, the Nobel Committee reiterated that it had awarded the Peace Prize based on Menchú's uncontested work promoting human rights and the peace process.
General Mejía allowed a managed return to democracy in Guatemala, starting with a 1 July 1984 election for a Constituent Assembly to draft a democratic constitution. On 30 May 1985, after nine months of debate, the Constituent Assembly finished drafting a new constitution, which took effect immediately. Vinicio Cerezo, a civilian politician and the presidential candidate of the Christian Democracy Party, won the first election held under the new constitution with almost 70% of the vote, and took office on 14 January 1986.
Upon its inauguration in January 1986, President Cerezo's civilian government announced that its top priorities would be to end the political violence and establish the rule of law. Reforms included new laws of habeas corpus and "amparo" (court-ordered protection), the creation of a legislative human rights committee, and the establishment in 1987 of the Office of Human Rights Ombudsman. The Supreme Court embarked on a series of reforms to fight corruption and improve legal system efficiency.
With Cerezo's election, the military returned to the more traditional role of providing internal security, specifically by fighting armed insurgents. The first two years of Cerezo's administration were characterized by a stable economy and a marked decrease in political violence. Dissatisfied military personnel made two coup attempts in May 1988 and May 1989, but the military leadership supported the constitutional order. The government was strongly criticized for its reluctance to investigate or prosecute cases of human rights violations.
The final two years of Cerezo's government were marked by a failing economy, strikes, protest marches, and allegations of widespread corruption. The government's inability to deal with many of the nation's social and health problems — such as infant mortality, illiteracy, deficient health and social services, and rising levels of violence — contributed to popular discontent.
Presidential and congressional elections were held on 11 November 1990. After a runoff ballot, Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías was inaugurated on 14 January 1991, completing the first successful transition from one democratically elected civilian government to another. Because his Movement of Solidarity Action (MAS) Party gained only 18 of 116 seats in Congress, Serrano entered into a tenuous coalition with the Christian Democrats and the National Union of the Center (UCN) to form a government.
The Serrano administration's record was mixed. It had some success in consolidating civilian control over the army, replacing a number of senior officers and persuading the military to participate in peace talks with the URNG. He took the politically unpopular step of recognizing the sovereignty of Belize, which had long been officially, though fruitlessly, claimed as a province by Guatemala. The Serrano government reversed the economic slide it inherited, reducing inflation and boosting real growth.
In 1992, Efraín Bámaca, a notable guerrilla leader also known as Comandante Everardo, "disappeared." It was later found that Bámaca was tortured and killed that year by Guatemalan Army officers. His widow, the American Jennifer Harbury, and members of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, based in Washington, DC, raised protests that ultimately led the United States to declassify documents going back to 1954 related to its actions in Guatemala. It was learned that the CIA had been funding the military, although Congress had prohibited such funding since 1990 because of the Army's human rights abuses. Congress forced the CIA to end its aid to the Guatemalan Army.
On 25 May 1993, Serrano illegally dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court and tried to restrict civil freedoms, allegedly to fight corruption. The "autogolpe" (palace coup) failed due to unified, strong protests by most elements of Guatemalan society, international pressure, and the army's enforcement of the decisions of the Court of Constitutionality, which ruled against the attempted takeover. In the face of this pressure, Serrano fled the country.
On 5 June 1993, Congress, pursuant to the 1985 constitution, elected the Human Rights Ombudsman, Ramiro de León Carpio, to complete Serrano's presidential term. De León was not a member of any political party. Lacking a political base but with strong popular support, he launched an ambitious anti-corruption campaign to "purify" Congress and the Supreme Court, demanding the resignations of all members of the two bodies.
Despite considerable congressional resistance, presidential and popular pressure led to a November 1993 agreement brokered by the Catholic Church between the administration and Congress. This package of constitutional reforms was approved by popular referendum on 30 January 1994. In August 1994, a new Congress was elected to complete the unexpired term. Controlled by the anti-corruption parties: the populist Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) headed by Ríos Montt, and the center-right National Advancement Party (PAN), the new Congress began to abandon the corruption that characterized its predecessors.
Under de León, the peace process, now brokered by the United Nations, took on new life. The government and the URNG signed agreements on human rights (March 1994), resettlement of displaced persons (June 1994), historical clarification (June 1994), and indigenous rights (March 1995). They also made significant progress on a socioeconomic and agrarian agreement.
National elections for president, Congress, and municipal offices were held in November 1995. With almost 20 parties competing in the first round, the presidential election came down to a 7 January 1996 runoff in which PAN candidate Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen defeated Alfonso Portillo Cabrera of the FRG by just over 2% of the vote. Arzú won because of his strength in Guatemala City, where he had previously served as mayor, and in the surrounding urban area. Portillo won all of the rural departments except Petén. Under the Arzú administration, peace negotiations were concluded, and the government signed peace accords ending the 36-year internal conflict in December 1996. (See section on peace process)
The human rights situation remained difficult during Arzú's tenure, although some initial steps were taken to reduce the influence of the military in national affairs. The most notable human rights case of this period was the brutal slaying of Bishop Juan José Gerardi on 24 April 1998, two days after he had publicly presented a major Catholic Church-sponsored human rights report known as "", summarizing testimony about human rights abuses during the Civil War. It was prepared by the Recovery of Historical Memory project, known by the acronym of REMHI. In 2001, three Army officers were convicted in civil court and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for his murder.
Guatemala held presidential, legislative, and municipal elections on 7 November 1999, and a runoff presidential election on 26 December. Alfonso Portillo was criticized during the campaign for his relationship with the FRG's chairman, former president Ríos Montt. Many charge that some of the worst human rights violations of the internal conflict were committed under Ríos Montt's rule.
In the first round the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) won 63 of 113 legislative seats, while the National Advancement Party (PAN) won 37. The New Nation Alliance (ANN) won nine legislative seats, and three minority parties won the remaining four. In the runoff on 26 December, Alfonso Portillo (FRG) won 68% of the vote to 32% for Óscar Berger (PAN). Portillo carried all 22 departments and Guatemala City, which was considered the PAN's stronghold.
Portillo's impressive electoral triumph, with two-thirds of the vote in the second round, gave him a mandate from the people to carry out his reform program. He pledged to maintain strong ties to the United States, enhance Guatemala's growing cooperation with Mexico, and join in the integration process in Central America and the Western Hemisphere. Domestically, he vowed to support continued liberalization of the economy, increase investment in human capital and infrastructure, establish an independent central bank, and increase revenue by stricter enforcement of tax collections rather than increasing taxation.
Portillo also promised to continue the peace process, appoint a civilian defense minister, reform the armed forces, replace the military presidential security service with a civilian one, and strengthen protection of human rights. He appointed a pluralist cabinet, including indigenous members and individuals who were independent of the FRG ruling party.
Progress in carrying out Portillo's reform agenda during his first year in office was slow. As a result, public support for the government sank to nearly record lows by early 2001. The administration made progress on such issues as taking state responsibility for past human rights cases and supporting human rights in international fora. It struggled to prosecute past human rights cases, and to achieve military reforms or a fiscal pact to help finance programs to implement peace. It is seeking legislation to increase political participation by residents.
The prosecution by Portillo's government of suspects in Bishop Gerardi's murder set a precedent in 2001; it was the first time military officers in Guatemala had been tried in civil courts.
Faced with a high crime rate, a public corruption problem, often violent harassment and intimidation by unknown assailants of human rights activists, judicial workers, journalists, and witnesses in human rights trials, the government began serious attempts in 2001 to open a national dialogue to discuss the considerable challenges facing the country.
In July 2003, the Jueves Negro demonstrations rocked the capital, forcing the closing of the US embassy and the UN mission. Supporters of Ríos Montt called for his return to power, demanding that the courts lift a ban against former coup leaders participating in government. They wanted Montt to run as a presidential candidate in the 2003 elections. The FRG fed the demonstrators.
On 9 November 2003, Óscar Berger, a former mayor of Guatemala city, won the presidential election with 39% of the vote. As he failed to achieve a fifty percent majority, he had to go through a runoff election on 28 December, which he also won. He defeated the center-left candidate Álvaro Colom. Allowed to run, Montt trailed a distant third with 11% of the vote.
In early October 2005, Guatemala was devastated by Hurricane Stan. Although a relatively weak storm, it triggered a flooding disaster, resulting in at least 1,500 people dead and thousands homeless.
Determined to make progress against crime and internal police corruption, Óscar Berger in December 2006 came to agreement with the United Nations to gain support for judicial enforcement of its laws. They created the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an independent institution, which is to assist the Office of the Prosecutor of Guatemala, the National Police Force, and other investigative institutions. Their goal was to prosecute cells linked to organised crime and to drug trafficking. CICIG has the authority to conduct its own inquiries, and to refer the most significant cases to the national judiciary. The stated objective of CICIG is to "reinforce the national criminal justice system and to help it with its reforms."
, CICIG has led inquiries into some 20 cases. It is acting as Deputy Prosecutor in eight other cases. CICIG conducted the investigations leading to an arrest warrant against Erwin Sperisen, former Head of the National Civilian Police (Policia Nacional Civil – PNC) from 2004 to 2007. With dual Swiss-Guatemalan citizenship, he fled to Switzerland to escape prosecution in Guatemala for numerous extrajudicial killings and police corruption. In addition, 17 other persons are covered by arrest warrants related to these crimes, including several former highly placed political figures of Guatemala.
Retired general Otto Pérez Molina was elected president along with Roxana Baldetti, the first ever woman vice president in Guatemala; the began their term in office on 14 January 2012. But on 16 April 2015, UN anti-corruption agency CICIG issued a report that implicated several high-profile politicians including Vice President Baldetti's private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzón and the director of the Guatemalan Internal Revenue Service. The revelations generated public outrage that had not been seen since the times of general Kjell Eugenio Laugerud Garcia presidency. The CICIG, working with the Guatemalan attorney general, revealed the scam known as "La Línea", following a year-long investigation that included wire taps; officials received bribes from importers in exchange for reducing tariffs the importers were required to pay, a procedure that as rooted in a long tradition of customs corruption in the country, as successive military governments tried to raise funds for counterinsurgency operations during Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war.
Citizens created an event on Facebook inviting all their friends to go to Guatemala City historic downtown to ask for Vice President Baldetti's resignation with the hashtag #RenunciaYa (Resign Now). Within days, over 10,000 people said they would attend. Quickly the organizers realized that for the action to succeed, they had to guarantee that no one would be harmed and The group set a series of rules making clear that no political party or group was behind that event, instructing protesters to follow the law, and urging people to bring water, food and sunblock but not cover their faces or wear party political colors. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Guatemala City, and due to the pressure, Baldetti resigned a few days later and was forced to remain in the country after the United States removed her visa to visit that country and the Guatemalan government arraigned her as there was enough suspicion to assume that she might be involved in "La Linea" scandal. This, and the prominent presence of US Ambassador Todd Robinson in the Guatemalan political scene since the scandal broke loose brought up the suspicion in Guatemalans that the US government was behind the investigation because it needed a government sympathetic to the US in Guatemala to counter the presence of China and Russia in the region.
Since then, the UN anti-corruption committee has reported on other cases and more than 20 government officials have stepped down, some have been arrested. Of those, the largest are the ones that involve two former president private secretaries: Juan de Dios Rodríguez in the Guatemalan Social Service and Gustavo Martínez, who was involved in a bribe scandal in the coil mega power plant Jaguar Energy. Martinez was also President Perez Molina's son-in-law.
But also political opposition leaders have been involved in CICIG investigations: several legislators and members of Libertad Democrática Renovada party (LIDER) were formally accused of bribery-related issues, prompting a large decline in the electorate trend for its presidential candidate, Manuel Baldizón, who before April was almost certain to become the next Guatemalan president in the 6 September 2015 presidential elections. Baldizón popularity suffered a steep decline and he even went on to accuse CICIG leader, Iván Velásquez, of international obstruction with Guatemalan internal affairs before the Organization of American States.
CICIG presented so many cases on Thursdays that Guatemalans started calling them "CICIG's Thursdays". But it was a Friday press conference that brought up the crisis to its peak: on Friday 21 August 2015, CICIG and the Attorney General, Thelma Aldana, presented an investigation showing enough evidence to believe that both President Pérez Molina and former Vice President Baldetti were the actual leaders of "La Línea". Baldetti was arrested that same day and an impeachment was requested for the president. As a result, several cabinet members resigned, and the clamor for the president's resignation grew to unprecedented levels after President Perez Molina defiantly assured the nation that he was not going to resign on a televised message transmitted on 23 August 2015.
After a thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand the increasingly isolated president's resignation, Guatemala's Congress named a commission of five legislators to consider whether to remove the president's immunity from prosecution. The request was approved by the supreme court. A major day of action kicked off early on Thursday 27 August, with marches and roadblocks across the country. Urban groups, which have spearheaded regular protests since the scandal broke in April, on Thursday 27th sought to unite with rural and indigenous organizations who have orchestrated the road blocks.
This strike in Guatemala City was filled to bursting with a diverse and peaceful crowd ranging from the indigenous poor to the well-heeled, and included many students from public and private universities. Hundreds of schools and businesses closed in support of the protests. The organization grouping Guatemala's most powerful business leaders issued a statement demanding that Pérez Molina step down, and urged Congress to withdraw his immunity from prosecution.
The attorney general's office released its own statement calling on the president to resign, "to prevent ungovernability that could destabilize the nation." As pressure mounted, the president's former ministers of defense and the interior, who were named in the corruption investigation and resigned from cabinet recently, left the country. Pérez Molina, meanwhile, has been losing support by the day. The powerful private sector – until then a loyal supporter of Molina, their former defender in the Army during the Guatemalan Civil War – called for his resignation; however, he also has managed to get support from entrepreneurs that are not affiliated to the private sector chambers: Mario López Estrada – grand child of former dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera and the billionaire owner of cellular phone companies – had some of his executives assume the cabinet positions that had been vacated days before.
The Guatemalan radio station TGTO (“Emisoras Unidas”) reported having a text message exchange with Perez Molina, who when asked about whether he planned to resign, wrote: "I will face whatever is necessary to face, and what the law requires." Some protesters have demanded the general election be postponed, both because of the crisis and because it is plagued with accusations of irregularities. Others warn that suspending the vote could lead to an institutional vacuum. However, on 2 September 2015 Molina quit from office after Congress impeached him a day before, and on 3 September 2015 he was summoned to the Justice Department to face his first legal audience for the .
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12157
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History of Latvia
The history of Latvia began around 9000 BC with the end of the last glacial period in northern Europe. Ancient Baltic peoples arrived in the area during the second millennium BC, and four distinct tribal realms in Latvia's territory were identifiable towards the end of the first millennium AD. Latvia's principal river Daugava, was at the head of an important trade route from the Baltic region through Russia into southern Europe and the Middle East that was used by the Vikings and later Nordic and German traders.
In the early medieval period, the region's peoples resisted Christianisation and became subject to attack in the Northern Crusades. Latvia's capital city Riga, founded in 1201 by Germans at the mouth of the Daugava, became a strategic base in a papally-sanctioned conquest of the area by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. It was to be the first major city of the southern Baltic and, after 1282, a principal trading centre in the Hanseatic League.
By the 16th century, Baltic German dominance in Terra Mariana was increasingly challenged by other powers. Due to Latvia's strategic location and prosperous trading city of Riga, its territories were a frequent focal point for conflict and conquest between at least four major powers: the State of the Teutonic Order, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden and Russian Empire. The last period of external hegemony began in 1710, when control over Riga and parts of modern-day Latvia switched from Sweden to Russia during the Great Northern War. Under Russian control, Latvia was in the vanguard of industrialisation and the abolition of serfdom, so that by the end of the 19th century, it had become one of the most developed parts of the Russian Empire. The increasing social problems and rising discontent that this brought meant that Riga also played a leading role in the 1905 Russian Revolution.
The First Latvian National Awakening began in the 1850s and continued to bear fruit after World War I when, after two years of struggle in the Latvian War of Independence, Latvia finally won sovereign independence, as recognised by Soviet Russia in 1920 and by the international community in 1921. The Constitution of Latvia was adopted in 1922. Political instability and effects of the Great Depression led to the May 15, 1934 coup d'état by Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis. Latvia's independence was interrupted in June–July 1940, when the country was occupied and incorporated into the Soviet Union. In 1941 it was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany, then reconquered by the Soviets in 1944–45.
From the mid-1940s Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic was subject to Soviet economic control and saw considerable Russification of its peoples. However, Latvian culture and infrastructures survived and, during the period of Soviet liberalisation under Mikhail Gorbachev, Latvia once again took a path towards independence, eventually succeeding in August 1991 to be recognised by Russia the following month. Since then, under restored independence, Latvia has become a member of the United Nations, entered NATO and joined the European Union.
Latvia's economy suffered greatly during the Great Recession which caused the 2008 Latvian financial crisis. Worsening economic conditions and better job opportunities in Western Europe have caused a massive Latvian emigration.
The Ice Age in the territory of present-day Latvia ended 14,000–12,000 years ago. The first human settlers arrived here during the Paleolithic Age 11,000–12,000 years ago. They were hunters, who following the reindeer herds camped along the rivers and shore of the Baltic Ice Lake. As geology of the Baltic Sea indicates, the coastline then reached further inland. The earliest tools found near Salaspils date to the late Paleolithic age, circa 12,000 years ago, and belong to the Swiderian culture.
During the Mesolithic Age (9000 – 5400 BC) permanent settlements of hunter-gatherers were established. They hunted and fished, establishing camps near rivers and lakes; 25 settlements have been found near Lake Lubāns. These people from the Kunda culture made weapons and tools from flint, antler, bone and wood.
The early Neolithic (5400 – 4100 BC) was marked by beginnings of pottery-making, animal husbandry and agriculture.
During the Middle Neolithic (4100 – 2900 BC) the local Narva culture developed in the region. Inhabitants of this age were Finno-Ugric peoples, forefathers of Livonians who are closely related to Estonians and Finns and belonged to Pit–Comb Ware culture.
At the beginning of the Late Neolithic (2900 – 1800 BC), present day Latvia was settled by Baltic people belonging to the Corded Ware culture. They were forefathers of Latvians, who have inhabited most of Latvian territory since the third millennium BCE.
With introduction of iron tools during the early Iron Age (500 BC – 1st cent. BC) agriculture was greatly improved and emerged as the dominant economic activity. Bronze, which was traded from foreigners because Latvia has no copper or tin, was used for making a wide variety of decorative ornaments.
Starting from the Middle Iron Age (400–800 AD) the local inhabitants began to form distinct ethnic and regional identities. Baltic tribesmen eventually became Curonians, Semigallians, Latgalians and Selonians, while Finno-Ugric people became Livonians, Estonians and Vends; local chiefdoms emerged.
At the beginning of current era, the territory known today as Latvia became famous as a trading crossroads. The renowned trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks mentioned in ancient chronicles stretched from Scandinavia through Latvian territory via Daugava to the ancient Kievan Rus' and Byzantine Empire. The ancient Balts actively participated in this trading network. Across the Europe Latvia's coast was known as a place for obtaining amber and Latvia sometimes is still called "Dzintarzeme" (Amberland). Up to and into the Middle Ages, amber was more valuable than gold in many places. Latvian amber was known in places as far away as Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, and the Amber Road was intensively used for the transfer of amber to the south of Europe.
During the Vendel Period near the town of Grobiņa a Scandinavian settlement was established, most likely, by people from Gotland. This colony which numbered a few hundred people existed sometime from 650 – 850 AD. Multiple chronicles mention that Curonians paid a tribute to Swedish kings.
During the Late Iron Age (800–1200 AD) the three-field system was introduced, rye cultivation began, quality of local craftsmanship improved with introduction of potter's wheel and better metal working techniques. Arab, Western European and Anglo-Saxon coins dating from this era have been found. A network of wooden hill-forts was built, which provided control and security over the land.
In the 10th century, the various ancient Baltic tribal chiefdoms started forming early realms. Regional tribal cultures developed in the territory of modern-day Latvia and northern Lithuania, including the Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians () and Livonians, who united under their local chiefs.
The largest tribe was the Latgalians who also were the most advanced in their socio-political development. The main Latgalian principality, Jersika, was ruled by Greek Orthodox princes from the Latgalian-Polotsk branch of the Rurik dynasty. The last ruler of Jersika, mentioned in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (a document that describes events of the late 12th and early 13th centuries) was King Visvaldis ("Vissewalde, rex de Gercike"). When he divided his realm in 1211, part of the country was called "Lettia" ("terra, quae Lettia dicitur"), probably the first time this name is mentioned in written sources.
In contrast, the Couronians, whose territories extended into today's Lithuania and Curonian Spit, maintained a lifestyle of sea invasions that included looting and pillaging. On the west coast of the Baltic Sea they became known as the "Baltic Vikings."
Selonians and Semgallians, closely related to Aukštaitians and Samogitians, were known as prosperous farmers and resisted Germans the longest under such chiefs as Viestards. Livonians lived along the shores of the Gulf of Riga and were fishers and traders, and they gave the first German name to this territory – Livland.
Before the German invasions started in late 12th century, Latvia was inhabited by about 135,000 Baltic people and 20,000 Livonians.
By the end of the 12th century, Latvia was increasingly often visited by traders from Western Europe who set out on trading journeys along Latvia's longest river, the Daugava, to Kievan Rus'. Among them were German traders who came with Christian preachers who attempted to convert the pagan Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes to the Christian faith.
In early 1180s Saint Meinhard began his mission among Daugava Livonians. They did not willingly convert to the new beliefs and practices, they particularly opposed the ritual of baptism. News of this reached Pope Celestine III in Rome, and it was decided in 1195 that Livonian Crusade would be undertaken to convert pagans by force. Meinhard was followed by Berthold of Hanover, who was killed in 1198 near the present-day Riga by Livonians.
The real founder of the German power in Latvia was Berthold's successor, Bishop Albert of Riga who spent almost 30 years conquering local rulers. Much of this period is described in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry. Bishop Albert of Riga founded Riga in 1201, and gradually it became the largest city in the southern part of the Baltic Sea.
A state known as Terra Mariana, later Livonian Confederation, was established in 1207. It consisted of various territories that belonged to the Church and Order in what is now Latvia and Estonia and was under the direct authority of the Pope of Rome. In 1228 the Livonian Confederation was established.
The Order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword was founded in 1202 to subjugate the local population. The Livonians were conquered by 1207 and most of the Latgalians by 1214. When Brothers of the Sword were decimated at the Battle of Saule in 1236, they asked for incorporation into the Teutonic Order as the Livonian Order. In 1260, the Battle of Durbe destroyed Teuton hopes for a wide land bridge between their territories in Prussia and Courland.
By the end of the 13th century, the Curonians and Semigallians were subjugated (in 1290 the majority of Semigallians left German-conquered areas and moved to Lithuania), and the development of the separate tribal realms of the ancient Latvians came to an end as Germans introduced direct rule over subjected peoples.
In 1282, Riga (and later Cēsis, Limbaži, Koknese and Valmiera) were included in the Northern German Trading Organisation, better known as the Hanseatic League (Hansa). From this time, Riga became an important point in west–east trading, and it formed closer cultural contacts with Western Europe.
Between 1297 and 1330 the Livonian Civil War raged, which started as a conflict between the Bishop of Riga and the Livonian Order.
Native people initially retained much of their personal freedoms as the number of Germans was too small to implement a total control beyond the requirements to follow Christian rites, pay the required taxes and participate as soldier in wars. In case of Curonian Kings the former tribal nobility retained a privileged status until the proclamation of independent Latvia. During the 14th century peasants had to pay 10% to the Church and work 4 days of socage per year.
In the 15th–16th centuries, the hereditary landed class of Baltic nobility gradually evolved from the German vassals of the Order and bishops. In time, their descendants came to own vast estates over which they exercised absolute rights. At the end of the Middle Ages this Baltic German minority had established themselves as the governing elite, partly as an urban trading population in the cities, and partly as rural landowners, via a vast manorial network of estates in Latvia. The titled landowners wielded economic and political power; they had a duty to care for the peasants dependent on them, however in practice the latter were forced into serfdom.
By 16th century sockage had increased to 4 – 6 days per week and various taxes to 25%. Peasants increasingly tried to escape to freedom, either by moving to Riga (they could gain freedom if they lived there for one year and one day) or another manor. In 1494 a law was passed which forbade peasants to leave their land, virtually enslaving them.
The Reformation reached Livonia in 1521 with Luther's follower Andreas Knöpken. During the Protestant riot of 1524 Catholic churches were attacked and in 1525 freedom of religion was allowed. First Latvian parishes were established and services held in Latvian. Protestants gained support in the cities, and by the middle of the 16th century the majority of the population had converted to Lutheranism.
The Livonian Confederation ceased to exist during the long Livonian War of 1558–82. The Livonian Order was dissolved by the Treaty of Vilnius in 1561. The following year, the Livonian Landtag decided to ask protection from King Sigismund II of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the end of government by the last Archbishop of Riga, William of Brandenburg, Riga became a Free Imperial City and the rest of the territory was divided into Polish-Lithuanian vassal states - Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (Polish vassal) and the Duchy of Livonia (Lithuanian vassal).
Livonian war put an end to the Livonian Confederacy. Despite the very real threat of Muscovite rule over the whole Livonia, Western Christian countries managed to establish their control over this area for the next 150 – 200 years.
In September 1557 the Livonian Confederation and the Polish–Lithuanian union signed the Treaty of Pozvol, which created a mutual defensive and offensive alliance. Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Muscovy regarded this as a provocation, and in January 1558 he reacted with the invasion of Livonia that began the Livonian War of 1558–83. On August 2, 1560 the forces of Ivan the Terrible destroyed the last few hundred soldiers of the Livonian Order and the Archbishop of Riga at the Battle of Ērģeme.
In 1561 the weakened Livonian Order was dissolved by the Treaty of Vilnius. Very much following the earlier model of Prussian Homage its lands were secularised as the Duchy of Livonia (Lithuanian vassal) and the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (Polish vassal) were created. The last Master of the Order Gotthard Kettler became the first Duke of Courland and converted to Lutheranism.
In 1560 Johannes IV von Münchhausen, the prince-bishop of Ösel-Wiek and Courland, sold his lands to king Frederick II of Denmark for 30,000 thalers. To avoid partition of his lands, King Frederick II gave these territories to his younger brother Magnus, Duke of Holstein on condition that he renounce his rights to succession in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Magnus was recognised as sovereign by the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek and Courland and as the prospective ruler of his lands by the authorities of The Bishopric of Dorpat. The Bishopric of Reval with the Harrien-Wierland gentry took his side. Gotthard Kettler, the last Master of the Livonian Order, gave Magnus the portions of Livonia he had taken possession of, along with Archbishop Wilhelm von Brandenburg of the Archbishopric of Riga and his coadjutor Christoph von Mecklenburg.
On June 10, 1570 Duke Magnus of Holstein arrived in Moscow, where he was crowned King of Livonia. Magnus took an oath of allegiance to Ivan the Terrible as his overlord and received from him the corresponding charter for the vassal kingdom of Livonia in what Ivan termed his patrimony. The armies of Ivan the Terrible were initially successful, taking Polotsk in 1563 and Pärnu in 1575 and overrunning much of Grand Duchy of Lithuania up to Vilnius.
In the next phase of the conflict, in 1577 Ivan IV took opportunity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's internal strife (called the war against Gdańsk in Polish historiography), and during the reign of Stefan Batory invaded Livonia, quickly taking almost the entire territory, with the exception of Riga and Revel.
In 1578 Magnus of Livonia recognized the sovereignty of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (not ratified by the Sejm of Poland-Lithuania, or recognized by Denmark). In 1578 Magnus retired to The Bishopric of Courland where he lived in Piltene Castle and accepted Polish pension. After he died in 1583, Poland annexed his territories to the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and Frederick II decided to sell his rights of inheritance. Except for the island of Œsel, Denmark was out of the Baltic by 1585.
Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz became the first Governor of the Duchy (1566–1578) with the seat in Sigulda Castle. It was a province of Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1569. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, it became a joint domain of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy. Muscovy recognized Polish–Lithuanian control of Ducatus Ultradunensis in 1582.
In 1598 Duchy of Livonia was divided onto:
The larger part of the Duchy was conquered by Swedish Kingdom during the Polish–Swedish War (1626–29), and was recognized as Swedish territory in the Truce of Altmark. The Commonwealth retained southeastern parts of the Wenden Voivodeship, renamed to Inflanty Voivodeship with the capital in Daugavpils ("Dyneburg"). Catholicism became the dominant religion in this territory, known as Inflanty or Latgale, as a result of Counter-Reformation. During the first Partition of Poland in 1772, when it was annexed by Catherine the Great's Russian Empire and title "Grand Duke of Livonia" was added to the grand title of Russian Emperors.
During the Polish–Swedish War (1600–1629) Riga and the largest part of Duchy of Livonia came under Swedish rule in 1621. During the Swedish rule this region was known as the "Swedish Bread Basket" because it supplied the larger part of the Swedish Kingdom with wheat.
Riga was the second largest city in the Swedish Empire at the time. Together with other Baltic Sea dominions, Livonia served to secure the Swedish "Dominium maris baltici". In contrast to Swedish Estonia, which had submitted to Swedish rule voluntarily in 1561 and where traditional local laws remained largely untouched, the uniformity policy was applied in Swedish Livonia under Karl XI of Sweden: serfdom was abolished in the estates owned by the Swedish crown, peasants were offered education and military, administrative or ecclesiastical careers, and nobles had to transfer domains to the king in the Great Reduction. These reforms were subsequently reversed by Peter I of Russia when he conquered Livonia.
In 1632 the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus founded Dorpat University which became the intellectual focus for population of Livonia. The translation of the whole Bible into Latvian in 1685 by Johann Ernst Glück was subsidized by the Swedish government. Schools for Latvian speaking peasantry were set up in the country parishes. In Latvian history this period is generally praised as the "good Swedish times".
After Gotthard Kettler became the first duke, other members of the Order became the nobility, with their fiefdoms becoming their estates. Kettler received nearly one-third of the land in the new duchy. Mitau (Jelgava) was designated as the capital and a Landtag was to meet there twice a year.
When Gotthard Kettler died in 1587, his sons Friedrich and Wilhelm became the dukes of Courland. They divided the Duchy into two parts in 1596. Friedrich controlled the eastern part, Semigalia ("Zemgale"), with his residence in Mitau (Jelgava). Wilhelm owned the western part, Courland ("Kurzeme"), with his residence in Goldingen (Kuldīga). Wilhelm regained the Grobiņa district when he married the daughter of the Duke of Prussia. Here he developed metalworking, shipyards, and the new ships delivered the goods of Courland to other countries. Wilhelm's conflict with local nobles ended with his removal from the duke's seat in 1616 and Friedrich became the only duke of Courland after 1616.
Under the next duke, Jacob Kettler, the Duchy reached the peak of its prosperity. During his travels in Western Europe, Jacob became the eager proponent of mercantilist ideas. Metalworking and ship building became much more developed, and powder mills began producing gunpowder. Trading relations developed not only with nearby countries, but also with Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. Jacob established the merchant fleet of the Duchy of Courland, with its main harbours in Windau and Libau. In Windau 120 ships were built, of which over 40 were warships. The duchy owned large fleet and established two colonies — St. Andrews Island in the estuary of Gambia River (in Africa) and Tobago Island (in the Caribbean Sea). Courland related place names from this period still survive today in these places.
The last duke, Peter von Biron who ruled under heavy Russian influence founded Academia Petrina in 1775. In April 1786 he purchased the Duchy of Sagan from the Bohemian Lobkovic family, from then additionally using the title of Duke of Żagań. In 1795, Russia determined the further fate of Courland when with its allies it began the third division of Poland. Given a "nice recommendation" by Russia, Duke gave up his rights in return of large payment, signing of the final document on March 28, 1795.
Enlightenment ideas influenced local Baltic Germans, two of whom played great role in the creation of Latvian nation. Gotthard Friedrich Stender wrote the first Latvian-German and German-Latvian dictionaries. He also wrote the first encyclopedia “The book of high wisdom of the world and nature” (1774) and the first illustrated Latvian alphabet book (1787).
Garlieb Merkel in 1796 published his book “The Latvians” in which exposed the horrible conditions of serfdom under which Latvians were forced to live because of cruelty of their German masters.
In 1700 the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia started largely because Peter the Great wanted to secure and enlarge Russian access to the Baltic ports. In 1710 Russians conquered Riga and Estonia and Livonia capitulated. Losses from the military actions were multiplied by the Great Northern War plague outbreak which killed up to 75% of people in some areas.
In 1713 Peter established the Riga Governorate, and after various administrative and territorial reforms, Governorate of Livonia was finally established in 1796. Latvians call it Vidzeme Governorate ("Vidzemes guberņa"). Sweden officially gave up its claims to Swedish Livonia with the 1721 Treaty of Nystad. The Treaty enshrined the existing privileges and freedoms of the German Baltic nobility. They were allowed to maintain their financial system, existing customs border, self-governing provincial Landtags and city councils, Lutheran religion and German language. This special position in the Russian Empire was reconfirmed by all Russian Emperors from Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) to Alexander II (reigned 1855-1881). Only the 1889 judicial reform imposed Russian laws and a program of Russification enforced school education in Russian.
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772 Russia gained Inflanty Voivodeship which was first included in the Mogilev Governorate and after 1802 in Vitebsk Governorate. This led to increased cultural and linguistic separation of Latgalians from the rest of ethnic Latvians. A large Daugavpils fortress was built here.
After the Third Partition of Poland and financial settlement with the last Duke of Courland and Semigallia in 1795 the Courland Governorate was created in which the Germans retained their privileges and autonomy for another century. Russian empire now possessed all the territories inhabited by Latvians.
In 1812 Napoleon's troops invaded Russia and the Prussian units under the leadership of the field marshal Yorck occupied Courland and approached Riga and the Battle of Mesoten was fought. Napoleon proclaimed restoration of Duchy of Courland and Semigallia under French and Polish protectorate. The Russian governor-general of Riga Ivan Essen was expecting attack, and set the wooden houses of Riga suburbs on fire to deflect the invaders leaving thousands of city residents homeless. However, Yorck did not attack Riga and in December the Napoleon's army retreated.
After the October 1802 Kauguri rebellion, czarist authorities reacted with the law of February 20, 1804 which was aimed at improving peasant condition in Livonian Governorate. Peasants no longer were tied to the land-owner, but to the land, so they could be sold only together with the land. Peasants were divided in two classes – people of manors and plowmen. Plowmen were divided into farm-owners and free people. Farms from now on could be inherited within the family. Amount and length of socage now was regulated and limited. This law was opposed by the nobles, who in 1809 secured changes in the law which again gave them more power over peasants and socage.
In 1816 Governorate of Estonia proposed a law for emancipation of serfs which was based on the model of the Prussian reforms. Czarist authorities ordered Courland Landtag to come up with a similar proposal, which was accepted on August 25, 1817 and proclaimed in Jelgava on August 30, 1818 in presence of Czar Alexander I. Emancipation came into force in 1819 and continued until 1832 as only selected number of peasants was emancipated each year. Emancipation gave peasants personal freedom, but no land, which they had to lease from land-owners. Peasants were not completely free, as they still could not move to another governorate or city without land-lord's permit.
After Emancipation in Estonia and Courland, the situation in Livonia was resolved by the law of March 26, 1819, which was very similar to the Emancipation law of Courland. It was proclaimed on early 1820 and was in force until 1832.
As Latgale was part of the Russian Vitebsk Governorate, serfdom here lasted until 1861, when the Emancipation reform of 1861 was proclaimed in the Russian Empire. Initially peasants kept their land, but had to continue performing socage and rent payments. This was ended by the new law of March 1, 1863.
After 1832 peasants were allowed freedom of settlement within the governorate, but only in 1848 Courland peasants were allowed to settle in towns and cities, many of which until then had mostly German and Jewish populations.
The provisional Livonian agrarian law of July 9, 1849 which came int force on November 20, 1850 maintained German nobility's property rights, but allowed peasants to rent or buy the land. By 1856 only 23% of farmers were paying land rent, while the rest were still performing socage. In 1860 this law became permanent and allowed increasing number of farmers to purchase their homes. An 1864 law permitted creation of credit unions, and this improved access to capital for farmers wanting to buy their homes from German land-lords. Just before the start of World War I about 99% of houses in Courland were bought and 90% in Livonia. This created a land-owning Latvian farmer class which increased in prosperity and sent its sons to schools of higher education.
In 1870-80's many peasants who were unable or unwilling to purchase their land, used the opportunity to emigrate to Siberia, where land was given for free. By the start of World War I approximately 200,000 Latvian farmers had moved to farming colonies in Siberia.
While there are records of Latvian last names going as far back as 15th century, almost all of them were inhabitants of large cities and often adopted Germanic family names. Some peasants had family names in the 17th century, but majority had only first name until the emancipation. Most people were identified by the name of their house or manor. Emancipation created the need for identity papers and with this, for family names. Livonian peasants had to choose family names by 1826, in Courland majority names were selected in the campaign that lasted from October 1834 until July 1835. Peasants were prohibited from choosing family names of German nobility and majority chose names related to animals, plants and trees, especially popular were diminutive forms – "Bērzs" (birch), "Bērziņš" (small birch), "Kalns" (hill), "Kalniņš" (small hill).
Latvia was predominantly Lutheran and Catholic, but in 1729 Herrnhuter Brethren started their mission in Livonia, with center in Valmiera, their missionaries made significant headway despite the opposition of the German landlords who controlled the Lutheran clergy. The Imperial government proscribed the Moravians 1743–1764. This was the first Christian movement where Latvians become involved voluntarily. Brethren operated independently from the German landlords and their meeting houses were run by Latvians, giving them a chance to create their own communities. Brethren reached the peak of their popularity around 1820, a few years after serfdom was abolished in Livonia Governorate. 30 parishes had almost 100 meeting houses and 20,000 members.
The Imperial government sponsored the Russian Orthodox Church, as part of its program of russification, but Lutheranism remained the dominant religion, except Latgale where Catholicism was dominant. Other Protestant missions had some success including the Baptists, Methodists and Seventh Day Adventists.
In 1571 the first Jews were invited to settle in Piltene and a Courland Jewish community was formed. After incorporation into Russian Empire more Jews from the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth settled here.
Latvian national awakening could start after the emancipation of serfs and growth in literacy and education rates. Educated Latvians no longer wanted to be Germanized.
In 1822 "Latviešu avīzes" the first weekly in Latvian began publishing. In 1832 weekly "Tas Latviešu Ļaužu Draugs" began publishing. The first Latvian writers who wrote in Latvian appeared – Ansis Liventāls (1803–77), Jānis Ruģēns (1817–76) and others. In 1839 institute for the elementary school teachers led by Jānis Cimze opened in Valmiera.
By the middle of 19th century, the First Latvian National Awakening began among ethnic Latvian intellectuals, a movement that partly reflected similar nationalist trends elsewhere in Europe. This revival was led by the "Young Latvians" (in Latvian: "jaunlatvieši") from the 1850s to the 1880s. Primarily a literary and cultural movement with significant political implications, the Young Latvians soon came into severe conflict with the Baltic Germans. During this time the notion of a united Latvian nation was born. Young Latvians also began to research Latvian folklore (See:Latvian dainas) and ancient beliefs.
In the 1880s and 1890s the russification policy was begun by Alexander III aimed at reducing German autonomy in the Baltic provinces. Introduction of the Russian language in administration, court and education was meant to reduce predominance of German language. At the same time these policies banned Latvian language from public sphere, especially schools, which was a heavy blow to the new Latvian culture.
With increasing poverty in many rural areas and growing urbanization and industrialization (especially of Riga), a loose but broad leftist movement called the "New Current" arose in the late 1880s. It was led by the future National poet Rainis and his brother-in-law Pēteris Stučka, editors of the newspaper "Dienas Lapa". This movement was soon influenced by Marxism and led to the creation of the Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party. While Rainis remained a social democrat until his death, Stučka become allied with Lenin, established the first Bolshevik state in Latvia and died in Moscow.
Latvia welcomed the 20th century with an explosion of popular discontent during the 1905 Revolution. It started with the shooting of demonstrators in Riga on January 13, progressed to mass strikes in October and armed uprising in December. The revolution was aimed not only against the czarist authorities, but against the hated German barons. For in Latvia most did not feel primarily oppressed by Russia or Russians, but by the Baltic Germans —roughly seven percent of the population— who had instituted a feudal system with themselves at the top and Latvian-speakers being left mostly poor and landless. As such, it involved not only left wing social democrats and industrial workers, but also more conservative peasants and Latvian intelligentsia since —despite being second class citizens in their own country— Latvia was also a highly literate and industrialised society. Riga was behind only St. Petersburg and Moscow by the number of industrial workers, and at the turn of the century over 90% of Latvians could read. In this regard, Latvia was equally primed for radical leftism and nationalism. In all, spearheaded by the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (LSDSP), the governorates making up what is now Latvia were probably the most ungovernable in the whole Russian Empire.
Following the shooting of demonstrators in St. Petersburg on January 9, 1905 a wide-scale general strike began in Riga. On January 13 Russian army troops opened fire on demonstrators in Riga killing 73 and injuring 200 people.
During the summer of 1905 the main revolutionary events moved to the countryside. 470 new parish administrative bodies were elected in 94% of the parishes in Latvia. The Congress of Parish Representatives was held in Riga in November. Mass meetings and demonstrations took place including violent attacks against Baltic German nobles, burning estate buildings and seizure of estate property, including weapons. In total 449 German manor houses were burned.
In the autumn of 1905 armed conflict between the German nobility and the Latvian peasants began in the rural areas of Vidzeme and Courland. In Courland, the peasants seized or surrounded several towns where they established revolutionary councils. In Vidzeme the fighters controlled the Rūjiena-Pärnu railway line. Altogether, a thousand armed clashes were registered in Latvia in 1905.
Martial law was declared in Courland in August 1905 and in Vidzeme in late November. Special punitive expeditions by Cossack cavalry units and Baltic Germans were dispatched in mid-December to suppress the movement. They executed over 2000 people without trial or investigation and burned 300 houses and public buildings. The executed often were local teachers or peasant activists who had shown disrespect to German nobles, not necessarily hardened revolutionaries. 427 people were court martialed and executed. 2652 people were exiled to Siberia, over 5000 went into exile to Western Europe or the US. In 1906 the revolutionary movement gradually subsided but some local protests and actions of forest guerrillas continued until 1907. They executed some daring raids – freeing their imprisoned comrades from Riga police HQ on January 17, 1906, February 26, 1906 Helsinki bank robbery and the 1910 Siege of Sidney Street in London.
Among the exiles were activists from the left and right who in just 10 years would fight against each other over the future of Latvia, such as the future Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis, National poet Jānis Rainis and early Cheka leader Jēkabs Peterss.
On August 1, 1914 Germany declared war on Russia. Since Courland Governorate had a direct border with Germany it was immediately involved in warfare. On August 2 German warships SMS Augsburg and SMS Magdeburg shelled port city Liepāja, causing it light damage. On August 19 German navy tried to capture Užava Lighthouse but were repelled, after which German artillery destroyed it. In October British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 from the British submarine flotilla in the Baltic arrived in Liepāja. On November 17 German navy again shelled Liepāja and military installations of Karosta damaging some 100 buildings.
Many Latvians served in the Russian units stationed at German border and took part in Russian invasion of East Prussia. They participated in the early battles of First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes and Battle of Augustow; total Latvian losses during these battles might have reached 25,000 dead.
By May 1915 the war reached most of Latvia. On April 30 Russian Commander-in-Chief ordered evacuation of all Jews from Courland within 24. hours. On May 2, 1915 German attack against Jelgava was repelled. On May 7 the Germans captured Liepāja and Kuldīga.
On June 29 the Russian Supreme Command ordered the whole population of Courland evacuated, and around 500,000 refugees fled to the east. Much of the crops and housing was destroyed by the army to prevent it from falling in the German hands. Some of refugees settled in Vidzeme but most continued their way to Russia where they had to settle in primitive conditions, suffering from the hunger and diseases. In August 1915 the Latvian Refugee Aid Central Committee was established in Petrograd, it was run by future politicians Vilis Olavs, Jānis Čakste and Arveds Bergs. Committee organized refugee housing, organized 54 schools, 25 hospitals and distributed aid. Many refugees returned to Latvia only after 1920, when a peace treaty was signed between Latvia and Soviet Russia. Many Latvians stayed in the new Bolshevik state, achieving high army and party offices, only to be purged and executed by Stalin during 1937–38.
On July 19, 1915 the Russian War Minister ordered the factories of Riga evacuated together with their workers. In the summer of 1915, 30,000 railway wagons loaded with machines and equipment from factories were taken away reducing the population of Riga by some 50%. This action effectively destroyed Riga as a great industrial center until the later industrialization under the Soviet regime.
On August 1, Germans captured the capital of Courland, Jelgava. A week later Battle of the Gulf of Riga started and eventually was lost by Germany. By October 23, Germans captured Ilūkste and were within the striking distance of Daugavpils with its fortress.
After on July 17 and 18, 1915 Germans captured Dobele, Talsi, Tukums and Ventspils, a public proclamation by State Duma members, written by Kārlis Skalbe, called for the formation of volunteer Latvian Riflemen units. In August the formation of Latvian battalions started. From 1915 to 1917, the Riflemen fought in the Russian army against the Germans in defensive positions along the Daugava River, notably the "Nāves sala" (Island of Death) bridgehead position. In December 1916 and January 1917, they suffered heavy casualties in month-long Christmas Battles. Many of them were buried in the newly created Riga Brothers' Cemetery.
After the great offensive of 1915, the front line stabilized along the Daugava river until the Russian army started to collapse in early 1917. In February 1917 Revolution broke out in Russia and in the summer the Russian army collapsed. By this time the Riflemen had overwhelmingly transferred their allegiances to the Bolsheviks. The following German offensive was successful and on September 3, 1917 they entered Riga.
In November 1917, the Communist Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Even though ethnic Latvians had become important assets in the task of securing Soviet power military (with the first ever commander-in-chief of the Red Army being Latvian Jukums Vācietis) the Bolshevik government tried to end the war and in March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed which gave Courland and Livonian Governorate to the Germans, who quickly established occupational regime which lasted until November 11, 1918. During this time Germans tried to create the United Baltic Duchy in perpetual union with the Crown of Prussia.
A survey in 1920 established that 56,7% of parishes had war damages. Population had decreased from 2,55 million to 1,59 million. The number of ethnic Latvians has never again reached the 1914 levels. 87,700 buildings were destroyed. 27% of the arable land laid in waste. Much of the industry was evacuated to Russia and lost forever. Ports were damaged by sunken ships, bridges blown up and railways damaged. 25,000 farms were destroyed, 70,000 horses, 170,000 cattle lost.
The course of World War I, which directly involved Latvians and Latvian territory, led to the idea of Latvian statehood. During the summer of 1915 German army conquered Kurzeme and Zemgale, which caused a virtual exodus of Latvians from these two provinces. Local politicians gained experience organizing refugee relief and Latvian refugee cultural life. Caught between the attacking Germans and incompetent Russians, Latvian riflemen ("latviešu strēlnieki") bravely fought on the Russian side during this war and became increasingly radicalized after repeated setbacks under czarist generals. During the Russian Civil War a significant group (known as Red riflemen) fought for Bolsheviks. Meanwhile, German Empire and local Baltic Germans were planning to annex the ancient Livonian and Estonian lands to their Empire. During the chaotic period of Russian and German empire collapses, February Revolution and Bolshevik revolution, Soviet westward offensive and onset of the Russian Civil War there were various efforts to establish a state in Latvia. Not all of them were aimed at establishing an independent state or even a Latvian state.
After the February Revolution in Russian Empire majority of Latvians were not expecting more than a federated status in a Russian state. "Free Latvia in Free Russia" was the slogan of the day. During March 12–13, 1917 in Valmiera the Vidzeme Land Congress was held which created the Provisional Land Council of Vidzeme. Courland was occupied by Germans, who increasingly supported idea of creating a puppet Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in order to annex it to Germany. Latgalian inhabited counties of the Vitebsk Governorate were demanding unity with other Latvian provinces (unification of Latgalian Latvians and Baltic Latvians), which came only after the Bolshevik revolution.
On July 5, 1917 the Russian Provisional Government recognized the elected Land councils of Vidzeme and Kurzeme. Encouraged by the liberalism of the Provisional government, Latvians put forward proposals which envisioned a broad local autonomy. On August 12, 1917 Latvian organizations jointly asked the Provisional government for autonomy and self-determination. During this Congress from August 11–12 (July 29–30, Old Style) in Riga, the left wing Social Democrats, heavily influenced by the Bolsheviks, established Iskolat government.
After Riga was occupied by Germans on September 3, 1917 Iskolat retreated to Vidzeme, where it assumed executive powers. The so-called Iskolat Republic existed from November 21, 1917 until March 3, 1918. Under German attacks it evacuated to Cēsis, then Valka and was disbanded on March 1918 after the Brest-Litovsk treaty left Latvian lands (except Latgale) to Germany.
After the preliminary meeting on September 14, on September 23, 1917 in the German occupied Riga the Latvian Social Democratic party together with Latvian Farmers' Union and some smaller republican and socialist parties created the Democratic bloc which petitioned Ober Ost for the restoration of elected Riga City Council, re-opening of schools and press freedoms. Democratic Bloc was not a formal organization, but a coalition of politicians, who shared similar political goals.
Latvian Social Democrats used their old contacts with the German Social Democrat Party, to directly lobby politicians in Berlin. On October 19, 1918 Democratic bloc representatives delivered a petition to the German Imperial chancellor Prince Maximilian of Baden, in which they asked for the removal of occupational forces, release of POW's and recognition of independent Latvian state.
In October 1917 centrist politicians met in Petrograd and agreed to create a united Council of all Latvian parties, refugee support organizations and soldiers committees. On November 29, 1917 the Latvian Provisional National Council was established in Valka. On December 2, 1917 it proclaimed creation of Latvia's autonomy in Latvian inhabited lands and proclaimed itself to be the only representative organ of Latvians. Council announced three main goals – convening of a Constitutional Assembly, creation of political autonomy and uniting of all ethnic Latvian inhabited lands.
The National Council, which was led by Voldemārs Zāmuēls sent a delegation, led by the future Minister of Foreign Affairs Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics to Allied countries, to get their support for independent Latvia.
Provisional National Council existed in the same place and time as the Bolshevik controlled Iskolat – the small city of Valka, which is situated on the border between ethnic Estonian and ethnic Latvian lands and for a couple of months was the virtual capital of Latvians. Iskolat moved to ban the Provisional Council in December 1917.
On January 5, 1918, during the only meeting of democratically elected Constituent Assembly of Russia, which was abolished by Bolsheviks, Latvian deputy Jānis Goldmanis, the initiator in 1915 of creation of Latvian Riflemen units, read a declaration of separation of Latvia from Russia.
On its second meeting, which was held in Petrograd, the Latvian National Council on January 30, 1918 declared that Latvia should be an independent, democratic republic, uniting Latvian regions Kurzeme (which includes Zemgale), Vidzeme and Latgale.
On March 3, 1918 Soviet Russia signed treaty of Brest-Litovsk with German Empire, by which Russia gave up Kurzeme and Vidzeme (but not Latgale). National Council protested against the splitting of Latvian lands and annexation of Kurzeme by Germany.
On November 11, 1918 British Empire recognized Latvian National Council as "de facto" government, confirming a prior verbal communication of October 23 to Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics by the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, A. J. Balfour.
Despite these successes, National Council had a major problem, the Social Democrats and the Democratic Bloc refused to join it. This prevented creation of a truly national consensus for proclaiming Independence. This was overcome only on November 17, 1918, when the People's Council (Tautas padome) was created.
On September 22, 1918 German Emperor Wilhelm II proclaimed Baltic provinces to be free and on November 5 Germans proclaimed United Baltic Duchy headed by the Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, however, this project (just like the similar Kingdom of Lithuania) collapsed together with the German Empire on November 9 and the Armistice of November 11.
On November 26, 1918 the new General Plenipotentiary of Germany August Winnig recognized the Latvian Provisional Government which was established by the People's Council. On November 28 the Regency Council of the United Baltic Duchy disbanded itself.
After the German collapse on November 9, the National Council and Democratic bloc began unity talks. Social Democrats insisted that the new Latvia should be a socialistic state, which was not acceptable to other parties. They also refused to join the National Council, instead insisting on creating a new unity organization. The unity talks were led by Farmers' Union leaders Kārlis Ulmanis and Miķelis Valters, while National Council leaders Voldemārs Zāmuēls, Arveds Bergs and Ādolfs Klīve were sidelined.
On November 17, 1918 competing Latvian factions finally united in the Latvia's Peoples Council (Tautas padome), which on November 18, 1918 proclaimed the Independence of Republic of Latvia and created the Latvian Provisional Government.
A few days later Soviet Russia started westward offensive aimed at regaining its western provinces and the War of Independence began.
The left wing of Latvian Social Democrats had become allied with Bolsheviks and during its conference of November 18–19, 1918 proclaimed that Latvian commune is a part of Russian Soviet Federation.
On December 1, 1918 Soviet Russia invaded Latvia.
Much of the invading army in Latvia consisted of Red Latvian Riflemen, which made the invasion easier. Soviet offensive met little resistance coming just a few weeks after the collapse of German Empire and proclamation of independent Latvia. Social Democratic party at this point decided to leave People's Council and rejoined it only in April 1918. On December 17, 1918 the Provisional government of Workers and Peasants, led by the veteran left-wing politician Pēteris Stučka proclaimed the Soviet rule. On December 18 Lenin officially recognized the new Soviet Latvia.
Riga was captured by the Soviet Army on January 3, 1919. By the end of January Provisional Government and remaining German units had retreated all the way to Liepāja, but then the Red offensive stalled along the Venta river. The Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic was officially proclaimed on January 13 with the political, economic, and military backing of the Soviet Russia. Stučka established a radical communist regime of nationalizations, expropriations and executions of class enemies. Revolutionary tribunals were established, condemning to death German nobles, pastors, wealthy traders as well as peasants, who refused to surrender their grain, in total some 1000 people were executed. Due to food supply disruptions 8590 people starved to death in Riga.
On March 3, 1919 German and Latvian forces commenced a counterattack against the forces of Soviet Latvia.
On April 16 the Baltic nobility organized a coup d'état in Liepāja and the puppet government under the
leadership of Andrievs Niedra was established. The provisional national government took the refuge aboard steamship "Saratov" under British protection
in Liepaja harbour.
On May 22, 1919 Riga was recaptured by Freikorps and White Terror against any suspected Soviet sympathizers began. The same time Estonian Army including the North Latvian Brigade loyal to Ulmanis government starts a major offensive against the Soviets in north Latvia. By the middle of June Soviet rule was reduced to Latgale.
In June 1919 collisions started between the "Baltische Landeswehr" on one side and the Estonian 3rd division, including the 2nd Cēsis regiment of North Latvian brigade on the other. The 3rd division defeated the German forces in the Battle of Wenden on June 23. An armistice was signed at Strazdumuiža, under the terms of which the Germans had to leave Latvia.
Instead the German forces were incorporated into the West Russian Volunteer Army. On October 5 it commenced an offensive on Riga taking the west bank of the Daugava River with front line splitting Riga in half. On November 11 the Latvian counteroffensive began and by the end of the month they were driven from Latvia. During battles in Riga, Latvian forces were supported by British naval artillery.
On January 3, 1920 the united Latvian and Polish forces launched an attack on the Soviet army in Latgale and after the Battle of Daugavpils liberated Daugavpils. By the end of January they reached the ethnographic border of Latvia and peace negotiations with Soviets soon began.
During the 1919 Paris Peace conference Latvia had unsuccessfully lobbied for international "de jure" recognition of its independence by the Allied countries. Allies still hoped for a quick end of the Bolshevik regime and establishment of a democratic Russian state which will grant Latvia large degree of autonomy. The internal situation also was unstable, as during 1919 three different governments (Latvians, Germans-White Russians, Soviets) were fighting for the control.
According to Latvian diplomats, during that time the US and France were against recognizing Latvia, Italy and Japan supported it while the United Kingdom gave limited support and waited for the events to play out.
On August 11, 1920 according to the Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty the Soviet Russia relinquished authority over the Latvian nation and claims to Latvian territory as "Russia recognizes without objection the independence and sovereignty of the Latvian State and forever renounces all sovereign rights held by Russia in relation to the Latvian nation and land on the basis of the previous State legal regime as well as any international agreements, all of which lose their force and effect for all future time as herein provided. The Latvian nation and land shall have no obligations arising from their previous possession by Russia."
In 1920 Latvia, together with Lithuania and Estonia, tried to join the League of Nations but was denied the membership.
As the Soviet victory in the Russian Civil War became clear and after heavy lobbying by the Foreign Minister Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics, the Allied Supreme War Council, which included United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy and Japan, recognized Latvia's independence on January 26, 1921. Recognition from many other countries followed soon. Latvia also became a member of the League of Nations on September 22, 1921. The US recognized Latvia only in July 1922. Before 1940 Latvia was recognized by 42 countries.
After Latgale was finally liberated from the Soviets in January 1920, on April 17–18, 1920 elections to the Constitutional Assembly of Latvia were held. While the population of Latvia had fallen by almost a million, from 2,552,000 to 1,596,000 in 1920 (in Riga from 520,000 to 225,000), they were represented by 50 lists of parties and candidates that competed for 150 seats. Close to 85% eligible voters participated in elections and 16 parties were elected. Social Democratic Workers' Party won 57, Farmers' Union 26, Latgalian Peasant Party won 17 seats. This voting pattern marked all the future parliaments – high number of parties representing small interest groups required formation of unstable coalition governments, while the largest single party, Social Democrats, held the post of Speaker of the Saeima, they avoided participating in governments. Between 1922 and 1934 Latvia had 13 governments led by 9 Prime Ministers.
On February 15, 1922 the Constitution of Latvia and in June the new Law on Elections were passed, opening the way to electing the parliament – Saeima.
During the Parliamentary era, four elections were held which elected 1st Saeima (1922–25), 2nd Saeima (1925–28), 3rd Saeima (1928–31), 4th Saeima (1931–34). Three State Presidents were elected – Jānis Čakste (1922–27) who died in office, Gustavs Zemgals (1927–30) who refused to be re-elected and Alberts Kviesis (1930–36) who accepted the May 15 coup d'état.
The Latvian-Soviet peace treaty had set the eastern border between Latvia and Soviet Russia. After 1944 parts of Abrene District were annexed by Russia as Pytalovsky District. Latvia gave up all legal claims to these lands in 2007.
During 1919 Estonia had provided military assistance to Latvia on a condition that some of its territorial claims in Vidzeme will be met. This was refused by Latvians and Estonia withdrew its support. Estonian claims centered on Valka district as well as territories in Ape, Veclaicene, Ipiķi and Lode. On March 22, 1920 Estonia and Latvia agreed to a settlement commission led by British colonel Stephen Tallents. Latvia retained Ainaži parish, and most of other contested lands, but lost most of Valka city (now Valga, Estonia). Issue of the ethnic Swedish inhabited Ruhnu island in the Gulf of Riga was left for both countries to decide. Latvia finally renounced all claims on Ruhnu island after signing military alliance with Estonia on November 1, 1923.
Latvia proposed to retain the southern border or former Courland governorate with Lithuania unchanged, but Lithuanians wanted to gain access to the sea, as at this time they did not control German lands of Klaipėda. In September 1919, during attack against the Soviets, Lithuanian army occupied much of Ilūkste Municipality and threatened to take Daugavpils as well. Between late August and early September 1920 Latvian army pushed Lithuanians out. Lithuanians were weakened by Żeligowski's Mutiny and did not escalate this confrontation. On September 25, 1920 Latvia and Lithuania agreed to seek international arbitration committee led by James Young Simpson to settle this dispute. On March 1921, Lithuania was given port town Palanga, village of Šventoji, parts of Rucava Municipality and railroad junction of Mažeikiai on Rīga – Jelgava – Liepāja railroad line, which meant that Latvia had to build a new railway line. Latvia received town of Aknīste and some smaller territories in Aknīste Municipality, Ukri parish and Bauska Municipality. Latvia gave up 283,3 square km, while receiving 290 km2. About 16–20 000 ethnic Latvians thus became Lithuanian citizens.
As a result of Polish–Soviet War, Poland secured a 105 km long border with Latvia. In July 1919 Poland announced annexation of all lands south of Daugavpils and their inclusion in Braslaw district. Latvia could not complain, as it still needed Polish military help for the decisive Battle of Daugavpils against the Soviets. The issue was solved by renewed Soviet attack against Poland, and later, by Polish-Lithuanian conflict over Vilnius. During the Soviet attack in July 1920, Polish forces retreated from this area which then was occupied by Latvian forces. After Żeligowski's Mutiny Poland wanted to have good diplomatic relations with Latvia and did not raise any serious territorial claims. The issue was solved in February 1929, when Latvian-Polish trade treaty was signed, which included a secret agreement about compensations to Polish landowners over lost properties. By 1937 Latvia had paid the full amount of 5 million golden lats. Over some protests from Lithuania, Latvian-Polish border was demarcated between 1933 and 1938.
The earliest foreign policy goals were securing peace with Soviet Russia and Germany, gaining international recognition and joining the League of Nations. All this was achieved by the efforts of Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics.
The hope of union of Baltic countries – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland – faded after 1922. After that Latvia was the most energetic proponent of Baltic unity and Baltic Entente. On November 1, 1923 Latvia and Estonia signed a military alliance, followed by trade agreements. Latvia tried to maintain good relations with regional hegemons Russia and Germany and hoped for more support from the Great Britain. 21 foreign embassies and 45 consulates were opened in Latvia by 1928, some of these consulates were located in port cities Liepāja and Ventspils.
Latvia purchased embassy buildings in Berlin (1922), Tallinn, Warsaw (1923), London (1925), Paris (1927), Geneva (1938).
Social Democratic Workers' Party, as the largest party, held the position of the Speaker of the Saeima in all the interwar Saeimas. 1st Saeima was chaired by Frīdrihs Veismanis, Second, Third and Fourth Saeimas were chaired by Pauls Kalniņš. The refusal of Social Democrats to participate in governments (except twice in short-lived cabinets) meant that government was usually led by the center-right Farmers' Union, or a coalition of smaller parties, as Saeima was split among many parties with just a few MPs.
Social Democrats were split between the main Social Democratic Workers' Party led by Pauls Kalniņš, Ansis Rudevics and Fricis Menders (which first won 30 seats but had a tendency to lose votes in subsequent elections) and the splinter Social Democrat Minority Party, led by Marģers Skujenieks, who were more centrist and managed even to lead governments on two occasions. The mainstream Social Democrat party maintained strong policy of Socialist International ideals, criticized the existing capitalist system, avoided using State flag and singing National anthem, instead using the Red flag and singing the Internationale in their meetings. Their popularity increasingly fell and in the 4th Saeima they had only 21 seats.
The officially banned Communist Party of Latvia in 1928 elections managed to get 5 seats as the Left Trade Union which was banned in 1930. In 1931 elections Communists won 6 seats as the Trade Union Workers and Peasants Group, but were once again banned in 1933.
Latvian Farmers' Union was the second largest parliamentary faction with 14–17 MPs and the largest of the conservative parties. It increasingly had to compete with some smaller farmer, catholic farmer and Latgale farmer parties which won more votes in each elections. Farmer's Union was led by Kārlis Ulmanis, Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics and Hugo Celmiņš. The decreasing popularity of Ulmanis and Farmers' Union might have been one of the reasons behind the May 15, 1934 Latvian coup d'état, as Ulmanis tried to prevent further loss of his political influence and power after the elections, scheduled for October 1934.
Democratic Centre Party, led by Gustavs Zemgals represented mostly urban, middle-class office workers and state employees.
National Union, led by Arveds Bergs was nationalistic, anti-Soviet, center-right party that attracted urban followers. The extreme nationalists were represented by anti-semitic Pērkonkrusts, led by Gustavs Celmiņš.
Most of the remaining small parties were either ethnic – German, Jewish, Polish or represented single-issue economic groups – small-holders, house owners, even railroad workers. The small parties usually formed larger coalitions (blocks) and then used their influence to join governing coalition. One of the most influential was coalition of Latgale parties.
During this time four referendums took place, all indicative of the issues facing the new state.
On July 19, 1922 a Concordat was signed with Vatican. This was motivated by the need to better integrate heavily Catholic Latgale in the Lutheran dominated state. In traditionally Lutheran Riga some buildings belonging to Russian Orthodox Church were given to Catholics and the Lutheran St. James's Cathedral was transferred to Catholics as their new cathedral. On September 1–2, 1923 the Church property referendum was held in order to prevent any further forcible transfer of churches and properties from one confession to another. About 200,000 or 20% of voters participated, and it failed.
On June 2, 1927 Saeima once again changed the Citizenship law. In earlier version Latvian citizenship was granted to anyone who had lived in Latvia for 20 years before the August 1, 1914 (start of the WWI). Now this was shortened to 6 months before the August 1, 1914. This was mainly done to allow many Latvian farming colonists, who now were fleeing Soviet Russia, to receive citizenship. However, this also meant that many Soviet Jews now could claim Latvian citizenship. On December 17–18, 1927 the Latvian citizenship referendum was held to prevent these new changes, but it failed, as only 250,000 or 20% of voters participated.
The Concordate with Vatican caused another church property referendum in 1931. After the St. Jame's Cathedral was given to Catholics, Latvian Lutherans had lost their bishop's cathedral and were sharing the Riga Cathedral with Baltic German congregation, which belonged to the autonomous German Lutheran confession. The anti-German sentiment was widespread and initiative to give Riga Cathedral to Latvian Lutherans gained strength. On September 5–6, 1931 almost 400,000 voters supported this idea, but referendum failed, as it did not gather over 50% of votes. In any case, Saeima soon passed a law confiscating the church from Germans and giving it to Latvians.
On February 24–25, 1934 the Insurance Law referendum was held in order to introduce a new old and unemployment benefit scheme which would be funded by taxing employers, higher wage earners and municipalities. The referendum was initiated by Social Democrats, who managed to get over 400,000 votes for this idea, but referendum failed.
The new state had to deal with two main issues: restoration of industrial plants, especially in Riga and implementation of Land reform that would transfer most of the land from German nobles to Latvian farmers.
Constituent Assembly passed the law of the Land reform, which expropriated the manor lands. Landowners were left with 50 hectares each and their land was distributed to the landless peasants without cost. In 1897, 61.2% of the rural population had been landless; by 1936, that percentage had been reduced to 18%. The extent of cultivated land surpassed the pre-war level already in 1923.
Before the World War I some 2% of landowners owned 53% of land in Kurzeme and Vidzeme, in Latgale it was 38%. The Agrarian reform Law of September 16, 1920 created State Land Fund which took over 61% of all land. The German nobles were left with no more than 50 ha of land. This destroyed their manor house system. Many of them sold their possessions and left for Germany. Former manor house buildings often were used as local schools, administrative buildings or hospitals. The land was distributed to a new class of small-holding farmers – over 54,000 Jaunsaimnieki (New farmers) with average farm size of 17,1 ha, who usually had to create their farms from nothing, in process building new houses and clearing fields. Due to their small size and unfavorable grain prices, the new farmers rapidly developed dairy farming. Butter, bacon and eggs became new export industries. Flax and state owned forests were another export revenue source.
On March 27, 1919 the Latvian rublis was introduced with an exchange rate of 1 Latvian rublis equal to 1 ostruble, 2 German marks and 1,5 czar rubles. On March 18, 1920 Latvian rublis was made the only legal currency. Due to high inflation, the new Latvian lats currency was introduced at a rate 1 lat to 50 rublis. In 1923 the Bank of Latvia was established and lats replaced rublis in 1925.
Between 1923 and 1930 state budget was with a surplus. On average 25,5% went to defense, 11,2% to education and 23,4% to capital investment projects. Around 15% of income was generated by state spirits monopoly.
The restoration of industry was more complicated. Before World War I 80% of industrial production was made for internal Russian Empire markets. Trade agreement with Soviet Union was signed in 1927 but did not result in high trade volumes. By the end of 1920s Latvia's largest export markets were Germany (35,6%), United Kingdom (20,8%), France, Belgium, Netherlands (22,9%). Latvia had to import almost all of modern machinery and fuels.
In 1929 Latvia had 3 state owned banks, 19 private banks, 605 credit unions and many more mutual credit unions.
The Great Depression reached Latvia in the middle of 1930. Exports fell and imports were strictly limited, to save foreign exchange reserves. State monopolies of sugar and bacon were created. To prevent banks from collapse, between July 31, 1931 and September 1, 1933 a law was in force which prohibited withdrawal of more than 5% of the total deposit per week. In 1932 the trade agreement with Soviet Union expired and industrial unemployment reached its peak in January 1932. The national income fell from 600 lats per capita in 1930 to 390 lats per capita in 1932.
In place of free international trade came interstate clearing agreements which set the volumes and types of goods that states then would trade. In 1932 clearing agreements were signed with France and Germany, in 1934 with the United Kingdom, in 1935 with Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania.
Economic recovery started in 1933 as production increased by some 30%. The state budget deficit was reduced from the record 24,2 million lats in 1931/32 to 7,8 million lats in 1933/34 budget.
On the night from May 15 to 16, 1934 the Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis and Minister of War Jānis Balodis, fathers of Latvian independence, took power by a bloodless coup d'état. Parliament and Constitution were suspended, State of War introduced, all political parties banned and press censorship established.
Just as in the politics, in economy the new Ulmanis regime was very active in increasing state control and planning mechanisms. In 1934 regime created Chamber of Trade and Industry was established, followed by the Chamber of Agriculture and the Chamber of Artisans in 1935 and the Chamber of Labour in 1936. The state helped bankrupt farmers by postponing bankruptcy auctions and refinanced their debt at a lower rate. On May 29, 1934 state took control over cooperative societies and associations. Dairy industry was placed under control of Central Union of Dairy Farmers.
On April 9, 1935 a state controlled Credit Bank of Latvia was created which reduced role of foreign capital by creating many state owned industry monopolies and joint stock companies. Buyouts and liquidations of foreign, Baltic German and Jewish owned companies become a norm. In place of many competing companies large state owned companies were created. In 1939 state owned 38 such companies. The new JSC Vairogs produced railway carriages and Ford-Vairogs automobiles under Ford licence. VEF made world's smallest Minox cameras and such experimental aircraft as VEF JDA-10M, VEF I-12 and others. Between 1936 and 1939 the Ķegums Hydroelectric Power Station, with 70,000 kWh capacity largest in the Baltics, was built by Swedish companies.
After Western countries abandoned the gold standard, the Latvian lats was pegged to the British pound in September 1936. It was a devaluation that further strengthened Latvian exports. By 1939, following an export boom propelled primarily by agricultural goods, Latvia was the richest of the Baltic countries, and had a GDP per capita higher than Finland or Austria.
However, the recovery from the Great Depression took almost ten years. National income was 444 lats per capita in 1933 and reached 637 lats per capita in 1938, thus finally overtaking the 1929 levels.
After the start of World War II Latvia declared complete neutrality, but it was now completely cut off from the market of United Kingdom, as Germany had sealed off the Baltic sea. Austerity was introduced on September 3, 1939. The politically disastrous October 5, 1939 Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty provided new export and import opportunities. On October 18, 1939 a new trade agreement was signed with the Soviet Union. Latvia exported its food products in return receiving oil, fuel and chemicals. On December 15, 1939 a new trade agreement was also signed with the Nazi Germany.
Latvian farmers had traditionally relied on seasonal farm workers from Poland, this was now cut-off by the war, and in spring 1940 new regulations introduced compulsory work service for state employees, students and school pupils.
In October 1936 Latvia was elected as non-permanent member of the Council of the League of Nations and retained this place for three years. In 1935 embassy in Washington was re-opened, which later served as important center for Latvian Diplomatic Service during 50 years of Soviet occupation.
After the Munich Agreement demonstrated the failure of collective security system, Latvia on December 13, 1938 proclaimed absolute neutrality. On March 28, 1939 Soviet Union without any discussions announced that it is interested in maintaining and defending Latvia's independence. On June 7, 1939 Latvia and Germany signed non-aggression treaty.
The Soviet Union guaranteed its interests in the Baltics with the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939. Under threat of invasion, Latvia (along with Estonia and Lithuania) signed the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty with Soviet Union, providing for the stationing of up to 25,000 Soviet troops on Latvian soil. Following the initiative from Nazi Germany, Latvia on October 30, 1939 concluded an agreement to "repatriate" ethnic Germans, most of whom had lived in the region for generations, in the wake of the impending Soviet takeover.
Seven months later, the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov accused the Baltic states of conspiracy against the Soviet Union. On June 16, 1940, threatening an invasion, Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding that the government be replaced and that an unlimited number of Soviet troops be admitted. Knowing that the Red Army had entered Lithuania a day before, that its troops were massed along the eastern border and mindful of the Soviet military bases in Western Latvia, the government acceded to the demands, and Soviet troops occupied the country on June 17. Staged elections were held July 14–15, 1940, and the results were announced in Moscow 12 hours before the polls closed; Soviet documents show the election results were forged. The newly elected "People's Assembly" declared Latvia a Socialist Soviet Republic and applied for admission into the Soviet Union on July 21. Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 5, 1940. Latvian diplomatic service continued to function in exile while the republic was under the Soviet control.
In the spring of 1941, the Soviet central government began planning the mass deportation of anti-Soviet elements from the occupied Baltic states. In preparation, General Ivan Serov, Deputy People's Commissar of Public Security of the Soviet Union, signed the Serov Instructions, "Regarding the Procedure for Carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia." During the night of June 13–14, 1941, 15,424 inhabitants of Latvia — including 1,771 Jews and 742 ethnic Russians — were deported to camps and special settlements, mostly in Siberia. 35,000 people were deported in the first year of Soviet occupation (131,500 across the Baltics).
The Nazi invasion, launched a week later, cut short immediate plans to deport several hundred thousand more from the Baltics. Nazi troops occupied Riga on July 1, 1941. Immediately after the installation of German authority, a process of eliminating the Jewish and Gypsy population began, with many killings taking place in Rumbula. The killings were committed by the Einsatzgruppe A, the Wehrmacht and Marines (in Liepāja), as well as by Latvian collaborators, including the 500–1500 members of the infamous Arajs Commando (which alone killed around 26,000 Jews) and the 2000 or more Latvian members of the SD. By the end of 1941 almost the entire Jewish population was killed or placed in the concentration camps. In addition, some 25,000 Jews were brought from Germany, Austria and the present-day Czech Republic, of whom around 20,000 were killed. The Holocaust claimed approximately 85,000 lives in Latvia, the vast majority of whom were Jews.
A large number of Latvians resisted the German occupation. The resistance movement was divided between the pro-independence units under the Latvian Central Council and the pro-Soviet units under the Latvian Partisan Movement Headquarters (Латвийский штаб партизанского движения) in Moscow. Their Latvian commander was Arturs Sproģis. The Nazis planned to Germanise the Baltics after the war. In 1943 and 1944 two divisions of Waffen-SS were formed from Latvian conscripts and volunteers to help Germany against the Red Army.
In 1944, when the Soviet military advances reached the area heavy fighting took place in Latvia between German and Soviet troops, which ended with another German defeat. Riga was re-captured by the Soviet Red Army on October 13, 1944 while the Courland Pocket held out until May 9, 1945. During the course of the war, both occupying forces conscripted Latvians into their armies, in this way increasing the loss of the nation's "live resources". In 1944, part of the Latvian territory once more came under Soviet control and Latvian national partisans began their fight against another occupier – the Soviet Union. 160,000 Latvian inhabitants took refuge from the Soviet army by fleeing to Germany and Sweden.
On the other side, many Latvians who had previously supported Bolshevism had chosen to remain in Soviet Russia, where they wielded disproportionate influence in the party. Latvian theatres, Latvian publishing houses, Latvian clubs, were all present in Soviet Russia, a whole culture all wiped out from 1937 onwards when, accused of fascist, nationalist or counter-revolutionary sympathies, Latvians were purged in their thousands.
The first post-war years were marked by particularly dismal and sombre events in the fate of the Latvian nation. On March 25, 1949, 43,000 rural residents ("kulaks") and Latvian patriots ("nationalists") were deported to Siberia in a sweeping repressive Operation Priboi in all three Baltic States, which was carefully planned and approved in Moscow already on January 29, 1949. Altogether 120,000 Latvian inhabitants were imprisoned or deported to Soviet concentration camps (the Gulag). Some managed to escape arrest and joined the partisans.
In the post-war period, Latvia was forced to adopt Soviet farming methods and the economic infrastructure developed in the 1920s and 1930s was eradicated. Rural areas were forced into collectivisation. The massive influx of labourers, administrators, military personnel and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. By 1959 about 400,000 persons arrived from other Soviet republics and the ethnic Latvian population had fallen to 62%. An extensive programme to impose bilingualism was initiated in Latvia, limiting the use of Latvian language in favor of Russian. All of the minority schools (Jewish, Polish, Belarusian, Estonian, Lithuanian) were closed down leaving only two languages of instructions in the schools- Latvian and Russian. The Russian language were taught notably, as well as Russian literature, music and history of Soviet Union (actually- history of Russia).
On March 5, 1953 Joseph Stalin died and his successor became Nikita Khrushchev. The period known as the Khrushchev Thaw began but attempts by the national communists led by Eduards Berklavs to gain a degree of autonomy for the republic and protect the rapidly deteriorating position of the Latvian language were not successful. In 1959 after Krushchev's visit in Latvia national communists were stripped of their posts and Berklavs was deported to Russia.
Because Latvia had still maintained a well-developed infrastructure and educated specialists it was decided in Moscow that some of the Soviet Union's most advanced manufacturing factories were to be based in Latvia. New industry was created in Latvia, including a major machinery factory RAF in Jelgava, electrotechnical factories in Riga, chemical factories in Daugavpils, Valmiera and Olaine, as well as food and oil processing plants. However, there were not enough people to operate the newly built factories. In order to expand industrial production, more immigrants from other Soviet republics were transferred into the country, noticeably decreasing the proportion of ethnic Latvians.
By 1989, the ethnic Latvians comprised about 52% of the population (1,387,757), compared to a pre-war proportion of 77% (1,467,035). In 2005 there were 1,357,099 ethnic Latvians, showing a real decrease in the titular population. Proportionately, however, the titular nation already comprises approximately 60% of the total population of Latvia (2,375,000).
Liberalization in the communist regime began in the mid-1980s in the USSR with the perestroika and glasnost instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev. In Latvia, several mass political organizations were constituted that made use of this opportunity – Popular Front of Latvia (Tautas Fronte), Latvian National Independence Movement (Latvijas Nacionālās Neatkarības Kustība) and Citizens' Congress (Pilsoņu kongress). These groups began to agitate for the restoration of national independence.
On the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (August 23, 1989) to the fate of the Baltic nations, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands in a human chain, the Baltic Way, that stretched 600 kilometers from Tallinn, to Riga, to Vilnius. It symbolically represented the united wish of the Baltic States for independence.
Subsequent steps toward full independence were taken on May 4, 1990. The Latvian SSR Supreme Council, elected in the first democratic elections since the 1930s, adopted a declaration restoring independence that included a transition period between autonomy within the Soviet Union and full independence. In January 1991, however, pro-communist political forces attempted to restore Soviet power with the use of force. Latvian demonstrators managed to stop the Soviet troops from re-occupying strategic positions (January 1991 events in Latvia). On August 21, after the unsuccessful attempt at a coup d'état in Moscow, parliament voted for an end to the transition period, thus restoring Latvia's pre-war independence. On September 6, 1991 Latvian independence was once again recognized by the Soviet Union.
Soon after reinstating independence, Latvia, which had been a member of the League of Nations prior to World War II, became a member of the United Nations. In 1992, Latvia became eligible for the International Monetary Fund and in 1994 took part in the NATO "Partnership for Peace" program in addition to signing the free trade agreement with the European Union. Latvia became a member of the European Council as well as a candidate for the membership in the European Union and NATO. Latvia was the first of the three Baltic nations to be accepted into the World Trade Organization.
At the end of 1999 in Helsinki, the heads of the European Union governments invited Latvia to begin negotiations regarding accession to the European Union. In 2004, Latvia's most important foreign policy goals, membership of the European Union and NATO, were fulfilled. On April 2, Latvia became a member of NATO and on May 1, Latvia, along with the other two Baltic States, became a member of the European Union. Around 67% had voted in favor of EU membership in a September 2003 referendum with turnout at 72.5%.
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Geography of Latvia
Latvia lies on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea on the level northwestern part of the rising East European platform, between Estonia and Lithuania. About 98% of the country lies under elevation. With the exception of the coastal plains, the ice age divided Latvia into three main regions: the morainic Western and Eastern uplands and the Middle lowlands. Latvia holds over 12,000 rivers, only 17 of which are longer than , and over 3,000 small lakes, most of which are eutrophic. The major rivers include the Daugava, the Lielupe, the Gauja, the Venta and the Salaca. Woodlands cover around 52% of the country (Pine – 34%, Spruce – 18%, Birch – 30%). Other than peat, dolomite, and limestone, natural resources are scarce. Latvia has of sandy coastline, and the ports of Liepāja and Ventspils provide important warm-water harbors for the Baltic coast.
Latvia is a small country with a land size of . However, it is larger than many other European countries (Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia or Switzerland). Its strategic location has instigated many wars between rival powers on its territory. As recently as 1944, the USSR granted Russia the Abrene region, which Latvia contested after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Latvia encompasses 64,589 square kilometers and is an extension of the East European Plain. Its flat terrain differs little from that of its surrounding neighbors. Latvia's only distinct border is the Baltic Sea coast, which extends for 496 kilometers. Its neighbors include Lithuania on the south (453 kilometers of common border), Estonia on the north (267 kilometers), Russia on the east (217 kilometers), and Belarus on the southeast (141 kilometers). Prior to World War II, Latvia bordered eastern Poland, but as a result of boundary changes by the Soviet Union, this territory was attached to Belarus.
The physiography of Latvia and its neighboring areas was formed, to a large degree, during the Quaternary period and the Pleistocene ice age, when soil and debris were pushed by glaciers into mounds and hills. Undulating plains cover 75% of Latvia's territory and provide the main areas for farming; 25% of the territory lies in uplands of moderate-sized hills. About 27% of the total territory is cultivable, with the central Zemgale Plain south of Riga being the most fertile and profitable. The three main upland areas, in the provinces of Kurzeme (western Latvia), Vidzeme (central Latvia, Vidzeme Upland and Aluksne Upland), and Latgale (eastern Latvia), provide a picturesque pattern of fields interspersed with forests and numerous lakes and rivers. In this area, the extensive glacial moraines, eskers, and drumlins have limited the profitability of agriculture by fragmenting fields and presenting serious erosion problems.
About 10% of Latvian territory consists of peat bogs, swamps, and marshes, some of which are covered by stunted forest growth. Forests are the outstanding feature of Latvia, claiming 52% of the territory. Over the past 100 years the amount of forest territories in Latvia has doubled, and the process is still ongoing. Forest territories are expanding naturally, as well as due to intentional afforestation of barren land and land that cannot be used for agricultural purposes. More than half of the forests consist of Scots pine or Norway spruce.
Nearly all forests in Latvia are publicly accessible, therefore indeed one of the most widespread pastimes of the population is picking bilberries, cranberries, mushrooms, and other bounties of natural environment.
Latvia's legislation on forestry is among the strictest in Europe firmly regulating wood harvesting. Each year the forests produce 25 million cubic meters of timber, while only about 12 - 13 million cubic meters are felled, therefore the amount of mature and old forests continue to increase.
Thanks to the significant amount of forest resources, Latvia has a well-developed wood processing industry, therefore timber and wood products are among the country's most important exports. Latvian wood processing companies are important players in many European markets.
The traditional Latvian approach to forestry with its small system of clear-cut areas combined with the network of forest territories that have seen little human influence, as well as the outflow of people from rural areas to urban ones have facilitated the emergence of a unique biological diversity in forests which home animal and bird species, that have died out or are very rare elsewhere in Europe.
According to a World Wildlife Fund study in 1992, Latvia has populations of black storks, lesser spotted eagles, otters, beaver, lynx, and wolves. There are also great concentrations of deer (86,000: red deer and roe deer), wild boar (32,000), elk (25,000) and red fox (13,000). Many Latvians today are planning to exploit this resource by catering to local and foreign numbers.
The variegated and rapidly changing physiography of glacial moraines and lowlands has also allowed temperate flora, such as oaks, to grow within a few hundred meters of northern flora, such as bog cotton and cloudberries. This variety and the rapid change in natural ecosystems are among the unique features of the republic.
The Soviet system left behind another windfall for naturalists. The Latvian western seacoast was a carefully guarded border region. Almost all houses near the sea were razed or evacuated. As a result, about 300 kilometers of undeveloped seashore are graced only by forests of pine and spruce and ecologically unique sand dunes. The temptation for fast profit, however, may foster violation of laws that clearly forbid any construction within one kilometer of the sea. This could lead to one of the last remaining wild shorelines in Europe becoming non-existent.
The seashore adjoining the population centers around Riga was a major focus of tourism during the Soviet era. Jūrmala, with its many SPA and tourist accommodations, its tall pines, sandy beaches, and antique architecture, is still an attractive destination for both Western and Eastern tourists.
Latvia has an abundant network of rivers, contributing to the visual beauty and the economy of the country. The largest river is the Daugava, which has been an important route for several thousand years. It has been used by local tribes as well as by Vikings, Russians, and other Europeans for trade, war, and conquest. With a total length of 1,020 kilometers, the Daugava (or Zapadnaya Dvina in its upper reaches) originates in the Valday Hills in Russia's Tver' Oblast, meanders through northern Belarus, and then winds through Latvia for before emptying into the Gulf of Riga. It is about 200 meters wide when it enters Latvia, increasing to between 650 and 750 meters at Riga and to 1.5 kilometers at its mouth.
The river carries an average annual flow of 21 cubic kilometers. Its total descent within Latvia of ninety-eight meters has made it an attractive source of hydroelectric power production. The first hydroelectric station—Ķegums Hydro Power Plant—was built during Latvia's independence period. The second dam—Pļaviņas Hydro Power Plant—aroused an unusual wave of protest in 1958. Most Latvians opposed the flooding of historical sites and a particularly scenic gorge with rare plants and natural features, such as the Staburags, a cliff comparable in cultural significance to the Lorelei in Germany. The construction of the dam was endorsed in 1959, however, after the purge of relatively liberal and nationally oriented leaders under Eduards Berklavs and their replacement by Moscow-oriented, ideologically conservative cadres led by Arvīds Pelše. The third dam—Riga Hydroelectric Power Plant—just above Riga, did not provoke much protest because of the seeming hopelessness of the cause. The proposed fourth dam, at the town of Daugavpils on the Daugava River, became the rallying point for protest in 1986-87 by hundreds of thousands of Latvians. This dam was not constructed, in spite of the vast expenditures already poured into the project.
Smaller rivers include the Lielupe, in central Latvia, with an average annual flow of 3.6 cubic kilometers; the Venta, in the west, with 2.9 cubic kilometers; the Gauja, in the northeast, with 2.5 cubic kilometers; and the Aiviekste, in the east, with 2.1 cubic kilometers. Very little hydroelectric power is generated by their waters, although planners are now thinking of reactivating some of the abandoned older dams and turbines. The Gauja is one of Latvia's most attractive, relatively clean rivers and has an adjoining large Gauja National Park along both of its banks as one of its notable features. Its cold waters attract trout and salmon, and its sandstone cliff and forest setting are increasingly a magnet for tourists interested in the environment.
More than 60% of the annual water volume of Latvia's six largest rivers comes from neighboring countries, mainly from Belarus and Lithuania. These adjoining resources create obvious needs for cooperation, especially in pollution control. The dangers from a lack of cooperation were brought home to Latvians in November 1990, when a polymer complex in Navapolatsk, Belarus, accidentally spilled 128 tons of cyanide derivatives into the Daugava River with no warning to downstream users in Latvia. Only the presence of numerous dead fish alerted Latvian inhabitants to the danger.
In the summer, daylight hours are long and in the winter short. In December it is still pitch dark at 9:00 A.M., and daylight disappears before 4:00 P.M. The climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream flowing across the Atlantic Ocean from Mexico. Average temperatures in winter are reasonably mild, ranging in January from in Liepāja, on the western coast, to in the southeastern town of Daugavpils. July temperatures range from in Liepāja to in Daugavpils. Latvia's proximity to the sea brings high levels of humidity and precipitation, with average annual precipitation of in Riga. There, an average of 180 days per year have precipitation, forty-four days have fog, and only seventy-two days are sunny. Continuous snow cover lasts eighty-two days, and the frost-free period lasts 177 days.
This precipitation has helped provide the abundant water for Latvia's many rivers and lakes, but it has created many problems as well. A large part of agricultural land requires drainage. Much money has been spent for land amelioration projects involving the installation of drainage pipes, the straightening and deepening of natural streams, the digging of drainage ditches, and the construction of polder dams. During the 1960s and 1970s, drainage work absorbed about one-third of all agricultural investments in Latvia. Although accounting for only one-third of 1% of the territory, Latvia was responsible for 11% of all artificially drained land in the former Soviet Union.
An additional problem associated with precipitation is the difficulty of early mechanized sowing and harvesting because of waterlogged fields. Heavy precipitation occurs, especially during harvest time in August and September, requiring heavy investment outlays in grain-drying structures and ventilation systems. In 1992 Latvia experienced the driest summer in recorded weather history, but unusually heavy rains in the preceding spring kept crop damage below the extent expected. The moist climate has been a major factor orienting Latvian agriculture toward animal husbandry and dairying. Even most of the field crops, such as barley, oats, and potatoes, are grown for animal feed.
Latvia cannot claim valuable natural resources. Nevertheless, the abundant presence of such materials as limestone for cement (6 billion cubic meters or 8 billion cubic yards), gypsum (165 million cubic meters or 216 million cubic yards), high-quality clay (375 million cubic meters or 490 million cubic yards), dolomite (615 million cubic meters or 804 million cubic yards), peat (480 million tonnes, 530 million short tons or 470 million long tons), and construction materials, including gravel and sand, satisfy local needs. Fish from the Baltic Sea is another potential export resource. Amber, million-year-old chunks of petrified pine pitch, is often found on the beaches of the Baltic Sea and is in high demand for jewelry. It has also had a symbolic impact on the country, which is often called Dzintarzeme, or Amberland. The future may hold potentially more valuable resources if oil fields are discovered in Latvian territorial waters, as some geologists have predicted. Latvia has an Exclusive Economic Zone of .
Area:
"total:"
"land:"
"water:"
Area - comparative:
slightly larger than West Virginia
slightly smaller than New Brunswick
Land boundaries:
"total:"
"border countries:"
Belarus , Estonia , Lithuania , Russia
Coastline:
Maritime claims:
"territorial sea:"
"exclusive economic zone:"
"continental shelf:"
Elevation extremes:
"lowest point:"
Baltic Sea 0 m
"highest point:"
Gaizinkalns
Latitude and longitude
Natural resources:
peat, limestone, dolomite, amber, hydropower, timber, arable land
Land use:
"arable land:"
17.96%
"permanent crops:"
0.11%
"other:"
81.93% (2011)
Irrigated land:
"note:" land in Latvia is often too wet and in need of drainage not irrigation; approximately or 85% of agricultural land has been approved by drainage (2007)
Total renewable water resources:
35.45 km3 (2011)
Natural hazards:
none
Environment - current issues:
Latvia's environment has benefited from a shift to service industries after the country regained independence; the main environmental priorities are improvement of drinking water quality and sewage system, household, and hazardous waste management, as well as reduction of air pollution; in 2001, Latvia closed the EU accession negotiation chapter on environment committing to full enforcement of EU environmental directives by 2010
Environment - international agreements:
"party to:"
Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Biodiversity, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands
"signed, but not ratified:"
none of the selected agreements
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Demographics of Latvia
This article is about the demographic features of the population of the historical territory of Latvia, including population density, ethnic background, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Latvia was settled by the Baltic tribes some three millennia ago. The territories along the eastern Baltic first came under foreign domination at the beginning of the 13th century, with the formal establishment of Riga in 1201 under the German Teutonic Knights.
Latvia, in whole or in parts, remained under foreign rule for the next eight centuries, finding itself at the cross-roads of all the regional superpowers of their day, including Denmark (the Danes held on lands around the Gulf of Riga), Sweden, and Russia, with southern (Courland) Latvia being at one time a vassal to Poland-Lithuania as well as Latgale falling directly under Poland-Lithuania rule. Through all this time, Latvia remained largely under Baltic German hegemony, with Baltic Germans comprising the largest land-owners, a situation which did not change until Latvia's independence.
Historically, Latvia has had significant German, Russian, Jewish, Polish, and Lithuanian minorities. The majority (roughly two thirds) of Latvians, under Swedish influences, adopted Lutheranism, while the minority (the remaining third) of Latvians under Poland-Lithuania, Latgale in particular, retained their Catholicism. Aglona, in Latgale, has been the site of annual Catholic pilgrimage for centuries, even through to today.
Recently introduced immigration law in Latvia provides framework for immigration through investment in various financial areas or real estate. In 2012, solely 2,435 applications for residence permit by investment in real estate were received by Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs. Main immigrant countries are Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania (Lithuania is in the European Union, thus no investment is needed). Moreover, Latvia receives residence permit applications from people of nationalities such as Afghans, Chinese, Libyans and people from various other distant countries.
Latvia's indigenous population has been ravaged numerous times throughout history. The earliest such event occurred during the conquest of Latvia by Peter the Great in the Great Northern War with Sweden.
In 1897, the first official census in this area indicated that Latvians formed 68.3% of the total population of 1.93 million; Russians accounted for 12%, Jews for 7.4%, Germans for 6.2%, and Poles for 3.4%. The remainder were Lithuanians, Estonians, Gypsies, and various other nationalities.
The demographics shifted greatly in the 20th century due to the world wars, the expulsion of the Baltic Germans, the Holocaust, and occupation by the Soviet Union. Today, only the Russian minority, which has tripled in numbers since 1935, remains important. The share of ethnic Latvians grew from 77% (1,467,035) in 1935 to 80% (1,508,800), after human loss in World War II and human deportation and other repressive measures, fell strongly to 52% (1,387,757) in 1989.
In 2005, there were even fewer Latvians than in 1989, though their share of the population was larger - 1,357,099 (58.8% of the inhabitants). People who arrived in Latvia during the Soviet era, and their descendants born before 21 August 1991, have to pass a naturalisation process to receive Latvian citizenship. Their children born after the restoration of independence in 1991 are registered as citizens, if one of the parents requests it.
Ethnic Latvians have been one of the world's slowest-growing ethnic groups for a century. The number of Latvians today is actually less than it was in the 1920s.
Over 130,000 persons have been naturalized as Latvian citizens since 1995, but 290,660 persons, as of March 2011, live in Latvia with non-citizen's passports. Large numbers of Russians, as well as some Ukrainians and Belarusians remained in Latvia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
According to the provisional results of the Population and Housing Census 2011, the total population of Latvia on 1 March 2011 was 2,067,887. Since the previous census in 2000 the country's population decreased by 309,000 or 13%. The proportion of ethnic Latvians increased to 62.1% of the population. Livonians are the other indigenous ethnic group, with about 100 of them remaining. Latgalians are a distinctive subgroup of Latvians inhabiting or coming from Eastern Latvia.
According to rankings provided by the United States Census Bureau—International Data Base (IDB)—Country Rankings, Latvia is estimated to have a population of 1,249,812 in the year 2050.
Illegal immigration in Latvia has traditionally been from neighboring countries but now migrants also come from other areas such as Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. The Latvian government have sought to work with Russia to stem the problem. In 2009 the US State Department criticized Latvia for its treatment of illegal immigrants.
For an immigrant not to become an illegal resident, a permit is required for a foreign national or a stateless person wishing to reside in the Republic of Latvia for more than 90 days within a 6-month period, thus if the person does not acquire himself a residence permit, he will be considered an illegal immigrant.
On 1 January 2011 the average age was 41.6 years—6 months more than the average age published earlier.
According to Statistics Latvia, 1,907,675 inhabitants live in Latvia as of 01.01.2020.
Data from Statistics Latvia:
Latvians have always been the largest ethnic group in Latvia during the past century, but minority peoples have always been numerous. Before World War 2, the proportion of non-Latvians was approximately 25%, the Russians being the largest minority (approx. 10%), followed by Jews (approx. 5%), Germans and Poles (2–3%). After World War 2 only small numbers of Jews and Germans remained and following a massive immigration of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, Latvians almost became a minority. In 1989, the proportion of Latvians had decreased to only 52% (from 75.5% in 1935). Despite the decreasing number of Latvians due to low fertility rates, the proportion of Latvians has considerably increased during the past two decades and reached 62.1% in 2011 (slightly higher than the 62.0% in 1959). This is due to large scale emigration of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The number of these peoples almost halved between 1989 and 2011.
In the 2011 census, 1,164,894 persons in Latvia reported Latvian as their main language spoken at home; 698,757 respondents listed Russian as their main language spoken at home, representing 37.2% of the total population, whereas Latvian was recorded as the main language spoken at home for 62.1%. Latvian was spoken as a second language by 20.8% of the population, and 43.7% spoke Russian as a second language. In total, 71% of ethnic Latvians said they could speak Russian, and 52% of Russians could speak Latvian in the 2000 census.
In August 2019, the Central Statistical Bureau published new data indicating that Latvian was the native language of 60.8% of Latvia's population per 1 January 2018, a 2.6% increase compared to the 2000 census. 62.2% of the population was 'ethnically Latvian'. The percentage of native Latvian speakers increased in all statistical regions, especially in the Rīga capital region and Pierīga region around it (4.6%). The number of native Russian speakers dropped in all regions; in Latgale, the number of native Russian speakers also dropped, although their percentage remained the same at 55.5%, the highest of the country. Compared to the 2011 census, the share of people speaking Latvian at home rose by 1.9%, while the number of Russian home speakers dropped by 2.6%. 90.7% of ethnic Russians indicated they spoke Russian at home, while 8.5% of them indicated they spoke Latvian at home. Inter-linguistic marriage was an important factor why, for example, some non-native Latvian speakers who married native Latvian speakers switched to speaking Latvian at home. The percentage of Russian home speakers gradually increased with age from 30.0% amongst 0–4-year-olds to 44.2% amongst 55–64-year-olds, while Latvian home speakers gradually decreased with age from 69.2% amongst 0–4-year-olds to 55.0% amongst 55–64-year-olds, indicating that children in Latvia are increasingly being raised and educated in Latvian.
The largest religion in Latvia is Christianity (79%), though only about 7% of the population attends religious services regularly. The largest groups were:
In the Eurobarometer Poll 2010, 38% of Latvian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", while 48% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 11% stated that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
Lutheranism was more prominent before the Soviet occupation, when it was a majority religion of ~60% due to strong historical links with the Nordic countries and influence of the Hansa, and Germany in general. Since then, Lutheranism has declined to a slightly greater extent than Roman Catholicism in all three Baltic states. The Evangelical Lutheran Church, with an estimated 600,000 members in 1956, was affected most adversely. An internal document of 18 March 1987, near the end of communist rule, spoke of an active membership that had shrunk to only 25,000 in Latvia, but the faith has since experienced a revival. Moreover, modern Evangelical Protestant denominations are spreading worldwide, including Latvia. The country's Orthodox Christians belong to the Latvian Orthodox Church, a semi-autonomous body within the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2011, there were 416 Jews and 319 Muslims living in Latvia.
There are more than 600 Latvian neopagans, "Dievturi", whose religion is based on Latvian mythology. About 21% of the total population is not affiliated with a specific religion.
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Politics of Latvia
The politics of Latvia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. The President holds a primarily ceremonial role as Head of State. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament, the Saeima. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
On March 19, 1991, the Supreme Council passed a law explicitly guaranteeing "equal rights to all nationalities and ethnic groups" and "guarantees to all permanent residents in the Republic regardless of their nationality, equal rights to work and wages." The law also prohibits "any activity directed toward nationality discrimination or the promotion of national superiority or hatred."
In autumn 1992 Latvia re-implemented significant portions of its 1922 constitution and in spring 1993 the government took a census to determine eligibility for citizenship. After almost three years of deliberations, Latvia finalized a citizenship and naturalization law in summer 1994.
In the 5–6 June 1993 elections, with a turnout of over 90%, eight of Latvia's 23 registered political parties passed the four per cent threshold to enter parliament. The Popular Front, which spearheaded the drive for independence two years previously with a 75% majority in the last parliamentary elections in 1990, did not qualify for representation. The centrist Latvian Way party received a 33% plurality of votes and joined with the Farmer's Union to head a centre-right coalition government.
Led by the opposition National Conservative Party, right-wing nationalists won a majority of the seats nationwide and also captured the Riga mayoralty in the 29 May 1994 municipal elections. OSCE and COE observers pronounced the elections free and fair, and turnout averaged about 60%. In February 1995, the Council of Europe granted Latvia membership.
With President Bill Clinton's assistance, on 30 April 1994 Latvia and Russia signed a troop withdrawal agreement. Russia withdrew its troops by 31 August 1994 but maintained several hundred technical specialists to staff an OSCE-monitored phased-array ABM radar station at Skrunda until 31 August 1998.
The 30 September-1 October 1995 elections produced a deeply fragmented parliament with nine parties represented and the largest party - the newly founded centrist Democratic Party "Saimnieks" - commanding only 18 of 100 seats. Attempts to form right-of-centre and left-wing governments failed; 7 weeks after the election, a broad but fractious coalition government of six of the nine parties was voted into office under Prime Minister Andris Šķēle, a nonpartisan businessman. The also-popular president, Guntis Ulmanis, had limited constitutional powers but played a key role in leading the various political forces to agree finally to this broad coalition. In June 1996, the Saeima re-elected Ulmanis to another 3-year term. In the summer of 1997, the daily newspaper "Diena" revealed that half the cabinet ministers and two-thirds of parliamentarians appeared to violate the 1996 anti-corruption law, which bars senior officials from holding positions in private business. Under pressure from Šķēle, several ministers subsequently resigned or were fired. However, after months of increasing hostility between Šķēle and leading coalition politicians, the coalition parties demanded and received the prime minister's resignation on 28 July. The new government was formed by the recent Minister of Economy Guntars Krasts. It included the same parties and mostly the same ministers as Šķēle's government. It pursued the same course of reform, albeit not as vigorously.
In the 1998 elections, the Latvian party structure began to consolidate with only six parties winning seats in the Saeima. Andris Šķēle's newly formed People's Party garnered a plurality with 24 seats. Though the election represented a victory for the centre-right, personality conflicts and scandals within the two largest right of centre parties – Latvian Way and the People's Party – prevented stable coalitions from forming. Two shaky governments under Vilis Krištopans and Andris Šķēle quickly collapsed in less than a year. In May 2000, a compromise candidate was found in the form of Andris Bērziņš, the Latvian Way mayor of Rīga. His four-party coalition government lasted till the next elections in 2002.
In 1999, the Saeima elected Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, a compromise candidate with no party affiliation, to the presidency. Though born in Rīga in 1937, she settled in Canada during the years of the Soviet occupation, becoming a well-respected academic in the subject of Latvian culture. Since her election, she has become one of the most popular political figures in Latvia.
Local elections in 2001 represented a victory for the left-of-center parties in several municipalities, including Rīga. A leftist coalition in the Rīga City Council elected Gundars Bojārs, a Social Democrat, to the office of mayor.
Between local elections in 2001 and Saeima elections in 2002, two new parties formed: the conservative New Era Party led by Einars Repše and Christian Democratic Latvia's First Party. Both of them promised to fight corruption and made that the most important issue in the 2002 elections. Six parties were elected to Saeima in 2002 elections. New Era Party with 26 seats out of 100 became the largest party in the parliament. Several previously successful parties such as Latvian Way and the Social Democrats did not reach the 5% threshold of the popular vote needed to be in the parliament. This was mostly due to voters perceiving these parties as corrupt. After elections, Einars Repše formed a government consisting of his New Era Party and three other parties.
In 2003, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga was re-elected to the presidency for the second term, until 2007. On 20 September 2003, Latvia voted to join the European Union in a referendum. Virtually all of the major political parties and major Latvian-language media supported the 'YES' vote. Latvian government also spent a significant amount of money for the 'YES' campaign. The 'NO' campaign lacked both funding and media access. Out of voters who participated in the referendum, 66.9% of cast votes in favour of EU. The vote was largely along the ethnic lines. It is estimated that 84% of ethnic Latvians voted 'YES', while 91% of ethnic Russians voted 'NO'.
After the referendum, Repše's government started to fall apart and he eventually resigned in January 2004. A new government, led by Indulis Emsis, head of the conservative Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) was approved by the parliament in March 2004. The government was a coalition of the ZZS, the People's Party (TP), and the Latvia's First Party (LPP); the coalition had only 46 out of 100 seats in Latvia's parliament, but was also supported by the leftist National Harmony Party (TSP). After the Saeima did not accept the budget for 2005 proposed by the government of Indulis Emsis, the government resigned. On 2 December 2004, Aigars Kalvītis became the new Prime Minister and thus head of the government.
Kalvītis was the first prime minister in the history of post-soviet independent Latvia whose government was reelected by an election in 2006. New Era Party, however, weakened, so a coalition reshuffle took place, and a 4-party centre-right coalition emerged. The government lasted only until 5 December 2007, when Kalvitis resigned due to his continuous and unsuccessful attempts to dismiss Aleksejs Loskutovs, the head of KNAB, the State Anti-Corruption Agency, after Loskutov's had investigated shadowy matters of the PM's party.
After negotiations, a "crisis-handling" government was formed, with the participation of the same parties, led by former PM Ivars Godmanis, a respectable public figure, and member of Latvian Way. The government tried to impose austerity measures, with moderate success. This was accompanied, though, with a widespread public opposition, which resulted in two referenda, one on pensions, the other on constitutional amendments, which would have allowed the electorate to initiate the dissolution of the parliament.
Both of the referenda failed, but the country entered into the worst political crisis since the independence from the Soviet Union, together with the economic situation severely deteriorating, due to the world financial crisis. The popularity of the governing parties melted and was below the parliamentary threshold. By the end of 2008, parties had a hard time agreeing on further budget cuts, (mainly in the social sphere) the planned reorganization of the government, and layoffs.
On 13 January 2009, there were severe riots in Riga, with protesters attacking the building of the parliament. The President Valdis Zatlers gave an ultimatum to parties, saying that should they not agree on constitutional amendments about the dissolution of the Saeima, he would dissolve the parliament by the end of March. After background talks and a failed vote of no confidence, PM Ivars Godmanis chose to resign in late February. On the 26 February, Zatlers nominated the candidate of New Era Party, MEP Valdis Dombrovskis to the post of prime minister. After talks, on 4 March 2009 five parties confirmed their participation in the coalition: New Era, People's Party, Union of Greens and Peasants, For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK, and Civic Union.
The current edition of the citizenship law was adopted in 1998 after much debate and pressure from Russia and European Union, amending a more restrictive law, initially passed in 1994. In accordance with the law, Latvian citizens are those who had Latvian citizenship prior to June 17, 1940, and their descendants. Those who settled in Latvia during the Soviet occupation, with exception of those who did so subsequent to retirement from the Soviet Army, or were employees, informers, agents or safehouse keepers of the KGB, or of the security services, intelligence services or other special services of some other foreign state, can obtain Latvian citizenship via naturalization. Other categories of persons not eligible for naturalization include convicted criminals, state officials and servicemen of armed forces of a foreign state, members of Communist Party as well as members of certain affiliate organizations, who, after 13 January 1991, have acted against the Latvian State. Naturalization criteria include a conversational knowledge of Latvian, an oath of loyalty, renunciation of former citizenship, a 5-year residency requirement, and a knowledge of the Latvian constitution. As of November 2005, about 109,000 persons applied for naturalization and about 103,000 of them were granted Latvian citizenship.
In 2006 approximately 18 per cent of the total population (420,000 inhabitants of Latvia, slightly less than half of ethnically non-Latvian population) had no Latvian citizenship. Most of them have Latvian non-Citizen Passports, which give them a status similar to permanent residency in other countries. They can reside in Latvia indefinitely and obtain most of the public services ("e.g.", education and healthcare) according to the same conditions as the citizens of Latvia. Non-citizens of Latvia cannot vote during municipal and state elections and are not allowed to work in government, the police and civil services. Several foreign nations also treat citizens and non-citizens of Latvia differently, admitting citizens of Latvia without a visa but requiring visas from non-citizens. Russia used to have an opposite practice, requiring visas from both citizens and non-citizens of Latvia, but allowing non-citizens to travel to Russia with a cheaper visa.
As a transitional clause, the Latvian law allows dual citizenship for those who were forced to leave Latvia during the Soviet or Nazi occupation and adopted another citizenship while away from Latvia. In order to be eligible for dual citizenship, they had to claim it by July 1, 1995. After that date the other citizenship must be renounced upon the acceptance of Latvian citizenship.
Latvian is the sole state language in Latvia; while the threatened Livonian language is recognized as "the language of the indigenous (autochthon) population". The Latgalian written language is also protected "as a historic variant of the Latvian language." All other languages are considered foreign by the law on state languages. Two parliamentary parties, Harmony Centre and ForHRUL, have requested that Russian (26.9% of inhabitants, according to the 2011 census, are Russians) be given official status.
Since 1999, the education laws have forbidden the public universities to instruct students in languages other than Latvian (there are exclusions made for linguistics, some international projects and non-budget groups). The law included a provision allowing for instruction in Latvian only in public high schools since 2004. Following large-scale protests in 2003—2004, the law was amended, requiring instruction in Latvian within at least 60% of the curriculum.
The president is elected by Parliament for a maximum of two terms of four-years, by secret ballot and by an absolute majority of the vote (Constitution of Latvia, Articles 35, 36 and 39).
The President is a largely ceremonial Head of State, and in common with other presidents in parliamentary republics, the President of Latvia has influence and authority rather than power.
Although the President is formally the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, signs treaties, represents Latvia abroad, and officially appoints ambassadors and other key officials, these powers are constitutionally exercised on the binding advice of the Prime Minister, who is politically responsible for them (Constitution of Latvia, Article 53). The President does, however, have personal discretion over the proposal of legislation to the Parliament, vetoing legislation, calling referendums on legislation, and nominating the Prime Minister. The President also has the right, "in extremis", to call a referendum on the premature dissolution of Parliament: if the referendum is passed, Parliament is dissolved; but if the referendum fails, the President must resign.
The Prime Minister is appointed by the President. The Prime Minister then chooses the Council of Ministers (Cabinet) which has to be accepted by the Parliament. The Parliament can remove the Prime Minister and Cabinet by means of a vote of no-confidence (Constitution of Latvia, Article 59).
The unicameral Parliament (Saeima) has 100 members, elected for a four-year term by proportional representation with a 5% threshold. The parliamentary elections are held on the first Saturday of October. Locally, Latvia elects municipal councils, consisting of 7 to 60 members, depending on the size of the municipality, also by proportional representation for a four-year term.
Summary of the 6 October 2018 Latvian Saeima election results
Judges' appointments are confirmed by Parliament and are irrevocable, except on the decision of the Judicial Disciplinary Board or on the judgment of a criminal court. There is a special Constitutional Court, with the authority to rule on the constitutionality of laws, whose members must be confirmed by an absolute majority vote of Parliament, by secret ballot.
BIS, CBSS, CE, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, EU, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICRM, IDA, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, ITUC, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), Interpol, IOC, IOM (observer), ISO (correspondent), ITU, NATO, NSG, OAS (observer), OPCW, OSCE, United Nations, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCO, WEU (associate partner), WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO, WTrO (applicant)
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Economy of Latvia
The economy of Latvia is an open economy in Northern Europe and is part of the European Union's (EU) single market. Latvia is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1999, a member of the European Union since 2004, a member of the Eurozone since 2014 and a member of the OECD since 2016. Latvia is ranked the 14th in the world by the Ease of Doing Business Index prepared by the World Bank Group, According to the Human Development Report 2011, Latvia belongs to the group of very high human development countries. Due to its geographical location, transit services are highly developed, along with timber and wood-processing, agriculture and food products, and manufacturing of machinery and electronic devices.
Latvia's economy has had rapid GDP growth of more than 10% per year during 2006–07, but entered a severe recession in 2009 as a result of an unsustainable current account deficit, collapse of the real estate market, and large debt exposure amid the softening world economy. Triggered by the collapse of Parex Bank, the second largest bank, GDP decreased by almost 18% in 2009, and the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other international donors provided substantial financial assistance to Latvia as part of an agreement to defend the currency's peg to the euro in exchange for the government's commitment to stringent austerity measures.
In 2011 Latvia achieved GDP growth by 5.5% and thus Latvia again was among the fastest growing economies in the European Union. The IMF/EU program successfully concluded in December 2011.
Privatization is mostly complete, except for some of the large state-owned utilities. Export growth contributed to the economic recovery, however, the bulk of the country's economic activity is in the services sector.
For centuries under Hanseatic and German influence and then during its inter-war independence, Latvia used its geographic location as an important East-West commercial and trading centre. Industry served local markets, while timber, paper and agricultural products were Latvia's main exports. Conversely, years in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union tended to integrate Latvia's economy with their markets and also serve those countries' large internal industrial needs.
After reestablishing its independence, Latvia proceeded with market-oriented reforms, albeit at a measured pace. Its freely traded currency, the lat, was introduced in 1993 and held steady, or appreciated, against major world currencies. Inflation was reduced from 958.6% in 1992 to 25% by 1995 and 1.4% by 2002.
After contracting substantially between 1991–95, the economy steadied in late 1994, led by a recovery in light industry and a boom in commerce and finance. This recovery was interrupted twice, first by a banking crisis and the bankruptcy of "Banka Baltija", Latvia's largest bank, in 1995 and second by a severe crisis in the financial system of neighbouring Russia in 1998. After 2000, Latvian GDP grew by 6–8% a year for 4 consecutive years. Latvia's state budget was balanced in 1997 but the 1998 Russian financial crisis resulted in large deficits, which were reduced from 4% of GDP in 1999 to 1.8% in 2003. These deficits were smaller than in most of the other countries joining the European Union in 2004.
Until the middle of 2008, Latvia had the fastest developing economy in Europe. In 2003, GDP growth was 7.5% and inflation was 2.9%. The centrally planned system of the Soviet period was replaced with a structure based on free-market principles. In 2005, private sector share in GDP was 70%. Recovery in light industry and Riga's emergence as a regional financial and commercial centre offset shrinkage of the state-owned industrial sector and agriculture. The official unemployment figure was held steady in the 7%–10% range.
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 severely disrupted the Latvian economy, primarily as a result of the easy credit bubble that began building up during 2004. The bubble burst leading to a rapidly weakening economy, resulting in a budget, wage and unemployment crisis. Latvia had the worst economic performance in 2009, with annual growth rate averaging −18%.
The Latvian economy entered a phase of fiscal contraction during the second half of 2008 after an extended period of credit-based speculation and unrealistic inflation of real estate values. The national account deficit for 2007, for example, represented more than 22% of the GDP for the year while inflation was running at 10%.
By 2009 unemployment rose to 23% and was the highest in the EU.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in economics for 2008, wrote in his "New York Times" Op-Ed column for 15 December 2008:
""The acutest problems are on Europe's periphery, where many smaller economies are experiencing crises strongly reminiscent of past crises in Latin America and Asia: Latvia is the new Argentina"."
By August 2009, Latvia's GDP had fallen by 20% year on year, with Standard & Poor's predicting a further 16% contraction to come. The International Monetary Fund suggested a devaluation of Latvia's currency, but the European Union objected to this, on the grounds that the majority of Latvia's debt was denominated in foreign currencies. Financial economist Michael Hudson has advocated for redenominating foreign currency liabilities in Latvian lats before devaluing.
However, by 2010 there were indications that Latvia's policy of internal devaluation was successful.
The economic situation has since 2010 improved, and by 2012 Latvia was described as a success by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde showing strong growth forecasts. The Latvian economy grew by 5.5% in 2011 and by 5.6% in 2012 reaching the highest rate of growth in Europe. Unemployment, however, remains high, and GDP remains below the pre-crisis level.
Privatisation in Latvia is almost complete. Virtually all of the previously state-owned small and medium companies have been privatized, leaving only a small number of politically sensitive large state companies. In particular, the country's main energy and utility company, Latvenergo remains state-owned and there are no plans to privatize it. The government also holds minority shares in Ventspils Nafta oil transit company and the country's main telecom company Lattelecom but it plans to relinquish its shares in the near future.
Foreign investment in Latvia is still modest compared with the levels in north-central Europe. A law expanding the scope for selling land, including land sales to foreigners, was passed in 1997. Representing 10.2% of Latvia's total foreign direct investment, American companies invested $127 million in 1999. In the same year, the United States exported $58.2 million of goods and services to Latvia and imported $87.9 million. Eager to join Western economic institutions like the World Trade Organization, OECD, and the European Union, Latvia signed a Europe Agreement with the EU in 1995 with a 4-year transition period. Latvia and the United States have signed treaties on investment, trade, and intellectual property protection and avoidance of double taxation.
Average wages are higher in Riga and its surroundings and in Ventspils and its surroundings, with inland border regions lacking behind, mainly the region of Latgale.
Almost all of Latvian electricity is produced with Hydroelectricity. Biggest hydroelectric power stations are Pļaviņas Hydroelectric Power Station, Riga Hydroelectric Power Plant, Ķegums Hydroelectric Power Station.
In 2017 about 4381 GWh were produced in hydro power and 150 GWh in wind power. There is a steady increase in Wind electricity production, and by 2022 the biggest wind farm is supposed to open which would produce 0.7 terawatt hours of energy (10% of country total)
Latvia imports 100% of its natural gas from Russia.
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
"lowest 10%:"
2.9%
"highest 10%:"
25.9% (1998)
Industries:
synthetic fibres, agricultural machinery, fertilizers, radios, electronics, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, textiles, timber; note – dependent on imports for energy and raw materials
Industrial production growth rate:
8.5% (2004 est.)
Electricity – production:
4,547 GWh (2002)
Electricity – production by source:
"fossil fuel:"
29.1%
"hydro:"
70.9%
"nuclear:"
0%
"other:"
0% (2001)
Electricity – consumption:
5,829 GWh (2002)
Electricity – exports:
1,100 GWh (2002)
Electricity – imports:
2,700 GWh (2002)
Agriculture – products:
wheat, barley, potatoes, vegetables; beef, milk, eggs; fish
Foreign direct investments in Latvia:
Lursoft statistics on the remaining amount of investments at the end of each year.
Packet of 20 cigarettes: On Average 3.30 – 4.50 EUR.
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Telecommunications in Latvia
Telecommunications in Latvia include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Radio stations:
Radios: 1.76 million (1997).
The state public radio broadcaster is Latvijas Radio.
Television stations:
Televisions: 1.22 million (1997).
The state public television broadcaster is Latvijas Televīzija.
Calling code: +371
International call prefix: 00
Main lines:
Mobile cellular:
Telephone system: Recent efforts have focused on bringing competition to the telecommunications sector; the number of fixed lines is decreasing as mobile-cellular telephone service expands; the number of telecommunications operators has grown rapidly since the fixed-line market opened to competition in 2003; combined fixed-line and mobile-cellular subscribership is roughly 150 per 100 persons; the Latvian network is now connected via fiber optic cable to Estonia, Finland, and Sweden (2008).
Until 2003 Lattelecom had a monopoly in the fixed telecommunications market. This led to overwhelming use of cellular phones for private customers, fixed lines being requested mostly by companies. In Latvia exist more than 2 million mobile phones but only 644,000 fixed phone connections.
Since the fixed-line voice communication monopoly ended on January 1, 2003, several companies entered the market for fixed voice communication services: Aeronavigācijas serviss, Baltcom TV, Beta Telecom, Latvenergo Tehniskais Centrs, OPTRON, Rigatta, Telecentrs, Telenets, Telekom Baltija, CSC Telecom and Bite Latvija. These voice telephony providers provide services for cheaper foreign calls, as well as local calls. The telecom regulator SPRK tries to provide a competitive environment so that new operators can compete with Lattelecom which owns most of the last-mile connections.
Top-level domain: .lv
Internet users:
Internet hosts:
Internet Service Providers: 150+ ISPs (2007).
The Internet in Latvia began to experience significant growth in 1999, as the consolidation of regional Internet providers began to drive down prices for dial-up access. By 2000, there were 75,000 Internet users and about a dozen e-commerce shops in Latvia. Back then the average salary for a web programmer was 500Ls/month. High-speed access costs remained prohibitive; for example, an ADSL service was introduced in July 2000 and planned to charge a monthly fee of 50,00Ls. By 2003, however, only 5.4% of Latvians used the Internet at home, and 60% did not use it at all; those who did instead accessed it in public areas or through their place of work, as high subscription prices for home usage remained a barrier. By 2008, access prices had fallen to 11,90Ls (€17) per month for the Lattelecom ADSL line. By July 2015, 79,2% of the population use internet at home. Latvia has the 7th fastest internet in the world.
There is no OpenNet Initiative (ONI) country profile, but Latvia is shown as no evidence of Internet filtering in all areas for which ONI tests (political, social, conflict/security, and Internet tools) on the ONI global Internet filtering maps.
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press. There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail.
In September 2010 the government's Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), which enforces campaign laws, removed a satirical film, The Last Bear Slayer, from the on-demand playlist of the partially state-owned cable provider, Lattelecom. The KNAB stated that the film might have constituted election advertising. Reporters Without Borders charged that the prohibition constituted improper censorship, but noted it was ineffective because the film was widely available on the Internet.
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Transport in Latvia
This article provides an overview of the transport infrastructure of Latvia.
It is mandatory to keep headlights on while driving, even in daylight; most cars commercially sold in Latvia are equipped to make this automatic.
Latvian Railways is the main state-owned railway company in Latvia. Its daughter companies both carry out passengers services as well as carry a large quantity of freight cargo, and freight trains operate over the whole current passenger network, and a number of lines currently closed to passenger services.
There is also a narrow gauge railway between Gulbene and Aluksne, operated by the Industrial Heritage Trust, using Russian and Polish built heritage rolling stock. Three narrow gauge trains a day operate on the 33 km route between the two towns.
"total:"
2,347 km
"Russian gauge:"
2,314 km gauge (270 km electrified)
"narrow gauge:"
33 km gauge (2002)
Pasažieru Vilciens is a daughter company of Latvian Railways and the only passenger-carrying company in Latvia.
Domestic passenger lines with current service are:
Riga International Airport is the only major airport in Latvia, carrying around 5 million passengers annually. It is the largest airport in the Baltic states and has direct flights to over 80 destinations in 30 countries including a nonstop transatlantic flight to New York–JFK operated by Uzbekistan Airlines year-round. It is also the main hub of airBaltic.
In the recent years airBaltic also operated from Liepāja International Airport as well as Ventspils International Airport but operations in both of these airports were ceased until 2017, when airBaltic relaunched flights from Riga to Liepaja.
Currently there are plans for further development in several regional airports, including Jūrmala Airport, Liepāja, Ventspils as well as Daugavpils International Airport.
As of 2003, there were a total of 51 airfields in Latvia, with 27 of them having paved runways.
Airports - with paved runways
"total:"
27
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"
7
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"
2
"914 to 1,523 m:"
2
"under 914 m:"
16 (2003)
Airports - with unpaved runways
"total:"
24
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"
1
"1,523 to 2,438 m:"
2
"914 to 1,523 m:"
1
"under 914 m:"
20 (2003)
Key ports are located in Riga (Freeport of Riga and Riga Passenger Terminal), Ventspils (Free port of Ventspils), and Liepāja (Port of Liepāja). Most transit traffic uses these and half the cargo is crude oil and oil products.
300 km (perennially navigable)
crude oil 412 km; refined products 421 km; natural gas 1,097 km (2003)
"total:"
11 ships (with a volume of or over) totaling /
"note:"
includes some foreign-owned ships registered here as a flag of convenience: Germany 1, Greece 1, Ukraine 1 (2002 est.)
"ships by type:"
cargo ship 6, petroleum tanker 1, refrigerated cargo 2, roll-on/roll-off ship 1, short-sea/passenger 1
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Latvian National Armed Forces
The Latvian National Armed Forces () are the armed forces of the Republic of Latvia. Latvia's defense concept is based on a mobile professional rapid response force and reserve segment that can be called upon relatively fast for mobilization should the need arise. The National Armed Forces consists of Land Forces, Naval Forces, Air Force and National Guard. Its main tasks are to protect the territory of the State; participate in international military operations; and to prevent threats to national security.
The mission of the National Armed Forces (NAF) is to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the nation and to defend its population against foreign or domestic armed aggression. In order to implement these tasks, the NAF provide for the defence of the nation, its air space and national territorial waters, participate in large scale crisis response operations, perform emergency rescue operations, and participate in international peacekeeping operations.
The main mission of the National Armed Forces is to:
The Latvian armed forces were first formed soon after the new state was proclaimed in November 1918 after World War I. At the end of the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920), the Latvian Army consisted of 69,232 men.
In terms of equipment the Latvian military during its first independence period (1919-1940) was armed mostly with British weapons and gear. The average Latvian infantry soldier in 1930s is believed to have carried 31,4 kg of equipment in winter, and around 29,1 kg in summer time. The main service rifle was British Pattern 1914 Enfield and the amount of standard issue ammunition for an infantry soldier was 45 rounds of .303 (7,7mm) caliber. In addition troops had access to 3 different types of hand grenades (defense, attack and rifle grenades). The Latvian Army had acquired wide variety of machine guns in different calibers from various means: trophies acquired from hostile forces during the War of Independence, allied donations and subsequent official state purchases. For light machine guns these included the French Chauchat, Danish Madsen, and British Lewis gun (which became the main light machine gun for the Latvian Army). The main heavy machine gun was the British Vickers machine gun in the .303 (7,7mm) caliber, although the army also kept Russian PM M1910 machine guns in reserve. In general, the Latvian Army was lacking in automatic weapons of all calibers, and the ones it did have were becoming increasingly outdated towards the start of World War II (most of the weapons in service were from World War I). In terms of heavy weapons, the Latvian military had acquired a rather large number of different artillery systems in different calibers, around 400 artillery pieces in total (although most of these were outdated and worn out due to heavy use and age). The main artillery gun for infantry support was British Ordnance QF 18-pounder field gun and British QF 4.5-inch howitzer, although there were also several types of French and Russian artillery field guns in reserve. For anti-tank weapons, in 1938 the army received Austrian 47 mm Cannone da 47/32 anti-tank cannons, which were reasonably effective against early WWII tanks. Concerning infantry mortars, a number of 81mm mortars were acquired from Finland somewhere around late 1930s, but its unclear how many were delivered and in service at the start of WWII.
In terms of vehicles, the Latvian military was seriously lacking in motorized transport, and thus had to rely mostly on railroads and horse drawn carriages for most of its logistic needs. The military leadership did make some efforts to solve this problem at the end of 1930's (by purchasing a small number of cars, trucks, artillery tractors and motorbikes), but at the start of WWII only a small portion of the Latvian military had access to motorized vehicles. In terms of armored vehicles, the Latvian military had 6 armored trains, 18 units of Carden Loyd tankettes, 6 armored cars and 27 tanks (of various designs and combat abilities). In terms of air power, at the start of WWII the Latvian Air Force had around 52 fighter planes and 48 scout planes, of which only 25 were the relatively modern Gloster Gladiator fighters. Thus the Latvian military during the interwar era was more or less comparable both in equipment and size to its other Baltic neighbors, such as Estonia, Lithuania and Finland.
However, the most crucial problem and flaw for both the Latvian military and other militaries of the Baltic states at the eve of WWII had to do with the failure to organize effective military cooperation between all the Baltic states in case of a new war in the region. The Latvian command in the interwar period had given very little attention towards any possible coordination of forces with either the Estonian or Lithuanian armies against a possible enemy, and so the Latvian military planned its actions and doctrine in almost complete isolation and oblivious towards whatever its neighbors to the north (Estonia) or south (Lithuania) did. This ultimately led to flawed and questionable choices in creating defense plans against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (there were separate plans towards both of these possible aggressors), since the Latvian higher command was unsure on how Latvia's neighbors would react in case of this possible conflict.
After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in June 1940, the annihilation of the Latvian Army began. The army was first renamed the People’s Army of Latvia (Latvian: "Latvijas Tautas armija") and in September–November 1940 the Red Army’s 24th Territorial Rifle Corps. The corps comprised the 181st and 183rd Rifle Divisions. In September the corps contained 24,416 men but in autumn more than 800 officers and about 10,000 instructors and soldiers were discharged. The arrests of soldiers continued in the following months. In June 1940, the entire Territorial Corps was sent to Litene camp. Before leaving the camp, Latvians drafted in 1939 were demobilised, and replaced by about 4,000 Russian soldiers from the area around Moscow. On June 10, the corps' senior officers were sent to Russia where they were arrested and most of them shot. On June 14 at least 430 officers were arrested and sent to Gulag camps. After the German attack against the Soviet Union, from June 29 to July 1 more than 2080 Latvian soldiers were demobilised, fearing that they might turn their weapons against the Russian commissars and officers. Simultaneously, many soldiers and officers deserted and when the corps crossed the Latvian border into the Russian SFSR, only about 3,000 Latvian soldiers remained.
The origin of the current Latvian armed forces can be traced to the establishment of the Latvian National Guard or Zemessardze on August 23, 1991, which served as the first organized defence force after the restoration of the independence of Latvia. A notable moment in the history of the armed forces is the accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004.
National Armed Forces consist of:
The Security Service of Parliament and State President was a part of the National Armed Forces until its merger with the Military Police in 2009.
Latvian National Armed Forces consist of the Regular Force, National Guard and Reserve. On January 1, 2007, conscription was abolished and since then the Regular Force consists of only professional soldiers. Recruits must be 18 years of age or older. As of June 2018, there were 5500 active duty soldiers, 8000 national guards. By the end of 2017, there were 7800 registered reserve soldiers, of whom about 5000 were retired professional soldiers. According to the National Defence Concept, the National Armed Forces are to maintain 17500 militarily trained personnel, including 6500 professional soldiers, 8000 National Guards and 3000 (trained) reserve soldiers. Reserve training began in 2015.
Along with providing for national defence, the NAF will also react immediately to threats to other allies and to international crises.
Latvia cooperates with Estonia and Lithuania in the joint infantry battalion BALTBAT and naval squadron BALTRON which are available for peacekeeping operations.
Currently, NATO is involved in the patrolling and protection of the Latvian air space as the Latvian military does not have the means to do so. For this goal a rotating force of four NATO fighters, which comes from different nations and switches at two or three month intervals, is based in Lithuania to cover all three Baltic states (see Baltic Air Policing).
After joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Latvia has undertaken obligations to strengthen common defence within the scope of its capabilities. For this purpose, every NATO member state delegates its military formations — fast response, well-armed and well-equipped units capable to operate beyond the NATO’s borders.
After joining NATO, the foundation of the Latvian defence system has shifted from total territorial defence to collective defence. Latvia has acquired small but highly professional troop units that have been fully integrated into NATO structures. NAF soldiers have participated in international operations since 1996. Specialized units (e.g. units of military medics, military police, unexploded ordnance neutralizers, military divers and special forces) have been established in order to facilitate and enhance NAF participation in international operations. Special attention has been paid to establishing a unit to deal with the identification and clearance of nuclear pollution. The successful participation of Latvian soldiers in international exercises, operations and missions demonstrates that their professional skills already comply with the performance requirements set by the Alliance.
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Foreign relations of Latvia
The foreign relations of Latvia are the primary responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Today's Republic of Latvia regards itself as a continuation of the 1918–1940 republic. After the declaration on the restoration of its full independence on August 21, 1991, Latvia became a member of the United Nations on September 17, 1991, and is a signatory to a number of UN organizations and other international agreements. Latvia welcomes further cooperation and integration with NATO, European Union, OECD and other Western organizations. It also seeks more active participation in UN peacekeeping efforts worldwide.
Council of Europe, CERCO, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, UNESCO, UNICEF, International Criminal Court, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It also is a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and of the North Atlantic Coordinating Council.
On September 20, 2003, in a nationwide referendum, the Latvians voted to join the European Union and Latvia's EU membership took effect on May 1, 2004. Latvia became a member state of NATO on March 29, 2004.
Through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Latvia maintains embassies in Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, the People's Republic of China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uzbekistan.
It also operates missions to the United Nations in New York City and Geneva, to the European Union, the Chemical Weapons Nonproliferation Organization, the OSCE, NATO, World Trade Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Latvia has a Consulate General in Russia; Consulates in Belarus and Russia; Honorary Consulates General in Australia, Cyprus, India, Israel, and Norway; and Honorary Consulates in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela.
Transshipment point for opiates and cannabis from Central and Southwest Asia to Western Europe and Scandinavia and Latin American cocaine and some synthetics from Western Europe to CIS; limited production of illicit amphetamines, ephedrine, and ecstasy for export.
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Lebanon
Lebanon (; , ), officially known as the Lebanese Republic (, ; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus is west across the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland had contributed to its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. At just 10,452 km2 (4,036 mi2), it is the smallest recognized sovereign state on the mainland Asian continent.
The earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than seven thousand years, predating recorded history. Lebanon was home to the Phoenicians, a maritime culture that flourished for almost three thousand years (c. 3200–539 BC). In 64 BC, the region came under the rule of the Roman Empire, and eventually became one of its leading centers of Christianity. The Mount Lebanon range saw the emergence of a monastic tradition known as the Maronite Church. As the Arab Muslims conquered the region, the Maronites held onto their religion and identity. However, a new religious group, the Druze, established themselves in Mount Lebanon as well, generating a religious divide that has lasted for centuries. During the Crusades, the Maronites re-established contact with the Roman Catholic Church and asserted their communion with Rome. These ties have influenced the region into the modern era.
Lebanon was conquered by the Ottomans in the 16th century and remained under the rule for the next 400 years. Following the empire's collapse after World War I, the five provinces constituting modern Lebanon came under the French Mandate. The French expanded the borders of the Mount Lebanon Governorate, which was predominately Maronite and Druze, to include more Muslims. Upon independence in 1943, Lebanon established a unique confessionalist form of government, with the major religious sects apportioned specific political powers. President Bechara El Khoury, prime minister Riad El-Solh, and minister of defence Emir Majid Arslan II are considered the founders of modern Lebanon and national heroes for their role in independence. Lebanon initially enjoyed political and economic stability, which shattered by the bloody Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) between various political and sectarian factions. The war partially led to military occupations by Syria (1975 to 2005) and Israel (1985 to 2000).
Despite its small size, Lebanese culture is renowned both in the Arab world and globally, powered by its large and influential diaspora. Prior to the civil war, the country enjoyed a diversified economy that included tourism, agriculture, commerce, and banking. Its financial power and stability through the 1950s and 1960s earned Lebanon the moniker of "Switzerland of the East", while its capital, Beirut, attracted so many tourists that it was known as "the Paris of the Middle East". Since the end of the war, there have been extensive efforts to revive the economy and rebuild national infrastructure. While still recovering from the political and economic effects of the conflict, Lebanon remains a cosmopolitan and relatively developed country, with the highest Human Development Index and GDP per capita in the Arab world outside of the oil-rich economies of the Persian Gulf.
Lebanon was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 and is a member of the Arab League (1945), the Non-Aligned Movement (1961), Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (1969) and the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (1973).
The name of Mount Lebanon originates from the Phoenician root "" (𐤋𐤁𐤍) meaning "white", apparently from its snow-capped peaks.
Occurrences of the name have been found in different Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of Ebla, and three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The name is recorded in Ancient Egyptian as "Rmnn" (𓂋𓏠𓈖𓈖𓈉), where "R" stood for Canaanite "L".
The name occurs nearly 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, as .
"Lebanon" as the name of an administrative unit (as opposed to the mountain range) was introduced with the Ottoman reforms of 1861, as the "Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate" (; ), continued in the name of the "State of Greater Lebanon" ( ""; ) in 1920, and eventually in the name of the sovereign "Republic of Lebanon" ( ) upon its independence in 1943.
The borders of contemporary Lebanon are a product of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. Its territory was the core of the Bronze Age Phoenician (Canaanite) city-states. As part of the Levant, it was part of numerous succeeding empires throughout ancient history, including the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Sasanid Persian empires.
After the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Levant, it was part of the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid Seljuk and Fatimid empires. The crusader state of the County of Tripoli, founded by Raymond IV of Toulouse in 1102, encompassed most of present-day Lebanon, falling to the Mamluk Sultanate in 1289 and finally to the Ottoman Empire in 1517. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Greater Lebanon fell under French mandate in 1920, and gained independence under president Bechara El Khoury in 1943. Lebanon's history since independence has been marked by alternating periods of political stability and prosperity based on Beirut's position as a regional center for finance and trade, interspersed with political turmoil and armed conflict (1948 Arab–Israeli War, Lebanese Civil War 1975–1990, 2005 Cedar Revolution, 2006 Lebanon War, 2007 Lebanon conflict, 2006–08 Lebanese protests, 2008 conflict in Lebanon, 2011 Syrian Civil War spillover, and 2019–20 Lebanese protests).
Evidence dating back to an early settlement in Lebanon was found in Byblos, considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The evidence dates back to earlier than 5000 BC. Archaeologists discovered remnants of prehistoric huts with crushed limestone floors, primitive weapons, and burial jars left by the Neolithic and Chalcolithic fishing communities who lived on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea over 7,000 years ago.
Lebanon was part of northern Canaan, and consequently became the homeland of Canaanite descendantsm the Phoenicians, a seafaring people who spread across the Mediterranean in the first millennium BC . The most prominent Phoenician cities were Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, while their most famous colonies were Carthage in present-day Tunisia and Cádiz in present-day Spain. The Phoenicians are credited with the invention of the oldest verified alphabet, which subsequently inspired the Greek alphabet and the Latin one thereafter. The cities of Phoenicia were incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE. The Phoenician city-states were later incorporated into the empire of Alexander the Great following the Siege of Tyre in 332 BC.
The region that is now Lebanon, as with the rest of Syria and much of Anatolia, became a major center of Christianity in the Roman Empire during the early spread of the faith. During the late 4th and early 5th century, a hermit named Maron established a monastic tradition focused on the importance of monotheism and asceticism, near the Mediterranean mountain range known as Mount Lebanon. The monks who followed Maron spread his teachings among Lebanese in the region. These Christians came to be known as Maronites and moved into the mountains to avoid religious persecution by Roman authorities. During the frequent Roman-Persian Wars that lasted for many centuries, the Sassanid Persians occupied what is now Lebanon from 619 till 629.
During the 7th century the Muslim Arabs conquered Syria establishing a new regime to replace the Byzantines. Though Islam and the Arabic language were officially dominant under this new regime, the general populace nonetheless only gradually converted from Christianity and the Syriac language. The Maronite community, in particular, managed to maintain a large degree of autonomy despite the succession of rulers over Lebanon and Syria.
During the 11th century the Druze religion emerged from a branch of Shia Islam. The new religion gained followers in the southern portion of Mount Lebanon. The northern portion of Mount Lebanon was ruled by Druze feudal families to the early 14th century which was then brought to an end by the Mamluk invasion. The Maronite population increased gradually in Northern Mount Lebanon and the Druze have remained in Southern Mount Lebanon until the modern era. In the south of Lebanon, Jabal Amel, Baalbek and the Beqaa Valley was ruled by Shia feudal families under the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire. Major cities on the coast, Acre, Beirut, and others, were directly administered by the Muslim Caliphs and the people became more fully absorbed by the Arab culture.
Following the fall of Roman Anatolia to the Muslim Turks, the Byzantines put out a call to the Pope in Rome for assistance in the 11th century. The result was a series of wars known as the Crusades launched by the Franks from Western Europe to reclaim the former Byzantine Christian territories in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Syria and Palestine (the "Levant"). The First Crusade succeeded in temporarily establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli as Roman Catholic Christian states along the coast. These crusader states made a lasting impact on the region, though their control was limited, and the region returned to full Muslim control after two centuries following the conquest by the Mamluks.
One of the most lasting effects of the Crusades in this region was the contact between the Franks (i.e. the French) and the Maronites. Unlike most other Christian communities in the Eastern Mediterranean, who swore allegiance to Constantinople or other local patriarchs, the Maronites proclaimed allegiance to the Pope in Rome. As such the Franks saw them as Roman Catholic brethren. These initial contacts led to centuries of support for the Maronites from France and Italy, even after the fall of the Crusader states in the region.
During this period Lebanon was divided into several provinces: Northern and Southern Mount Lebanon, Tripoli, Baalbek and Beqaa Valley and Jabal Amel.
In southern Mount Lebanon in 1590, Fakhr-al-Din II became the successor to Korkmaz. He soon established his authority as paramount prince of the Druze in the Shouf area of Mount Lebanon. Eventually, Fakhr-al-Din II was appointed Sanjakbey (Governor) of several Ottoman sub-provinces, with responsibility for tax-gathering. He extended his control over a substantial part of Mount Lebanon and its coastal area, even building a fort as far inland as Palmyra. This over-reaching eventually became too much for Ottoman Sultan Murad IV, who sent a punitive expedition to capture him in 1633. He was taken to Istanbul, kept in prison for two years and then executed along with one of his sons in April 1635. Surviving members of Fakhr al-Din's family ruled a reduced area under closer Ottoman control until the end of the 17th century.
On the death of the last Maan emir, various members of the Shihab clan ruled Mount Lebanon until 1830. Approximately 10,000 Christians were killed by the Druzes during inter-communal violence in 1860. Shortly afterwards, the Emirate of Mount Lebanon, which lasted about 400 years, was replaced by the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, as a result of a European-Ottoman treaty called the Règlement Organique.
The Baalbek and Beqaa Valley and Jabal Amel was ruled intermittently by various Shia feudal families, especially the Al Ali Alsagheer in Jabal Amel that remained in power until 1865 when Ottomans took direct ruling of the region. Youssef Bey Karam, a Lebanese nationalist played an influential role in Lebanon's independence during this era.
In 1920, following World War I, the area of the Mutasarrifate, plus some surrounding areas which were predominantly Shia and Sunni, became a part of the state of Greater Lebanon under the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon. Around 100,000 people in Beirut and Mount Lebanon died of starvation during World War I. In the first half of 1920, Lebanese territory was claimed as part of the Arab Kingdom of Syria, but shortly the Franco-Syrian War resulted in Arab defeat and capitulation of the Hashemites.
On 1 September 1920, France reestablished Greater Lebanon after the Moutasarrifiya rule removed several regions belonging to the Principality of Lebanon and gave them to Syria. Lebanon was a largely Christian country (mainly Maronite territory with some Greek Orthodox enclaves) but it also included areas containing many Muslims and Druze. On 1 September 1926, France formed the Lebanese Republic. A constitution was adopted on 25 May 1926 establishing a democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government.
Lebanon gained a measure of independence while France was occupied by Germany. General Henri Dentz, the Vichy High Commissioner for Syria and Lebanon, played a major role in the independence of the nation. The Vichy authorities in 1941 allowed Germany to move aircraft and supplies through Syria to Iraq where they were used against British forces. The United Kingdom, fearing that Nazi Germany would gain full control of Lebanon and Syria by pressure on the weak Vichy government, sent its army into Syria and Lebanon.
After the fighting ended in Lebanon, General Charles de Gaulle visited the area. Under political pressure from both inside and outside Lebanon, de Gaulle recognized the independence of Lebanon. On 26 November 1941, General Georges Catroux announced that Lebanon would become independent under the authority of the Free French government. Elections were held in 1943 and on 8 November 1943 the new Lebanese government unilaterally abolished the mandate. The French reacted by imprisoning the new government. In the face of international pressure, the French released the government officials on 22 November 1943. The allies occupied the region until the end of World War II.
Following the end of World War II in Europe the French mandate may be said to have been terminated without any formal action on the part of the League of Nations or its successor the United Nations. The mandate was ended by the declaration of the mandatory power, and of the new states themselves, of their independence, followed by a process of piecemeal unconditional recognition by other powers, culminating in formal admission to the United Nations. Article 78 of the UN Charter ended the status of tutelage for any member state: "The trusteeship system shall not apply to territories which have become Members of the United Nations, relationship among which shall be based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality." So when the UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, after ratification of the United Nations Charter by the five permanent members, as both Syria and Lebanon were founding member states, the French mandate for both was legally terminated on that date and full independence attained. The last French troops withdrew in December 1946.
Lebanon's unwritten National Pact of 1943 required that its president be Maronite Christian, its speaker of the parliament to be a Shiite Muslim, its prime minister be Sunni Muslim, and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister be Greek Orthodox.
Lebanon's history since independence has been marked by alternating periods of political stability and turmoil interspersed with prosperity built on Beirut's position as a regional center for finance and trade.
In May 1948, Lebanon supported neighbouring Arab countries in a war against Israel. While some irregular forces crossed the border and carried out minor skirmishes against Israel, it was without the support of the Lebanese government, and Lebanese troops did not officially invade. Lebanon agreed to support the forces with covering artillery fire, armored cars, volunteers and logistical support. On 5–6 June 1948, the Lebanese army – led by the then Minister of National Defence, Emir Majid Arslan – captured Al-Malkiyya. This was Lebanon's only success in the war.
100,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon because of the war. Israel did not permit their return after the cease-fire. As of 2017 between 174,000 and 450,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon with about half in refugee camps (although these are often decades old and resemble neighborhoods). Palestinians often cannot obtain Lebanese citizenship or even Lebanese identity cards so many are legally barred from owning property or performing certain occupations (including law, medicine, and engineering). According to Human Rights Watch, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in "appalling social and economic conditions."
In 1958, during the last months of President Camille Chamoun's term, an insurrection broke out, instigated by Lebanese Muslims who wanted to make Lebanon a member of the United Arab Republic. Chamoun requested assistance, and 5,000 United States Marines were briefly dispatched to Beirut on 15 July. After the crisis, a new government was formed, led by the popular former general Fuad Chehab.
With the defeat of the PLO in Jordan, many Palestinian militants relocated to Lebanon, increasing their armed campaign against Israel. The relocation of Palestinian bases also led to increasing sectarian tensions between Palestinians versus the Maronites and other Lebanese factions.
In 1975, following increasing sectarian tensions, largely boosted by Palestinian militant relocation into South Lebanon, a full-scale civil war broke out in Lebanon. The Lebanese Civil War pitted a coalition of Christian groups against the joint forces of the PLO, left-wing Druze and Muslim militias. In June 1976. Lebanese President Elias Sarkis asked for the Syrian Army to intervene on the side of the Christians and help restore peace. In October 1976 the Arab League agreed to establish a predominantly Syrian Arab Deterrent Force, which was charged with restoring calm.
PLO attacks from Lebanon into Israel in 1977 and 1978 escalated tensions between the countries. On 11 March 1978, eleven Fatah fighters landed on a beach in northern Israel and proceeded to hijack two buses full of passengers on the Haifa – Tel-Aviv road, shooting at passing vehicles in what became known as the Coastal Road massacre. They killed 37 and wounded 76 Israelis before being killed in a firefight with Israeli forces. Israel invaded Lebanon four days later in Operation Litani. The Israeli Army occupied most of the area south of the Litani River. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 425 calling for immediate Israeli withdrawal and creating the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), charged with attempting to establish peace.
Israeli forces withdrew later in 1978, but retained control of the southern region by managing a wide security zone along the border. These positions were held by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Christian-Shi'a militia under the leadership of Major Saad Haddad backed by Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister, Likud's Menachem Begin, compared the plight of the Christian minority in southern Lebanon (then about 5% of the population in SLA territory) to that of European Jews during World War II. The PLO routinely attacked Israel during the period of the cease-fire, with over 270 documented attacks. People in Galilee regularly had to leave their homes during these shellings. Documents captured in PLO headquarters after the invasion showed they had come from Lebanon. Arafat refused to condemn these attacks on the grounds that the cease-fire was only relevant to Lebanon.
In April 1980 the presence of UNIFIL soldiers in the buffer zone led to the At Tiri incident. On 17 July 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed multi-story apartment buildings in Beirut that contained offices of PLO associated groups. The Lebanese delegate to the United Nations Security Council claimed that 300 civilians had been killed and 800 wounded. The bombing led to worldwide condemnation, and a temporary embargo on the export of U.S. aircraft to Israel.
In August 1981, defense minister Ariel Sharon began to draw up plans to attack PLO military infrastructure in West Beirut, where PLO headquarters and command bunkers were located.
In 1982, the PLO attacks from Lebanon on Israel led to an Israeli invasion, aiming to support Lebanese forces in driving out the PLO. A multinational force of American, French and Italian contingents (joined in 1983 by a British contingent) were deployed in Beirut after the Israeli siege of the city, to supervise the evacuation of the PLO. The civil war re-emerged in September 1982 after the assassination of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, an Israeli ally, and subsequent fighting. During this time a number of sectarian massacres occurred, such as in Sabra and Shatila, and in several refugee camps. The multinational force was withdrawn in the spring of 1984, following a devastating bombing attack during the previous year.
In September 1988, the Parliament failed to elect a successor to President Gemayel as a result of differences between the Christians, Muslims, and Syrians. The Arab League Summit of May 1989 led to the formation of a Saudi–Moroccan–Algerian committee to solve the crisis. On 16 September 1989 the committee issued a peace plan which was accepted by all. A ceasefire was established, the ports and airports were re-opened and refugees began to return.
In the same month, the Lebanese Parliament agreed to the Taif Agreement, which included an outline timetable for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and a formula for the de-confessionalisation of the Lebanese political system. The war ended at the end of 1990 after sixteen years; it had caused massive loss of human life and property, and devastated the country's economy. It is estimated that 150,000 people were killed and another 200,000 wounded. Nearly a million civilians were displaced by the war, and some never returned. Parts of Lebanon were left in ruins. The Taif Agreement has still not been implemented in full and Lebanon's political system continues to be divided along sectarian lines.
The internal political situation in Lebanon significantly changed in the early 2000s. After the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the death of former president Hafez Al-Assad in 2000, the Syrian military presence faced criticism and resistance from the Lebanese population.
On 14 February 2005, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in a car bomb explosion. Leaders of the March 14 Alliance accused Syria of the attack, while Syria and the March 8 Alliance claimed that Israel was behind the assassination. The Hariri assassination marked the beginning of a series of assassinations that resulted in the death of many prominent Lebanese figures.
The assassination triggered the Cedar Revolution, a series of demonstrations which demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the establishment of an international commission to investigate the assassination. Under pressure from the West, Syria began withdrawing, and by 26 April 2005 all Syrian soldiers had returned to Syria.
UNSC Resolution 1595 called for an investigation into the assassination. The UN International Independent Investigation Commission published preliminary findings on 20 October 2005 in the Mehlis report, which cited indications that the assassination was organized by Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services.
On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah launched a series of rocket attacks and raids into Israeli territory, where they killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fire on targets in Lebanon, and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, resulting in the 2006 Lebanon War. The conflict was officially ended by the UNSC Resolution 1701 on 14 August 2006, which ordered a ceasefire. Some 1,191 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed in the conflict. Beirut's southern suburb was heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
In 2007, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp became the center of the 2007 Lebanon conflict between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam. At least 169 soldiers, 287 insurgents and 47 civilians were killed in the battle. Funds for the reconstruction of the area have been slow to materialize.
Between 2006 and 2008, a series of protests led by groups opposed to the pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demanded the creation of a national unity government, over which the mostly Shia opposition groups would have veto power. When Émile Lahoud's presidential term ended in October 2007, the opposition refused to vote for a successor unless a power-sharing deal was reached, leaving Lebanon without a president.
On 9 May 2008, Hezbollah and Amal forces, sparked by a government declaration that Hezbollah's communications network was illegal, seized western Beirut, leading to the 2008 conflict in Lebanon. The Lebanese government denounced the violence as a coup attempt. At least 62 people died in the resulting clashes between pro-government and opposition militias. On 21 May 2008, the signing of the Doha Agreement ended the fighting. As part of the accord, which ended 18 months of political paralysis, Michel Suleiman became president and a national unity government was established, granting a veto to the opposition. The agreement was a victory for opposition forces, as the government caved in to all their main demands.
In early January 2011, the national unity government collapsed due to growing tensions stemming from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was expected to indict Hezbollah members for the Hariri assassination. The parliament elected Najib Mikati, the candidate for the Hezbollah-led March 8 Alliance, Prime Minister of Lebanon, making him responsible for forming a new government. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah insists that Israel was responsible for the assassination of Hariri. A report leaked by the Al-Akhbar newspaper in November 2010 stated that Hezbollah has drafted plans for a takeover of the country in the event that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues an indictment against its members.
In 2012, the Syrian civil war threatened to spill over in Lebanon, causing more incidents of sectarian violence and armed clashes between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli. According to UNHCR, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon increased from around 250,000 in early 2013 to 1,000,000 in late 2014. In 2013, The Lebanese Forces Party, the Kataeb Party and the Free Patriotic Movement voiced concerns that the country's sectarian based political system is being undermined by the influx of Syrian refugees. On 6 May 2015, UNHCR suspended registration of Syrian refugees at the request of the Lebanese government. In February 2016, the Lebanese government signed the Lebanon Compact, granting a minimum of €400 million of support for refugees and vulnerable Lebanese citizens. As of October 2016, the government estimates that the country hosts 1.5 million Syrians.
On 17 October 2019 the first of a series of mass civil demonstrations erupted; they were initially triggered by planned taxes on gasoline, tobacco and online phone calls such as through WhatsApp, but quickly expanded into a country-wide condemnation of sectarian rule, stagnant economy, unemployment, endemic corruption in the public sector, legislation (such as banking secrecy) that is perceived to shield the ruling class from accountability and failures from the government to provide basic services such as electricity, water and sanitation.
As a result of the protests, Lebanon entered a political crisis, with Prime Minister Saad Hariri tendering his resignation and echoing protestors' demands for a government of independent specialists. Other politicians targeted by the protests have remained in power. On 19 December 2019, former Minister of Education Hassan Diab was designated the next prime minister and tasked with forming a new cabinet. Protests and acts of civil disobedience have since continued, with protesters denouncing and condemning the designation of Diab as prime minister.
Lebanon is located in Western Asia between latitudes 33° and 35° N and longitudes 35° and 37° E. Its land straddles the "northwest of the Arabian plate".
The country's surface area is of which is land. Lebanon has a coastline and border of on the Mediterranean Sea to the west, a border shared with Syria to the north and east and a long border with Israel to the south. The border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights is disputed by Lebanon in a small area called Shebaa Farms.
Lebanon is divided into four distinct physiographic regions: the coastal plain, the Lebanon mountain range, the Beqaa valley and the Anti-Lebanon mountains.
The narrow and discontinuous coastal plain stretches from the Syrian border in the north where it widens to form the Akkar plain to Ras al-Naqoura at the border with Israel in the south. The fertile coastal plain is formed of marine sediments and river deposited alluvium alternating with sandy bays and rocky beaches.
The Lebanon mountains rise steeply parallel to the Mediterranean coast and form a ridge of limestone and sandstone that runs for most of the country's length. The mountain range varies in width between and ; it is carved by narrow and deep gorges. The Lebanon mountains peak at above sea level in Qurnat as Sawda' in North Lebanon and gradually slope to the south before rising again to a height of in Mount Sannine. The Beqaa valley sits between the Lebanon mountains in the west and the Anti-Lebanon range in the east; it is a part of the Great Rift Valley system. The valley is long and wide, its fertile soil is formed by alluvial deposits. The Anti-Lebanon range runs parallel to the Lebanon mountains, its highest peak is in Mount Hermon at .
The mountains of Lebanon are drained by seasonal torrents and rivers foremost of which is the long Leontes that rises in the Beqaa Valley to the west of Baalbek and empties into the Mediterranean Sea north of Tyre. Lebanon has 16 rivers all of which are non navigable; 13 rivers originate from Mount Lebanon and run through the steep gorges and into the Mediterranean Sea, the other three arise in the Beqaa Valley.
Lebanon has a moderate Mediterranean climate. In coastal areas, winters are generally cool and rainy whilst summers are hot and humid. In more elevated areas, temperatures usually drop below freezing during the winter with heavy snow cover that remains until early summer on the higher mountaintops. Although most of Lebanon receives a relatively large amount of rainfall, when measured annually in comparison to its arid surroundings, certain areas in north-eastern Lebanon receive little because of rain shadow created by the high peaks of the western mountain range.
In ancient times, Lebanon was covered by large forests of cedar trees, the national emblem of the country. Millennia of deforestation have altered the hydrology in Mount Lebanon and changed the regional climate adversely. As of 2012, forests covered 13.4% of the Lebanese land area; they are under constant threat from wildfires caused by the long dry summer season.
As a result of longstanding exploitation, few old cedar trees remain in pockets of forests in Lebanon, but there is an active program to conserve and regenerate the forests. The Lebanese approach has emphasized natural regeneration over planting by creating the right conditions for germination and growth. The Lebanese state has created several nature reserves that contain cedars, including the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, the Jaj Cedar Reserve, the Tannourine Reserve, the Ammouaa and Karm Shbat Reserves in the Akkar district, and the Forest of the Cedars of God near Bsharri.
In 2010, the Environment Ministry set a 10-year plan to increase the national forest coverage by 20%, which is equivalent to the planting of two million new trees each year. The plan, which was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and implemented by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), through the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative (LRI), was inaugurated in 2011 by planting cedar, pine, wild almond, juniper, fir, oak and other seedlings, in ten regions around Lebanon. As of 2016, forests covered 13.6% of Lebanon, and other wooded lands represented a further 11%. Since 2011, more than 600,000 trees, including cedars and other native species, have been planted throughout Lebanon as part of the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative (LRI).
Beirut and Mount Lebanon have been facing a severe garbage crisis. After the closure of the Bourj Hammoud dump in 1997, the al-Naameh dumpsite was opened by the government in 1998. The al-Naameh dumpsite was planned to contain 2 million tons of waste for a limited period of six years at the most. It was designed to be a temporary solution, while the government would have devised a long-term plan. Sixteen years later al-Naameh was still open and exceeded its capacity by 13 million tons. In July 2015 the residents of the area, already protesting in the recent years, forced the closure of the dumpsite.The inefficiency of the government, as well as the corruption inside of the waste management company Sukleen in charge of managing the garbage in Lebanon, have resulted in piles of garbage blocking streets in Mount Lebanon and Beirut.
In December 2015, the Lebanese government signed an agreement with Chinook Industrial Mining, part owned by Chinook Sciences, to export over 100,000 tons of untreated waste from Beirut and the surrounding area. The waste had accumulated in temporary locations following the government closure of the county's largest land fill site five months earlier. The contract was jointly signed with Howa International which has offices in Holland and Germany. The contract is reported to cost $212 per ton. The waste, which is compacted and infectious, would have to be sorted and was estimated to be enough to fill 2,000 containers. Initial reports that the waste was to be exported to Sierra Leone have been denied by diplomats.
In February 2016, the government withdrew from negotiations after it was revealed that documents relating to the export of the trash to Russia were forgeries. On 19 March 2016, the Cabinet reopened the Naameh landfill for 60 days in line with a plan it passed few days earlier to end the trash crisis. The plan also stipulates the establishment of landfills in Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava, east and south of Beirut respectively. Sukleen trucks began removing piled garbage from Karantina and heading to Naameh. Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk announced during a chat with activists that more than 8,000 tons of garbage had been collected so far as part of the government's trash plan in only 24 hours. The plan's execution is still ongoing. In 2017, Human Rights Watch found that Lebanon's garbage crisis, and open burning of waste in particular, was posing a health risk to residents and violating the state's obligations under international law.
In September 2018, Lebanon's parliament passed a law that banned open dumping and burning of waste. Despite penalties set in case of violations, Lebanese municipalities have been openly burning the waste, putting the lives of people in danger. In October 2018, Human Rights Watch researchers witnessed the open burning of dumps in al-Qantara and Qabrikha.
On Sunday 13 October 2019 at night, a series of about 100 forest fires according to Lebanese Civil Defense, broke out and spread over large areas of Lebanon's forests. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri confirmed his contact with a number of countries to send assistance via helicopters and firefighting planes, Cyprus, Jordan, Turkey and Greece participated in firefighting. According to press reports on Tuesday (15 October), fire has decreased in different places due to the rains, after churches and mosques called on citizens to perform raining prayers.
Lebanon is a parliamentary democracy that includes confessionalism, in which high-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups. The President, for example, has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Eastern Orthodox. This system is intended to deter sectarian conflict and to represent fairly the demographic distribution of the 18 recognized religious groups in government.
Until 1975, Freedom House considered Lebanon to be one of only two (together with Israel) politically free countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. The country lost this status with the outbreak of the Civil War, and has not regained it since. Lebanon was rated "Partly Free" in 2013. Even so, the United States still considers Lebanon to be one of the most democratic nations in the Arab world.
Until 2005, Palestinians were forbidden to work in over 70 jobs because they did not have Lebanese citizenship. After liberalization laws were passed in 2007, the number of banned jobs dropped to around 20. In 2010, Palestinians were granted the same rights to work as other foreigners in the country.
Lebanon's national legislature is the unicameral Parliament of Lebanon. Its 128 seats are divided equally between Christians and Muslims, proportionately between the 18 different denominations and proportionately between its 26 regions. Prior to 1990, the ratio stood at 6:5 in favor of Christians; however, the Taif Agreement, which put an end to the 1975–1990 civil war, adjusted the ratio to grant equal representation to followers of the two religions.
The Parliament is elected for a four-year term by popular vote on the basis of sectarian proportional representation.
The executive branch consists of the President, the head of state, and the Prime Minister, the head of government. The parliament elects the president for a non-renewable six-year term by a two-third majority. The president appoints the Prime Minister, following consultations with the parliament. The president and the prime minister form a cabinet, which must also adhere to the sectarian distribution set out by confessionalism.
In an unprecedented move, the Lebanese parliament has extended its own term twice amid protests, the last being on 5 November 2014, an act which comes in direct contradiction with democracy and article #42 of the Lebanese constitution as no elections have taken place.
Lebanon was without a President between May 2014 and October 2016.
Nationwide elections were finally scheduled for May 2018.
As of August 2019, the Lebanese cabinet included two ministers directly affiliated with Hezbollah, in addition to a close but officially non-member minister.
There are 18 officially recognized religious groups in Lebanon, each with its own family law legislation and set of religious courts.
The Lebanese legal system is based on the French system, and is a civil law country, with the exception for matters related to personal status (succession, marriage, divorce, adoption, etc.), which are governed by a separate set of laws designed for each sectarian community. For instance, the Islamic personal status laws are inspired by the Sharia law. For Muslims, these tribunals deal with questions of marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance and wills. For non-Muslims, personal status jurisdiction is split: the law of inheritance and wills falls under national civil jurisdiction, while Christian and Jewish religious courts are competent for marriage, divorce, and custody. Catholics can additionally appeal before the Vatican Rota court.
The most notable set of codified laws is the Code des Obligations et des Contrats promulgated in 1932 and equivalent to the French Civil Code. Capital punishment is still de facto used to sanction certain crimes, but no longer enforced.
The Lebanese court system consists of three levels: courts of first instance, courts of appeal, and the court of cassation. The Constitutional Council rules on constitutionality of laws and electoral frauds. There also is a system of religious courts having jurisdiction over personal status matters within their own communities, with rules on matters such as marriage and inheritance.
Lebanon concluded negotiations on an association agreement with the European Union in late 2001, and both sides initialed the accord in January 2002. It is included in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer. Lebanon also has bilateral trade agreements with several Arab states and is working toward accession to the World Trade Organization.
Lebanon enjoys good relations with virtually all of the other Arab countries (despite historic tensions with Libya and Syria), and hosted an Arab League Summit in March 2002 for the first time in more than 35 years. Lebanon is a member of the Francophonie countries and hosted the Francophonie Summit in October 2002 as well as the Jeux de la Francophonie in 2009.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has 72,000 active personnel, including 1,100 in the air force, and 1,000 in the navy.
The Lebanese Armed Forces' primary missions include defending Lebanon and its citizens against external aggression, maintaining internal stability and security, confronting threats against the country's vital interests, engaging in social development activities, and undertaking relief operations in coordination with public and humanitarian institutions.
Lebanon is a major recipient of foreign military aid. With more than $400 million since 2005, it is the second largest per capita recipient of American military aid behind Israel.
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Lebanese army of torture.
Male homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon. Discrimination against LGBT people in Lebanon is widespread. According to 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 80% of Lebanese respondents believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.
Lebanon is divided into eight governorates ("muḥāfaẓāt", ; singular "muḥāfaẓah", ) which are further subdivided into twenty-six districts ("aqdyah" ; singular: "qadāʾ" ). The districts themselves are also divided into several municipalities, each enclosing a group of cities or villages. The governorates and their respective districts are listed below:
Lebanon's constitution states that 'the economic system is free and ensures private initiative and the right to private property'. Lebanon's economy follows a laissez-faire model. Most of the economy is dollarized, and the country has no restrictions on the movement of capital across its borders. The Lebanese government's intervention in foreign trade is minimal.
The Lebanese economy went through a significant expansion after the war of 2006, with growth averaging 9.1% between 2007 and 2010. After 2011 the local economy was affected by the Syrian civil war, growing by a yearly average of 1.7% on the 2011-2016 period and by 1.5% in 2017. In 2018, the size of the GDP was estimated to be $54.1 billion.
Lebanon has a very high level of public debt and large external financing needs. The 2010 public debt exceeded 150.7% of GDP, ranking fourth highest in the world as a percentage of GDP, though down from 154.8% in 2009. At the end 2008, finance minister Mohamad Chatah stated that the debt was going to reach $47 billion in that year and would increase to $49 billion if privatization of two telecoms companies did not occur. The Daily Star wrote that exorbitant debt levels have "slowed down the economy and reduced the government's spending on essential development projects".
The urban population in Lebanon is noted for its commercial enterprise. Emigration has yielded Lebanese "commercial networks" throughout the world. Remittances from Lebanese abroad total $8.2 billion and account for one fifth of the country's economy. Lebanon has the largest proportion of skilled labor among Arab States.
The Investment Development Authority of Lebanon was established with the aim of promoting investment in Lebanon. In 2001, Investment Law No.360 was enacted to reinforce the organisation's mission.
The agricultural sector employs 12% of the total workforce. Agriculture contributed to 5.9% of the country's GDP in 2011. Lebanon's proportion of cultivable land is the highest in the Arab world, Major produce includes apples, peaches, oranges, and lemons.
The commodities market in Lebanon includes substantial gold coin production, however according to International Air Transport Association (IATA) standards, they must be declared upon exportation to any foreign country.
Oil has recently been discovered inland and in the seabed between Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt and talks are underway between Cyprus and Egypt to reach an agreement regarding the exploration of these resources. The seabed separating Lebanon and Cyprus is believed to hold significant quantities of crude oil and natural gas.
Industry in Lebanon is mainly limited to small businesses that reassemble and package imported parts. In 2004, industry ranked second in workforce, with 26% of the Lebanese working population, and second in GDP contribution, with 21% of Lebanon's GDP.
Nearly 65% of the Lebanese workforce attain employment in the services sector. The GDP contribution, accordingly, amounts to roughly 67.3% of the annual Lebanese GDP. However, dependence on the tourism and banking sectors leaves the economy vulnerable to political instability.
Lebanese banks are high on liquidity and reputed for their security. Lebanon was one of the only seven countries in the world in which the value of the stock markets increased in 2008.
On 10 May 2013 the Lebanese minister of energy and water clarified that seismic images of the Lebanese's sea bed are undergoing detailed explanation of their contents and that up till now, approximately 10% have been covered. Preliminary inspection of the results showed, with more than 50% probability, that 10% of Lebanon's exclusive economic zone contained up to 660 million barrels of oil and up to 30×1012 cu ft of gas.
The Syrian crisis has significantly affected Lebanese economic and financial situation. The demographic pressure imposed by the Syrian refugees now living in Lebanon has led to competition in the labour market. As a direct consequence unemployment has doubled in three years, reaching 20% in 2014. A loss of 14% of wages regarding the salary of less-skilled workers has also been registered. The financial constraints were also felt: the poverty rate increased with 170.000 Lebanese falling under the poverty threshold. In the period between 2012 and 2014, the public spending increased by $1 billion and losses amounted to $7.5 billion. Expenditures related only to the Syrian refugees were estimated by the Central Bank of Lebanon as $4.5 billion every year.
In the 1950s, GDP growth was the second highest in the world. Despite not having oil reserves, Lebanon, as the banking center of the Middle East and one of the trading centers, had a high national income.
The 1975–1990 civil war heavily damaged Lebanon's economic infrastructure, cut national output by half, and all but ended Lebanon's position as a West Asian entrepôt and banking hub. The subsequent period of relative peace enabled the central government to restore control in Beirut, begin collecting taxes, and regain access to key port and government facilities. Economic recovery has been helped by a financially sound banking system and resilient small- and medium-scale manufacturers, with family remittances, banking services, manufactured and farm exports, and international aid as the main sources of foreign exchange.
Until July 2006, Lebanon enjoyed considerable stability, Beirut's reconstruction was almost complete, and increasing numbers of tourists poured into the nation's resorts. The economy witnessed growth, with bank assets reaching over 75 billion US dollars, Market capitalization was also at an all-time high, estimated at $10.9 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2006. The month-long 2006 war severely damaged Lebanon's fragile economy, especially the tourism sector. According to a preliminary report published by the Lebanese Ministry of Finance on 30 August 2006, a major economic decline was expected as a result of the fighting.
Over the course of 2008 Lebanon rebuilt its infrastructure mainly in the real estate and tourism sectors, resulting in a comparatively robust post war economy. Major contributors to the reconstruction of Lebanon include Saudi Arabia (with US$1.5 billion pledged), the European Union (with about $1 billion) and a few other Persian Gulf countries with contributions of up to $800 million.
The tourism industry accounts for about 10% of GDP. Lebanon managed to attract around 1,333,000 tourists in 2008, thus placing it as rank 79 out of 191 countries. In 2009, "The New York Times" ranked Beirut the No. 1 travel destination worldwide due to its nightlife and hospitality. In January 2010, the Ministry of Tourism announced that 1,851,081 tourists had visited Lebanon in 2009, a 39% increase from 2008. In 2009, Lebanon hosted the largest number of tourists to date, eclipsing the previous record set before the Lebanese Civil War. Tourist arrivals reached two million in 2010, but fell by 37% for the first 10 months of 2012, a decline caused by the war in neighbouring Syria.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Japan are the three most popular origin countries of foreign tourists to Lebanon. The recent influx of Japanese tourists has caused the recent rise in popularity of Japanese Cuisine in Lebanon.
The population of Lebanon was estimated to be in ; however, no official census has been conducted since 1932 due to the sensitive confessional political balance between Lebanon's various religious groups. Identifying all Lebanese as ethnically Arab is a widely employed example of panethnicity since in reality, the Lebanese "are descended from many different peoples who are either indigenous, or have occupied, invaded, or settled this corner of the world", making Lebanon, "a mosaic of closely interrelated cultures". While at first glance, this ethnic, linguistic, religious and denominational diversity might seem to cause civil and political unrest, "for much of Lebanon’s history this multitudinous diversity of religious communities has coexisted with little conflict".
The fertility rate fell from 5.00 in 1971 to 1.75 in 2004. Fertility rates vary considerably among the different religious groups: in 2004, it was 2.10 for Shiites, 1.76 Sunnis and 1.61 for Maronites.
Lebanon has witnessed a series of migration waves: over 1,800,000 people emigrated from the country in the 1975–2011 period. Millions of people of Lebanese descent are spread throughout the world, mostly Christians, especially in Latin America. Brazil and Argentina have the largest expatriate population. "(See Lebanese people)". Large numbers of Lebanese migrated to West Africa, particularly to the Ivory Coast (home to over 100,000 Lebanese) and Senegal (roughly 30,000 Lebanese). Australia is home to over 270,000 Lebanese (1999 est.). In Canada, there is also a large Lebanese diaspora of approximately 250,000–700,000 people having Lebanese descent. (see Lebanese Canadians). Another region with a significant diaspora is the Persian Gulf, where the countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar (around 25,000 people), Saudi Arabia and UAE act as host countries to many Lebanese.
, Lebanon was host to over 1,600,000 refugees and asylum seekers: 449,957 from Palestine, 3,515 from Iraq, over 1,100,000 from Syria, and 4,000 from Sudan. According to the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia of the United Nations, among the Syrian refugees, 71% live in poverty. A 2013 estimate by the United Nations put the number of Syrian refugees at more than 1,250,000.
In the last three decades, lengthy and destructive armed conflicts have ravaged the country. The majority of Lebanese have been affected by armed conflict; those with direct personal experience include 75% of the population, and most others report suffering a range of hardships. In total, almost the entire population (96%) has been affected in
some way – either personally or because of the wider consequences of armed conflict.
Lebanon is the most religiously diverse country in the Middle East. the CIA World Factbook estimates the following: Muslim 54% (27% Sunni Islam, 27% Shia Islam), Christian 40.5% (includes 21% Maronite Catholic, 8% Greek Orthodox, 5% Melkite Catholic, 1% Protestant, 5.5% other Christian), Druze 5.6%, very small numbers of Jews, Baha'is, Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons. A study conducted by the Lebanese Information Center and based on voter registration numbers shows that by 2011 the Christian population was stable compared to that of previous years, making up 34.35% of the population; Muslims, the Druze included, were 65.47% of the population. The World Values Survey of 2014 put the percentage of atheists in Lebanon at 3.3%.
It is believed that there has been a decline in the ratio of Christians to Muslims over the past 60 years, due to higher emigration rates of Christians, and a higher birth rate in the Muslim population. When the last census was held in 1932, Christians made up 53% of Lebanon's population. In 1956, it was estimated that the population was 54% Christian and 44% Muslim.
A demographic study conducted by the research firm Statistics Lebanon found that approximately 27% of the population was Sunni, 27% Shia, 21% Maronite, 8% Greek Orthodox, 5% Druze, 5% Melkite, and 1% Protestant, with the remaining 6% mostly belonging to smaller non-native to Lebanon Christian denominations.
Other sources like Euronews or the Madrid-based diary "La Razón" estimate the percentage of Christians to be around 53%.
Because the relative size of confessional groups remains a sensitive issue, a national census has not been conducted since 1932. There are 18 state-recognized religious sects – four Muslim, 12 Christian, one Druze, and one Jewish.
The Sunni residents primarily live in Tripoli, Western Beirut, the Southern coast of Lebanon, and Northern Lebanon.
The Shi'a residents primarily live in Southern Beirut, the Beqaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon.
The Maronite residents primarily live in Eastern Beirut and the mountains of Lebanon. They are the largest Christian community in Lebanon.
The Greek Orthodox, the second largest Christian community in Lebanon, primarily live in Koura, Beirut, Rachaya, Matn, Aley, Akkar, in the countryside around Tripoli, Hasbaya and Marjeyoun. They are a minority of 10% in Zahle.
The Greek Catholics live mainly in Beirut, on the eastern slopes of the Lebanon mountains and in Zahle which is predominantly Greek Catholic.
In the Christian village of Hadat, there have been a municipal ban on Muslims from buying or renting property. It has been claimed that it is due to the underlying fear of mixing with one another's salvation since for three decades, the village of Hadat has been primarily Christian.
The Lebanese government tend to count its Druze citizens as part of its Muslim population.
Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The majority of Lebanese people speak Lebanese Arabic, which is grouped in a larger category called Levantine Arabic, while Modern Standard Arabic is mostly used in magazines, newspapers, and formal broadcast media. Lebanese Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community. Almost 40% of Lebanese are considered francophone, and another 15% "partial francophone", and 70% of Lebanon's secondary schools use French as a second language of instruction. By comparison, English is used as a secondary language in 30% of Lebanon's secondary schools. The use of French is a legacy of France's historic ties to the region, including its League of Nations mandate over Lebanon following World War I; , some 20% of the population used French on a daily basis. The use of Arabic by Lebanon's educated youth is declining, as they usually prefer to speak in French and, to a lesser extent, English, which are seen as more fashionable.
English is increasingly used in science and business interactions. Lebanese citizens of Armenian, Greek, or Assyrian descent often speak their ancestral languages with varying degrees of fluency. , there were around 150,000 Armenians in Lebanon, or around 5% of the population.
The culture of Lebanon reflects the legacy of various civilizations spanning thousands of years. Originally home to the Canaanite-Phoenicians, and then subsequently conquered and occupied by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Fatimids, the Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks and most recently the French, Lebanese culture has over the millennia evolved by borrowing from all of these groups. Lebanon's diverse population, composed of different ethnic and religious groups, has further contributed to the country's festivals, musical styles and literature as well as cuisine. Despite the ethnic, linguistic, religious and denominational diversity of the Lebanese, they "share an almost common culture". Lebanese Arabic is universally spoken while food, music, and literature are deep-rooted "in wider Mediterranean and Arab Levantine norms".
In visual arts, Moustafa Farroukh was one of Lebanon's most prominent painters of the 20th century. Formally trained in Rome and Paris, he exhibited in venues from Paris to New York to Beirut over his career. Many more contemporary artists are currently active, such as Walid Raad, a contemporary media artist currently residing in New York. In the field of photography, the Arab Image Foundation has a collection of over 400,000 photographs from Lebanon and the Middle East. The photographs can be viewed in a research center and various events and publications have been produced in Lebanon and worldwide to promote the collection.
In literature, Khalil Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. He is particularly known for his book "The Prophet" (1923), which has been translated into more than twenty different languages and is the second best selling book in the 20th century behind the Bible.
Ameen Rihani was a major figure in the mahjar literary movement developed by Arab emigrants in North America, and an early theorist of Arab nationalism.
Mikha'il Na'ima is widely recognized as one of the most important figures in modern Arabic letters and one of the most important spiritual writers of the 20th century.
Several contemporary Lebanese writers have also achieved international success; including Elias Khoury, Amin Maalouf, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Georges Schehadé.
While traditional folk music remains popular in Lebanon, modern music reconciling Western and traditional Arabic styles, pop, and fusion are rapidly advancing in popularity. Lebanese artists like Fairuz, Wadih El Safi, Sabah or Najwa Karam are widely known and appreciated in Lebanon and in the Arab world. Lebanese singer Lydia Canaan is listed in the catalog of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's Library and Archives in Cleveland, Ohio, USA as the first rock star of the Middle East. Radio stations feature a variety of music, including traditional Lebanese, classical Arabic, Armenian and modern French, English, American, and Latin tunes.
The cinema of Lebanon, according to film critic and historian, Roy Armes, was the only cinema in the Arabic-speaking region, other than Egypt's, that could amount to a national cinema. Cinema in Lebanon has been in existence since the 1920s, and the country has produced over 500 films. The media of Lebanon is not only a regional center of production but also the most liberal and free in the Arab world. According to Press freedom's Reporters Without Borders, "the media have more freedom in Lebanon than in any other Arab country". Despite its small population and geographic size, Lebanon plays an influential role in the production of information in the Arab world and is "at the core of a regional media network with global implications".
Lebanon celebrates national and both Christian and Muslim holidays. Christian holidays are celebrated following both the Gregorian Calendar and Julian Calendar. Greek Orthodox (with the exception of Easter), Catholics, Protestants, and Melkite Christians follow the Gregorian Calendar and thus celebrate Christmas on 25 December. Armenian Apostolic Christians celebrate Christmas on 6 January, as they follow the Julian Calendar. Muslim holidays are followed based on the Islamic lunar calendar. Muslim holidays that are celebrated include Eid al-Fitr (the three-day feast at the end of the Ramadan month), Eid al-Adha (The Feast of the Sacrifice) which is celebrated during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and also celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God, the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ashura (the Shiite Day of Mourning). Lebanon's National Holidays include Workers Day, Independence day, and Martyrs Day. Music festivals, often hosted at historical sites, are a customary element of Lebanese culture. Among the most famous are Baalbeck International Festival, Byblos International Festival, Beiteddine International Festival, Jounieh International Festival, Broumana Festival, Batroun International Festival, Ehmej Festival, Dhour Chwer Festival and Tyr Festival. These festivals are promoted by Lebanon's Ministry of Tourism. Lebanon hosts about 15 concerts from international performers each year, ranking 1st for nightlife in the Middle East, and 6th worldwide.
Lebanese cuisine is similar to those of many countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. The Lebanese national dishes are the kibbe, a meat pie made from finely minced lamb and burghul (cracked wheat), and the tabbouleh, a salad made from parsley, tomatoes, and burghul. The national beverage is arak, a strong anise-flavored liquor made from fermented grape juice. It is usually drunk with water and ice, which turns the clear liquid milky-white, and usually accompanies food. Arak is a strong spirit similar to the Greek ouzo and the Turkish raki. Lebanese restaurant meals begin with a wide array of mezze - small savoury dishes, such as dips, salads, and pastries. The mezze are typically followed by a selection of grilled meat or fish. In general, meals are finished with Arabic coffee and fresh fruit, though sometimes a selection of traditional sweets will be offered as well. M'Juhdara, a thick stew of onions, rice, and lentils, is sometimes considered poor man's fare and is often eaten around Lent by people in the Lebanese diaspora. Beirut and its environs contain many restaurants of various national origins. At the same time, wine is growing in popularity and a number of vineyards currently exist in the Bekaa valley and elsewhere. Beer is also highly popular and Lebanon produces a number of local beers, of which almaza is perhaps the most popular.
Lebanon has six ski resorts. Because of Lebanon's unique geography, it is possible to go skiing in the morning and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea in the afternoon. At the competitive level, basketball and football are among Lebanon's most popular sports. Canoeing, cycling, rafting, climbing, swimming, sailing and caving are among the other common leisure sports in Lebanon. The Beirut Marathon is held every fall, drawing top runners from Lebanon and abroad.
Rugby league is a relatively new but growing sport in Lebanon. The Lebanon national rugby league team participated in the 2000 Rugby League World Cup, and narrowly missed qualification for the 2008 and 2013 tournaments. Lebanon also took part in the 2009 European Cup where, after narrowly failing to qualify for the final, the team defeated Ireland to finish 3rd in the tournament. Hazem El Masri, who was born in Tripoli, will always be considered to be the greatest Lebanese to ever play the game. He immigrated to Sydney, Australia from Lebanon in 1988. He became the greatest point-scorer in National Rugby League history in 2009 by scoring himself 2418 points while playing for Australian club, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs where he also holds the record for most first grade appearances for the club with 317 games and most tries for the club with 159 tries. At international level, He also hold the records as top-try scorer with 12 tries and top-point scorer with 136 points for the Lebanese national team.
Lebanon participates in Basketball. The Lebanese National Team qualified for the FIBA World Championship 3 times in a row. Dominant Basketball teams in Lebanon are Sporting Al Riyadi Beirut, who are the current Arab and Asian champions, Club Sagesse who were able to earn the Asian and Arab championships before. Fadi El Khatib is the most decorated player in the Lebanese National Basketball League.
Football is also one of the more popular sports in the country with the Lebanese Premier League, whose most successful clubs are the Al-Ansar Club and the Nejmeh SC, with notable players being Roda Antar and Youssef Mohamad, the first Arab to captain a European premier league team.
In recent years, Lebanon has hosted the AFC Asian Cup and the Pan Arab Games. Lebanon hosted the 2009 Jeux de la Francophonie from 27 September to 6 October, and have participated in every Olympic Games since its independence, winning a total of four medals.
Prominent Lebanese bodybuilders include Samir Bannout, Mohammad Bannout and Ahmad Haidar.
Water sports have also shown to be very active in the past years, in Lebanon. Since 2012 and with the emergence of the Lebanon Water Festival NGO, more emphasis has been placed on those sports, and Lebanon has been pushed forward as a water sport destination internationally. They host different contests and water show sports that encourage their fans to participate and win big.
Listed by the World Economic Forum's 2013 Global Information Technology Report, Lebanon has been ranked globally as the fourth best country for math and science education, and as the tenth best overall for quality of education. In quality of management schools, the country was ranked 13th worldwide.
The United Nations assigned Lebanon an education index of 0.871 in 2008. The index, which is determined by the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio, ranked the country 88th out of the 177 countries participating.
All Lebanese schools are required to follow a prescribed curriculum designed by the Ministry of Education. Some of the 1400 private schools offer IB programs, and may also add more courses to their curriculum with approval from the Ministry of Education. The first eight years of education are, by law, compulsory.
Lebanon has forty-one nationally accredited universities, several of which are internationally recognized. The American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) were the first Anglophone and the first Francophone universities to open in Lebanon, respectively. Universities in Lebanon, both public and private, largely operate in French or English.
The top-ranking universities in the country are the American University of Beirut (#237 worldwide, #2 in the Middle East as of 2019), Lebanese American University (#580s worldwide as of 2019), Université Saint Joseph de Beyrouth (#500 worldwide as of 2019), Université Libanaise (#3,826 worldwide) and Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (#600s worldwide as of 2019).
In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 7.03% of the country's GDP. In 2009, there were 31.29 physicians and 19.71 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants. The life expectancy at birth was 72.59 years in 2011, or 70.48 years for males and 74.80 years for females.
By the end of the civil war, only one third of the country's public hospitals were operational, each with an average of only 20 beds. By 2009 the country had 28
public hospitals, with a total of 2,550 beds, while currently the country had an approximate of 25 public hospitals. At public hospitals, hospitalized uninsured patients pay 5% of the bill, in comparison with 15% in private hospitals, with the Ministry of Public Health reimbursing the remainder. The Ministry of Public Health contracts with 138 private hospitals and 25 public hospitals.
In 2011, there were 236,643 subsidized admissions to hospitals; 164,244 in private hospitals, and 72,399 in public hospitals. More patients visit private hospitals than public hospitals, because the private beds supply is higher.
According to the Ministry of Public Health in Lebanon, the top 10 leading causes of reported hospital deaths in 2017 were: malignant neoplasm of bronchus or lung (4.6%), Acute myocardial infarction (3%), pneumonia (2.2%), exposure to unspecified factor, unspecified place (2.1%), acute kidney injury (1.4%), intra-cerebral hemorrhage (1.2%), malignant neoplasm of colon (1.2%), malignant neoplasm of pancreas (1.1%), malignant neoplasm of prostate (1.1%), malignant neoplasm of bladder (0.8%).
Recently, there has been an increase in foodborne illnesses which has put an emphasis on the importance of the safety of the food chain in Lebanon. This raised the illues public awareness. More restaurants are seeking information and compliance with International Organization for Standardization.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17771
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History of Lebanon
The history of Lebanon covers the history of the modern Republic of Lebanon and the earlier emergence of Greater Lebanon under the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, as well as the previous history of the region, covered by the modern state.
Ksar Akil, 10 km northwest of Beirut, is a large rock shelter below a steep limestone cliff where excavations have shown occupational deposits reaching down to a depth of with one of the longest sequences of Paleolithic flint archaeological industry is a very well tained Upper Levalloiso-Mousterian remains with long and triangular Lithic flakes. The level above this showed industries accounting for all six stages of the Upper Paleolithic. An Emireh point was found at the first stage of this level (XXIV), at around below datum with a complete skeleton of an eight-year-old Homo sapiens (called Egbert, now in the National Museum of Beirut after being studied in America) was discovered at , cemented into breccia. A fragment of a Neanderthal maxilla was also discovered in material from level XXVI or XXV, at around . Studies by Hooijer showed Capra and Dama were dominant in the fauna along with Stephanorhinus in later Levalloiso-Mousterian levels.
It is believed to be one of the earliest known sites containing Upper Paleolithic technologies. Artifacts recovered from the site include Ksar Akil flakes, the main type of tool found at the site, along with shells with holes and chipped edge modifications that are suggested to have been used as pendants or beads. These indicate that the inhabitants were among the first in Western Eurasia to use personal ornaments. Results from radiocarbon dating indicate that the early humans may have lived at the site approximately 45,000 years ago or earlier. The presence of personal ornaments at Ksar Akil is suggestive of modern human behavior. The findings of ornaments at the site are contemporaneous with ornaments found at Late Stone Age sites such as Enkapune Ya Muto.
The earliest prehistoric cultures of Lebanon, such as the Qaraoun culture gave rise to the civilization of the Canaanite period, when the region was populated by ancient peoples, cultivating land and living in sophisticated societies during the 2nd millennium BC. Northern Canaanites are mentioned in the Bible as well as in other Semitic records from that period.
Canaanites were the creators of the oldest known 24-letter alphabet, a shortening of earlier 30-letter alphabets such as Proto-Sinaitic and Ugaritic. The Canaanite alphabet later developed into the Phoenician one (with sister alphabets of Hebrew, Aramaic and Moabite), influencing the entire Mediterranean region.
The coastal plain of Lebanon is the historic home of a string of coastal trading cities of Semitic culture, which the Greeks termed Phoenicia, whose maritime culture flourished there for more than 1,000 years. Ancient ruins in Byblos, Berytus (Beirut), Sidon, Sarepta (Sarafand), and Tyre show a civilized nation, with urban centres and sophisticated arts.
Phoenicia was a cosmopolitan centre for many nations and cultures. Phoenician art, customs and religion reveal considerable Mesopotamian and Egyptian influence. The sarcophagi of Sidonian kings Eshmunazzar II and Tabnit reveal that Phoenician royalty adopted Egyptian burial customs.
Phoenician traders exported spices from Arabia, such as cinnamon and frankincense, to the Greeks. This trade likely led to the transmission of the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. Herodotus attests that the Phoenicians "introduced into Greece upon their arrival a great variety of arts, among the rest that of writing, whereof the Greeks till then had, as I think, been ignorant."According to legend however, it is Cadmus, Prince of Tyre, who brought the alphabet with him to Greece in his search for his abducted sister Europa. Cadmus ultimately settles in Greece and founds the city of Thebes. Ancient Greek history accepts the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet. According to Herodotus, "[the Greeks] originally they shaped their letters exactly like all the other Phoenicians, but afterwards, in course of time, they changed by degrees their language, and together with it the form likewise of their characters."Herodotus attests the persistence of traces of the Phoenician alphabet in Greece on tripods in Delphi in what is now known as the 5th century BC.
The Phoenicians were equally reputed for their seafaring skills. They were allegedly the first to circumnavigate the African continent. Herodotus writes that Egyptian Pharaoh Necos, "[...] sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules [the Strait of Gibraltar], and return to Egypt through them, and by the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians took their departure from Egypt by way of the Erythraean sea [the Red Sea], and so sailed into the southern ocean.
When autumn came, they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared - I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may - that in sailing round Libya [i.e., Africa] they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered."The last phrase is usually regarded by modern historians as lending credibility to the Phoencian narrative, as they could not have otherwise known that the sun would be on their right hand side as they sailed southwards below the Equator line.
The Phoenicians founded various colonies in the Mediterranean. The most famous of them were Carthage in today's Tunisia and Cadiz in today's Spain.
Phoenicia maintained an uneasy tributary relationship with the neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian empires during the 9th to 6th centuries BC.
After the gradual decline of their strength, the Phoenician city-states on the Lebanese coast were conquered outright in 539 BCE by Achaemenid Persia under Cyrus the Great. Under Darius I, the area comprising Phoenicia, Palestine, Syria, and Cyprus was administered in a single satrapy and paid a yearly tribute of three hundred and fifty talents. By comparison, Egypt and Libya paid seven hundred talents. Many Phoenician colonies continued their independent existence—most notably Carthage. The Persians forced some of the population to migrate to Carthage, which remained a powerful nation until the Second Punic War.
The Phoenicians of Tyre showed greater solidarity with their former colony Carthage than loyalty towards Persian king Cambyses, by refusing to sail against the former when ordered.
The Phoenicians furnished the bulk of the Persian fleet during the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus considers them as "the best sailors" in the Persian fleet. Phoenicians under Xerxes I were equally commended for their ingenuity in building the Xerxes Canal. Nevertheless, they were harshly punished by the Persian king following the Battle of Salamis, which culminated in a defeat for the Achaemenid Empire.
In 350 or 345 BC, a rebellion in Sidon led by Tennes was crushed by Artaxerxes III. Its destruction was described by Diodorus Siculus.
After two centuries of Persian rule, the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great, during his war against Persia, attacked and burned Tyre, the most prominent Phoenician city. He conquered what is now Lebanon and other nearby regions in 332 BCE. After Alexander's death the region was absorbed into the Seleucid Empire and became known as Coele-Syria.
Christianity was introduced to the coastal plain of Lebanon from neighboring Galilee, already in the 1st century. The region, as with the rest of Syria and much of Anatolia, became a major center of Christianity. In the 4th century it was incorporated into the Christian Byzantine Empire. Mount Lebanon and its coastal plain became part of the Diocese of the East, divided to provinces of Phoenice Paralia and Phoenice Libanensis (which also extended over large parts of modern Syria).
During the late 4th and early 5th centuries, a hermit named Maron established a monastic tradition, focused on the importance of monotheism and asceticism, near the mountain range of Mount Lebanon. The monks who followed Maron spread his teachings among the native Lebanese Christians and remaining pagans in the mountains and coast of Lebanon. These Lebanese Christians came to be known as Maronites, and moved into the mountains to avoid religious persecution by Roman authorities. During the frequent Roman–Persian Wars that lasted for many centuries, the Sassanid Persians occupied what is now Lebanon from 619 to 629.
During the 7th century AD the Muslim Arabs conquered Syria soon after the death of Muhammad, establishing a new regime to replace the Romans (or Byzantines as the Eastern Romans are sometimes called). Though Islam and the Arabic language were officially dominant under this new regime, the general populace still took time to convert from Christianity and the Syriac language. In particular, the Maronite community clung to its faith and managed to maintain a large degree of autonomy despite the succession of rulers over Syria. Muslim influence increased greatly in the seventh century, when the Umayyad capital was established at nearby Damascus.
During the 11th century the Druze faith emerged from a branch of Islam. The new faith gained followers in the southern portion of Lebanon. The Maronites and the Druze divided Lebanon until the modern era. The major cities on the coast, Acre, Beirut, and others, were directly administered by Muslim Caliphs. As a result, the people became increasingly absorbed by Arabic culture.
Following the fall of Roman/Christian Anatolia to the Muslim Turks, the Romans put out a call to the Pope in Rome for assistance in the 11th century. The result was a series of wars known as the Crusades launched by Latin Christians (of mainly French origin) in Western Europe to reclaim the former Roman territories in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Syria and Palestine (the "Levant"). Lebanon was in the main path of the First Crusade's advance on Jerusalem. Frankish nobles occupied areas within present-day Lebanon as part of the southeastern Crusader States. The southern half of present-day Lebanon formed the northern march of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; the northern half was the heartland of the County of Tripoli. Although Saladin eliminated Christian control of the Holy Land around 1190, the Crusader states in Lebanon and Syria were better defended.
One of the most lasting effects of the Crusades in this region was the contact between the crusaders (mainly French) and the Maronites. Unlike most other Christian communities in the region, who swore allegiance to Constantinople or other local patriarchs, the Maronites proclaimed allegiance to the Pope in Rome. As such the Franks saw them as Roman Catholic brethren. These initial contacts led to centuries of support for the Maronites from France and Italy, even after the later fall of the Crusader states in the region.
Muslim control of Lebanon was reestablished in the late 13th century under the Mamluk sultans of Egypt. Lebanon was later contested between Muslim rulers until the Turkish Ottoman Empire solidified authority over the eastern Mediterranean.
Ottoman control was uncontested during the early modern period, but the Lebanese coast became important for its contacts and trades with the maritime republics of Venice, Genoa other Italian city-states. ("See also Levantines")
The mountainous territory of Mount Lebanon has long been a shelter for minority and persecuted groups, including its historic Maronite Christian majority and Druze communities. It was an autonomous region of the Ottoman Empire.
Starting from the 13th century, the Ottoman Turks formed an empire which came to encompass the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa. The Ottoman sultan Selim I (1516–20), after defeating the Persians, conquered the Mamluks. His troops, invading Syria, destroyed Mamluk resistance in 1516 at Marj Dabiq, north of Aleppo.
During the conflict between the Mamluks and the Ottomans, the amirs of Lebanon linked their fate to that of Ghazali, governor (pasha) of Damascus. He won the confidence of the Ottomans by fighting on their side at Marj Dabiq and, apparently pleased with the behavior of the Lebanese amirs, introduced them to Salim I when he entered Damascus. Salim I, whose treasury was depleted by the wars, decided to grant the Lebanese amirs a semiautonomous status in exchange for their acting as "tax farmers". The Ottomans, through the two main feudal families, the Maans who were Druze and the Chehabs who were Sunni Muslim Arab converts to Maronite Christianity, ruled Lebanon until the middle of the nineteenth century. During Ottoman rule the term Syria was used to designate the approximate area including present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine.
The Maans came to Lebanon from Yemen sometime in the 11th or 12th centuries. They were a tribe and dynasty of Qahtani Arabs who settled on the southwestern slopes of the Lebanon Mountains and soon adopted the Druze religion. Their authority began to rise with Fakhr ad-Din I, who was permitted by Ottoman authorities to organize his own army, and reached its peak with Fakhr ad-Din II (1570–1635). (The existence of "Fakhr ad-Din I" has been questioned by some scholars.)
Born in Baakline to a Druze family, his father died when he was 13, and his mother entrusted her son to another princely family, probably the Khazens (al-Khazin).
In 1608, Fakhr-al-Din forged an alliance with the Italian Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The alliance contained both a public economic section and a secret military one.
Fakhr-al-Din's ambitions, popularity and unauthorized foreign contacts alarmed the Ottomans who authorized Hafiz Ahmed Pasha, Muhafiz of Damascus, to mount an attack on Lebanon in 1613 in order to reduce Fakhr-al-Din's growing power. Professor Abu-Husayn has made the Ottoman archives relevant to the emir's career available.
Faced with Hafiz's army of 50,000 men, Fakhr-al-Din chose exile in Tuscany, leaving affairs in the hands of his brother Emir Yunis and his son Emir Ali Beg. They succeeded in maintining most of the forts such as Banias (Subayba) and Niha which were a mainstay of Fakhr ad-Din's power. Before leaving, Fakhr ad-Din paid his standing army of soqbans (mercenaries) two years wages in order to secure their loyalty.
Hosted in Tuscany by the Medici Family, Fakhr-al-Din was welcomed by the grand duke Cosimo II, who was his host and sponsor for the two years he spent at the court of the Medici. He spent a further three years as guest of the Spanish Viceroy of Sicily and then Naples, the Duke Osuna. Fakhr-al-Din had wished to enlist Tuscan or other European assistance in a "Crusade" to free his homeland from Ottoman domination, but was met with a refusal as Tuscany was unable to afford such an expedition. The prince eventually gave up the idea, realizing that Europe was more interested in trade with the Ottomans than in taking back the Holy Land. His stay nevertheless allowed him to witness Europe's cultural revival in the 17th century, and bring back some Renaissance ideas and architectural features.
By 1618, political changes in the Ottoman sultanate had resulted in the removal of many of Fakhr-al-Din's enemies from power, allowing Fahkr-al-Din's return to Lebanon, whereupon he was able quickly to reunite all the lands of Lebanon beyond the boundaries of its mountains; and having revenge from Emir Yusuf Pasha ibn Siyfa, attacking his stronghold in Akkar, destroying his palaces and taking control of his lands, and regaining the territories he had to give up in 1613 in Sidon, Tripoli, Bekaa among others. Under his rule, printing presses were introduced and Jesuit priests and Catholic nuns encouraged to open schools throughout the land.
In 1623, the prince angered the Ottomans by refusing to allow an army on its way back from the Persian front to winter in the Bekaa. This (and instigation by the powerful Janissary garrison in Damascus) led Mustafa Pasha, Governor of Damascus, to launch an attack against him, resulting in the battle at Majdel Anjar where Fakhr-al-Din's forces although outnumbered managed to capture the Pasha and secure the Lebanese prince and his allies a much needed military victory. The best source (in Arabic) for Fakhr ad-Din's career up to this point is a memoir signed by al-Khalidi as-Safadi, who was not with the Emir in Europe but had access to someone who was, possibly Fakhr ad-Din himself.
However, as time passed, the Ottomans grew increasingly uncomfortable with the prince's increasing powers and extended relations with Europe. In 1632, Kuchuk Ahmed Pasha was named Muhafiz of Damascus, being a rival of Fakhr-al-Din and a friend of Sultan Murad IV, who ordered Kuchuk Ahmed Pasha and the sultanate's navy to attack Lebanon and depose Fakhr-al-Din.
This time, the prince had decided to remain in Lebanon and resist the offensive, but the death of his son Emir Ali Beik in Wadi el-Taym was the beginning of his defeat. He later took refuge in Jezzine's grotto, closely followed by Kuchuk Ahmed Pasha. He surrendered to the Ottoman general Jaafar Pasha, whom he knew well, under circumstances that are not clear.
Fakhr-al-Din was taken to Constantinople and kept in the Yedikule (Seven Towers) prison for two years. He was then summoned before the sultan. Fakhr-al-Din, and one or two of his sons, were accused of treason and executed there on 13 April 1635. There are unsubstantiated rumors that the younger of the two boys was spared and raised in the harem, later becoming Ottoman ambassador to India.
Although Fakhr ad-Din II's aspirations toward complete independence for Lebanon ended tragically, he greatly enhanced Lebanon's military and economic development.
Noted for religious tolerance, the Druze prince attempted to merge the country's different religious groups into one Lebanese community. In an effort to attain complete independence for Lebanon, he concluded a secret agreement with Ferdinand I, grand duke of Tuscany.
Following his return from Tuscany, Fakhr ad-Din II, realizing the need for a strong and disciplined armed force, channeled his financial resources into building a regular army. This army proved itself in 1623, when Mustafa Pasha, the new governor of Damascus, underestimating the capabilities of the Lebanese army, engaged it in battle and was decisively defeated at Anjar in the Biqa Valley.
In addition to building up the army, Fakhr ad-Din II, who became acquainted with Italian culture during his stay in Tuscany, initiated measures to modernize the country. After forming close ties and establishing diplomatic relations with Tuscany, he brought in architects, irrigation engineers, and agricultural experts from Italy in an effort to promote prosperity in the country. He also strengthened Lebanon's strategic position by expanding its territory, building forts as far away as Palmyra in Syria, and gaining control of Palestine. Finally, the Ottoman sultan Murad IV of Istanbul, wanting to thwart Lebanon's progress toward complete independence, ordered Kutshuk, then governor of Damascus, to attack the Lebanese ruler. This time Fakhr ad-Din was defeated, and he was executed in Istanbul in 1635. No significant Maan rulers succeeded Fakhr ad-Din II.
Fakhreddine is regarded by the Lebanese as the best leader and prince the country has ever seen. The Druze prince treated all the religions equally and was the one who formed Lebanon. Lebanon has achieved during Fakhreddine's reign enormous heights that the country had and would never witness again.
The Shihabs succeeded the Maans in 1697 after the Battle of Ain Dara, a battle that changed the face of Lebanon back then, where a clash between two Druze clans broke up: the Qaysis and the Yemenis. The Druze Qaysis, led back then by Ahmad Shihab, won and expelled the Yemenis from Lebanon to Syria. This has led to an enormous decrease to the Druze population in Mount-Lebanon, who were a majority back then and helped the Christians overcome the Druze demographically. This Qaysi 'victory' gave the Shihab, who were Qaysis themselves and the allies of Lebanon, the rule over Mount-Lebanon. The Druze overlords voted for the Shihabs to rule Mount Lebanon and the Chouf by the threat of the Ottoman Empire who wanted the Sunnis to rule Lebanon. The Shihabs originally lived in the Hawran region of southwestern Syria and settled in Wadi al-Taym in southern Lebanon. The most prominent among them was Bashir Shihab II. His ability as a statesman was first tested in 1799, when Napoleon besieged Acre, a well-fortified coastal city in Palestine, about forty kilometers south of Tyre. Both Napoleon and Al Jazzar, the governor of Acre, requested assistance from the Shihab leader; Bashir, however, remained neutral, declining to assist either combatant. Unable to conquer Acre, Napoleon returned to Egypt, and the death of Al Jazzar in 1804 removed Bashir's principal opponent in the area. The Shihabs were originally a Sunni Muslim family, but had converted to Christianity.
In 1788 Bashir Shihab II (sometimes spelled Bachir in French sources) would rise to become the Emir. Born into poverty, he was elected emir upon the abdication of his predecessor, and would rule under Ottoman suzerainty, being appointed "wali" or governor of Mt Lebanon, the Biqa valley and Jabal Amil. Together this is about two thirds of modern-day Lebanon. He would reform taxes and attempt to break the feudal system, in order to undercut rivals, the most important of which was also named Bashir: Bashir Jumblatt, whose wealth and feudal backers equaled or exceeded Bashir II—and who had increasing support in the Druze community. In 1822 the Ottoman wali of Damascus went to war with Acre, which was allied with Muhammad Ali, the pasha of Egypt. As part of this conflict one of the most remembered massacres of Maronite Christians by Druze forces occurred, forces that were aligned with the wali of Damascus. Jumblatt represented the increasingly disaffected Druze, who were both shut out from official power and angered at the growing ties with the Maronites by Bashir II, who was himself a Maronite Christian.
Bashir II was overthrown as wali when he backed Acre, and fled to Egypt, later to return and organize an army. Jumblatt gathered the Druze factions together, and the war became sectarian in character: the Maronites backing Bashir II, the Druze backing Bashir Jumblatt. Jumblatt declared a rebellion, and between 1821 and 1825 there were massacres and battles, with the Maronites attempting to gain control of the Mt. Lebanon district, and the Druze gaining control over the Biqa valley. In 1825 Bashir II, helped by the Ottomans and the Jezzar, defeated his rival in the Battle of Simqanieh. Bashir Jumblatt died in Acre at the order of the Jezzar. Bashir II was not a forgiving man and repressed the Druze rebellion, particularly in and around Beirut. This made Bashir Chehab the only leader of Mount Lebanon. However, Bashir Chehab was depicted as a nasty leader because Bashir Jumblatt was his all-time friend and has saved his life when the Keserwan peasants tried to kill the prince, by sending 1000 of his men to save him. Also, days before the Battle of Simqania, Bashir Jumblatt had the chance to kill Bashir II when he was returning from Acre when he reportedly kissed the Jezzar's feet in order to help him against Jumblatt, but Bashir II reminded him of their friendship and told Jumblatt to "pardon when you can". The high morals of Jumblatt led him to pardon Bashir II, a decision he should have regretted.
Bashir II, who had come to power through local politics and nearly fallen from power because of his increasing detachment from them, reached out for allies, allies who looked on the entire area as "the Orient" and who could provide trade, weapons and money, without requiring fealty and without, it seemed, being drawn into endless internal squabbles. He disarmed the Druze and allied with France, governing in the name of the Egyptian Pasha Muhammad Ali, who entered Lebanon and formally took overlordship in 1832. For the remaining 8 years, the sectarian and feudal rifts of the 1821–1825 conflict were heightened by the increasing economic isolation of the Druze, and the increasing wealth of the Maronites.
During the nineteenth century the town of Beirut became the most important port of the region, supplanting Acre further to the south. This was mostly because Mount Lebanon became a centre of silk production for export to Europe. This industry made the region wealthy, but also dependent on links to Europe. Since most of the silk went to Marseille, the French began to have a great impact in the region.
The discontent grew to open rebellion, fed by both Ottoman and British money and support: Bashir II fled, the Ottoman Empire reasserted control and Mehmed Hüsrev Pasha, whose sole term as Grand Vizier ran from 1839 to 1841, appointed another member of the Shihab family, who styled himself Bashir III. Bashir III, coming on the heels of a man who by guile, force and diplomacy had dominated Mt Lebanon and the Biqa for 52 years, did not last long. In 1841 conflicts between the impoverished Druze and the Maronite Christians exploded: There was a massacre of Christians by the Druze at Deir al Qamar, and the fleeing survivors were slaughtered by Ottoman regulars. The Ottomans attempted to create peace by dividing Mt Lebanon into a Christian district and a Druze district, but this would merely create geographic powerbases for the warring parties, and it plunged the region back into civil conflict which included not only the sectarian warfare but a Maronite revolt against the Feudal class, which ended in 1858 with the overthrow of the old feudal system of taxes and levies. The situation was unstable: the Maronites lived in the large towns, but these were often surrounded by Druze villages living as "perioikoi".
In 1860, this would boil back into full scale sectarian war, when the Maronites began openly opposing the power of the Ottoman Empire. Another destabilizing factor was France's support for the Maronite Christians against the Druze which in turn led the British to back the Druze, exacerbating religious and economic tensions between the two communities. The Druze took advantage of this and began burning Maronite villages. The Druze had grown increasingly resentful of the favoring of the Maronites by Bashir II, and were backed by the Ottoman Empire and the wali of Damascus in an attempt to gain greater control over Lebanon; the Maronites were backed by the French, out of both economic and political expediency. The Druze began a military campaign that included the burning of villages and massacres, while Maronite irregulars retaliated with attacks of their own. However, the Maronites were gradually pushed into a few strongholds and were on the verge of military defeat when the Concert of Europe intervened and established a commission to determine the outcome. The French forces deployed there were then used to enforce the final decision. The French accepted the Druze as having established control and the Maronites were reduced to a semi-autonomous region around Mt Lebanon, without even direct control over Beirut itself. The Province of Lebanon that would be controlled by the Maronites, but the entire area was placed under direct rule of the governor of Damascus, and carefully watched by the Ottoman Empire.
The long siege of Deir al Qamar found a Maronite garrison holding out against Druze forces backed by Ottoman soldiers; the area in every direction was despoiled by the besiegers. In July 1860, with European intervention threatening, the Turkish government tried to quiet the strife, but Napoleon III of France sent 7,000 troops to Beirut and helped impose a partition: The Druze control of the territory was recognized as the fact on the ground, and the Maronites were forced into an enclave, arrangements ratified by the Concert of Europe in 1861. They were confined to a mountainous district, cut off from both the Biqa and Beirut, and faced with the prospect of ever-growing poverty. Resentments and fears would brood, ones which would resurface in the coming decades.
Youssef Bey Karam, a Lebanese nationalist played an influential role in Lebanon's independence during this era.
The remainder of the 19th century saw a relative period of stability, as Muslim, Druze and Maronite groups focused on economic and cultural development which saw the founding of the American University of Beirut and a flowering of literary and political activity associated with the attempts to liberalize the Ottoman Empire. Late in the century there was a short Druze uprising over the extremely harsh government and high taxation rates, but there was far less of the violence that had scalded the area earlier in the century.
In the approach to World War I, Beirut became a center of various reforming movements, and would send delegates to the Arab Syrian conference and Franco-Syrian conference held in Paris. There was a complex array of solutions, from pan-Arab nationalism, to separatism for Beirut, and several status quo movements that sought stability and reform within the context of Ottoman government. The Young Turk revolution brought these movements to the front, hoping that the reform of Ottoman Empire would lead to broader reforms. The outbreak of hostilities changed this, as Lebanon was to feel the weight of the conflict in the Middle East more heavily than most other areas occupied by the Syrians.
About half the population of Lebanon starved to death (200,000 killed out of 400,000 of the total populace) throughout the years of 1915–1918 during what is now known as the great famine Mount of Lebanon. As a consequence of a mixed combination of crop failure, incompetent governance and food blockade by the Allies during World War I. Dead bodies were piled in the streets and starving Lebanese civilians were reported to be eating street animals while some even resorted to cannibalism.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the League of Nations mandated the five provinces that make up present-day Lebanon to the direct control of France. Initially the division of the Arabic-speaking areas of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided by the Sykes–Picot Agreement; however, the final disposition was at the San Remo conference of 1920, whose determinations on the mandates, their boundaries, purposes and organization was ratified by the League in 1921 and put into effect in 1922.
According to the agreements reached at San Remo, France had its control over what was termed Syria recognised, the French having taken Damascus in 1920. Like all formerly Ottoman areas, Syria was a Class A Mandate, deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory." The entire French mandate area was termed "Syria" at the time, including the administrative districts along the Mediterranean coast. Wanting to maximize the area under its direct control, contain an Arab Syria centered on Damascus, and ensure a defensible border, France moved the Lebanon-Syrian border to the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, east of the Beqaa Valley, territory which had historically belonged to the province of Damascus for hundreds of years, and was far more attached to Damascus than Beirut by culture and influence. This doubled the territory under the control of Beirut, at the expense of what would become the state of Syria.
On October 27, 1919, the Lebanese delegation led by Maronite Patriarch Elias Peter Hoayek presented the Lebanese aspirations in a memorandum to the Paris Peace Conference. This included a significant extension of the frontiers of the Lebanon Mutasarrifate, arguing that the additional areas constituted natural parts of Lebanon, despite the fact that the Christian community would not be a clear majority in such an enlarged state. The quest for the annexation of agricultural lands in the Bekaa and Akkar was fueled by existential fears following the death of nearly half of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate population in the Great Famine; the Maronite church and the secular leaders sought a state that could better provide for its people. The areas to be added to the Mutasarrifate included the coastal towns of Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre and their respective hinterlands, all of which belonged to the Beirut Vilayet, together with four Kazas of the Syria Vilayet (Baalbek, the Bekaa, Rashaya and Hasbaya).
As a consequence of this also, the demographics of Lebanon were profoundly altered, as the added territory contained people who were predominantly Muslim or Druze: Lebanese Christians, of which the Maronites were the largest subgrouping, now constituted barely more than 50% of the population, while Sunni Muslims in Lebanon saw their numbers increase eightfold, and the Shi'ite Muslims fourfold. The Modern Lebanon's constitution, drawn up in 1926, specified a balance of power between the various religious groups, but France designed it to guarantee the political dominance of its Christian allies. The president was required to be a Christian (in practice, a Maronite), the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. On the basis of the 1932 census, parliament seats were divided according to a six-to-five Christian/Muslim ratio. The constitution gave the president veto power over any legislation approved by parliament, virtually ensuring that the 6:5 ratio would not be revised in the event that the population distribution changed. By 1960, Muslims were thought to constitute a majority of the population, which contributed to Muslim unrest regarding the political system.
During World War II when the Vichy government assumed power over French territory in 1940, General Henri Fernand Dentz was appointed as high commissioner of Lebanon. This new turning point led to the resignation of Lebanese president Émile Eddé on April 4, 1941. After five days, Dentz appointed Alfred Naqqache for a presidency period that lasted only three months. The Vichy authorities allowed Nazi Germany to move aircraft and supplies through Syria to Iraq where they were used against British forces. Britain, fearing that Nazi Germany would gain full control of Lebanon and Syria by pressure on the weak Vichy government, sent its army into Syria and Lebanon.
After the fighting ended in Lebanon, General Charles de Gaulle visited the area. Under various political pressures from both inside and outside Lebanon, de Gaulle decided to recognize the independence of Lebanon. On November 26, 1941, General Georges Catroux announced that Lebanon would become independent under the authority of the Free French government.
Elections were held in 1943 and on November 8, 1943 the new Lebanese government unilaterally abolished the mandate. The French reacted by throwing the new government into prison. In the face of international pressure, the French released the government officials on November 22, 1943 and accepted the independence of Lebanon.
The allies kept the region under control until the end of World War II. The last French troops withdrew in 1946.
Lebanon's history since independence has been marked by alternating periods of political stability and turmoil interspersed with prosperity built on Beirut's position as a freely trading regional center for finance and trade. Beirut became a prime location for institutions of international commerce and finance, as well as wealthy tourists, and enjoyed a reputation as the "Paris of the Middle East" until the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War.
In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Lebanon became home to more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees.
In 1958, during the last months of President Camille Chamoun's term, an insurrection broke out, and 5,000 United States Marines were briefly dispatched to Beirut on July 15 in response to an appeal by the government. After the crisis, a new government was formed, led by the popular former general Fuad Chehab.
During the 1960s, Lebanon enjoyed a period of relative calm, with Beirut-focused tourism and banking sector-driven prosperity. Lebanon reached the peak of its economic success in the mid-1960s—the country was seen as a bastion of economic strength by the oil-rich Persian Gulf Arab states, whose funds made Lebanon one of the world's fastest growing economies. This period of economic stability and prosperity was brought to an abrupt halt with the collapse of Yousef Beidas' Intra Bank, the country's largest bank and financial backbone, in 1966.
Additional Palestinian refugees arrived after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. Following their defeat in the Jordanian civil war, thousands of Palestinian militiamen regrouped in Lebanon, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, with the intention of replicating the modus operandi of attacking Israel from a politically and militarily weak neighbour. Starting in 1968, Palestinian militants of various affiliations began to use southern Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks on Israel. Two of these attacks led to a watershed event in Lebanon's inchoate civil war. In July 1968, a faction of George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an Israeli El Al civilian plane en route to Algiers; in December, two PFLP gunmen shot at an El Al plane in Athens, resulting in the death of an Israeli.
As a result, two days later, an Israeli commando flew into Beirut's international airport and destroyed more than a dozen civilian airliners belonging to various Arab carriers. Israel defended its actions by informing the Lebanese government that it was responsible for encouraging the PFLP. The retaliation, which was intended to encourage a Lebanese government crackdown on Palestinian militants, instead polarized Lebanese society on the Palestinian question, deepening the divide between pro- and anti-Palestinian factions, with the Muslims leading the former grouping and Maronites primarily constituting the latter. This dispute reflected increasing tensions between Christian and Muslim communities over the distribution of political power, and would ultimately foment the outbreak of civil war in 1975.
In the interim, while armed Lebanese forces under the Maronite-controlled government sparred with Palestinian fighters, Egyptian leader Gamal Abd al-Nasser helped to negotiate the 1969 "Cairo Agreement" between Arafat and the Lebanese government, which granted the PLO autonomy over Palestinian refugee camps and access routes to northern Israel in return for PLO recognition of Lebanese sovereignty. The agreement incited Maronite frustration over what were perceived as excessive concessions to the Palestinians, and pro-Maronite paramilitary groups were subsequently formed to fill the vacuum left by government forces, which were now required to leave the Palestinians alone. Notably, the Phalange, a Maronite militia, rose to prominence around this time, led by members of the Gemayel family.
In September 1970 Suleiman Franjieh, who had left the country briefly for Latakia in the 1950s after being accused of killing hundreds of people including other Maronites, was elected president by a very narrow vote in parliament. In November, his personal friend Hafiz al-Assad, who had received him during his exile, seized power in Syria. Later, in 1976, Franjieh would invite the Syrians into Lebanon.
For its part, the PLO used its new privileges to establish an effective "mini-state" in southern Lebanon, and to ramp up its attacks on settlements in northern Israel. Compounding matters, Lebanon received an influx of armed Palestinian militants, including Arafat and his Fatah movement, fleeing the 1970 Jordanian crackdown. The PLO's "vicious terrorist attacks in Israel" dating from this period were countered by Israeli bombing raids in southern Lebanon, where "150 or more towns and villages...have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968," of which the village of Khiyam is probably the best-known example. Palestinian attacks claimed 106 lives in northern Israel from 1967, according to official IDF statistics, while the Lebanese army had recorded "1.4 Israeli violations of Lebanese territory per day from 1968–74" Where Lebanon had no conflict with Israel during the period 1949–1968, after 1968 Lebanon's southern border began to experience an escalating cycle of attack and retaliation, leading to the chaos of the civil war, foreign invasions and international intervention. The consequences of the PLO's arrival in Lebanon continue to this day.
The Lebanese Civil War had its origin in the conflicts and political compromises of Lebanon's post-Ottoman period and was exacerbated by the nation's changing demographic trends, inter-religious strife, and proximity to Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israel. By 1975, Lebanon was a religiously and ethnically diverse country with most dominant groups of Maronite Christians, Orthodox Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims; with significant minorities of Druze, Kurds, Armenians, and Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Events and political movements that contributed to Lebanon's violent implosion include, among others, the emergence of Arab Nationalism, Arab Socialism in the context of the Cold War, the Arab–Israeli conflict, Ba'athism, the Iranian Revolution, Palestinian militants, Black September in Jordan, Islamic fundamentalism, and the Iran–Iraq War.
In all, it is estimated that more than 100,000 were killed, and another 100,000 handicapped by injuries, during Lebanon's 16-year war. Up to one-fifth of the pre-war resident population, or about 900,000 people, were displaced from their homes, of whom perhaps a quarter of a million emigrated permanently. Thousands of people lost limbs during many stages of planting of land-mines.
The War can be divided broadly into several periods: The initial outbreak in the mid-1970s, the Syrian and then Israeli intervention of the late 1970s, escalation of the PLO-Israeli conflict in the early 1980s, the 1982 Israeli invasion, a brief period of multinational involvement, and finally resolution which took the form of Syrian occupation.
Constitutionally guaranteed Christian control of the government had come under increasing fire from Muslims and leftists, leading them to join forces as the National Movement in 1969, which called for the taking of a new census and the subsequent drafting of a new governmental structure that would reflect the census results. Political tension became military conflict, with full-scale civil war in April 1975. The leadership called for Syrian intervention in 1976, leading to the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon, and an Arab summit in 1976 was called to stop the crisis.
In the south, military exchanges between Israel and the PLO led Israel to support Saad Haddad's South Lebanon Army (SLA) in an effort to establish a security belt along Israel's northern border, an effort which intensified in 1977 with the election of new Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Fatah attacks in Israel in March 1978, occupying most of the area south of the Litani River, and resulting in the evacuation of at least 100,000 Lebanese, as well as approximately 2,000 deaths.
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 425 calling for an immediate Israeli withdrawal and creating the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), charged with maintaining peace. Israeli forces withdrew later in 1978, leaving an SLA-controlled border strip as a protective buffer against PLO cross-border attacks.
In addition to the fighting between religious groups, there was rivalry between Maronite groups. In June 1978 one of Suleiman Franjieh's sons, Tony, was killed along with his wife and infant daughter in a nighttime attack on their town, reportedly by Bashir Gemayel, Samir Geagea, and their Phalangist forces.
Concurrently, tension between Syria and Phalange increased Israeli support for the Maronite group and led to direct Israeli-Syrian exchanges in April 1981, leading to American diplomatic intervention. Philip Habib was dispatched to the region to head off further escalation, which he successfully did via an agreement concluded in May.
Intra-Palestinian fighting and PLO-Israeli conflict continued, and July 24, 1981, Habib brokered a cease-fire agreement with the PLO and Israel: the two sides agreed to cease hostilities in Lebanon proper and along the Israeli border with Lebanon.
After continued PLO-Israeli exchanges, Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6 in Operation Peace for Galilee. By June 15, Israeli units were entrenched outside Beirut and Yassir Arafat attempted through negotiations to evacuate the PLO. It is estimated that during the entire campaign, approximately 20,000 were killed on all sides, including many civilians. A multinational force composed of U.S. Marines and French and Italian units arrived to ensure the departure of the PLO and protect civilians. Nearly 15,000 Palestinian militants were evacuated by September 1.
Although Bashir Gemayel did not cooperate with the Israelis publicly, his long history of tactical collaboration with Israel counted against him in the eyes of many Lebanese, especially Muslims. Although the only announced candidate for the presidency of the republic, the National Assembly elected him by the second-narrowest margin in Lebanese history (57 votes out of 92) on August 23, 1982; most Muslim members of the Assembly boycotted the vote. Nine days before he was due to take office, Gemayel was assassinated along with twenty-five others in an explosion at the Kataeb party headquarters in Beirut's Christian neighborhood of Achrafieh on September 14, 1982.
Phalangists entered Palestinian camps on September 16 at 6:00 PM and remained until the morning of September 19, massacring 700–800 Palestinians, according to official Israeli statistics, "none apparently members of any PLO unit". These are known as the Sabra and Shatila massacre. It is believed that the Phalangists considered it retaliation for Gemayel's assassination and for the Damour massacre which PLO fighters had committed earlier in a Christian town.
Bachir Gemayel was succeeded as president by his older brother Amine Gemayel, who served from 1982 to 1988. Rather different in temperament, Amine Gemayel was widely regarded as lacking the charisma and decisiveness of his brother, and many of the latter's followers were dissatisfied.
Amine Gemayel focused on securing the withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian forces. A May 17, 1983, agreement among Lebanon, Israel, and the United States arranged an Israeli withdrawal conditional on the departure of Syrian troops. Syria opposed the agreement and declined to discuss the withdrawal of its troops, effectively stalemating further progress.
In 1983 the IDF withdrew southward and left the Chouf, and would remain only in the "security zone" until the year 2000. That led to the Mountain War between the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and the Maronite Lebanese Forces. The PSP won the decisive battle that occurred in the Chouf and Aley District and inflected heavy losses to the LF. The result was the expulsion of the Christians from the Southern Mount Lebanon.
Intense attacks against U.S. and Western interests, including two truck bombings of the US Embassy in 1983 and 1984 and the landmark attacks on the U.S. Marine and French parachute regiment barracks on October 23, 1983, led to an American withdrawal, while the virtual collapse of the Lebanese Army in the 6 February 1984 Intifada in Beirut, led by the PSP and Amal, the two main allies, was a major blow to the government. On March 5, as a result of the Intifada and the Mountain War, the Lebanese Government canceled the May 17 agreement and the Marines departed a few weeks later.
Between 1985 and 1989, heavy fighting took place in the "War of the Camps". The Shi'a Muslim Amal militia sought to rout the Palestinians from Lebanese strongholds.
Combat returned to Beirut in 1987, with Palestinians, leftists and Druze fighters allied against Amal. After winning the battle, the PSP controlled West Beirut. The Syrians then entered Beirut. This combat was fueled by the Syrians in order to take control of Beirut by taking as a pretext of stopping the fights between the brothers, the PSP and Amal. Violent confrontation flared up again in Beirut in 1988 between Amal and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, on the political front, Prime Minister Rashid Karami, head of a government of national unity set up after the failed peace efforts of 1984, was assassinated on June 1, 1987. President Gemayel's term of office expired in September 1988. Before stepping down, he appointed another Maronite Christian, Lebanese Armed Forces Commanding General Michel Aoun, as acting Prime Minister, as was his right under the Lebanese constitution of 1943. This action was highly controversial.
Muslim groups rejected the move and pledged support to Selim al-Hoss, a Sunni who had succeeded Karami. Lebanon was thus divided between a Christian government in East Beirut and a Muslim government in West Beirut, with no President.
In February 1989, General Aoun launched the "War of liberation", a war against the Syrian Armed Forces in Lebanon. His campaign was partially supported by a few foreign nations but the method and approach was disputed within the Christian community. This led to the Lebanese forces to abstain from the Syrian attack against Aoun. In October 1990, the Syrian air force, backed by the US and pro-Syrian Lebanese groups (including Hariri, Joumblatt, Berri, Geagea and Lahoud) attacked the Presidential Palace at B'abda and forced Aoun to take refuge in the French embassy in Beirut and later go into exile in Paris. October 13, 1990 is regarded as the date the civil war ended, and Syria is widely recognized as playing a critical role in its end.
The Taif Agreement of 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the war, and was ratified on November 4. President Rene Mouawad was elected the following day, but was assassinated in a car bombing in Beirut on November 22 as his motorcade returned from Lebanese independence day ceremonies. He was succeeded by Elias Hrawi, who remained in office until 1998.
In August 1990, the parliament and the new president agreed on constitutional amendments embodying some of the political reforms envisioned at Taif. The National Assembly expanded to 128 seats and was divided equally between Christians and Muslims. In March 1991, parliament passed an amnesty law that pardoned most political crimes prior to its enactment, excepting crimes perpetrated against foreign diplomats or certain crimes referred by the cabinet to the Higher Judicial Council.
In May 1991, the militias (with the important exception of Hizballah) were dissolved, and the Lebanese Armed Forces began to slowly rebuild themselves as Lebanon's only major non-sectarian institution.
Some violence still occurred. In late December 1991 a car bomb (estimated to carry of TNT) exploded in the Muslim neighborhood of Basta. At least thirty people were killed, and 120 wounded, including former Prime Minister Shafik Wazzan, who was riding in a bulletproof car. It was the deadliest car bombing in Lebanon since June 18, 1985, when an explosion in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli killed sixty people and wounded 110.
The last of the Westerners kidnapped by Hezbollah during the mid-1980s were released in May 1992.
Since the end of the war, the Lebanese have conducted several elections, most of the militias have been weakened or disbanded, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have extended central government authority over about two-thirds of the country. Only Hezbollah retained its weapons, and was supported by the Lebanese parliament in doing so, as they had defended Lebanon against the Israeli occupation. Syria on the other hand kept its military presence in most of Lebanon, also holding various government institutions in the country, strengthening its occupation. The Israeli forces finally withdrew from south of Lebanon in May 2000, though the Syrian occupation of most Lebanon still continued.
By early November 1992, a new parliament had been elected, and Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri had formed a cabinet, retaining for himself the finance portfolio. The formation of a government headed by a successful billionaire businessman was widely seen as a sign that Lebanon would make a priority of rebuilding the country and reviving the economy. Solidere, a private real estate company set up to rebuild downtown Beirut, was a symbol of Hariri's strategy to link economic recovery to private sector investment. After the election of then-commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces Émile Lahoud as President in 1998 following Hrawi's extended term as President, Salim al-Hoss again served as Prime Minister. Hariri returned to office as Prime Minister in November 2000. Although problems with basic infrastructure and government services persist, and Lebanon is now highly indebted, much of the civil war damage has been repaired throughout the country, and many foreign investors and tourists have returned.
Postwar social and political instability, fueled by economic uncertainty and the collapse of the Lebanese currency, led to the resignation of Prime Minister Omar Karami, also in May 1992, after less than 2 years in office. He was replaced by former Prime Minister Rachid Solh, who was widely viewed as a caretaker to oversee Lebanon's first parliamentary elections in 20 years.
If Lebanon has in part recovered over the past decade from the catastrophic damage to infrastructure of its long civil war, the social and political divisions that gave rise to and sustained that conflict remain largely unresolved. Parliamentary and more recently municipal elections have been held with fewer irregularities and more popular participation than in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, and Lebanese civil society generally enjoys significantly more freedoms than elsewhere in the Arab world. However, there are continuing sectarian tensions and unease about Syrian and other external influences.
In the late 1990s, the government took action against Sunni Muslim extremists in the north who had attacked its soldiers, and it continues to move against groups such as Asbat al-Ansar, which has been accused of being partnered with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. On January 24, 2002, Elie Hobeika, another former Lebanese Forces figure associated with the Sabra and Shatilla massacres who later served in three cabinets and the parliament, was assassinated in a car bombing in Beirut.
During Lebanon's civil war, Syria's troop deployment in Lebanon was legitimized by the Lebanese Parliament in the Taif Agreement, supported by the Arab League, and is given a major share of the credit for finally bringing the civil war to an end in October 1990. In the ensuing fifteen years, Damascus and Beirut justified Syria's continued military presence in Lebanon by citing the continued weakness of a Lebanese armed forces faced with both internal and external security threats, and the agreement with the Lebanese Government to implement all of the constitutional reforms in the Taif Agreement. Under Taif, the Hezbollah militia was eventually to be dismantled, and the LAF allowed to deploy along the border with Israel. Lebanon was called on to deploy along its southern border by , urged to do so by UN Resolution , and deployment was demanded by UN Security Council Resolution 1559. The Syrian military and intelligence presence in Lebanon was criticised by some on Lebanon's right-wing inside and outside of the country, others believed it helped to prevent renewed civil war and discourage Israeli aggression, and others believed its presence and influence was helpful for Lebanese stability and peace but should be scaled back. Major powers United States and France rejected Syrian reasoning that they were in Lebanon by the consent of the Lebanese government. They insist that the latter had been co-opted and that in fact Lebanon's Government was a Syrian puppet.
Up to 2005, 14–15,000 Syrian troops (down from 35,000) remained in position in many areas of Lebanon, although the Taif called for an agreement between the Syrian and Lebanese Governments by September 1992 on their redeployment to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Syria's refusal to exit Lebanon following Israel's 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon first raised criticism among the Lebanese Maronite Christians and Druze, who were later joined by many of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims. Lebanon's Shiites, on the other hand, have long supported the Syrian presence, as has the Hezbollah militia group and political party.
The U.S. began applying pressure on Syria to end its occupation and cease interfering with internal Lebanese matters. In 2004, many believe Syria pressured Lebanese MPs to back a constitutional amendment to revise term limitations and allow Lebanon's two term pro-Syrian president Émile Lahoud to run for a third time. France, Germany and the United Kingdom, along with many Lebanese politicians joined the U.S. in denouncing alleged Syria's interference.
On September 2, 2004, the UN Security Council adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1559, authored by France and the U.S. in an uncommon show of cooperation. The resolution called "upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon" and "for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias".
On May 25, 2000, Israel completed its withdrawal from the south of Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. A 50-square-kilometre piece of mountain terrain, commonly referred to as the Shebaa farms, remains under the control of Israel. The UN has certified Israel's pullout, and regards the Shebaa Farms as occupied Syrian territory, while Lebanon and Syria have stated they regard the area as Lebanese territory. The January 20, 2005, UN Secretary-General's report on Lebanon stated: "The continually asserted position of the Government of Lebanon that the Blue Line is not valid in the Shab'a farms area is not compatible with Security Council resolutions. The Council has recognized the Blue Line as valid for purposes of confirming Israel's withdrawal pursuant to resolution 425 (1978). The Government of Lebanon should heed the Council's repeated calls for the parties to respect the Blue Line in its entirety."
In Resolution 425, the UN had set a goal of assisting the Lebanese government in a "return of its effective authority in the area", which would require an official Lebanese army presence there. Further, UN Security Council Resolution 1559 requires the dismantling of the Hezbollah militia. Yet, Hezbollah remains deployed along the Blue Line. Both Hezbollah and Israel have violated the Blue Line more than once, according to the UN. The most common pattern of violence have been border incursions by the Hezbollah into the Shebaa Farms area, and then Israeli air strikes into southern Lebanon. The UN Secretary-General has urged "all governments that have influence on Hezbollah to deter it from any further actions which could increase the tension in the area". Staffan de Misura, Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for Southern Lebanon stated that he was "deeply concerned that air violations by Israel across the Blue Line during altercations with Hezbollah are continuing to take place", calling "upon the Israeli authorities to cease such violations and to fully respect the Blue Line". In 2001 de Misura similarly expressed his concern to Lebanon's prime minister for allowing Hezbollah to violate the Blue Line, saying it was a "clear infringement" of UN Resolution 425, under which the UN certified Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon as complete. On January 28, 2005, UN Security Council Resolution 1583 called upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it.
On January 23, 2006 The UN Security Council called on the Government of Lebanon to make more progress in controlling its territory and disbanding militias, while also calling on Syria to cooperate with those efforts. In a statement read out by its January President, Augustine Mahiga of Tanzania, the Council also called on Syria to take measures to stop movements of arms and personnel into Lebanon.
On September 3, 2004, the National Assembly voted 96–29 to amend the constitution to allow the pro-Syrian president, Émile Lahoud, three more years in office by extending a statute of limitations to nine years. Many regarded this as a second time Syria had pressured Lebanon's Parliament to amend the constitution in a way that favored Lahoud (the first allowing for his election in 1998 immediately after he had resigned as commander-in-chief of the LAF.) Three cabinet ministers were absent from the vote and later resigned. The USA charged that Syria exercised pressure against the National Assembly to amend the constitution, and many of the Lebanese rejected it, saying that it was considered as contradictive to the constitution and its principles. Including these is the Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir—the most eminent religious figure for Maronites—and the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.
To the surprise of many, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who had vehemently opposed this amendment, appeared to have finally accepted it, and so did most of his party. However, he ended up resigning in protest against the amendment. He was assassinated soon afterwards (see below), triggering the Cedar Revolution. This amendment comes in discordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for a new presidential election in Lebanon.
On October 1, 2004, one of the main dissenting voices to Émile Lahoud's term extension, the newly resigned Druze ex-minister Marwan Hamadeh was the target of a car bomb attack as his vehicle slowed to enter his Beirut home. Mr. Hamadeh and his bodyguard were wounded and his driver killed in the attack. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt appealed for calm, but said the car bomb was a clear message for the opposition. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed his serious concern over the attack.
On October 7, 2004, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council that Syria had failed to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. Mr. Annan concluded his report saying that "It is time, 14 years after the end of hostilities and four years after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, for all parties concerned to set aside the remaining vestiges of the past. The withdrawal of foreign forces and the disbandment and disarmament of militias would, with finality, end that sad chapter of Lebanese history.". On October 19, 2004, following the UN Secretary General's report, the UN Security Council voted unanimously (meaning that it received the backing of Algeria, the only Arab member of the Security Council) to put out a statement calling on Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon, in accordance with Resolution 1559.
On October 20, 2004, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri resigned; the next day former Prime Minister and loyal supporter of Syria Omar Karami was appointed Prime Minister. On February 14, 2005, former Prime Minister Hariri was assassinated in a car-bomb attack which killed 21 and wounded 100. On February 21, 2005, tens of thousand Lebanese protestors held a rally at the site of the assassination calling for the withdrawal of Syria's peacekeeping forces and blaming Syria and the pro-Syrian president Lahoud for the murder.
Hariri's murder triggered increased international pressure on Syria. In a joint statement U.S. President Bush and French president Chirac condemned the killing and called for full implementation of UNSCR 1559. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he was sending a team led by Ireland's deputy police commissioner, Peter FitzGerald, to investigate the assassination. And while Arab League head Amr Moussa declared that Syrian president Assad promised him a phased withdrawal over a two-year period, the Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah said Mr Moussa had misunderstood the Syrian leader. Mr Dakhlallah said that Syria will merely move its troops to eastern Lebanon. Russia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia all called for Syrian troops to leave.
Local Lebanese pressure mounted as well. As daily protests against the Syrian occupation grew to 25,000, a series of dramatic events occurred. Massive protests such as these had been quite uncommon in the Arab world, and while in the 90s most anti-Syrian demonstrators were predominantly Christian, the new demonstrations were Christian and Sunni. On February 28 the government of pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned, calling for a new election to take place. Mr Karami said in his announcement: "I am keen the government will not be a hurdle in front of those who want the good for this country." The tens of thousands gathered at Beirut's Martyrs' Square cheered the announcement, then chanted "Karami has fallen, your turn will come, Lahoud, and yours, Bashar". Opposition MPs were also not satisfied with Karami's resignation, and kept pressing for full Syrian withdrawal. Former minister and MP Marwan Hamadeh, who survived a similar car bomb attack on October 1, 2004, said "I accuse this government of incitement, negligence and shortcomings at the least, and of covering up its planning at the most... if not executing". Two days later Syrian leader Bashar Assad announced that his troops will leave Lebanon completely "in the next few months". Responding to the announcement, opposition leader Walid Jumblatt said that he wanted to hear more specifics from Damascus about any withdrawal: "It's a nice gesture but 'next few months' is quite vague—we need a clear-cut timetable".
On March 5 Syrian leader Assad declared in a televised speech that Syria would withdraw its forces to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, and then to the border between Syria and Lebanon. Assad did not provide a timetable for a complete withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon—14,000 soldiers and intelligence agents. Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah called for a "massive popular gathering" on Tuesday against UN Resolution 1559 saying "The resistance will not give up its arms ... because Lebanon needs the resistance to defend it", and added "all the articles of UN resolution give free services to the Israeli enemy who should have been made accountable for his crimes and now finds that he is being rewarded for his crimes and achieves all its demands".
In opposition to Nasrallah's call, Monday, March 7 saw at least 70,000 people—with some estimates putting the number at twice as high—gathered at central Martyrs' Square to demand that Syria leave completely.
The following day a pro-Syrian demonstration set a new record when Hezbollah amassed 400–500 thousand protestors at Riad Solh square in Beirut, most of them bussed in from the heavily Shi'ite south Lebanon and eastern Beka'a valley. The show of power demonstrated Hezbollah's influence, wealth and organization as the sole Lebanese party allowed to hold a militia by Syria. In his speech Nasrallah blasted UN Security-Council Resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah's militia to be disbanded, as foreign intervention. Nasrallah also reiterated his earlier calls for the destruction of Israel saying "To this enemy we say again: There is no place for you here and there is no life for you among us. Death to Israel!". Though Hezbollah organized a very successful rally, opposition leaders were quick to point out that Hezbollah had active support from Lebanon's government and Syria. While the pro-democracy rallies had to deal with road blocks forcing protestors to either turn back or march long distances to Martyr's Square, Hezbollah was able to bus people directly to Riad Solh square. Dory Chamoun, an opposition leader, pointed out that "the difference is that in our demonstrations, people arrive voluntarily and on foot, not in buses". Another opposition member said the pro-Syrian government pressured people to turn out and some reports said Syria had bused in people from across the border. But on a mountain road leading to Beirut, only one bus with a Syrian license plate was spotted in a convoy of pro-Syrian supporters heading to the capital and Hezbollah officials denied the charges.
Opposition MP Akram Chehayeb said "That is where the difference between us and them lies: They asked these people to come and they brought them here, whereas the opposition's supporters come here on their own. Our protests are spontaneous. We have a cause. What is theirs?".
One month after Hariri's murder, an enormous anti-Syrian rally gathered at Martyr's Square in Beirut. Multiple news agencies estimated the crowd at between 800,000 and 1 million—a show of force for the Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze communities. The rally was double the size of the mostly Shi'ite pro-Syrian one organized by Hezbollah the previous week. When Hariri's sister took a pro-Syrian line saying that Lebanon should "stand by Syria until its land is liberated and it regains its sovereignty on the occupied Golan Heights" the crowd jeered her. This sentiment was prevalent among the rally participants who opposed Hezbollah's refusal to disarm based on the claim that Lebanese and Syrian interests are linked.
Jamil Al Sayyed, a Syrian ally in the Lebanese security forces, resigned on 25 April, just a day before the final Syrian troops pulled out of Lebanon.
On 26 April 2005, the last 250 Syrian troops left Lebanon. During the departure ceremonies, Ali Habib, Syria's chief of staff, said that Syria's president had decided to recall his troops after the Lebanese army had been "rebuilt on sound national foundations and became capable of protecting the state."
UN forces led by Senegalese Mouhamadou Kandji and guided by Lebanese Imad Anka were sent to Lebanon to verify the military withdrawal which was mandated by Security Council resolution 1559.
Following the Syrian withdrawal a series of assassinations of Lebanese politicians and journalists with the anti-Syrian camp had begun. Many bombings have occurred to date and have triggered condemnations from the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General.
Eight months after Syria withdrew from Lebanon under intense domestic and international outrage over the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri the UN investigation has yet to be completed. While UN investigator Detlev Mehlis has pointed the finger at Syria's intelligence apparatus in Lebanon he has yet to be allowed full access to Syrian officials who are suspected by the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) as being behind the assassination. In its latest report UNIIIC said it had "credible information" that Syrian officials had arrested and threatened close relatives of a witness who recanted testimony he had previously given the Commission, and that two Syrian suspects it questioned indicated that all Syrian intelligence documents on Lebanon had been burned.
A campaign of bomb attacks against politicians, journalists and even civilian neighborhoods associated with the anti-Syrian camp has provoked much negative attention for Syria in the UN and elsewhere.
On December 15, 2005 the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the UNIIIC.
On December 30, 2005 Syria's former Vice-President, Abdul Halim Khaddam, said that "Hariri received many threats" from Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad. Prior to Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon Mr Khaddam was in charge of Syria's Lebanon policy and mainly responsible for Syria's abuse of Lebanon's resources. Many believe that Khaddam seized the opportunity to clear his history of corruption and blackmail.
Parliament voted for the release of the former Lebanese Forces warlord Samir Geagea in the first session since election were held in the spring of 2005. Geagea was the only leader during the civil war to be charged with crimes related to that conflict. With the return of Michel Aoun, the climate was right to try to heal wounds to help unite the country after former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated on 14 February 2005. Geagea was released on 26 July 2005 and left immediately for an undisclosed European nation to undergo medical examinations and convalesce.
During the Cedar Revolution Hezbollah organized a series of pro-Syrian rallies. Hezbollah became a part of the Lebanese government following the 2005 elections but is at a crossroads regarding the UNSCR 1559 call for its militia to be dismantled. On 21 November 2005, Hezbollah launched an attack along the entire border with Israel, the heaviest in the five and a half years since Israel's withdrawal. The barrage was supposed to provide tactical cover for an attempt by a squad of Hezbollah special forces to abduct Israeli troops in the Israeli side of the village of Al-Ghajar. The attack failed when an ambush by the IDF Paratroopers killed 4 Hezbollah members and scattered the rest. The UN Security Council accused Hezbollah of initiating the hostilities.
On 27 December 2005, Katyusha rockets fired from Hezbollah territory smashed into houses in the Israeli village of Kiryat Shmona wounding three people. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on the Lebanese Government "to extend its control over all its territory, to exert its monopoly on the use of force, and to put an end to all such attacks". Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora denounced the attack as "aimed at destabilizing security and diverting attention from efforts exerted to solve the internal issues prevailing in the country". On December 30, 2005 the Lebanese army dismantled two other Katyusha rockets found in the border town of Naqoura, an action suggesting increased vigilance following PM Saniora's angry remarks. In a new statement Saniora also rejected claims by Al-Qaeda that it was responsible for the attack and insisted again that it was a domestic action challenging his government's authority.
The 2006 Lebanon War was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israeli military. The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon.
In 2007, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp became the center of the 2007 Lebanon conflict between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam. At least 169 soldiers, 287 insurgents and 47 civilians were killed in the battle. Funds for the reconstruction of the area have been slow to materialize.
Between 2006 and 2008, a series of protests led by groups opposed to the pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demanded the creation of a national unity government, over which the mostly Shia opposition groups would have veto power. When Émile Lahoud's presidential term ended in October 2007, the opposition refused to vote for a successor unless a power-sharing deal was reached, leaving Lebanon without a president.
On 9 May 2008, Hezbollah and Amal forces, sparked by a government declaration that Hezbollah's communications network was illegal, seized western Beirut, leading to the 2008 conflict in Lebanon. The Lebanese government denounced the violence as a coup attempt. At least 62 people died in the resulting clashes between pro-government and opposition militias. On 21 May 2008, the signing of the Doha Agreement ended the fighting. As part of the accord, which ended 18 months of political paralysis, Michel Suleiman became president and a national unity government was established, granting a veto to the opposition. The agreement was a victory for opposition forces, as the government caved in to all their main demands.
In early January 2011, the national unity government collapsed due to growing tensions stemming from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was expected to indict Hezbollah members for the Hariri assassination. The parliament elected Najib Mikati, the candidate for the Hezbollah-led March 8 Alliance, Prime Minister of Lebanon, making him responsible for forming a new government. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah insists that Israel was responsible for the assassination of Hariri. A report leaked by the Al-Akhbar newspaper in November 2010 stated that Hezbollah has drafted plans for a takeover of the country in the event that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues an indictment against its members.
In 2012, the Syrian Civil War threatened to spill over in Lebanon, causing more incidents of sectarian violence and armed clashes between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli. As of 6 August 2013, more than 677,702 Syrian refugees are in Lebanon. As the number of Syrian refugees increases, the Lebanese Forces Party, the Kataeb Party, and the Free Patriotic Movement fear the country's sectarian based political system is being undermined.
The 2019–20 Lebanese protests, nicknamed the "Tax Intifada", are a series of country-wide protests in response to the government's failure to find solutions to an economic crisis that has been looming for the past year. It is suspected that the direct trigger to the protests were due to the planned imposed taxes on gasoline, tobacco and online phone calls such as through WhatsApp, as country-wide protests broke out right after Cabinet talks of the taxes, due to be ratified by October 22.
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Geography of Lebanon
Lebanon is a small country in the Middle East, located at approximately 33˚N, 35˚E. It stretches along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and its length is almost three times its width. From north to south, the width of its terrain becomes narrower. Lebanon's mountainous terrain, and the economic and religious movements that either originated in the region or crossed through to leave an imprint upon Lebanese society, give form to the country's history.
The country's role in the region, as indeed in the world at large, was shaped by trade. Lebanon is named "the Pearl of the Middle East." It serves as a link between the Mediterranean world and India and East Asia. The merchants of the region exported oil, grain, textiles, metal work, and pottery through the port cities to Western markets.
The hilly Mediterranean geography has influenced the history, cuisine, and culture of Lebanon.
The area of Lebanon is . The country is roughly rectangular in shape, becoming narrower toward the south and the farthest north. Its widest point is , and its narrowest is ; the average width is about . Due to the fact that Lebanon straddles the northwest of the Arabian Plate, it is sometimes geopolitically grouped together with nations with adjacent tectonic proximations such as Syria, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Egyptian Sinai, Palestine and the UAE.
The physical geography of Lebanon is influenced by natural systems that extend outside the country. Thus, the Beqaa Valley is part of the Great Rift system, which stretches from southern Turkey to Mozambique in Africa. Like any mountainous country, Lebanon's physical geography is complex. Land forms, climate, soils, and vegetation differ markedly within short distances. There are also sharp changes in other elements of the environment, from good to poor soils, as one moves through the Lebanese mountains.
A major feature of Lebanese topography is the alternation of lowland and highland that runs generally parallel with a north-to-south orientation. There are four such longitudinal strips between the Mediterranean Sea and Syria: the coastal strip (or the maritime plain), western Lebanon, the central plateau, and eastern Lebanon (see fig. 3, Physical Features).
The extremely narrow coastal strip stretches along the shore of the eastern Mediterranean. Hemmed in between sea and mountain, the sahil, as it is called in Lebanon, is widest in the north near Tripoli, where it is only wide. A few kilometers south at Juniyah the approximately 1.5-kilometer-wide plain is succeeded by foothills that rise steeply to within from the sea. For the most part, the coast is abrupt and rocky. The shoreline is regular with no deep estuary, gulf, or natural harbor. The maritime plain is especially productive of fruits and vegetables.
The western range, the second major region, is the Lebanon Mountains, sometimes called Mount Lebanon, or Lebanon proper before 1920. Since Roman days the term Mount Lebanon has encompassed this area. Antilibanos (Anti-Lebanon) was used to designate the eastern range. Geologists believe that the twin mountains once formed one range. The Lebanon Mountains are the highest, most rugged, and most imposing of the whole maritime range of mountains and plateaus that start with the Nur Mountains in northern Syria and end with the towering massif of Sinai. The mountain structure forms the first barrier to communication between the Mediterranean and Lebanon's eastern hinterland. The mountain range is a clearly defined unit having natural boundaries on all four sides. On the north it is separated from the Al-Ansariyah mountains of Syria by Nahr al-Kabir ("the great river"); on the south it is bounded by Al Qasimiyah River, giving it a length of 169 kilometers. Its width varies from about near Tripoli to on the southern end. It rises to alpine heights southeast of Tripoli. Qurnat as Sawda' ("the black nook") reaches and is the highest mountain of Lebanon. Of the other peaks that rise east of Beirut, Mount Sannine () is the highest. Ahl al Jabal ("people of the mountain"), or simply jabaliyyun, has referred traditionally to the inhabitants of western Lebanon. Near its southern end, the Lebanon Mountains branch off to the west to form the Shuf Mountains.
The third geographical region is the Beqaa Valley. This central highland between the Lebanon Mountains and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains is about in length and 9.6 to 16 kilometers wide and has an average elevation of . Its middle section spreads out more than its two extremities. Geologically, the Beqaa is the medial part of a depression that extends north to the western bend of the Orontes River in Syria and south to Jordan through Arabah to Aqaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Beqaa is the country's chief agricultural area and served as a granary of Roman Syria. Beqaa is the Arabic plural of buqaah, meaning a place with stagnant water.
Emerging from a base south of Homs in Syria, the eastern mountain range, or Anti-Lebanon (Lubnan ash Sharqi), is almost equal in length and height to the Lebanon Mountains. This fourth geographical region falls swiftly from Mount Hermon to the Hawran Plateau, whence it continues through Jordan south to the Dead Sea. The Barada Gorge divides Anti-Lebanon. In the northern section, few villages are on the western slopes, but in the southern section, featuring Mount Hermon (2860 meters), the western slopes have many villages. Anti-Lebanon is more arid, especially in its northern parts, than Mount Lebanon and is consequently less productive and more thinly populated.
Lebanon is divided into five ribbonlike topographical areas stretching mainly in a north-south direction:
Lebanon has a Mediterranean climate characterized by a long, semi-hot, and dry summer, and a cold, rainy and snowy winter. Fall is a transitional season with a lowering of temperature and little rain; spring occurs when the winter rains cause the vegetation to revive. Topographical variation creates local modifications of the basic climatic pattern. Along the coast, summers are warm and humid, with little or no rain. Heavy dews form, which are beneficial to agriculture. The daily range of temperature is not wide. A west wind provides relief during the afternoon and evening; at night the wind direction is reversed, blowing from the land out to sea.
Winter is the rainy and snowy season, with major precipitation falling after December. Rainfall is generous but is concentrated during only a few days of the rainy season, falling in heavy cloudbursts. The amount of rainfall varies greatly from one year to another. Snow is common in inland areas and mountains, with temperatures reaching an average of −1 Celsius in December, −5 Celsius in January, and −7 Celsius in February. A hot wind blowing from the Egyptian desert called the khamsin (Arabic for "fifty"), may cause sudden increase in temperatures, mostly in spring. Bitterly cold winds often come from Southern Europe. Along the coast the proximity to the sea provides a moderating influence on the climate, making the range of temperatures narrower than it is inland, but the temperatures are cooler in the northern parts of the coast where there is also more rain.
In the Lebanon Mountains the high increase in altitude produces extremely cold winters with more precipitation and snow. The summers have a wider daily range of temperatures and less humidity. In the winter, frosts are frequent and snows heavy; in fact, snow covers the highest peaks for much of the year. In the summer, temperatures may rise as high as 27 Celsius during the day, but they fall far lower at night. Inhabitants of the coastal cities, as well as visitors, seek refuge from the oppressive humidity of the coast by spending much of the summer in the mountains, where numerous summer resorts are located. The influence of the Mediterranean Sea is abated by the altitude and, although the precipitation is even higher than it is along the coast, the range of temperatures is wider and the winters are more severe.
The Biqa Valley and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains are shielded from the influence of the sea by the Lebanon Mountains. The result is considerably less precipitation and humidity and a wider variation in daily and yearly temperatures. The khamsin does not occur in the Biqa Valley, but the north winter wind is so severe that the inhabitants say it can "break nails." Despite the relatively low altitude of the Biqa Valley (the highest point of which, near Baalbek, is only ) more snow falls there than at comparable altitudes west of the Lebanon Mountains.
Because of their altitudes, the Anti-Lebanon Mountains receive more precipitation than the Biqa Valley, despite their remoteness from maritime influences. Much of this precipitation appears as snow, and the peaks of the Anti-Lebanon, like those of the Lebanon Mountains, are snow-covered for much of the year. Temperatures are cooler than in the Biqa Valley.
The Biqa Valley is watered by two rivers that rise in the watershed near Baalbek: the Orontes flowing north (in Arabic it is called Nahr al-Asi, "the Rebel River", because this direction is unusual), and the Litani flowing south into the hill region of the southern Biqa Valley, where it makes an abrupt turn to the west in southern Lebanon and is thereafter called the Al Qasmiyah River. The Orontes continues to flow north into Syria and eventually reaches the Mediterranean in Turkey. Its waters, for much of its course, flow through a channel considerably lower than the surface of the ground. The Nahr Barada, which waters Damascus, has as its source a spring in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.
Smaller springs and streams serve as tributaries to the principal rivers. Because the rivers and streams have such steep gradients and are so fast moving, they are erosive instead of depository in nature. This process is aided by the soft character of the limestone that composes much of the mountains, the steep slopes of the mountains, and the heavy rainstorms. The only permanent lake is Lake Qaraoun, about ten kilometers east of Jezzine. There is one seasonal lake, fed by springs, on the eastern slopes of the Lebanon Mountains near Yammunah, about southeast of Tripoli.
Area:
"Total:"
"Land:"
"Water:"
Land boundaries:
"Total:"
"Border countries:" Israel , Syria
Coastline:
Maritime claims:
"Territorial sea:"
"Exclusive Economic Zone:"
Elevation extremes:
"Lowest point:" Mediterranean Sea (sea level)
"Highest point:" Qurnat as Sawda'
Limestone, iron ore, salt, water-surplus state in a water-deficit region, arable land
Land use:
"arable land:" 10.72%
"permanent crops:" 12.06%
"other:" 77.22% (2011)
Irrigated land: (2011)
Total renewable water resources: (2011)
Water is becoming a scarce resource in Lebanon due to climate change, which leads to different rainfall patterns as well as to inefficient methods of distribution within the country. Most of Lebanon’s rainfall is in the four months of winter, but over the last 45 years, the Ministry of Environment (Lebanon) estimates that rainfall has decreased overall between 5 and 20 percent. The coastal strip of Lebanon gets approximately 2,000 mm of rain per year, while the Beqaa Valley to the east gets only one-tenth as much. In 2004, only about 21% of households across Lebanon had constant access to water in the summer months, with most of those households concentrated in or near Beirut. It is predicted that in future years, there will be higher temperatures, lower rainfall, and longer droughts, leading to even less access to water. According to the Ministry of Environment, several factors that are putting stress on Lebanon’s water resources are unsustainable water management practices, increasing water demand from all sectors, water pollution, and ineffective water governance. Lebanon has struggled with inadequate water and sanitation services for many years. The factors with the greatest effect on quality and quantity of water resources in Lebanon are population growth, urbanization (88% of the population now lives in urban areas), economic growth, and climate change. In recent years, population growth has been increased rapidly with the addition of many Syrian refugees. Some new projects have been proposed to restructure the water sector. Currently, over 48 percent of water supplied by the public system is lost through seepage and wastewater networks are extremely poor, or even non-existent in some areas. One project that is currently being implemented by the Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focusses on harvesting rainwater from agricultural greenhouse tops in order to increase water harvesting and reduce the pressure on pumping groundwater. This project is expected to increase water availability during the especially critical months of late summer and early autumn when there is less precipitation, which would help to reduce the risk of salinity in both soil and water, and to increase the resilience of crops faced with prolonged drought. There are also proposed projects that suggest the agricultural sector use recycled waste water to allow for more fresh and potable water for consumption. This would be a huge improvement, as solid-wast treatment facilities are in short supply, and over 92 percent of Lebanon’s sewage runs untreated directly into water-courses and the sea. If Lebanon does not reform its water sector, it is likely that there will be chronic and critical water shortages by 2020, which would create needs the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW) would be unable to meet. Water is becoming a scarce resource and if Lebanon instates reformed practices, the progression forward into future water scarcity can be slowed.
As of september 2019, approximately 1.5 million syrian refugees reside in Lebanon. As the number of Refugees of the Syrian Civil War in Lebanon rises, Lebanon continues to face more major challenges to its food and water security. The refugee situation is placing tremendous pressure on the country's resources. There are serious changes in Lebanon's water availability and agricultural production as a result of climate change and population growth, making it more difficult to fulfill the needs of refugees. More than 40% of farmers in Kfardebian and 81% in the Beqa'a region have reported water shortages being exacerbated by the region's close proximity to Syria and the influx of refugees. Water scarcity affects the quantity and quality of water available to the villages, food security, and land availability for living and for cultivating. The influx of Syrian refugees is not something the Lebanese government could have reasonably prepared for as it happened so rapidly, but international aid has proven to also be inadequate for the scale of the crisis, especially in the Beqa'a and Northern Lebanon region, which borders closely with Syria. Arrivals of refugees to Lebanon grew at an unprecedented pace in 2013 and 2014, with an average of 47,000 refugees being registered by UNHCR per month. Close to 30 percent of the refugee population are left without access to safe drinking water because of the increased water scarcity in the region. One issue with providing adequate care for the refugees is that both Syria and Lebanon have deeply divided populations, meaning that their current priorities are not climate change or population growth as much as they are regime stability and national security. Because of this priority focus away from refugees, Lebanon needs major international assistance to meet immediate humanitarian needs, as well as to strengthen water infrastructure and irrigation throughout the country. By the beginning of 2015, there were an estimated 1.3 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, and it is expected that this number will rise to approximately 1.8 million by December 2015.It is estimated to be around 2 million syrian refugees as of september 2019. "As their displacement extends and their savings deplete, refugees' socio-economic vulnerability increases." Syrian refugees who were born in Lebanon are at an increased risk, as 72 percent of them do not possess official birth certificates. The majority of refugees have settled in the Beqa'a region. Because of the influx, not only has Lebanon suffered on a basis of resources and environmental stress, but Lebanon has also suffered economically through a loss of trade, tourism and investment. According to a World Bank Assessment in October 2013, the economic impact of the Syrian crisis was estimated to cost Lebanon USD 7.5 billion, and the country's GDP has plunged from 10 percent before the crisis to 2 percent currently. Public services and infrastructure as well are under severe strain as a result of the refugee influx. A vulnerability assessment conducted by the UN and partner agencies has shown that upward of 70 percent of refugees cannot meet their minimum daily food requirements. 72 percent of all refugees have been receiving monthly food assistance from WFP (World Food Programme). However, in 2015, WFP lost funding and had to reduce the value of food vouchers by 40 percent. There is a serious strain on resources in Lebanon being exacerbated by an influx of refugees in the country, and Lebanon needs more international aid in order to sustain the population in the long-term.
Natural hazards include dust storms.
Current environmental degradation concerns include deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, air pollution in Beirut from vehicular traffic and the burning of industrial wastes, and pollution of coastal waters from raw sewage and oil spills.
Lebanon's rugged terrain historically helped isolate, protect, and develop numerous factional groups based on religion, clan, and ethnicity.
As a result of increasingly hot summers and its location within the Mediterranean region, which is often cited for having long episodes of pollution, Lebanon, Beirut in particular, is at high risk for air pollution. Approximately 93 percent of Beirut's population is exposed to high levels of air pollution, which can most often be attributed to vehicle-induced emissions, whether it be long-range travel or short commuting traffic. The cost of air pollution to health may exceed ten million dollars a year. The levels of air pollution in Beirut are increasing annually, and were already above acceptable WHO (World Health Organization) standards by 2011. The most noted pollution in Beirut is particulate matter (street dust), chemicals in the air, and vehicle exhaust. Air pollution is exacerbated by city structure and inadequate urban management as indicated by high buildings on narrow streets, which contain air pollutants. Some recommendations for improvement of air quality include encouragement of carpooling and citywide biking, alternative fuels for vehicles, and a widened public transit sector.
Sukleen, Lebanon's largest waste disposal company has a waste management process that goes through several stages, including clean-up and collection, sorting and composting, and burial. However, many argue that Lebanon needs a much better system for disposal of waste to reduce pollution and environmental degradation. The Litani River is Lebanon's largest river and many farms use the river's water to irrigate land and crops. Because of Lebanon's poor waste management system, a lot of waste and pollution ends up in the Litani and contaminates the crops, in turn endangering the health of consumers and farmers alike, contributing to environmental degradation, as well as hurting the agricultural reputation and economy.
In January 2014, protests in the town of Naameh began to arise, effectively blocking disposal of garbage at the landfill for three days. The protests were instated in response to the continued use of the landfill in Naameh beyond the date it was originally meant to close. The landfill began as a six-year project in 1997, but has remained open for seventeen years as of 2015, and without a sufficient alternative location for garbage disposal, it is likely that it will remain open for the foreseeable future. In 1997, Naameh became the country's primary landfill and was initially supposed to hold two million tons of waste. The landfill currently holds ten million tons of trash, and is still in use. Residents of the area in 2014 did not want to extend the landfill agreement, and staged the protests to prevent future plans. The company in charge of the majority of the area's collection and cleanup of trash is called Sukleen. It serves 364 towns and municipalities within Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The total waste collected by the company rose from 1,140 tons daily in 1994, to 3,100 tons in 2014. Sukleen is the largest government-contracted private waste management company in Lebanon. In response to the protests, which were asking the government for more efficient waste management systems along with the closure of the landfill in Naameh, Sukleen responded to environmentalists by halting service to Beirut and Mount Lebanon for three days. Because the Naameh landfills were closed and Sukleen was out of service, trash began to pile up in the streets of the city, affecting everyone citywide and drawing attention to the issue of city/region waste-management issues.
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Demographics of Lebanon
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Lebanon, including population density, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
About 99% of the population of Lebanon includes numerous Muslim sects and Christian denominations. Because the matter of religious balance is a sensitive political issue, a national census has not been conducted since 1932, before the founding of the modern Lebanese state. Consequently, there is an absence of accurate data on the relative percentages of the population of the major religions and groups. The absence of data and comprehensive statistics also concerns all other demographic studies unrelated to religious balance, due to the all but total inactivity of the concerned public agencies. The only recent (post-war) statistics available are estimates based on studies made by private organizations. The biggest study made after the independence on the Lebanese Population was made by the Central Administration of Statistics (in French: "Administration Centrale de la Statistique") under the direction of Robert Kasparian and Grégoire Haddad's Social Movement: "L'enquête par sondage sur la population active au Liban en 1970" (in English: "The survey on the active population in Lebanon in 1970"). It was conducted on a sample of 130,000 individuals.
There are from 8.6 to 14 million Lebanese and descendants of Lebanese worldwide, mostly Christians.
Ethnic background is an important factor in Lebanon. The country encompasses a great mix of cultural, religious, and ethnic groups which have been building up for more than 6,000 years. The Arabs invaded and occupied Phoenicia in the 7th century AD from Arabia. The predominant cultural backgrounds and ancestry of the Lebanese vary from Canaanite (Phoenician), Aramean (Ancient Syria) and Greek (Byzantine). The question of ethnic identity has come to revolve increasingly around aspects of cultural self-identification more than descent. Religious affiliation has also become a substitute in some respects for ethnic affiliation.
Generally, the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. Moreover, in a 2013 interview, the lead investigator, Pierre Zalloua, pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions: "Lebanon already had well-differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities, but not significant differences, and religions came as layers of paint on top. There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another".
The Lebanese Christians are some of the oldest Christians in the world, preceded only by the oriental Orthodox of Armenia and Copts of Egypt. The Maronite Christians, belong to the West Syriac Rite. Their Liturgical language is the Syriac-Aramaic language. The Melkite Greek Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, tend to focus more on the Greco-Hellenistic heritage of the region from the days of the Byzantine Empire, and the fact that Greek was maintained as a liturgical language until very recently. Some Lebanese even claim partial descent from Crusader knights who ruled Lebanon for a couple of centuries during the Middle Ages, also backed by recent genetic studies which confirmed this among Lebanese people, especially in the north of the country that was under the Crusader County of Tripoli. This identification with non-Arab civilizations also exists in other religious communities, albeit not to the same extent.
Lebanon's religious divisions are extremely complicated, and the country is made up by a multitude of religious groupings. The ecclesiastical and demographic patterns of the sects and denominations are complex. Divisions and rivalries between groups date back as far as 15 centuries, and still are a factor today. The pattern of settlement has changed little since the 7th century, but instances of civil strife and ethnic cleansing, most recently during the Lebanese Civil War, has brought some important changes to the religious map of the country. (See also History of Lebanon.)
Lebanon has by far the largest proportion of Christians of any Middle Eastern country, but both Christians and Muslims are sub-divided into many splinter sects and denominations. Population statistics are highly controversial. The various denominations and sects each have vested interests in inflating their own numbers. Shias, Sunnis, Maronites and Greek Orthodox (the four largest denominations) all often claim that their particular religious affiliation holds a majority in the country, adding up to over 150% of the total population, even before counting the other denominations. One of the rare things that most Lebanese religious leaders will agree on is to avoid a new general census, for fear that it could trigger a new round of denominational conflict. The last official census was performed in 1932.
Religion has traditionally been of overriding importance in defining the Lebanese population. Dividing state power between the religious denominations and sects, and granting religious authorities judicial power, dates back to Ottoman times (the millet system). The practice was reinforced during French mandate, when Christian groups were granted privileges. This system of government, while partly intended as a compromise between sectarian demands, has caused tensions that still dominate Lebanese politics to this day.
The Christian population majority is believed to have ended in the early 1970s, but government leaders would agree to no change in the political power balance. This led to Muslim demands of increased representation, and the constant sectarian tension slid into violent conflict in 1958 (prompting U.S. intervention) and again in the grueling Lebanese Civil War, in 1975–90.
The balance of power has been slightly adjusted in the 1943 National Pact, an informal agreement struck at independence, in which positions of power were divided according to the 1932 census. The Sunni elite was then accorded more power, but Maronites continued to dominate the system. The sectarian balance was again adjusted towards the Muslim side but simultaneously further reinforced and legitimized. Shia Muslims (by now the second largest sect) then gained additional representation in the state apparatus, and the obligatory Christian-Muslim representation in Parliament was downgraded from a 6:5 to a 1:1 ratio. Christians of various denominations were then generally thought to constitute about 40% of the population, although often Muslim leaders would cite lower numbers, and some Christians would claim that they still held a majority of the population.
The present Lebanese Constitution officially acknowledges 18 religious groups (see below). These have the right to handle family law according to their own courts and traditions, and they are the basic players in Lebanon's complex sectarian politics.
"Note: stateless Palestinians and Syrians are not included in the statistics below since they do not hold Lebanese citizenship. The numbers only include the present population of Lebanon, and not the Lebanese diaspora."
The 1932 census stated that Christians made up 50% of the resident population. Maronites, largest among the Christian denomination and then largely in control of the state apparatus, accounted for 29% of the total resident population.
A 2012 study conducted by Statistics Lebanon, a Beirut-based research firm, cited by the United States Department of State found that of Lebanon's population of approximately 4.3 million is estimated to be:
There is also a very small number of other religious minorities such as, Bahais, Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons.
In 2017, the CIA World Factbook specified that of those residing in Lebanon, 57.7% are Muslims (28.7% Sunni, 28.4% Shia, 0.6% Alawites and Sufis), 36.2% are Christians (mostly Maronites, Eastern Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Protestant, Armenian Apostolic, Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Syrian Catholic), 5.2% are Druze, and 1.3% are "Other".
According to the CIA World Factbook, in 2017 the Muslim population was estimated at 57.7% within Lebanese territory and 20% of the 8.6–14 million Lebanese diaspora population. In 2012 a more detailed breakdown of the size of each Muslim sect in Lebanon was made:
According to the CIA World Factbook, in 2017 the Christian population was estimated at 36.2% within Lebanese territory and 80% of the 8.6–14 million Lebanese diaspora population. In 2012 a more detailed breakdown of the size of each Christian sect in Lebanon was made:
The Druze constitute 5.2% of the population and can be found primarily in the rural, mountainous areas of Mount Lebanon and the Chouf District.
Other religions account for only an estimated 0.3% of the population mainly foreign temporary workers, according to the CIA World Factbook. There remains a very small Jewish population, traditionally centered in Beirut. It has been larger: most Jews left the country after the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) as thousands of Lebanese did at that time.
Apart from the four and a half million citizens of Lebanon proper, there is a sizeable Lebanese diaspora. There are more Lebanese people living outside of Lebanon (8.6-14 million), than within (6.1 million). The majority of the diaspora population consists of Lebanese Christians; however, there are some who are Muslim. They trace their origin to several waves of Christian emigration, starting with the exodus that followed the 1860 Lebanon conflict in Ottoman Syria.
Under the current Lebanese nationality law, diaspora Lebanese do not have an automatic right of return to Lebanon. Due to varying degrees of assimilation and high degree of interethnic marriages, most diaspora Lebanese have not passed on the Arabic language to their children, while still maintaining a Lebanese ethnic identity.
Many Lebanese families are economically and politically prominent in several Latin American countries (in 2007 Mexican Carlos Slim Helú, son of Lebanese immigrants, was determined to be the wealthiest man in the World by Fortune Magazine), and make up a substantial portion of the Lebanese American community in the United States. The largest Lebanese diaspora is located in Brazil, where about 6–7 million people have Lebanese descent (see Lebanese Brazilian). In Argentina, there is also a large Lebanese diaspora of approximately 1.5 million people having Lebanese descent. (see Lebanese Argentine). In Canada, there is also a large Lebanese diaspora of approximately 250,000-500,000 people having Lebanese descent. (see Lebanese Canadians).
There are also sizable populations in West Africa, particularly Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Senegal.
The large size of Lebanon's diaspora may be partly explained by the historical and cultural tradition of seafaring and traveling, which stretches back to Lebanon's ancient Phoenician origins and its role as a "gateway" of relations between Europe and the Middle East. It has been commonplace for Lebanese citizens to emigrate in search of economic prosperity. Furthermore, on several occasions in the last two centuries the Lebanese population has endured periods of ethnic cleansing and displacement (for example, 1840–60 and 1975–90). These factors have contributed to the geographical mobility of the Lebanese people.
While under Syrian occupation, Beirut passed legislation which prevented second-generation Lebanese of the diaspora from automatically obtaining Lebanese citizenship. This has reinforced the émigré status of many diaspora Lebanese. There is currently a campaign by those Lebanese of the diaspora who already have Lebanese citizenship to attain the vote from abroad, which has been successfully passed in the Lebanese parliament and will be effective as of 2013 which is the next parliamentary elections. If suffrage was to be extended to these 1.2 million Lebanese émigré citizens, it would have a significant political effect, since as many as 80% of them are believed to be Christian.
With no official figures available, it is estimated that 600,000–900,000 persons fled the country during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90). Although some have since returned, this permanently disturbed Lebanese population growth and greatly complicated demographic statistics.
Another result of the war was a large number of internally displaced persons. This especially affected the southern Shia community, as Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978, 1982, and 1996 prompted waves of mass emigration, in addition to the continual strain of occupation and fighting between Israel and Hezbollah (mainly 1982 to 2000).
Many Shias from Southern Lebanon resettled in the suburbs south of Beirut. After the war, the pace of Christian emigration accelerated, as many Christians felt discriminated against in a Lebanon under increasingly oppressive Syrian occupation.
According to a UNDP study, as much as 10% of the Lebanese had a disability in 1990. Other studies have pointed to the fact that this portion of society is highly marginalized due to the lack of educational and governmental support of their advancement.
Arabic is the official language of the country. Lebanese Arabic is mostly spoken in non-official contexts. French and English are taught in many schools from a young age. Among the Armenian ethnic minority in Lebanon, the Armenian language is taught and spoken within the Armenian community.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
Age structure:
There are substantial numbers of immigrants from other Arab countries (mainly Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Egypt) and non-Arab-speaking Muslim countries. Also, recent years have seen an influx of people from Ethiopia and South East Asian countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, as well as smaller numbers of other immigrant minorities, Colombians and Brazilians (of Lebanese descent themselves). Most of these are employed as guest workers in the same fashion as Syrians and Palestinians, and entered the country to search for employment in the post-war reconstruction of Lebanon. Apart from the Palestinians, there are approximately 180,000 stateless persons in Lebanon.
Lebanese Armenians, Jews and Iranians form more distinct ethnic minorities, all of them in possession of a separate languages (Armenian, Hebrew, Persian) and a national home area (Armenia, Israel, Iran) outside of Lebanon. However, they combined total 5% of the population.
During the French Mandate of Lebanon, there was a fairly large French minority and a tiny Italian minority. Most of the French and Italian settlers left after Lebanese independence in 1943 and only 22,000 French Lebanese and 4,300 Italian Lebanese continue to live in Lebanon. The most important legacy of the French Mandate is the frequent use and knowledge of the French language by most of the educated Lebanese people, and Beirut is still known as the "Paris of the Middle East".
Around 175,555 Palestinian refugees were registered in Lebanon with the UNRWA in 2014, who are refugees or descendants of refugees from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Some 53% live in 12 Palestine refugee camps, who "suffer from serious problems" such as poverty and overcrowding. Some of these may have emigrated during the civil war, but there are no reliable figures available. There are also a number of Palestinians who are not registered as UNRWA refugees, because they left earlier than 1948 or were not in need of material assistance. The exact number of Palestinians remain a subject of great dispute and the Lebanese government will not provide an estimate. A figure of 400,000 Palestinian refugees would mean that Palestinians constitute less than 7% of the resident population of Lebanon.
Palestinians living in Lebanon are considered foreigners and are under the same restrictions on employment applied to other foreigners. Prior to 2010, they were under even more restrictive employment rules which permitted, other than work for the U.N., only the most menial employment. They are not allowed to attend public schools, own property, or make an enforceable will. Palestinian refugees, who constitute nearly 6.6% of the country's population, have long been denied basic rights in Lebanon. They are not allowed to attend public schools, own property or pass on inheritances, measures Lebanon says it has adopted to preserve their right to return to their property in what constitutes Israel now.
Their presence is controversial, and resisted by large segments of the Christian population, who argue that the primarily Sunni Muslim Palestinians dilute Christian numbers. Many Shia Muslims also look unfavorably upon the Palestinian presence since the refugee camps have tended to be concentrated in their home areas. The Lebanese Sunnis, however, would be happy to see these Palestinians given the Lebanese nationality, thus increasing the Lebanese Sunni population by well over 10% and tipping the fragile electoral balance much in favor of the Sunnis. Late prime minister Rafiq Hariri —himself a Sunni— had hinted on more than one occasion on the inevitability of granting these refugees Lebanese citizenship. Thus far the refugees lack Lebanese citizenship as well as many rights enjoyed by the rest of the population, and are confined to severely overcrowded refugee camps, in which construction rights are severely constricted.
Palestinians may not work in a large number of professions, such as lawyers and doctors. However, after negotiations between Lebanese authorities and ministers from the Palestinian National Authority some professions for Palestinians were allowed (such as taxi driver and construction worker). The material situation of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is difficult, and they are believed to constitute the poorest community in Lebanon, as well as the poorest Palestinian community with the possible exception of Gaza Strip refugees. Their primary sources of income are UNRWA aid and menial labor sought in competition with Syrian guest workers.
The Palestinians are almost totally Sunni Muslim, though at some point Christians counted as high as 40% with Muslims at 60%. The numbers of Palestinian Christians has diminished in later years, as many have managed to leave Lebanon. During the Lebanese Civil War, Palestinian Christians sided with the rest of the Palestinian community, instead of allying with Lebanese Eastern Orthodox or other Christian communities.
60,000 Palestinians have received Lebanese citizenship, including most Christian Palestinians.
In 1976, the then Syrian president Hafez al-Assad sent troops into Lebanon to fight PLO forces on behalf of Christian militias. This led to escalated fighting until a cease-fire agreement later that year that allowed for the stationing of Syrian troops within Lebanon. The Syrian presence in Lebanon quickly changed sides; soon after they entered Lebanon they had flip-flopped and began to fight the Christian nationalists in Lebanon they allegedly entered the country to protect. The Kateab Party and the Lebanese Forces under Bachir Gemayel strongly resisted the Syrians in Lebanon. In 1989, 40,000 Syrian troops remained in central and eastern Lebanon under the supervision of the Syrian government. Although, the Taif Accord, established in the same year, called for the removal of Syrian troops and transfer of arms to the Lebanese army, the Syrian Army remained in Lebanon until the Lebanese Cedar Revolution in 2005 ended the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
In 1994, the Lebanese government under the pressure of the Syrian government, gave Lebanese passports to thousands of Syrians.
There are nearly 1.08 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
There are an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 Iraqi Assyrian refugees in Lebanon. The vast majority of them are undocumented, with a large number having been deported or put in prison. They belong to various denominations, including the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and Syriac Catholic Church.
Due to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Lebanon received a mass influx of Iraqi refugees numbering at around 100,000. The vast majority of them are undocumented, with a large number having been deported or put in prison.
There are an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Syria within Lebanese territory. Many of them are undocumented. As of 2012, around 40% of all Kurds in Lebanon do not have Lebanese citizenship.
The Turkish people began to migrate to Lebanon once the Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered the region in 1516. Turks were encouraged to stay in Lebanon by being rewarded with land and money. Today the Turkish minority numbers approximately 80,000. Moreover, since the Syrian Civil War, approximately 125,000 to 150,000 Syrian Turkmen refugees arrived in Lebanon, and hence they now outnumber the long established Turkish minority who settled since the Ottoman era.
The Circassians migrated to the Ottoman Empire including Lebanon and neighboring countries in the 18th and 19th century. However, they are mostly located in Akkar Governorate, in which they have come to Berkail since 1754. Today the Circassian minority numbers approximately 100,000.
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Politics of Lebanon
Lebanon is a parliamentary democratic republic within the overall framework of confessionalism, a form of consociationalism in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities. The constitution grants the people the right to change their government. However, from the mid-1970s until the parliamentary elections in 1992, the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) precluded the exercise of political rights.
According to the constitution, direct elections must be held for the parliament every 4 years but after the parliamentary election in 2009 another election was not held until 2018. The Parliament, in turn, elects a President every 6 years to a single term. The President is not eligible for re-election. The last presidential election was in 2016. The president and parliament choose the Prime Minister. Political parties may be formed; most are based on sectarian interests. 2008 saw a new twist to Lebanese politics when the Doha Agreement set a new trend where the opposition is allowed a veto power in the Lebanese Council of Ministers and confirmed religious Confessionalism in the distribution of political power. The Economist Intelligence Unit classified Lebanon as a "hybrid regime" in 2016.
Since the emergence of the post-1943 state and after the destruction of the Ottoman Caliphate, national policy has been determined largely by a relatively restricted group of traditional regional and sectarian leaders. The 1943 National Pact, an unwritten agreement that established the political foundations of modern Lebanon, allocated political power on an essentially confessional system based on the 1932 census. Seats in parliament were divided on a 6-to-5 ratio of Christians to Muslims, until 1990 when the ratio changed to half and half. Positions in the government bureaucracy are allocated on a similar basis. The pact also by custom allocated public offices along religious lines, with the top three positions in the ruling "troika" distributed as follows:
Efforts to alter or abolish the confessional system of allocating power have been at the centre of Lebanese politics for decades. Those religious groups most favoured by the 1943 formula sought to preserve it, while those who saw themselves at a disadvantage sought either to revise it after updating key demographic data or to abolish it entirely. Nonetheless, many of the provisions of the national pact were codified in the 1989 Ta'if Agreement, perpetuating sectarianism as a key element of Lebanese political life.
Although moderated somewhat under Ta'if, the Constitution gives the President a strong and influential position. The President has the authority to promulgate laws passed by the Parliament, form the government to issue supplementary regulations to ensure the execution of laws, and to negotiate and ratify treaties.
The Parliament is elected by adult suffrage (majority age for election is 21) based on a system of majority or "winner-take-all" for the various confessional groups. There has been a recent effort to switch to proportional representation which many argue will provide a more accurate assessment of the size of political groups and allow minorities to be heard. Most deputies do not represent political parties as they are known in the West, and rarely form Western-style groups in the assembly. Political blocs are usually based on confessional and local interests or on personal/family allegiance rather than on political affinities.
The parliament traditionally has played a significant role in financial affairs, since it has the responsibility for levying taxes and passing the budget. It also exercises political control over the cabinet through formal questioning of ministers on policy issues and by requesting a confidence debate.
Lebanon's judicial system is based on the Napoleonic Code. Juries are not used in trials. The Lebanese court system has three levels—courts of first instance, courts of appeal, and the court of cassation. There also is a system of religious courts having jurisdiction over personal status matters within their own communities, e.g., rules on such matters as marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
Lebanese political institutions often play a secondary role to highly confessionalized personality-based politics. Powerful families also still play an independent role in mobilizing votes for both local and parliamentary elections. Nonetheless, a lively panoply of domestic political parties, some even predating independence, exists. The largest are all confessional based. The Free Patriotic Movement, The Kataeb Party, also known as the Phalange Party, the National Bloc, National Liberal Party, Lebanese Forces and the Guardians of the Cedars (now outlawed) each have their own base among Christians. Amal and Hezbollah are the main rivals for the organized Shi'a vote, and the PSP (Progressive Socialist Party) is the leading Druze party. While Shi'a and Druze parties command fierce loyalty to their leaderships, there is more factional infighting among many of the Christian parties. Sunni parties have not been the standard vehicle for launching political candidates, and tend to focus across Lebanon's borders on issues that are important to the community at large. Lebanon's Sunni parties include Hizb ut-Tahrir, Future Movement, Independent Nasserist Organization (INO), the Al-Tawhid, and Ahbash. Besides the traditional confessional parties above, new secular parties have emerged amongst which Sabaa and the Party of Lebanon representing a new trend in Lebanese politics towards secularism and a truly democratic society. In addition to domestic parties, there are branches of pan-Arab secular parties (Ba'ath parties, socialist and communist parties) that were active in the 1960s and throughout the period of civil war.
There are differences both between and among Muslim and Christian parties regarding the role of religion in state affairs. There is a very high degree of political activism among religious leaders across the sectarian spectrum. The interplay for position and power among the religious, political, and party leaders and groups produces a political tapestry of extraordinary complexity.
In the past, the system worked to produce a viable democracy. Events over the last decade and long-term demographic trends, however, have upset the delicate Muslim-Christian-Druze balance and resulted in greater segregation across the social spectrum. Whether in political parties, places of residence, schools, media outlets, even workplaces, there is a lack of regular interaction across sectarian lines to facilitate the exchange of views and promote understanding. All factions have called for a reform of the political system.
Some Christians favor political and administrative decentralization of the government, with separate Muslim and Christian sectors operating within the framework of a confederation. Muslims, for the most part, prefer a unified, central government with an enhanced share of power commensurate with their larger share of the population. The reforms of the Ta'if agreement moved in this direction but have not been fully realized.
Palestinian refugees, predominantly Sunni Muslims, whose numbers are estimated at between 160,000–225,000, are not active on the domestic political scene.
On September 3, 2004, the Lebanese Parliament voted 96–29 to amend the constitution to extend President Émile Lahoud's six-year term (which was about to expire) by another three years. The move was supported by Syria, which maintained a large military presence in Lebanon.
Following the withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005, Lebanon held parliamentary elections in four rounds, from 29 May to 19 June. The elections, the first for 33 years without the presence of Syrian military forces, were won by the Quadripartite alliance, which was part the Rafik Hariri Martyr List, a coalition of several parties and organizations newly opposed to Syrian domination of Lebanese politics.
In January 2015, the Economist Intelligence Unit, released a report stating that Lebanon ranked the 2nd in Middle East and 98th out of 167 countries worldwide for Democracy Index 2014, the report, which ranks countries according to election processes, pluralism, government functions, political participation, political cultures and fundamental freedoms.
The President is elected by the Parliament for a six-year term and cannot be reelected again until six years have passed from the end of the first term. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are appointed by the President in consultation with the Parliament; the president is required to be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni, and the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi'a. (See list of the ministers and their political affiliation for a list of ministers.)
This confessional system is based on 1932 census data which showed the Maronite Christians as having a substantial majority of the population. The Government of Lebanon continues to refuse to undertake a new census.
Lebanon operates under a strong semi-presidential system. This system is unique in that it grants the president wide unilateral discretion, does not make him accountable to Parliament (unless for treason), yet is elected by the Parliament. The President has the sole power to appoint the Prime Minister, and may dismiss him whenever he wishes (without input from the Chamber of Deputies, which can also force him to resign). In addition, he has the sole authority to form a government (which must then receive a vote-of-confidence from Parliament) and dismiss it when he wishes. This thus makes Lebanon a president-parliamentary system rather than a premier-presidential system (such as France), as the President does not have to cohabitate with a Prime Minister he dislikes.
The historical reason for the broad powers of the President are that his powers were merged with those of the French High Commissioner of Greater Lebanon, thus creating an exceptionally powerful presidency for semi-presidential systems.
Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the President lost some powers to the Council of Ministers through the Taif Agreement; being the sole person who appoints it, however, he "de facto" still retains all (or most) of his pre-Taif powers.
Lebanon's national legislature is called the Assembly of Representatives ("Majlis al-Nuwab" in Arabic). Since the elections of 1992 (the first since the reforms of the Taif Agreement of 1989 removed the built-in majority previously enjoyed by Christians and distributed the seats equally between Christians and Muslims), the Parliament has had 128 seats. The term was four years, but has recently been extended to five.
Seats in the Parliament are "confessionally distributed" but elected by "universal suffrage." Each religious community has an allotted number of seats in the Parliament. They do not represent only their co-religionists, however; all candidates in a particular constituency, regardless of religious affiliation, must receive a plurality of the total vote, which includes followers of all confessions. The system was designed to minimize inter-sectarian competition and maximize cross-confessional cooperation: candidates are opposed only by co-religionists, but must seek support from outside of their own faith in order to be elected.
The opposition Qornet Shehwan Gathering, a group opposed to the former pro-Syrian government, has claimed that constituency boundaries have been drawn so as to allow many Shi'a Muslims to be elected from Shi'a-majority constituencies (where the Hezbollah Party is strong), while allocating many Christian members to Muslim-majority constituencies, forcing Christian politicians to represent Muslim interests. (Similar charges, but in reverse, were made against the Chamoun administration in the 1950s).
The following table sets out the confessional allocation of seats in the Parliament before and after the Taif Agreement.
Lebanon has numerous political parties, but they play a much less significant role in Lebanese politics than they do in most parliamentary democracies. Many of the "parties" are simply lists of candidates endorsed by a prominent national or local figure. Loose coalitions, usually organized locally, are formed for electoral purposes by negotiation among clan leaders and candidates representing various religious communities; such coalitions usually exist only for the election, and rarely form a cohesive block in the Parliament after the election. No single party has ever won more than 12.5 percent of the seats in the Parliament, and no coalition of parties has won more than 35 percent.
Especially outside of the major cities, elections tend to focus more on local than national issues, and it is not unusual for a party to join an electoral ticket in one constituency while aligned with a rival party – even an ideologically opposite party – in another constituency.
Lebanon is a civil law country.
Its judicial branch is composed of:
Lebanon is divided into eight governorates ("muhafazat", singular – "muhafazah"): Akkar, Baalbek-Hermel, Beirut, Beqaa, Mount Lebanon, Nabatiye, North Lebanon, and South Lebanon.
ABEDA, ACCT, AFESD, AL, AMF, EBU, ESCWA, FAO, G24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Inmarsat, ITUC, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OAS (observer), OIC, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNRWA, UPU, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO.
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Economy of Lebanon
The economy of Lebanon is classified as a developing, upper-middle income economy. The nominal GDP was estimated $54.1 billions in 2018 , with a per capita GDP amounting to $12,000. Government spending amounted to $15.9 billion in 2018, or 23% of GDP.
The Lebanese economy significantly expanded after the war of 2006, with growth averaging 9.1% between 2007 and 2010. After 2011 the local economy was affected by the Syrian civil war, growing by a yearly average of 1.7% on the 2011-2016 period and by 1.5% in 2017. In 2018, the size of the GDP was estimated to be $54.1 billion. Lebanon is the third-highest indebted country in the world in terms of the ratio of debt-to-GDP. As a consequence, interest payments consumed 48% of domestic government revenues in 2016, thus limiting the government’s ability to make needed investments in infrastructure and other public goods.
The Lebanese economy is service-oriented. Lebanon has a strong tradition of laissez-faire, with the stating that 'the economic system is free and ensures private initiative and the right to private property'. The major economic sectors include metal products, banking, agriculture, chemicals, and transport equipment. Main growth sectors include banking and tourism. There are no restrictions on foreign exchange or capital movement.
The 1975-90 Lebanese civil war seriously damaged Lebanon's economic infrastructure, cut national output by half, and had major consequences for Lebanon's position as a Middle Eastern entrepot and banking hub. After the war, the central government regained its ability to collect taxes and control over key port and government facilities. As a result, GDP per capita expanded 353% in the 1990s.
Economic recovery has been helped by a financially sound banking system and resilient small- and medium-scale manufacturers, with family remittances, banking services, manufactured and farm exports, and international aid as the main sources of foreign exchange. Lebanon's economy has made impressive gains since the launch of "Horizon 2000," the government's $20 billion reconstruction program in 1993. Real GDP grew 8% in 1994 and 7% in 1995 before Israel's Operation Grapes of Wrath in April 1996 stunted economic activity. Real GDP grew at an average annual rate of less than 3% per year for 1997 and 1998 and only 1% in 1999. During 1992-98, annual inflation fell from more than 100% to 5%, and foreign exchange reserves jumped to more than $6 billion from $1.4 billion. Burgeoning capital inflows have generated foreign payments surpluses, and the Lebanese pound has remained relatively stable. Progress also has been made in rebuilding Lebanon's war-torn physical and financial infrastructure. Solidere, a $2-billion firm, is managing the reconstruction of Beirut's central business district; the stock market reopened in January 1996, and international banks and insurance companies are returning. The government nonetheless faces serious challenges in the economic arena. It has had to fund reconstruction by tapping foreign exchange reserves and boosting borrowing. Reducing the government budget deficit is a major goal of the current government. The gap between rich and poor grew in the 1990s, resulting in popular dissatisfaction over the skewed distribution of the reconstruction's benefits and leading the government to shift its focus from rebuilding infrastructure to improving living conditions.
After the end of the civil war, Lebanon enjoyed considerable stability, Beirut's reconstruction was almost complete, and increasing numbers of tourists poured into the nation's resorts. The economy witnessed growth, with bank assets reaching over 75 billion US dollars, Market capitalization was also at an all-time high, estimated at $10.9 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2006. The month-long 2006 war severely damaged Lebanon's economy, especially the tourism sector.
Over the course of 2008 Lebanon rebuilt its infrastructure mainly in the real estate and tourism sectors, resulting in a comparatively robust post war economy. Major contributors to the reconstruction of Lebanon include Saudi Arabia (with US$1.5 billion pledged), the European Union (with about $1 billion) and a few other Persian Gulf countries with contributions of up to $800 million.
Given the frequent security turmoil it has faced, the Lebanese banking system has adopted a conservative approach, with strict regulations imposed by the central bank to protect the economy from political instability. These regulations have generally left Lebanese banks unscathed by the Financial crisis of 2007–2010. Lebanese banks remain, under the current circumstances, high on liquidity and reputed for their security. In late 2008, Moody's shifted Lebanon's sovereign rankings from stable to positive, acknowledging its financial security. Moreover, with an increase of 51% in the Beirut stock market, the index provider MSCI ranked Lebanon the world's best performer in 2008. Lebanon is one of the only seven countries in the world in which the value of the stock market increased in 2008. The Lebanese economy experienced continued resilience, growing 8.5 percent in 2008, 7 percent in 2009 and 8.8% in 2010. However, Lebanon's debt to GDP ratio remained one of the highest in the world.
The International Monetary Fund issued a second report on Lebanon in October 2015, where its expectations of the economic growth rate were lowered to 2%, compared to the 2.5% growth rate of the first report, released in April 2015.
In October 2019, Lebanon witnessed nationwide protests that erupted over the country’s deteriorating economic conditions. Thousands of demonstrations took to the streets of downtown Beirut, calling for the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to quit over "its utter failure to stop the deterioration of the economic and living conditions in the country". The protests began after the government announced to charge 20 cents per day for voice over internet protocol (VOIP) use over social media apps, including Whatsapp, Facebook, and other applications.
Lebanon's trade balance is structurally negative. In 2017, the trade deficit reached $20.3 billion. The country imported $23.1 billion worth of goods and services, and exported $2.8 billion.
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Telecommunications in Lebanon
This article concerns the systems of communication in Lebanon. Lebanon possesses a number of systems of telecommunication. The country code and top-level domain for Lebanon is ".lb".
There are 1,816,262 landlines giving a relatively high fixed line penetration rate, along with 4,890,534 mobile telephones in use in Lebanon. The telephone system was severely damaged during the civil war but was completely rebuilt and revamped. The systems that provide the infrastructure for the telephone network are, domestically, microwave radio relay stations and cables, and internationally, two Intelsat satellite-earth stations, a microwave radio relay station to Syria and three international undersea fiber optic cables: I-ME-WE, CADMOS (to Cyprus), and BERYTAR (to Syria).
Lebanon possesses one AM radio broadcast station, and 32 FM radio broadcast stations. In 2005, there were 28 privately owned FM radio stations. One FM station, which shifts between French, English, and Armenian, and the sole AM radio station, which broadcasts solely in Arabic, are owned by the state-owned Radio Lebanon, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Information. Radio Lebanon also relays Radio France International at 13:00 (UTC) daily. Among private broadcasters are Mix FM, PAX Radio, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation(LBCI), National Broadcasting Network, Radio One, and the Voice of Tomorrow. There are 2.85 million radios is Lebanon. In 1998 Lebanon's radio penetration rate was 906 radios per 1000 people. Furthermore, Lebanon has five digital cable television companies, Cable Vision, Digitek, EcoNet, City TV and UCL.
There are 28 television broadcast stations in Lebanon, although the application of the audiovisual law has caused the closure of a number of TV stations. The PAL television standard is used in Lebanon. Other than the state-owned Télé Liban, most broadcasters are privately owned and earn revenues from advertising. Some of the most important television networks are the LBC, Murr TV, Al Jadeed, Future TV, Orange TV (OTV), Al-Manar, NBN, Télé Lumière, and Télé Liban (State-owned). There are 1.18 million television sets in Lebanon.
There are five cable TV companies in Lebanon: Cable Vision, Eco Net, City TV, Digitek and UCL.
The development and growth of internet infrastructure has been particularly slow in Lebanon due to corruption and allegations of a sector monopoly.
Internet services are administered in Lebanon by the Ministry of Telecommunication. Lebanon provides three types of services: dialup services, wireless Internet service and ADSL. Lebanon ranks 161 on the netindex.com (as of 1 February 2019).
Dialup services cost around $7 a month but users have to pay for the cost of phone communication.
ADSL was offered for the first time in April 2007 and there were, as of July 2011, 1,284,361 subscribers. The ADSL network has been undergoing large upgrades throughout the country. The addition of the new IMEWE underwater cable during the summer of 2011 has dramatically increased Lebanon's international bandwidth capacity, allowing for increased speeds and larger data caps. The prices for ADSL varies slightly depending on the DSP but typically cost from $16/month (4 Mbit/s) to $65/month (open speed ) on unlimited data plans.
To fix the problem, the Ministry of Telecommunications signed an 18-month contract with Consolidated Engineering & Trading and French/American Company Alcatel-Lucent to install a Fiber Optics grid. It was expected that by the end of 2011 all the areas of Lebanon will have fast internet ranging from 10–15 Mbit/s download, and 20 Mbit/s and more will be available the year after, allowing Lebanon to finally catch up with the rest of the world, which eventually never happened.
A new fiber-to-the-home initiative was launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Telecommunications under Boutrous Harb. It is expected to be fully implemented by 2020, presenting users with VDSL2+ plans capable of offering speeds reaching 150Mbit/s.
Wireless Internet services were offered for the first time in 2005 to palliate for the absence of an ADSL infrastructure at the time. ISPs fees revolve around $45/month. Wireless internet is portable: users can connect nearly anywhere through a receiver (connected to the client via USB or Ethernet) and it provides download rates between 2 Mbit/s and 9 Mbit/s depending on the chosen plan. Coverage weakens in densely built areas or remote locations.
Fibre to the Home/Fibre to the Office (or Business) is being deployed in a phased approach in Lebanon under the management of the Ministry of Post & Telecoms and Ogero (the fixed network owner & maintainer) with the aim for the majority of Lebanese population to have access to a full range of services (FTTH, IPTV, video conferencing) by 2020.
The number of Internet users in Lebanon grew rapidly in the past two years after the Telecoms Ministry and state-run Ogero introduced fast DSL and 3G and 4G service.
A 4,700 km fiber optic network is being deployed across Lebanon linking 300 fixed central offices with thousands of Active Cabinets being installed with the last mile using copper connections, allowing subscribers to reach a connection speed of 4 Mbit/s and more at home. The backbone FO network consist of 13 rings and is almost complete.
Experts say that Lebanon should have much faster Internet thanks to the international capacity cables. They added that only a small fraction of the cable capacity was used in Lebanon. However, the country did not perform as well in terms of fiber-to-the-home services.
On 1 July 2016 a five-year plan to revamp Lebanon's telecoms infrastructure and provide Internet users across the country with fiber-optic connectivity by the year 2020 has been announced.
FTTx- phase1
– 2015–2017: FTTO Organizations SME/SM
– 2015–2020: FTTC (+VDSL) cabinets (& Houses)
– 2016–2020: FTTH1 (Houses)
– 2019–2022: FTTH2 (Houses)
In the last two phases, fiber optics will gradually become available in households and for end users.
State-owned operator OGERO is managing the rollout of the fibre optics infrastructure across Lebanon and has awarded in Feb. 2018 three contracts worth $283 million to three local companies (out of four bidders) to distribute fiber optics from central stations to end users: SERTA Channels, BMB, and Powertech; paired with international equipment vendors: Huawei, Calix, and Nokia.
Upgraded Central Offices with fibre optics GPON or P2P access technology & FTTx deployment phasing can be found on Ogero's website. Also updates are found on the Fibre Optics Lebanon Forum.
5G Fixed Wireless Internet is commercially available across Beirut International Airport terminals.
Solidere the Lebanese company for the development and reconstruction of the Beirut Central District, has deployed a Broadband Network in partnership with Orange Business Services in March 2007. Orange operates this IP network using a fiber-optic backbone with dual connection to each building in the city center. Under its unified communication network, Solidere provides IPTV services to all its residents operated and monitored from the network main operation center.
Beirut Digital District (BDD) was launched in September 2012 as a government facilitated project with broadband internet and telephone infrastructure facilities. Beirut Digital District (BDD) will represent a community focused urbanized hub for the creative companies and talents. The project aims to become an all-inclusive zone dedicated to improving the digital industry in Lebanon through providing state-of-the-art infrastructure and superior support services for businesses and the healthiest living environment for the young and dynamic workforce; all at competitive and affordable rates.
3.9G & 4G LTE data services
Alfa and MTC Touch have commercial 3.9G & 4G LTE data services in many regions in Lebanon (mostly dense urban regions) starting May 2013.
As part of Lebanon Broadband 2020 plan, Full LTE 4G Coverage is expected by 2018.
ISPs:
There are 18 licensed ISPs (Internet Services Providers) and 9 licensed DSPs (Data Service Providers) operating in Lebanon:
DSPs:Cable One, Cedarcom, GlobalCom Data Services, Pesco, Sodetel, Solidere, LCNC S.A.L., TRISAT S.A.R.L., Waves S.A.L.
In 2009 Lebanon had 2,000,000 internet users (48% of the population).
In mid-2011 Lebanon had 2,500,820, 59% penetration rate
As of 31 December 2011, Lebanon had 3,367,220 Internet users (87% penetration rate).
As of 30 June 2012, Lebanon had 3,722,950 Internet users (92% penetration rate).
The cabinet of ministers passed a decree on 23 August 2011, to increase the current speeds of Internet connection setting the minimum speed to 2 Mbit/s in addition to lowering the prices.
In June 2019, the Ministry of Telecommunications announced plans for a new Internet submarine cable to link the country to Europe. The aim is to boost the Internet service locally and to turn Lebanon into a hub for Internet distribution to countries in the region. Another cable project is scheduled to be launched in 2019. This new undersea cable will replace the ‘Cadmus’ cable which links Lebanon to Cyprus. The project will be executed in partnership with the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CYTA). Besides ‘Cadmos’, Lebanon is currently connected to the outside world by the submarine cable ‘Alexandros’ which links the country to France through Cyprus.
"Much of the information in this article is adapted from the CIA World Factbook."
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Transport in Lebanon
Transportation in Lebanon varies greatly in quality from the ultramodern Beirut International Airport to poor road conditions in many parts of the country. The Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990 and the 2006 Lebanon War with Israel severely damaged the country's infrastructure.
Lebanon has an extensive road network throughout the country, generally in good conditions, though it varies. The main roads in the country are:
Part of the main road network have been updated to dual carriageway, four-lane motorways, which are the following:
An overland trans-desert bus service between Beirut, Haifa, Damascus and Baghdad was established by the "Nairn Transport Company" of Damascus in 1923.
Beirut has frequent bus connections to other cities in Lebanon and major cities in Syria. The Lebanese Commuting Company, or LCC in short, is just one of a handful brands of public transportations all over Lebanon. On the other hand, the publicly owned buses are managed by le Office des Chemins de Fer et des Transports en Commun (OCFTC), or the ""Railway and Public Transportation Authority"" in English. Buses for northern destinations and Syria leave from Charles Helou Station.
Buses are popular and inexpensive and can be stopped anywhere along the way simply by hailing.
Apart from the international airport, the Port of Beirut is another port of entry. As a final destination, anyone can also reach Lebanon by ferry from Cyprus, or Greece or by road from Damascus, etc. The Port of Tripoli (Lebanon) is also a port of entry and ferries usually come from Taşucu, Turkey.
In order to get from one place to another, people can either use a service or taxis. A "service" is a lot cheaper than a "taxi" as the passenger would be sharing the cab in the first place unlike the latter, where he would have the cab to himself.
Cabs can be recognized by their red license plates (indicating that it is licensed for public transportation). The driver would pull aside for if the person hails while seeing him. He will then ask for his destination and then will decide whether he will drive the passenger with the regular fare, an extra, or not at all.
One has to specify one's destination and enter the taxi only if one's destination corresponds to the itinerary of the Service-taxi. The driver stops to pick up additional passengers anywhere on the streets and drop them off generally in main squares and main streets. It remains advantageous with very low fares.
"Service-Taxi Taxi"
The driver must not pick up additional passengers. Most of these taxis are not equipped with meters, so it is important to negotiate the fare before embarking. The regular taxi fare starts at LBP 10,000 ($6.66).
Uber and Careem are both available in Lebanon as online services which are ordered online through the app and can be paid either online or by cash. These alternatives are sometimes cheaper than traditional taxis in Lebanon.
Pick up people who have pre-booked by phone. They don't respond to hails in the street. They don't have a meter so passengers should ask the operator the price when they are booking the taxi, and double check with the driver at the end of the journey.
Carpolo App (https://www.carpolo.co/download-app) is an alternative mode of transportation in Lebanon. Upon downloading the app, users post their un-used seats and the app connects them with people who have matching rides. It is free for users on the public community and has private communities that can be accessed by invitation only. Carpolo uses gamification to incentivize drivers to list their empty car seats and offers incentives for carpoolers.
The main national airport is the Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport and is located in the southern suburbs. The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report ranked the country 51st in terms of air transport infrastructure.
In 2017, a delegation from Lebanon's Civil Aviation Authority inspected the Rene Mouawad Air Base in order to assess the needs and requirements of reconstructing the air base.
A cable car, Téléphérique de Jounieh, operates in the Mount Lebanon Governorate between the coast of Jounieh and Harissa. The cable car has been active since 1965 and is 1.5 km long reaching 650 m of altitude at the top.
The Lebanese rail system is not currently in use, with services having ceased due to the country's political difficulties.
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Lebanese Armed Forces
The Lebanese Armed Forces ([LAF] Arabic: القوات المسلحة اللبنانية | "Al-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥa al-Lubnāniyya") or Forces Armées Libanaises (FAL) in French, also known as the Lebanese Army (Arabic: الجيش اللبناني or ""Armée libanaise"" in French), is the military of the Lebanese Republic. It consists of three branches, the army, the air force, and the navy. The motto of the Lebanese Armed Forces is "Honor, Sacrifice, Loyalty" (Arabic: "شرف · تضحية · وفاء" - "Sharaf.Tadhia.Wafa'"). The Lebanese Armed Forces symbol consists of a Lebanon cedar tree surrounded by two laurel leaves, positioned above the symbols of the three branches: the ground forces represented by the two bayonets, the navy represented by an anchor, and the air force represented by two wings.
The Lebanese Armed Forces' primary missions include defending Lebanon and its citizens against external aggression, maintaining internal stability and security, confronting threats against the country's vital interests, engaging in social development activities and undertaking relief operations in coordination with public and humanitarian institutions.
The armed forces consist of 72,000 active personnel with the ground force consisting of approximately 65,000 troops, the air force 2,000 personnel and 5,000 in the naval force. The remaining personnel are commanders, advisors, engineers and members of the special forces. All three branches are operated and coordinated by the LAF Commander; a position customarily held by a Maronite Catholic Christian, from the ministry of defence which is located in Yarzeh, east of Lebanon's capital, Beirut. The current commander in chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces is General Joseph Aoun. Currently, the LAF is ranked sixth in the world in terms of growth, with the number of military personnel doubling over the period between 1985 and 2000. The country has six military colleges and schools. Lebanese officers are sent to other countries such as the United States, Russia or other parts of Europe to receive additional training.
The equipment of the LAF is outdated due to lack of funds, political bickering and until the 2000s, the presence of foreign forces. The Lebanese government is working with its partners to improve the armed forces' capabilities. After the conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War, the LAF decided to repair as much of its equipment as it could, while being aided by modest donations from other states. The United States remains a key partner for Lebanon in this improvement process. About 85% of the LAF's equipment is US-made, with the remaining being UK, French, and Soviet-made.
Historically, being the crossroads of the ancient world and the modern world, Lebanon have been inhabited and defended by various different empires and nations be it natives or invaders. Notably, the Phoenicians who were the natives of Lebanon, constituted the first notion of defenders of Lebanon, as recorded by various historical sources, the Phoenicians brutally rebelled and fought different empires such as the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians and Greeks. Later after, Lebanon became a part of the Roman empire for almost 5 centuries, the veterans of two Roman legions under Augustus were established in the city of Beirut (the Legio V Macedonica and the Legio III Gallica).
However, The Lebanese Army finds its original local roots in the armed forces that were first formed under the various native dynasties that ruled Lebanon, notably Harfush, Maan, Ali al-Saghir, Hamadas and Shihab etc. As the realm of the Lebanese dominion sometimes extended as far as Cilicia under Fakhreddine II where he was defeated later by the Ottomans in 1635, and Palmyra in 1568 under Ali ibn Musa Harfush. These dynasties formed the barrier of Lebanon since the late 15th century until the Ottoman departure. The first major victory came on October 31, 1622 against the Ottoman Empire Army under the lead of the Pasha of Damascus in the Battle of Majdel Anjar. Outnumbered (5,000 Lebanese soldiers against 12,000 Syrians), Fakher el-Din was nevertheless victorious and was able to capture the Pasha of Damascus himself and take over Syria, Galilee and parts of Transjordan.
During the period of the semi-autonomous province (Mutasarrifia) period of Mount Lebanon between 1861 and 1914, no Turkish troops were allowed to station within its boundary. Lebanon established its own army made up of volunteer militias; "the free independent bearing of these mountaineers was in striking contrast to that of the underpaid, underfed and poorly clothed conscripts of the regular [Turkish] army".
The beginnings of the modern Lebanese Army arose during 1916, when the French government established the "Legion of the Orient", which included Lebanese soldiers. After a post World War I League of Nations mandate was established over Lebanon in April 1920, France formed the Army of the Levant, which was later reorganized into the "Troupes Spéciales du Levant" (Special Troops of the Levant). These troops were composed of Lebanese and Syrian enlisted personnel, but were commanded predominantly by French officers; however, the percentage of Lebanese and Syrian officers in the force gradually increased in size to approximately 90% of the total number by 1945.
Later in 1926, the Lebanese First Sharp Shooters Unit was created out of the Special Troops of the Levant; it is considered to be a direct precursor to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
During World War II, Lebanese troops fought in Lebanon with the Vichy French forces against Free French and British forces. After the Vichy forces in the Middle East surrendered in July 1941, volunteers from the "Troupes Spéciales du Levant" enlisted in the Free French forces and participated in combat in Italy, North Africa, and southern France. In 1943, prior to the declaration of Lebanese independence, all the military units were combined in one brigade, the Fifth Brigade, under the command of General Fouad Chehab. On the day Lebanon declared independence, the Lebanese Third Sharp Shooters Regiment was placed at the disposal of the Lebanese government in order to maintain security. In June of the same year, the French reconstituted units of the "Troupes Spéciales du Levant", which were then attached to the British forces in the Middle East. The majority of the Lebanese Armed Forces remained a part of the French Army in Lebanon.
After gaining independence in 1943, the Lebanese government formed an official delegation in 1944 to negotiate with the French the terms related to handing over the LAF. After nearly three weeks of talks, the joint French-British Command decreed that responsibility for armed units under French control were to be handed over to the Independent Government of Lebanon. These units were part of the Troupes Spéciales du Levant and totaled about 3,000 men. On August 1, 1945 at 00:00 hours, the LAF was placed under full authority of the Lebanese National Government; this day is commemorated annually as Lebanese Army Day.
After establishing authority over the LAF in 1945, the Lebanese government intentionally kept its armed forces small and weak due to the country's unique internal politics. Christian politicians feared that Muslims might use the armed forces as a vehicle for seizing power in a military coup. They also appeared unwilling to incur the cost of maintaining a large well equipped army. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Lebanon never spent more than 4% of its GNP on the military budget. Many Christian Lebanese also feared that a large army would inevitably force Lebanon into the Arab–Israeli conflict. However, Muslim politicians were also worried that a strong army could be used against Muslim interests because it would be commanded by Christians. At the same time they tended to feel that the military should be strong enough to play a part in the Arab-Israeli struggle. In addition to the two major conflicting views, prominent Lebanese politicians of the myriad of religious denominations in Lebanon have also tended to be feudal warlords commanding their own private militias and feared that a strong army would endanger their personal power.
In 1948, the Lebanese Third Sharp Shooters Regiment fought Israeli Forces occupying the Lebanese village of Malkieh in the northern Galilee and captured it, and that by the orders of Lebanese defense minister then, Emir Majid Arslan II. This was the first major combat operation for the Lebanese Armed Forces under the Independent Lebanese Government.
The LAF Command is headquartered at Yarzeh. The organizational structure of the LAF Command includes:
The Lebanese Ground Forces, القوات البريّة, literally "Ground Forces", are by far the largest of the three branches of the military.
The Fourth Brigade was previously active but was disbanded in 1984.
The Lebanese Army Ground Forces consist of:
The Lebanese Army still uses equipment mostly received through donations or friendly prices. Its work horse is the M113 which is commonly used by every regiment and brigade. A collection of Western and Soviet made weaponry and equipment exists ranging from rifles to tanks. However, the Lebanese Army is trying to re-arm and modernize itself through new aid and purchases from different countries such as the United States, Belgium, Russia, and The Netherlands. A list of awaiting-for-delivery armaments is constantly growing and includes M60 Patton tanks, M198 Howitzers, etc. A recent Russian promise to supply Lebanon with T-90 tanks has been in discussion since the Lebanese Defense Minister's last visit to Russia on December 16, 2008.
Throughout history the Lebanese Army employed different weapons and equipment which, at the time, were considered state of the art. Most of these arms have either been phased out of service or sold to other countries. Among the major equipment that is not currently active are AMX-13, Saladin, Panhard M3, and Staghound vehicles.
The Lebanese Air Force, القوات الجوية اللبنانية, are the aviation branch of the Lebanese Armed Forces. It currently has a number of helicopters including the Bell UH-1H Huey, Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma, Gazelle, Cessna Caravan, Hawker Hunters, and various others. The air force is currently in the process of restoring its jet capabilities and considering the purchase of a small number of fighters or jet trainers.
The Lebanese Navy, officially the Lebanese Naval Forces, القوات البحرية اللبنانية, is responsible for protecting Lebanon's territorial waters, ports, and fighting illegal smuggling of goods. At the head of the naval hierarchy is the Navy Command, then it branches off into the quarter-general of the Navy, the Department of Naval Equipment Stores, the Naval School, Beirut Naval Base and the Jounieh Naval Base.
The navy, which currently lacks a suitable amount of equipment, has approximately 50 vessels of various sizes and roles; however, it is trying to modernize itself and increase its size.
The Lebanese Special Forces are the elite of the Lebanese Army. Those who enroll are subjected to rigorous training regimes and must be in peak physical and mental condition prior to their ascension to such a highly desired position. Each branch of the Armed Forces maintains its own form of Special Forces or Commandos. These include:
To ensure the effectiveness of such an elite force, many Commandos are sent overseas to nations such as the US, UK and France to receive extra training in specialized areas that the Lebanese Armed Forces are unable to provide, due to a lack of resources. While training in Lebanon, each Commando is instructed in the art of urban and guerrilla warfare. So rigorous is their domestic training regime that each commando is subjected to a training timetable consisting of 20 hours per day for 3 months, which is divided into different stages. Each stage consists of a specialized form of warfare and its associated tactics. Such tactics include: sabotage, sniping, extraction and covert operations. The Lebanese Special Forces are also well known for killing and eating snakes with their bare hands at graduation ceremonies.
In 2008, the Lebanese Armed Forces started establishing the Lebanese Special Operations Command in order to group the LAF's elite units. These special operations forces will include the Airborne Regiment, the Rangers Regiment, the Navy Commandos Regiment, and the Counter-Sabotage Regiment of the Military Intelligence. The initial size of the force will be less than two brigades, around 5,000 troops, but the plan is to enlarge it up to three brigades.
The Lebanese Armed Forces has six official military colleges and schools that serve a wide variety of functions from officer training to overseeing national youth conscription programs. The recent emphasis on the First Flag Service Center is designed to help overcome the diverse nature of the population. The schools and colleges are:
The Staff and Command College, Military Academy, and Mountain Skiing Fighting School are training centers for Lebanese soldiers designed to upgrade the quality of their skills while the High Center for Military Sport is designed to keep them in peak physical shape (it also organizes sports groups and teams for international competition as well). The Training Institute is designed to help soldiers specialize in certain aspects of the military, such as artillery and defense.
The military ranks are as follows:
Lebanon previously had mandatory military service for men only. All men were required to do 1 year of military service through age 18+. Training was only done whenever they had free time or time off school including summer vacations and holidays. There were also training done alongside high school. On May 4, 2005, a new conscription system was adopted, making for a six-month service, and pledging to end conscription within two years. As of February 10, 2007 mandatory military service no longer exists in Lebanon thus making it a conscription-free all-volunteer force.
Training of new conscripts takes place in the First Flag Service Center (FFSC). After a week of enlisting, they submit to two training courses, the common military training basic course and the specific course. All these courses are organized in details according to a program determining hours of training taking into consideration the conscript rank. The first course consists of 240 hours equivalent to 9 weeks and the training program is composed of:
The second course consists of 84 hours equivalent to three weeks. The infantry course is composed of:
As the civil war escalated, Lebanese militias grew stronger and soon surpassed the regular army. This rapidly undermined the authority of the central government. The government's ability to maintain order was also handicapped by the nature of the Lebanese Army. One of the smallest in the Middle East, it was composed based on a fixed ratio of religions. As members defected to sectarian militias, the army would eventually prove unable to contain the militant groups, rein in the PLO or monitor foreign infiltration. Since the government was Christian-dominated, especially the officers' ranks, trust among Muslims for central institutions, including the army, was low. The disintegration of the Lebanese Army was eventually initiated by Muslim deserters declaring that they would no longer take orders from the Maronite generals.
During December 1999–January 2000 an Islamic group launched a failed uprising against the Lebanese authorities in the Dinnieh district. In a period of 8 days of fighting in the snow-blanketed mountains east of the northern port of Tripoli, 14 soldiers and 25 rebels were killed.
In the 2006 Lebanon War the LAF did not engage in a direct conflict with the Israeli Army, despite its threat of retaliation if the IDF pushed too far northward into Lebanon. However, Israel did bomb several Lebanese military bases. While providing aid to civilians, Lebanese troops helped to uphold order in city streets, directed refugees to safer areas, and assisted with overlooking damage done by Israeli attacks. On several occasions, Lebanese troops fired anti-air weapons at Israeli aircraft, but no damage was documented. Overall, 49 Lebanese soldiers were killed.
After the 2006 Lebanon War the LAF deployed south of the Litani River for the first time since 1968 to enforce Security Council Resolution 1701. The LAF says it will not, and cannot, disarm Hezbollah by force. On August 3, 2010, the Lebanese army fired at Israeli soldiers whom crane lifted a soldier across the border, to remove a tree off the fence; Israeli troops returned fire. 3 LAF soldiers, one Israeli officer and 1 Lebanese journalist were killed in the incident (After Israeli Artillery & aircraft bombing). According to UN reports, the border fence in the area is actually inside Israel's international border. The UNIFIL force stationed in the south described the shootout as a "serious incident".
The 2007 Lebanon conflict began when fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam, an Islamic terrorist organization, and the Lebanese Armed Forces on May 20, 2007 in Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. It has been the most severe internal fighting since Lebanon's 1975–90 civil war. The primary theater of conflict was the Siege of Nahr el-Bared. There was heavy use of the Lebanese artillery in that area to eliminate snipers posted around the cities. The conflict finally ended on September 2, 2007 with the Lebanese Army taking control of the camp after more than three months of heavy fights and a death toll of 155 Commandos and Infantrymen. The LAF Engineering Corps achieved what was seen as a feat of ingenuity during the conflict where they converted a number of UH-1 helicopters into bombers, arming them with 250 kg and 400 kg conventional bombs from old Hunter and Mirage III fighter jets. Some helicopters were also fitted with French Matra rocket pods. This was, according to observers, a decisive step that considerably shortened the conflict.
During the week-long clashes that occurred at the beginning of May 2008 in Beirut and other regions of the country, the army was unable to prevent rival Lebanese groups from fighting each other. This was because the army, along with the government, had thought it would have been better if rival groups would eventually end the violence and sort out the dispute between them, alone, other than involving the national army which may have led to great divisions between the soldiers, just like in the civil war. It would have also caused an out cry to the soldiers that could have died, leading to even greater divisions and blame to the political forces. However, whenever ceasefire was brought into action in a specific area or district in Beirut or else where in the country, the LAF would straight away enforce peace. On May 13, the national army had announced that if the clashes would not end as soon as possible, it would have to intervene and use force if necessary to stop them.
Since the outbreak of conflict in Syria, the Lebanese Army has been deployed to prevent Sunni-Shiite clashes from taking place in the city of Tripoli, as well as in other hot zones such as Arsal and downtown Beirut. Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front terrorist groups have bases on Lebanon’s mountainous eastern border with Syria from where they operate against the Lebanese army and Hezbollah. Lebanon's military is coming under immense strain from the Syrian conflict spilling across the border.
On June 23, 2013, intense clashes in Sidon took place between followers of Salafist Sunni preacher Ahmad Al-Assir and Lebanese troops. Following these clashes, the Lebanese Army was sent in to capture Sheikh Assir’s headquarters at Abra and apprehend him. Lebanese Army units fought against pro-Assir militants for two days in a battle that led to the deaths of at least 16 Lebanese soldiers, and the wounding of at least 50 men. Although the LAF managed to secure his complex, Assir was able to escape and was only captured on August 16, 2015 while trying to flee the country on a false passport.
On the August 2, 2014, following the arrest of an Al-Nusra Front Commander Abu Ahmad Jumaa; Terrorists from Al-Nusra and ISIS launched an assault on the Lebanese Armed Forces in the town of Arsal and seized control of the town. By August 7, a fragile truce was established as ISIS and Al Nusra forces also retreated from the town and redeployed along the border with Syria. Their hideouts there were subsequently bombed by the Syrian Air Force. Two days later, the Lebanese Army entered Arsal in full force and re-established control over checkpoints that the militants had previously seized.
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Lesotho
Lesotho (, ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho (), is an enclaved country within the border of South Africa. Along with the Vatican City and San Marino, it is one of only three independent states completely surrounded by the territory of another country, and the only one outside the Italian peninsula or that is not a microstate. Lesotho is just over and has a population of around /1e6 round 0 million. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. The official language is Sesotho.
Lesotho was previously the British Crown Colony of Basutoland, but it declared independence from the United Kingdom on 4 October 1966. It is now a fully sovereign state and is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the African Union, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The name "Lesotho" roughly translates to "the land of the people who speak Sesotho".
The original inhabitants of the area now known as Lesotho were the San people. Examples of their rock art can be found in the mountains throughout the area.
Modern Lesotho, then called Basutoland, emerged as a single polity under King Moshoeshoe I in 1822. Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804. Between 1821 and 1823, he and his followers settled at the Butha-Buthe Mountain, joining with former adversaries in resistance against the Lifaqane associated with the reign of Shaka Zulu from 1818 to 1828.
Further evolution of the state emerged from conflicts between British Empire and Dutch colonists leaving the Cape Colony following its seizure from the French-allied Dutch by the British in 1795, and also from the Orange River Sovereignty and subsequent Orange Free State. Missionaries Thomas Arbousset, Eugène Casalis and Constant Gosselin from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, invited by Moshoeshoe I, were placed at Morija, developing Sesotho orthography and printed works in the Sesotho language between 1837 and 1855. Casalis, acting as translator and providing advice on foreign affairs, helped set up diplomatic channels and acquire guns for use against the encroaching Europeans and the Griqua people.
Trekboers from the Cape Colony arrived on the western borders of Basutoland and claimed rights to its land, the first of which being Jan de Winnaar, who settled in the Matlakeng area in May–June 1838. Incoming Boers attempted to colonise the land between the two rivers and even north of the Caledon, claiming that it had been abandoned by the Sotho people. Moshoeshoe subsequently signed a treaty with the British Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Thomas Napier, that annexed the Orange River Sovereignty where many Boers had settled. These outraged Boers were suppressed in a brief skirmish in 1848. In 1851, a British force was defeated by the Basotho army at Kolonyama, provoking an embarrassing war for the British. After repelling another British attack in 1852, Moshoeshoe sent an appeal to the British commander that settled the dispute diplomatically, and then defeated the Batlokoa in 1853.
In 1854, the British pulled out of the region, and in 1858, Moshoeshoe fought a series of wars with the Boers in what is known as the Free State–Basotho War. As a result, Moshoeshoe lost a great portion of the western lowlands. The last war with the Boers ended in 1867 when Moshoeshoe appealed to Queen Victoria, who agreed to make Basutoland a British protectorate in 1868.
In 1869, the British signed a treaty at Aliwal North with the Boers that defined the boundaries of Basutoland. This treaty effectively reduced Moshoeshoe's kingdom to half its previous size by ceding away its western territories.
Following the cession in 1869, the British transferred functions from Moshoeshoe's capital in Thaba Bosiu to a police camp on the northwest border, Maseru, until eventually the administration of Basutoland was transferred to the Cape Colony in 1871. Moshoeshoe died on 11 March 1870, marking the end of the traditional era and the beginning of the colonial era of Basutoland. He was buried at Thaba Bosiu.
In the early years of British rule between 1871 and 1884, Basutoland was treated similarly to other territories that had been forcibly annexed, much to the humiliation of the Basotho, leading to the Basuto Gun War in 1880-1881.
In 1884, Basutoland was restored as a protectorate with Maseru as its capital, but remained under direct rule by a governor, though effective internal power was wielded by traditional tribal chiefs.
Basutoland gained its independence from Britain and became the Kingdom of Lesotho in 1966.
In January 1970, the ruling Basotho National Party (BNP) lost the first post-independence general elections, with 23 seats to the Basotho Congress Party's (BCP) 36. Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan refused to cede power to the BCP, instead declaring himself "Tona Kholo" (Sesotho: 'prime minister'), and imprisoning the BCP leadership.
BCP began a rebellion and then received training in Libya for its Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) under the pretense of being Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) soldiers of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Deprived of arms and supplies by the Sibeko faction of the PAC in 1978, the 178-strong LLA was rescued from their Tanzanian base by the financial assistance of a Maoist PAC officer, but they launched the guerrilla war with only a handful of old weapons. The main force was defeated in northern Lesotho, and later guerrillas launched sporadic but usually ineffectual attacks. The campaign was severely compromised when BCP's leader, Ntsu Mokhehle, went to Pretoria. In the early 1980s, several Basotho who sympathised with the exiled BCP were threatened with death and attacked by the government of Leabua Jonathan. On 4 September 1981, the family of Benjamin Masilo was attacked. In the attack his 3-year-old grandson died. Exactly four days later, Edgar Mahlomola Motuba, the editor of the popular newspaper Leselinyana la Lesotho, was abducted from his home together with two friends and murdered.
The BNP ruled from 1966 until January 1970. What later ensued was a de facto government led by Dr. Leabua Jonathan until 1986 when a military coup forced it out of office. The Transitional Military Council that came to power granted executive powers to King Moshoeshoe II, who was until then a ceremonial monarch. But in 1987 the King was forced into exile after coming up with a six-page memorandum on how he wanted the Lesotho's constitution to be, which would have given him more executive powers than the military government had originally agreed to. His son was installed as King Letsie III in his place.
The chairman of the military junta, Major General Justin Metsing Lekhanya, was ousted in 1991 and replaced by Major General Elias Phisoana Ramaema, who handed over power to a democratically elected government of the BCP in 1993. Moshoeshoe II returned from exile in 1992 as an ordinary citizen. After the return to democratic government, King Letsie III tried unsuccessfully to persuade the BCP government to reinstate his father (Moshoeshoe II) as head of state.
In August 1994, Letsie III staged a military-backed coup that deposed the BCP government, after the BCP government refused to reinstate his father, Moshoeshoe II, according to Lesotho's constitution. The new government did not receive full international recognition. Member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) engaged in negotiations to reinstate the BCP government. One of the conditions Letsie III put forward for this was that his father should be re-installed as head of state. After protracted negotiations, the BCP government was reinstated and Letsie III abdicated in favour of his father in 1995, but he ascended the throne again when Moshoeshoe II died at the age of fifty-seven in a supposed road accident, when his car plunged off a mountain road during the early hours of 15 January 1996. According to a government statement, Moshoeshoe had set out at 1 am to visit his cattle at Matsieng and was returning to Maseru through the Maluti Mountains when his car left the road.
In 1997, the ruling BCP split over leadership disputes. Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle formed a new party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), and was followed by a majority of members of parliament, which enabled him to form a new government. Pakalitha Mosisili succeeded Mokhehle as party leader and the LCD won the general elections in 1998. Although the elections were pronounced free and fair by local and international observers and a subsequent special commission appointed by SADC, the opposition political parties rejected the results.
Opposition protests in the country intensified, culminating in a peaceful demonstration outside the royal palace in August 1998. Exact details of what followed are greatly disputed, both in Lesotho and South Africa. While the Botswana Defence Force troops were welcomed, tensions with South African National Defence Force troops were high, resulting in fighting. Incidences of sporadic rioting intensified when South African troops hoisted a South African flag over the Royal Palace. By the time the SADC forces withdrew in May 1999, much of the capital of Maseru lay in ruins, and the southern provincial capital towns of Mafeteng and Mohale's Hoek had lost over a third of their commercial real estate. A significant number of South Africans and Basotho also died in the fighting.
An Interim Political Authority (IPA), charged with reviewing the electoral structure in the country, was created in December 1998. The IPA devised a proportional electoral system to ensure that the opposition would be represented in the National Assembly. The new system retained the existing 80 elected Assembly seats, but added 40 seats to be filled on a proportional basis. Elections were held under this new system in May 2002, and the LCD won again, gaining 54 percent of the vote. But for the first time, opposition political parties won significant numbers of seats, and despite some irregularities and threats of violence from Major General Lekhanya, Lesotho experienced its first peaceful election. Nine opposition parties now hold all 40 of the proportional seats, with the BNP having the largest share (21). The LCD has 79 of the 80 constituency-based seats. Although its elected members participate in the National Assembly, the BNP has launched several legal challenges to the elections, including a recount; none has been successful.
On 30 August 2014, an alleged abortive military "coup" took place, forcing then Prime Minister Thomas Thabane to flee to South Africa for three days.
On May 19 2020, Thomas Thabane formally stepped down as prime minister of Lesotho following months of pressure after he was named as a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife.
The Lesotho Government is a parliamentary or constitutional monarchy. The Prime Minister, Moeketsi Majoro, is the head of government and has have executive authority. The King of Lesotho, Letsie III, serves a largely ceremonial function; he no longer possesses any executive authority and is prohibited from actively participating in political initiatives.
The All Basotho Convention (ABC) leads a coalition government in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
The upper house of parliament, called the Senate, is composed of 22 principal chiefs whose membership is hereditary, and 11 appointees of the king, acting on the advice of the prime minister.
The constitution provides for an independent judicial system, made up of the High Court, the Court of Appeal, Magistrate's Courts, and traditional courts that exist predominantly in rural areas. All but one of the Justices on the Court of Appeal are South African jurists. There is no trial by jury; rather, judges make rulings alone or, in the case of criminal trials, with two other judges as observers.
The constitution also protects basic civil liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of religion. Lesotho was ranked 12th out of 48 sub-Saharan African countries in the 2008 Ibrahim Index of African Governance.
Lesotho's geographic location makes it extremely vulnerable to political and economic developments in South Africa. It is a member of many regional economic organisations, including the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). It is also active in the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU), the Non-Aligned Movement, the Commonwealth, and many other international organisations.
Prince Seeiso Simoné Seeiso is the present High Commissioner of the Kingdom of Lesotho to the Court of St. James's. The UN is represented by a resident mission as well, including UNDP, UNICEF, WHO, FAO, WFP, UNFPA and UNAIDS.
Lesotho also has maintained ties with the United Kingdom (Wales in particular), Germany, the United States and other Western states. Although in 1990 it broke relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and re-established relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan), it later restored ties with the PRC.
Lesotho also recognises the State of Palestine. From 2014 up until 2018 Lesotho also recognized the Republic of Kosovo.
In the past, it was a strong public opponent of apartheid in South Africa and granted a number of South African refugees political asylum during the apartheid era.
In 2019, Lesotho signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Lesotho does not have a single code containing its laws; it draws them from a variety of sources including: Constitution, Legislation, Common Law, Judicial precedent, Customary Law, and Authoritative texts.
The Constitution of Lesotho came into force after the publication of the Commencement Order. Constitutionally, legislation refers to laws that have been passed by both houses of parliament and have been assented to by the king (section 78(1)). Subordinate legislation refers to laws passed by other bodies to which parliament has by virtue of section 70(2) of the Constitution validly delegated such legislative powers. These include government publications, ministerial orders, ministerial regulations and municipal by-laws.
Although Lesotho shares with South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Zimbabwe a mixed general legal system which resulted from the interaction between the Roman-Dutch Civilian law and the English Common Law, its general law operates independently. Lesotho also applies the common law, which refers to unwritten law or law from non-statutory sources, but excludes customary law. Decisions from South African courts are only persuasive, and courts refer to them in formulating their decisions. Decisions from similar jurisdictions can also be cited for their persuasive value. Magistrates' courts decisions do not become precedent since these are lower courts. They are, however, bound by decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal. The most powerful court in the Lesotho justice system is the Court of Appeal, which is the final appellate forum on all matters. It has a supervisory and review jurisdiction over all the courts of Lesotho.
Lesotho has a dual legal system consisting of customary and general laws operating side by side. Customary law is made up of the customs of the Basotho, written and codified in the Laws of Lerotholi. The general law on the other hand consists of Roman Dutch Law imported from the Cape and the Lesotho statutes. The codification of customary law came about after a council was appointed in 1903 to advise the British Resident Commissioner on which laws would be best for governing the Basotho. Until this time, the Basotho customs and laws were passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. The council was given the task of codifying them, and they came up with the Laws of Lerotholi which are applied by customary courts today (local courts). Written works of eminent authors have persuasive value in the courts of Lesotho. These include writings of the old authorities as well as contemporary writers from similar jurisdictions.
For administrative purposes, Lesotho is divided into ten districts, each headed by a district administrator. Each district has a capital known as a "camptown".
The districts are subdivided into 80 constituencies, which consist of 129 local community councils.
Lesotho covers . It is the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above in elevation. Its lowest point of is thus the highest lowest point of any country in the world. Over 80 percent of the country lies above . Lesotho is also the southernmost landlocked country in the world and is entirely surrounded by South Africa. It lies between latitudes 28° and 31°S, and longitudes 27° and 30°E. About 12% of Lesotho is arable land, however, this land is vulnerable to soil erosion, and it is estimated that 40 million tons of soil are lost each year due to erosion.
Because of its elevation, Lesotho remains cooler throughout the year than other regions at the same latitude. Most of the rain falls as summer thunderstorms. Maseru and surrounding lowlands often reach in summer. Winters can be cold with the lowlands getting down to and the highlands to at times. Snow is common in the highlands between May and September; the higher peaks can experience snowfalls year-round. Rainfall in Lesotho is highly variable regarding both when and where precipitation occurs. Despite Lesotho's small size, annual precipitation can vary from 500mm annual in one area to 1200mm in another because of elevation. The summer season that stretches from October to April sees the most rainfall, and from December to February, the majority of the country receives over 100mm of rain a month. The least monthly rainfall in Lesotho occurs in June when most regions receive less than 15mm a month.
Periodic droughts have a serious effect on Lesotho's majority rural population as many people living outside of urban areas rely on subsistence farming or small scale agriculture as their primary source of income. Droughts in Lesotho are exacerbated by poor agricultural practices as well as high rates of HIV/AIDS. The World Fact Book lists periodic droughts under the 'Natural Hazard' section of Lesotho's section of the publication.
In 2007, Lesotho experienced its worst drought in 30 years and was advised by the United Nations to declare a state of emergency to get aid from international organizations. Erratic weather and the corresponding decline of the humanitarian situation still present Lesotho with problems currently. The Famine Early Warning System Network most recently reported that the rainy season of 2018/2019 not only started a month later than normal but also has recorded below-average amounts of rain. Also, data from the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation Station (CHIRP) shows rainfall in Lesotho between October 2018 and February 2019 ranged from 55% to 80% below normal rates.
In March 2019, the Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis Committee conducted a report that initially predicted that 487,857 people in the country need humanitarian assistance because of the effects of drought.
There are a variety of different ways drought in Lesotho has led to the need for humanitarian assistance. Poor hygiene practices that result from a lack of clean water can cause cases of typhoid and diarrhea. Lack of available water also indirectly leads to an increased risk for women and girls who collect water for household consumption as they must spend more time and travel long distances while running the risk of physically or sexually assaulted. Drought in Lesotho also leads to both migration to more urban areas and immigration to South Africa for new opportunities and to escape food insecurity. The report also found that between July 2019 and June 2020 640,000 people in Lesotho are expected to be affected by food insecurity as a result of unproductive harvests as well as the corresponding rise in food prices because of the drought.
There are known to be 339 bird species in Lesotho, including 10 globally threatened species and 2 introduced species, 17 reptile species, including geckos, snakes and lizards, and 60 mammal species endemic to Lesotho, including the endangered white-tailed rat.
Lesotho's flora is Alpine, due to the high and mountainous terrain. The Katse Botanical Gardens houses a collection of medicinal plants and has a large seed bank of plants from the Malibamat'so River area.
Lesotho is geographically surrounded by South Africa and economically integrated with it. The economy of Lesotho is based on agriculture, livestock, manufacturing and mining, and depends heavily on inflows of workers' remittances and receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). The majority of households subsist on farming. The formal sector employment consists mainly of female workers in the apparel sector, male migrant labour, primarily miners in South Africa for three to nine months, and employment by the Government of Lesotho (GOL). The western lowlands form the main agricultural zone. Almost 50 percent of the population earn income through informal crop cultivation or animal husbandry with nearly two-thirds of the country's income coming from the agricultural sector. The percentage of the population living below USD Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) US$1.25/day fell from 48 percent to 44 percent between 1995 and 2003. The country is among the "Low Human Development" countries (rank 160 of 187 on the Human Development Index as classified by the UNDP, with 52 years of life expectancy at birth. Adult literacy is as high as 82 percent. Among the children below the age of five years, 20 percent are under weight.
Lesotho has taken advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to become the largest exporter of garments to the US from sub-Saharan Africa. US brands and retailers sourcing from Lesotho include: Foot Locker, Gap, Gloria Vanderbilt, JCPenney, Levi Strauss, Saks, Sears, Timberland and Wal-Mart. In mid-2004 its employment reached over 50,000, mainly female workers, marking the first time that manufacturing sector workers outnumbered government employees. In 2008 it exported goods worth 487 million dollars mainly to the US. Since 2004, employment in the sector has dwindled to about 45,000 in mid-2011 due to international competition in the garment sector. It was the largest formal sector employer in Lesotho in 2011. In 2007, the average earnings of an employee in the textile sector were US$103 per month, and the official minimum wage for a general textile worker was US$93 per month. The average gross national income per capita in 2008 was US$83 per month. The sector initiated a major program to fight HIV/AIDS called Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS (ALAFA). It is an industry-wide program providing disease prevention and treatment for workers.
Water and diamonds are Lesotho's significant natural resources. Water is used through the 21-year, multibillion-dollar Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), under the authority of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority. The project commenced in 1986. The LHWP is designed to capture, store, and transfer water from the Orange River system to South Africa's Free State and greater Johannesburg area, which features a large concentration of South African industry, population, and agriculture. Completion of the first phase of the project has made Lesotho almost completely self-sufficient in the production of electricity and generated approximately US$70 million in 2010 from the sale of electricity and water to South Africa. The World Bank, African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, and many other bilateral donors financed the project.
Diamonds are produced at the Letšeng, Mothae, Liqhobong, and Kao mines, which combined are estimated to produce 240,000 carats of diamonds in 2014, worth US$300 million. The Letšeng mine is estimated to produce diamonds with an average value of US$2172/carat, making it the world's richest mine on an average price per carat basis. The sector suffered a setback in 2008 as the result of the world recession, but rebounded in 2010 and 2011. Export of diamonds reached US$230 million in 2010–2011. In 1957, a South African adventurer, colonel Jack Scott, accompanied by a young man named Keith Whitelock, set out prospecting for diamonds. They found their diamond mine at 3,100 m elevation, on top of the Maluti Mountains in northeastern Lesotho, some 70 km from Mokhotlong at Letšeng. In 1967, a diamond (Lesotho Brown) was discovered in the mountains by a Mosotho woman. In August 2006, a white diamond, the Lesotho Promise, was discovered at the Letšeng-la-Terae mine. Another diamond was discovered at the same location in 2008.
Lesotho has progressed in moving from a predominantly subsistence-oriented economy to a lower middle income economy exporting natural resources and manufacturing goods. The exporting sectors have brought higher and more secure incomes to a significant portion of the population.
However, the global economic crisis hit the Lesotho economy hard. Lesotho suffered a loss of textile exports and jobs in this sector due largely to the economic slowdown in the United States, one of their major export destinations. Reduced diamond mining and exports, including a drop in the price of diamonds as well as a drop in SACU revenues due to the economic slowdown in the South African economy also contributed to the crisis. Finally reduction in worker remittances due to weakening of the South African economy and contraction of the mining sector and related job losses in South Africa contributed to in 2009, Lesotho's GDP growth slowing to 0.9 percent.
The official currency is the loti (plural: maloti), but can be used interchangeably with the South African rand. Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, and South Africa also form a common currency and exchange control area known as the Common Monetary Area (CMA). The loti is at par with the rand. One hundred lisente (singular: sente) equal one loti.
Lesotho is a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), in which tariffs have been eliminated on the trade of goods between other member countries Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Eswatini. Lesotho has received economic aid from a variety of sources, including the United States, the World Bank, Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Germany.
Lesotho has a population of approximately . The population distribution of Lesotho is 25 percent urban and 75 percent rural. However, it is estimated that the annual increase in urban population is 3.5 percent. Population density is lower in the highlands than in the western lowlands. Although the majority of the population—60.2 percent—is between 15 and 64 years of age, Lesotho has a substantial youth population numbering around 34.8 percent.
Lesotho's ethno-linguistic structure consists almost entirely of the Basotho, a Bantu-speaking people: an estimated 99.7 percent of the people identify as Basotho. In this regard, Lesotho is part of a handful of sub-Saharan African countries that are nation states with a single dominant cultural ethnic group and language; majority of sub-Saharan African nations' borders were drawn by colonial powers and do not correspond to ethnic boundaries or pre-colonial polities. Basotho subgroups include the Bafokeng ("totems: phoka (dew), 'mutla (hare)"), Batloung ("totem: tlou (elephant)"), Baphuthi ("totem: phuthi), Bakuena ("totem: kuena (crocodile)"), Bataung ("totem: tau (lion)"), Batšoeneng ("totem: tšoene), and Matebele.
The main language, Sesotho, is also the first official and administrative language, and it is what Basotho speak on an ordinary basis.
The population of Lesotho is estimated to be more than 95 percent Christian. Protestants account for 50 percent of the population, (Evangelicals 17.5 percent, Anglicans 7.5 percent, Pentecostals 21.9 percent and other Christians an additional 8.5 percent). Catholics represent nearly 40 percent of the population, served by the province of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Maseru and his three suffragans (the bishops of Leribe, Mohale's Hoek and Qacha's Nek), who also form the national episcopal conference. Non-Christian religions represent only 1.5% of the population, and those of no religion 3.5%.
According to recent estimates, 85 percent of women and 68 percent of men over the age of 15 are literate. As such, Lesotho holds one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, in part because Lesotho invests over 12 percent of its GDP in education. Unlike in most other countries, in Lesotho female literacy (84.93 percent) exceeds male literacy (67.75 percent) by 17.18 percentage points. According to a study by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality in 2000, 37 percent of grade six pupils in Lesotho (average age 14 years) are at or above reading level four, "Reading for Meaning." A pupil at this level of literacy can read ahead or backwards through various parts of text to link and interpret information. Although education is not compulsory, the Government of Lesotho is incrementally implementing a program for free primary education.
Despite their literacy, Lesotho's residents struggle for access to vital services, such as healthcare, travel and educational resources, as, according to the International Telecommunication Union, only 3.4 percent of the population use the Internet. A service from Econet Telecom Lesotho expanded the country's access to email through entry-level, low-end mobile phones and, consequently, improved access to educational information. The African Library Project works to establish school and village libraries in partnership with US Peace Corps Lesotho and the Butha Buthe District of Education.
Life expectancy at birth in Lesotho in 2016 was 51 years for men and 55 for women. Infant mortality is about 8.3%. In 2019 life expectancy was estimated at 52 years for men and women.
As of 2016, Lesotho's adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 25% was the second highest in the world.
The country has the second highest incidence of tuberculosis in the world.
The internal and external security of Lesotho is the responsibility of the Defence Commission, which is established and defined by article 145 of the Lesotho national Constitution. The Prime Minister is the Chairman "ex officio", and there are six other Defence Commission members, namely the Commander and Deputy Commander of the Lesotho Defence Force, the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service, and the Director and Deputy Director of the Lesotho National Security Service. The Defence Commission has power to strategically direct the defence force, the police, and the prison service, but not the security service, which is answerable only to the Government. The Defence Commission has power to appoint or remove the senior staff of the defence force, police, and prison service, but not the security service, whose Director and Deputy Director are personal appointments of the Prime Minister.
The Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) is established under article 146 of the national Constitution, and charged with the maintenance of internal security and the defence of Lesotho. Its chief officer is designated "Commander" by the Constitution, and usually holds the rank of lieutenant-general. The LDF has a total strength of just over 3,000. The largest component is infantry, but they are supported by small artillery, logistics, and air force units, and a single armoured reconnaissance company. Since 2000, Lesotho Defence Forces have been trained by a small contingent of Indian Army Training Team, led by a Brigadier.
The Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) is established under article 147 of the national Constitution, and charged with the maintenance of law and order. Its chief officer is designated "Commissioner" by the Constitution. The LMPS provides uniformed policing, criminal detection, and traffic policing. There are specialist units dealing with high-tech crime, immigration, wildlife, and terrorism. The current force has existed, despite changes of name, continuously since 1872.
The Lesotho National Security Service (LNSS) is established under article 148 of the national Constitution, and charged with the protection of national security. Its chief officer is designated "Director" by the Constitution. The LNSS is an intelligence service, reporting directly to the Government. The power to appoint or dismiss a Director is vested directly in the Prime Minister.
Traditional musical instruments include the lekolulo, a kind of flute used by herding boys, the setolo-tolo, played by men using their mouth, and the woman's stringed thomo.
The national anthem of Lesotho is ""Lesotho Fatše La Bo-ntata Rona"", which literally translates into "Lesotho, Land of Our Fore-Fathers".
The traditional style of housing in Lesotho is called a mokhoro. Many older houses, especially in smaller towns and villages, are of this type, with walls usually constructed from large stones cemented together. Baked mud bricks and especially concrete blocks are also used nowadays, with thatched roofs still common, although often replaced by corrugated roofing sheets.
Traditional attire revolves around the Basotho blanket, a thick covering made primarily of wool. The blankets are ubiquitous throughout the country during all seasons, and worn differently by men and women.
The Morija Arts & Cultural Festival is a prominent Sesotho arts and music festival. It is held annually in the historical town of Morija, where the first missionaries arrived in 1833.
The cuisine of Lesotho includes African traditions and British influences.
The national dish of Lesotho is Motoho, a fermented sorghum porridge eaten throughout the country.
Because Lesotho has limited food resources, a majority of families in the country raise their own food and livestock to support themselves and their families.
Some staple foods include papa, a cornmeal porridge covered with a sauce consisting of various vegetables. Tea and locally brewed beer are popular choices for beverages.
2018 film "Black Panther" director Ryan Coogler stated that his depiction of Wakanda was inspired by Lesotho. Basotho blankets also became more known as a result of the film.
Significant levels of child labour exist in Lesotho, and the country is in the process of formulating an Action Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (APEC). According to the UN, Lesotho has the highest rape rate of any country (91.6 per 100,000 people rate for reported rape in 2008).
Treatment of people with disabilities is another major issue facing the country. According to the Lesotho Census of 2006, around four percent of the population is thought to have some sort of disability. However, there are concerns regarding the reliability of the methodologies used and the real figure is thought to be closer to the global estimate of 15 percent. According to a survey conducted by the Lesotho National Federation of Organisations of the Disabled in conjunction with SINTEF, people with disability in Lesotho face significant social and cultural barriers which prevent them from accessing education, healthcare, and employment on an equal basis with others.
On 2 December 2008 Lesotho became the 42nd country in the world to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, to date the treaty has yet to be domesticated. Despite lobbying efforts from disabled persons organisations, there have been no moves to develop disability specific legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities. Although the National Disability and Rehabilitation Policy was developed in 2011, thus far there has been no budget allocated for its implementation.
Sexual violence in Lesotho is a serious problem. International data from UNODC found the incidence of rapes recorded in 2008 by the police to be the highest in Lesotho.
One study in Lesotho found that 61 percent of women reported having experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives, of which 22 percent reported being physically forced to have sexual intercourse. In the 2009 DHS survey 15.7 percent of men said that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife if she refuses to have sex with him, while 16 percent said a husband is justified to use force to have sex. In another study, researchers have concluded that "Given the high prevalence of HIV in Lesotho, programs should address women's right to control their sexuality."
The "Married Persons Equality Act 2006" gives equal rights to wives in regard to their husbands, abolishing the husband's marital power.
The World Economic Forum's 2015 Gender Gap Report ranks Lesotho 61st in the world for gender parity, while neighboring South Africa ranks 17th.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17781
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History of Lesotho
The history of people living in the area now known as Lesotho () goes back as many as 40,000 years. The present Lesotho (then called Basutoland) emerged as a single polity under paramount chief Moshoeshoe I in 1822. Under Moshoeshoe I, Basutoland joined other tribes in their struggle against the Lifaqane associated with the reign of Shaka Zulu from 1818 to 1828.
Subsequent evolution of the state was shaped by contact with the British and Dutch colonists from Cape Colony. Missionaries invited by Moshoeshoe I developed orthography and printed works in the Sotho language between 1837 and 1855. The country set up diplomatic channels and acquired guns for use against the encroaching Europeans and the Korana people. Territorial conflicts with both British and Boer settlers arose periodically, including Moshoeshoe's notable victory over the Boers in the Free State–Basotho War, but the final war in 1867 with an appeal to Queen Victoria, who agreed to make Basutoland a British suzerainty. In 1869, the British signed a treaty at Aliwal with the Boers that defined the boundaries of Basutoland and later Lesotho, which by ceding the western territories effectively reduced Moshoeshoe's kingdom to half its previous size.
The extent to which the British exerted direct control over Basutoland waxed and waned until Basutoland's independence in 1966, when it became the Kingdom of Lesotho. However, when the ruling Basotho National Party (BNP) lost the first post-independence general elections to the Basotho Congress Party (BCP), Leabua Jonathan refused to cede and declared himself Tona Kholo (Sesotho translation of prime minister). The BCP began an insurrection that culminated in a January 1986 military coup forced the BNP out of office. Power was transferred to King Moshoeshoe II, until then a ceremonial monarch, but forced into exile when he lost favour with the military the following year. His son was installed as King Letsie III. Conditions remained tumultuous, including an August 1994 self-coup by Letsie III, until 1998 when the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) came to power in elections which were deemed fair by international observers. Despite protests from opposition parties, the country has remained relatively stable since.
At some stage during their migration south from a tertiary dispersal area Bantu speaking peoples came to settle the lands that now make up Lesotho as well as a more extensive territory of fertile lands that surround modern day Lesotho. These people spoke a unique "South Sotho" dialect seSotho and called themselves the Basotho. There were several severe disruptions to the Basotho peoples in the early 19th century. One view states that the first of these were marauding Zulu clans, displaced from Zululand as part of the Lifaqane (or Mfecane), wrought havoc on the Basotho peoples they encountered as they moved first west and then north. The second that no sooner than the Zulu has passed to the north than the first Voortrekkers arrived, some of whom obtained hospitality during their difficult trek north. Early Voortrekker accounts describe how the lands surrounding the mountain retreat of the Basotho had been burnt and destroyed, in effect leaving a vacuum that subsequent Voortrekkers began to occupy.
However, this interpretation of history for the entire southern region of Africa is a matter of dispute. One attempt at refutation came by Norman Etherington in "The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815-1854" (Longman, 2001). Etherington argues that no such thing as the Mfecane occurred, the Zulu were no more marauding than any other group in the region, and the land the Voortrekkers saw as empty was not settled by either Zulu or Basotho because those people did not value open lowland plains as pasture.
In 1818, Moshoeshoe I consolidated various Basotho groupings and became their king. During Moshoeshoe's reign (1823–1870), a series of wars (1856–68) were fought with the Boers who had settled in traditional Basotho lands. These wars resulted in the extensive loss of land, now known as the "Lost Territory".
A treaty was signed with the Boers of Griqualand in 1843 and an agreement was made with the British in 1853 following a minor war. The disputes with the Boers over land, however, were revived in 1858 with Senekal's War and again, more seriously, in 1865 with the Seqiti War. The Boers had a number of military successes, killing possibly 1,500 Basotho soldiers, and annexed an expanse of arable land which they were able to retain following a treaty at Thaba Bosiu. Further conflict led to an unsuccessful attack on Thaba Bosiu and the death of a Boer commandant, Louw Wepener, but by 1867, much of Moshoeshoe's land and most of his fortresses had been taken.
Fearing defeat, Moshoeshoe made further appeals to High Commissioner Philip Edmond Wodehouse for British assistance. On 12 March 1868, the British Cabinet agreed to place the territory under British protection and the Boers were ordered to leave. In February 1869, the British and the Boers agreed to the Convention of Aliwal North, which defined the boundaries of the protectorate. The arable land west of the Caledon River remained in Boer hands and is referred to as the Lost or Conquered Territory. Moshoeshoe died in 1870 and was buried atop Thaba Bosiu.
In 1871 the protectorate was annexed to Cape Colony. The Basotho resisted the British and in 1879 a southern chief, Moorosi, rose in revolt. His campaign was crushed, and he was killed in the fighting. The Basotho then began to fight amongst themselves over the division of Moorosi's lands. The British extended the Cape Peace Preservation Act of 1878 to cover Basutoland and attempted to disarm the natives. Much of the colony rose in revolt in the Gun War (1880-1881), inflicting significant casualties upon the colonial British forces sent to subdue it. A peace treaty of 1881 failed to quell sporadic fighting.
Cape Town's inability to control the territory led to its return to crown control in 1884 as the Territory of Basutoland. The colony was bound by the Orange River Colony, Natal Colony, and Cape Colony. It was divided into seven administrative districts: Berea, Leribe, Maseru, Mohale's Hoek, Mafeteng, Qacha's Nek and Quthing. The colony was ruled by the British Resident Commissioner, who worked through the "pitso" (national assembly) of hereditary native chiefs under one paramount chief. Each chief ruled a ward within the territory. The first paramount chief was Lerothodi, the son of Moshoeshoe. During the Second Boer War the colony was neutral. The population grew from around 125,000 in 1875, to 310,000 in 1901, and to 349,000 by 1904.
When the Union of South Africa was founded in 1910 the colony was still controlled by the British and moves were made to transfer it to the Union. However the people of Basutoland opposed this and when the National Party put its apartheid policies into place the possibility of annexation was halted. In 1959, a new constitution gave Basutoland its first elected legislature. This was followed in April 1965 with general legislative elections.
The differing fates of the seSotho-speaking peoples in the Protectorate of Basotholand and in the lands that became the Orange Free State are worth noting. The Orange Free State became a Boer-ruled territory. At the end of the Boer War, it was colonised by the British, and this colony was subsequently incorporated by Britain into the Union of South Africa as one of four provinces. It is still part of the modern day Republic of South Africa, now known as the Free State. In contrast, Basotholand, along with the two other British Protectorates in the sub-Saharan region (Bechuanaland and Swaziland), was precluded from incorporation into the Union of South Africa. These protectorates were individually brought to independence by Britain in the 1960s. By becoming a protectorate, Basotholand and its inhabitants were not subjected to Afrikaner rule, which saved them from experiencing Apartheid, and so generally prospered under more benevolent British rule. Basotho residents of Basotholand had access to better health services and to education, and came to experience greater political emancipation through independence. These lands protected by the British, however, had a much smaller capacity to generate income and wealth than had the "lost territory", which had been granted to the Boers.
After a 1955 request by the Basutoland Council to legislate its internal affairs, in 1959 a new constitution gave Basutoland its first elected legislature. This was followed in April 1965 with general legislative elections with universal adult suffrage in which the Basotho National Party (BNP) won 31 and the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) won 25 of the 65 seats contested.
On October 4, 1966, the Kingdom of Lesotho attained full independence, governed by a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral Parliament consisting of a Senate and an elected National Assembly. Early results of the first post-independence elections in January 1970 indicated that the Basotho National Party (BNP) might lose control. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Chief Leabua Jonathan, the ruling BNP refused to cede power to the rival Basotholand Congress Party (BCP), although the BCP was widely believed to have won the elections. Citing election irregularities, Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan nullified the elections, declared a national state of emergency, suspended the constitution, and dissolved the Parliament. In 1973, an appointed Interim National Assembly was established. With an overwhelming progovernment majority, it was largely the instrument of the BNP, led by Prime Minister Jonathan. In addition to the Jonathan regime's alienation of Basotho powerbrokers and the local population, South Africa had virtually closed the country's land borders because of Lesotho support of cross-border operations of the African National Congress (ANC). Moreover, South Africa publicly threatened to pursue more direct action against Lesotho if the Jonathan government did not root out the ANC presence in the country. This internal and external opposition to the government combined to produce violence and internal disorder in Lesotho that eventually led to a military takeover in 1986.
Under a January 1986 Military Council decree, state executive and legislative powers were transferred to the King who was to act on the advice of the Military Council, a self-appointed group of leaders of the Royal Lesotho Defense Force (RLDF). A military government chaired by Justin Lekhanya ruled Lesotho in coordination with King Moshoeshoe II and a civilian cabinet appointed by the King.
In February 1990, King Moshoeshoe II was stripped of his executive and legislative powers and exiled by Lekhanya, and the Council of Ministers was purged. Lekhanya accused those involved of undermining discipline within the armed forces, subverting existing authority, and causing an impasse on foreign policy that had been damaging to Lesotho's image abroad. Lekhanya announced the establishment of the National Constituent Assembly to formulate a new constitution for Lesotho with the aim of returning the country to democratic, civilian rule by June 1992. Before this transition, however, Lekhanya was ousted in 1991 by a mutiny of junior army officers that left Phisoane Ramaema as Chairman of the Military Council.
Because Moshoeshoe II initially refused to return to Lesotho under the new rules of the government in which the King was endowed only with ceremonial powers, Moshoeshoe's son was installed as King Letsie III. In 1992, Moshoeshoe II returned to Lesotho as a regular citizen until 1995 when King Letsie abdicated the throne in favor of his father. After Moshoeshoe II died in a car accident in 1996, King Letsie III ascended to the throne again.
In 1993, a new constitution was implemented leaving the King without any executive authority and proscribing him from engaging in political affairs. Multiparty elections were then held in which the BCP ascended to power with a landslide victory. Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle headed the new BCP government that had gained every seat in the 65-member National Assembly. In early 1994, political instability increased as first the army, followed by the police and prisons services, engaged in mutinies. In August 1994, King Letsie III, in collaboration with some members of the military, staged a coup, suspended Parliament, and appointed a ruling council. As a result of domestic and international pressures, however, the constitutionally elected government was restored within a month.
In 1995, there were isolated incidents of unrest, including a police strike in May to demand higher wages. For the most part, however, there were no serious challenges to Lesotho's constitutional order in the 1995-96 period. In January 1997, armed soldiers put down a violent police mutiny and arrested the mutineers.
In 1997, tension within the BCP leadership caused a split in which Dr. Mokhehle abandoned the BCP and established the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) followed by two-thirds of the parliament. This move allowed Mokhehle to remain as Prime Minister and leader of a new ruling party, while relegating the BCP to opposition status. The remaining members of the BCP refused to accept their new status as the opposition party and ceased attending sessions. Multiparty elections were again held in May 1998.
Although Mokhehle completed his term as Prime Minister, due to his failing health, he did not vie for a second term in office. The elections saw a landslide victory for the LCD, gaining 79 of the 80 seats contested in the newly expanded Parliament. As a result of the elections, Mokhehle's Deputy Prime Minister, Pakalitha Mosisili, became the new Prime Minister. The landslide electoral victory caused opposition parties to claim that there were substantial irregularities in the handling of the ballots and that the results were fraudulent. The conclusion of the Langa Commission, a commission appointed by Southern African Development Community (SADC) to investigate the electoral process, however, was consistent with the view of international observers and local courts that the outcome of the elections was not affected by these incidents. Despite the fact that the election results were found to reflect the will of the people, opposition protests in the country intensified. The protests culminated in a violent demonstration outside the royal palace in early August 1998 and in an unprecedented level of violence, looting, casualties, and destruction of property. In early September, junior members of the armed services mutinied. The Government of Lesotho requested that a SADC task force intervene to prevent a military coup and restore stability to the country. To this end, Operation Boleas, consisting of South African and (later) Botswana troops, entered Lesotho on September 22, 1998 to put down the mutiny and restore the democratically elected government. The army mutineers were brought before a court-martial.
After stability returned to Lesotho, the SADC task force withdrew from the country in May 1999, leaving only a small task force (joined by Zimbabwean troops) to provide training to the LDF. In the meantime, an Interim Political Authority (IPA), charged with reviewing the electoral structure in the country, was created in December 1998 and devised a proportional electoral system to ensure that there be opposition in the National Assembly. The new system retained the existing 80 elected Assembly seats, but added 40 seats to be filled on a proportional basis. Elections were held under this new system in May 2002, and the LCD won again, gaining 54% of the vote. For the first time, however, opposition political parties won significant numbers of seats, and despite some irregularities and threats of violence from Major General Lekhanya, Lesotho experienced its first peaceful election. Nine opposition parties now hold all 40 of the proportional seats, with the BNP having the largest share (21). The LCD has 79 of the 80 constituency-based seats.
In June 2014, Prime Minister Thomas Thabane suspended parliament because of conflict within his coalition, leading to criticisms that he was undermining the government. In August, after Thabane attempted to remove Lieutenant General Kennedy Tlai Kamoli from the head of the army, the Prime Minister fled the country alleging a coup was taking place. Kamoli denied that any coup had occurred.
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Demographics of Lesotho
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Lesotho, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The Demographics of Lesotho describe the condition and overview of Lesotho's peoples. Demographic topics include basic education, health, and population statistics as well as identified racial and religious affiliations.
According to the 2016 census, Lesotho has a total population of 2,007,201. Of the population, 34.17 percent lived in urban and 65.83 percent in rural areas. The country's capital, Maseru, accounts for around half of the total urban population. The sex distribution is 982,133 male and 1,025,068 female, or around 96 males for each 100 females.
The average population density in the country is around 66,1 people per square kilometer. The density is lower in the Lesotho Highlands than in the western lowlands. Although the majority of the population—56.1 percent—is between 15 and 64 years of age, Lesotho has a substantial youth population numbering around 37.8 percent. The annual population growth rate is estimated at 0.13%
According to the total population was in , compared to only 734 000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 37.4%, 58.3% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 4.3% was 65 years or older
.
Registration of vital events is in Lesotho not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Fertility data as of 2014 (DHS Program):
Life expectancy from 1950 to 2015 ("UN World Population Prospects"):
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
The following demographic are from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.
6,600 people living in Lesotho are from Asia or Europe. They represent 0.3% of the total population of Lesotho. The 5,000 Chinese people form the largest non-African ethnic group in Lesotho.
15.1 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.)
Protestant 47.8% (Pentecostal 23.1%, Lesotho Evangelical 17.3%, Anglican 7.4%), Roman Catholic 39.3%, other Christian 9.1%, non-Christian 1.4%, none 2.3% (2014 est.)
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.)
Due to Lesotho's long history as a unified nation, that continued even through British colonial rule, the ethnic makeup of the country is very homogenous. Lesotho's ethno-linguistic structure consists almost entirely of the Basotho (singular "Mosotho"), a Bantu-speaking people: an estimate of 99.7 percent of the people identify as Basotho. The Kwena (Bakoena) are the largest subgroup of the Sotho; other Basotho subgroups include the Natal (North) Nguni, Batloung (the Tlou), Baphuthi (the Phuti), Bafokeng, Bataung (the Tau), Bats'oeneng (the tso'ene) and the Cape (South) Nguni (Thembu). Other ethnic groups include Europeans, numbering in the thousands, and several hundred Asians.
Sesotho (Southern Sotho) and English languages are both official. Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and French are also spoken.
The population of Lesotho is estimated to be around 90 percent Christian. Roman Catholics, the largest religious group, make up around 45 percent of the population. Evangelicals comprise 26 percent of the population, and Anglican and other Christian groups an additional 19 percent. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'i, and members of traditional indigenous religions comprise the remaining 10 percent of the population.
According to recent estimates, 85 percent of the population 15 and over was literate. Among women the literacy rate was around 95 percent, and among men around 75 percent. As such, Lesotho boasts one of the higher literacy rates in Africa. Although education is not compulsory, the Government of Lesotho is incrementally implementing a programme for free primary education. It was expected that the program would be fully in place by 2006. The National University of Lesotho located in Roma and the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology located in the heart of Maseru, Moshoeshoe 2 are the only universities in the country. In addition, the country has almost 20 other public and 15 private institutes giving tertiary education.
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Politics of Lesotho
Politics of Lesotho takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Lesotho is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of Parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Lesotho Government is a constitutional monarchy. The Prime Minister, Moeketsi Majoro, is head of government and has executive authority. The King serves a largely ceremonial function; he no longer possesses any executive authority and is proscribed from actively participating in political initiatives. According to the constitution, the leader of the majority party in the assembly automatically becomes prime minister; the monarch is hereditary, but, under the terms of the constitution which came into effect after the March 1993 election, the monarch is a "living symbol of national unity" with no executive or legislative powers; under traditional law the college of chiefs has the power to determine who is next in the line of succession, who shall serve as regent in the event that the successor is not of mature age, and may even depose the monarch.
Parliament has two chambers. The National Assembly has 120 members, elected for a five-year term, 80 in single-seat constituencies and 40 by proportional representation. The Senate has 33 nominated members.
The constitution provides for an independent hierarchical judicial system. The judiciary is made up of the High Court of Lesotho, the Court of Appeal, magistrate's courts, and traditional (customary) courts which exist predominantly in rural areas. There is no trial by jury; rather, judges make rulings alone, or, in the case of criminal trials, with two other judges as observers. The constitution also protects basic civil liberties, including freedom of speech, association, and the press; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of religion.
The Court of Appeal is located in Maseru and consists of a President and 6 justices of Appeal.
The High Court has unlimited original jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters, as well as appellate jurisdiction from the lower courts and comprises a Chief Justice and other puisne judges. Parallel to the High Court is the Labour Court, which is a specialist court dealing exclusively with industrial and labour matters.
Magistrates Courts are presided over by judicial officers (magistrates) employed as civil servants. They are not courts of record and as such their decisions are not binding on future cases.
The Chief Justice and Justices of the Court of Appeal are appointed by the King on the advice of the Prime Minister. Puisne judges of the High Court are appointed by the King on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission. High Court judges may retire any time after attaining the age of 75 but may be removed from office by the King for malfeasance or infirmity.
For administrative purposes, Lesotho is divided into 10 districts, each headed by a district secretary and a district military officer appointed by the central government and the RLDF, respectively.
The districts are: Berea, Butha-Buthe, Leribe, Mafeteng, Maseru, Mohales Hoek, Mokhotlong, Qacha's Nek, Quthing, Thaba-Tseka
Lesotho is member of ACP, AfDB, C, CCC, ECA, FAO, G-77, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), Interpol, IOC, ITU, NAM, OAU, OPCW, SACU, SADC, United Nations, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO
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Economy of Lesotho
The economy of Lesotho is based on agriculture, livestock, manufacturing, mining, and depends heavily on inflows of workers’ remittances and receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Lesotho is geographically surrounded by South Africa and is economically integrated with it as well. The majority of households subsist on farming. The formal sector employment consist of mainly the female workers in the apparel sector, the male migrant labor, primarily miners in South Africa for 3 to 9 months and employment in the Government of Lesotho (GOL) . The western lowlands form the main agricultural zone. Almost 50% of the population earn income through informal crop cultivation or animal husbandry with nearly two-thirds of the country's income coming from the agricultural sector. About 70% of the population lives in rural areas and works in agriculture.
Lesotho has taken advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to become the largest exporter of garments to the US from sub-Saharan Africa. American Brands and retailers sourcing from Lesotho include: Foot Locker, Gap, Gloria Vanderbilt, JCPenny, Levi Strauss, Saks, Sears, Timberland and Wal-Mart. In mid-2004 its employment reached over 50,000 mainly female workers, marking the first time that manufacturing sector workers outnumbered government employees. In 2008 it exported 487 million dollars mainly to the U.S.A. Since 2004 employment in the sector was somehow reduced to about 45,000, in mid-2011, due to intense international competition in the garment sector. It was the largest formal sector employer in Lesotho in 2011. The sector initiated a major program to fight HIV/AIDS called Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS (ALAFA). It is an industry-wide program providing prevention and treatment for the workers.
Lesotho, is a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) in which tariffs have been eliminated on the trade of goods between other member countries, which also include Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, and South Africa also form a common currency and exchange control area known as the Rand Monetary Area that uses the South African rand as the common currency. In 1980, Lesotho introduced its own currency, the loti (plural: maloti). One hundred lisente equal one loti. The Loti is at par with the rand.
Until the political insecurity in September 1998, Lesotho's economy had grown steadily since 1992. The riots, however, destroyed nearly 80% of commercial infrastructure in Maseru and two other major towns in the country, having a disastrous effect on the country's economy. Nonetheless, the country has completed several IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and inflation declined substantially over the course of the 1990s. Lesotho's trade deficit, however, is quite large, with exports representing only a small fraction of imports.
The global economic crisis hit the Lesotho economy hard through loss of textile exports and jobs in the sector due largely to the economic slowdown in the United States which is a major export destination, reduced diamond mining and exports, including weak prices for diamonds; drop in SACU revenues due to the economic slowdown in the South African economy, and reduction in worker remittances due to weakening of the South African economy and contraction of the mining sector and related job losses in South Africa. In 2009, GDP growth slowed to 0.9 percent.
Lesotho's progress in moving from a predominantly subsistence-oriented economy to a lower middle income, diversified economy exporting natural resources and manufacturing goods has brought higher, more secure incomes to a significant portion of the population. The percentage of the population living below USD PPP US$1.25/day fell from 48 percent to 44 percent between 1995 and 2003. The unemployment rate in 2008 was 25.29% and rose to 27.2% in 2012. However, the unemployment rate fell to 23.06% in 2017. The percentage of the population living below the poverty line fell from 58% in 2002 to 49.2% in 2017. The country is still among the "Low Human Development" countries (rank 155 of 192) as classified by the UNDP, with 42.3 years of life expectancy at birth. However, adult literacy is very high - 82% and children under weight aged under 5 is only 20%.
Lesotho has received economic aid from a variety of sources, including the United States, the World Bank, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Germany.
Lesotho has nearly 6,000 kilometers of unpaved and modern all-weather roads. There is a short rail line (freight) linking Lesotho with South Africa that is totally owned and operated by South Africa.
Women make up 51% of Lesotho’s population. While women are more subject to access to secondary schooling than men, men make 1.5 times more income than women. Prior to the 1950s, Basotho women migrated to South Africa for work due to an agricultural decline. Of those who migrated, many of them were unwed and many stayed in South Africa. Married couples also traveled to South Africa together for work. In 1923, the pass law Natives (Urban Areas) Act was passed in South Africa which required black men to carry passports with them at all times when in white areas for work. Women were included in an amendment to the law in 1952. The amendment caused a decline in migration of female labor, and by the 1970s, only 36.1% of women over age 39 in Lesotho had worked in South Africa. Lesotho women did not work in mines.
In the 1980s, Lesotho received aid to help with the manufacturing industry. The main workers employed in the industry were young women. In 1990, 92% of employees in the textile industry were women.
About 86% of the female population in Lesotho works in the textile industry.
Water and diamonds are Lesotho's only significant natural resources. Water is being extracted through the 30-year, multibillion-dollar Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), which was initiated in 1986. The LHWP is designed to capture, store, and transfer water from the Orange River system and send it to South Africa's Free State and greater Johannesburg area, which features a large concentration of South African industry, population and agriculture. At the completion of the project, Lesotho should be almost completely self-sufficient in the production of electricity and also gain income from the sale of electricity to South Africa. The World Bank, African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, and many other bilateral donors are financing the project. Diamonds are produced in Letšeng, Mothae, Liqhobong and Kao mines. The sector suffered a setback in 2008 as the result of the world recession but rebounded in 2010 and 2011. It is a major contributor to the exports of Lesotho.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
"lowest 10%:"
0.9%
"highest 10%:"
43.4% (1986–87)
Industrial production growth rate:
3% (2010)
Electricity - consumption:
626 GWh (2010/11)
Agriculture - products:
maize, wheat, pulses, sorghum, barley; livestock
Currency:
1 loti (L) = 100 lisente; note - maloti (M) is the plural form of loti
Exchange rates:
maloti (M) per US$1 – 7.32 (2010), 6.10948 (1999), 3.62709 (1995); note - the Basotho loti is at par with the South African rand
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Telecommunications in Lesotho
Telecommunications in Lesotho include radio, television, print and online newspapers, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Vodacom Lesotho started operating in 1996 with the Government of Lesotho as a shareholder through its stake in Lesotho Telecommunications Corporation. When the Government of Lesotho began its privatisation process in 1999, it invited bids for this share in Vodacom Lesotho. In July 2000, Sekha-Metsi Consortium, a group of local business people and public figures, was announced as the successful bidder. Sekha-Metsi now holds a 12% share in Vodacom Lesotho with the remaining share held by Vodacom Group. In 2008 Vodacom Lesotho introduced its new partnership with Vodafone.
Econet Telecom Lesotho is part of the Econet Wireless group and operates as a stand-alone entity with full local board and management control. It is the first African mobile service operator to use ForgetMeNot Africa's eTXT service to enable their customer base to send and receive email via any mobile capable of a simple SMS.
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms without judicial oversight. The Internet is not widely available and almost nonexistent in rural areas due to the lack of communications infrastructure and high cost of access.
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech, so long as they do not interfere with "defense, public safety, public order, public morality, or public health". The government generally respects this right. An independent press, effective judiciary, and functioning democratic political system combine generally to promote freedom of the press; however, harassment of journalists and self-censorship persist. The law prohibits expressions of hatred or contempt for any person because of the person’s race, ethnic affiliation, gender, disability, or color.
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Transport in Lesotho
This article concerns systems of transport in Lesotho. As a landlocked country, Lesotho has no seaports or harbours, but does have road, air transport, and limited rail infrastructure.
Prior to Lesotho's independence in 1966, the only paved road in the country was the Kingsway in the capital, Maseru, between the Mejametalana Airport and the Royal Palace. Since the early 1970s, the road infrastructure has been substantially developed. In 1999, Lesotho had a road network measuring at in length, of which were paved. The most weight has been given to connecting the district centres, but the roads within central Lesotho have also been improved, as part of the construction needs of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
The only railway line in Lesotho is the Maseru branch line, which connects the capital city Maseru to the Bloemfontein–Bethlehem line in the railway network of South Africa. The final of this line, which opened on 18 December 1905, lies within the borders of Lesotho, running from the border bridge on the Mohokare River through the northern industrial district of Maseru to that city's station, the only railway station in the country.
As of 2008, there have been talks of building new railways to connect Lesotho to Durban and Port Elizabeth.
There are a total of 28 airports in Lesotho, of which 3 have paved runways. The only international airport is the Moshoeshoe I International Airport in Mazenod, a short distance southeast from Maseru. The main runway of the Moshoeshoe Airport is the only one with a runway longer than 1,523 meters; it measures at 3,200 meters.
Of the other airports, one has a paved runway between 914 and 1,523 meters in length and one a paved runway with a length of under 914 meters. Four of the airports have unpaved runways of between 914 and 1,523 meters in length, and the others have unpaved runways of less than 914 meters. All of the classifications are made by the length of the longest runway on an airport.
Lesotho is landlocked and completely dependent on South Africa for sea transport. The nearest major port and the transshipping point for the country is Durban. Recently due to delays out of Durban more companies have been using the Port Elizabeth facilities that are 2 hours farther south.
Inland water transport is limited to small ferry boats at river crossings, and the Government of Lesotho operates boats at major crossings.
The main intermediate means of transport (IMTs) in use are wheelbarrows and work animals. Wheelbarrows are widespread in the urban and rural areas and are commonly used by women and men to transport food aid, grains for milling, water containers, and building materials. The importance of wheelbarrows for water collection is gradually being reduced by the provision of water taps. Also common in both highland and lowland areas are two-wheeled ‘scotch carts' with pneumatic tyres. They used to be pulled mainly by oxen, but in recent years there has been an increasing tendency to use cows (females), as farmers often do not own oxen. The carts vary in design, some being made with old pickup bodies, some made using old axles, and many being purpose-made to standard designs by small workshops in Lesotho or South Africa. Most are painted red. Discussion with workshops producing carts suggest the main problem is obtaining suitable wheels and axles, as well as other raw materials, that can be afforded by their clients.
Basotho ponies are very important in the highlands for riding. Ponies are sometimes used as pack animals to carry goods, but this is relatively uncommon. Donkeys, on the other hand are widely used as pack animals in all parts of the county. Donkeys are quite commonly ridden, mainly by young men and usually without a saddle. It is quite common for women to ride ponies, but relatively few women ride donkeys. A few people, notably older men, ride donkeys fitted with saddles. Mules are relatively uncommon, and may be used for riding or pack transport. The use of ponies, mules and donkeys to pull carts is very low. Very few two-wheeled donkey carts or horse carts, although such carts are very common in other countries in southern, eastern, western and northern Africa. In at least two urban areas (Maputsoe and Mafeteng) a small number of transport entrepreneurs use carts or wagons with pneumatic tyres pulled mainly by single ponies (and occasionally by two donkeys or a mule). In Mafeteng, the transporters use two-wheel carts, while in Maputsoe, the transporters use four-wheel wagons.
The numbers of bicycles and motorcycles in use is very low. The per-capita ownership of motorcycles in Lesotho, and also bicycles, may be among the lowest in the world. The small number of people who do use bicycles tend to be children and young men, primarily for recreation although some use them for inter-village travel. A few people use bicycles for sport, and some South Africans and other tourists travel through the highlands on bicycles. A small number of transport entrepreneurs use bicycles to gain a livelihood.
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Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean to its south-southwest. It has a population of around 5 million and covers an area of . English is the official language, but over 20 indigenous languages are spoken, representing the numerous ethnic groups who make up more than 95% of the population. The country's capital and largest city is Monrovia.
Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS), who believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. The country declared its independence on July 26, 1847. The U.S. did not recognize Liberia's independence until February 5, 1862, during the American Civil War. Between January 7, 1822, and the American Civil War, more than 15,000 freed and free-born black people who faced legislated limits in the U.S., and 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to the settlement. The settlers carried their culture and tradition with them. The Liberian constitution and flag were modeled after those of the U.S. On January 3, 1848, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a wealthy, free-born African American from Virginia who settled in Liberia, was elected Liberia's first president after the people proclaimed independence.
Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence, and is Africa's first and oldest modern republic. It retained its independence during the Scramble for Africa. During World War II, Liberia supported the United States war effort against Germany and in turn, the U.S. invested in considerable infrastructure in Liberia to help its war effort, which also aided the country in modernizing and improving its major air transportation facilities. In addition, President William Tubman encouraged economic changes. Internationally, Liberia was a founding member of the League of Nations, United Nations, and the Organisation of African Unity.
The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered, especially those in communities of the more isolated "bush". The colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Americo-Liberians developed as a small elite that held on to political power, and indigenous tribesmen were excluded from birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904. Americo-Liberians promoted religious organizations to set up missions and schools to educate the indigenous peoples.
In 1980 political tensions from the rule of William R. Tolbert resulted in a military coup during which Tolbert was killed, marking the beginning of years-long political instability. Five years of military rule by the People's Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. These resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people (about 8% of the population) and the displacement of many more, and shrank Liberia's economy by 90%. A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005, in which Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President, making history as the first female president in the continent. National infrastructure and basic social services were severely affected by the conflicts as well as by an outbreak of Ebola virus, with 83% of the population living below the international poverty line as of 2015.
The Pepper Coast, also known as the Grain Coast, has been inhabited by indigenous peoples of Africa at least as far back as the 12th century. Mende-speaking people expanded westward from the Sudan, forcing many smaller ethnic groups southward toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Dei, Bassa, Kru, Gola, and Kissi were some of the earliest documented peoples in the area.
This influx of these groups was compounded by the decline of the Western Sudanic Mali Empire in 1375 and the Songhai Empire in 1591. As inland regions underwent desertification, inhabitants moved to the wetter coast. These new inhabitants brought skills such as cotton spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, rice and sorghum cultivation, and social and political institutions from the Mali and Songhai empires. Shortly after the Mane conquered the region, the Vai people of the former Mali Empire immigrated into the Grand Cape Mount County region. The ethnic Kru opposed the influx of Vai, forming an alliance with the Mane to stop further influx of Vai.
People along the coast built canoes and traded with other West Africans from Cap-Vert to the Gold Coast. Arab traders entered the region from the north, and a long-established slave trade took captives to north and east Africa.
Between 1461 and the late 17th century, Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders had contacts and trading posts in the region. The Portuguese named the area "Costa da Pimenta" ("Pepper Coast") but it later came to be known as the Grain Coast, due to the abundance of melegueta pepper grains. European traders would barter commodities and goods with local people.
In the United States there was a movement to settle free-born blacks and freed slaves in Africa. This was ostensibly because they faced racial discrimination in the form of political disenfranchisement and the denial of civil, religious, and social rights. Formed in 1816, the American Colonization Society was made up mostly of Quakers and slaveholders. Quakers believed blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the U.S. While slaveholders opposed freedom for blacks, they viewed repatriation as a way to avoid rebellions.
In 1822 the American Colonization Society began sending black volunteers to the Pepper Coast, the closest point of Africa and therefore the least expensive to reach, to establish a colony for freed blacks. Although mortality from tropical diseases was horrendous — of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 were alive in 1843 — by 1867 the ACS (and state-related chapters) had assisted in the migration of more than 13,000 blacks to Liberia. These free African-Americans and their descendants married within their community and came to identify as Americo-Liberians. Many were of mixed race and educated in American culture; they did not identify with the indigenous natives of the tribes they encountered. They intermarried largely within the colonial community, developing an ethnic group that had a cultural tradition infused with American notions of political republicanism and Protestant Christianity.
The ACS, supported by prominent American politicians such as Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, and James Monroe, believed "repatriation" of free African Americans — sending them to Africa — was preferable to having emancipated slaves remain in the United States. Similar state-based organizations established colonies in Mississippi-in-Africa, Kentucky in Africa, and the Republic of Maryland, which Liberia later annexed. However, Lincoln in 1862 described Liberia as only "in a certain sense...a success", and proposed instead that free blacks be assisted to emigrate to Chiriquí, today part of Panama.
The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered, especially those in communities of the more isolated "bush". They knew nothing of their cultures, languages, or animist religion, and were not interested in learning. The colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Encounters with tribal Africans in the bush often became violent confrontations.
In "Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia", Benjamin Dennis and Anita Dennis argue that the Americo-Liberians replicated the only society most of them knew: the racist culture of the American South. Believing themselves different from and culturally and educationally superior to the indigenous peoples, the Americo-Liberians developed as an elite minority that held on to political power. They treated the natives the way American whites had treated them: as inferiors. The natives could not vote and could not speak unless spoken to. Just as American Blacks were prohibited from marrying or having sexual relationships with white women, the natives could not marry Americo-Liberian women. Even when some natives became educated, they were excluded from government positions, except for a token few. Indigenous tribesmen did not enjoy birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904. Americo-Liberians encouraged religious organizations to set up missions and schools to educate the indigenous peoples.
On July 26, 1847, the settlers issued a Declaration of Independence and promulgated a constitution. Based on the political principles of the United States Constitution, it established the independent Republic of Liberia. The United Kingdom was the first country to recognize Liberia's independence. The United States did not recognize Liberia until 1862, after the southern states, who had significant influence in the American government, seceded from the union to form the Confederacy.
The leadership of the new nation consisted largely of the Americo-Liberians, who initially established political and economic dominance in the coastal areas that the ACS had purchased; they maintained relations with U.S. contacts in developing these areas and the resulting trade. Their passage of the 1865 Ports of Entry Act prohibited foreign commerce with the inland tribes, ostensibly to "encourage the growth of civilized values" before such trade was allowed in the region.
By 1877, the True Whig Party was the country's most powerful political entity. It was made up primarily of Americo-Liberians, who maintained social, economic and political dominance well into the 20th century, repeating patterns of European colonists in other nations in Africa. Competition for office was usually contained within the party; a party nomination virtually ensured election.
Pressure from the United Kingdom, which controlled Sierra Leone to the northwest, and France, with its interests in the north and east, led to a loss of Liberia's claims to extensive territories. Both Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast annexed territories. Liberia struggled to attract investment to develop infrastructure and a larger, industrial economy.
There was a decline in production of Liberian goods in the late 19th century, and the government struggled financially, resulting in indebtedness on a series of international loans. On July 16, 1892, Martha Ann Erskine Ricks met Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and presented her a handmade quilt, Liberia's first diplomatic gift. Born into slavery in Tennessee, Ricks said, "I had heard it often, from the time I was a child, how good the Queen had been to my people—to slaves—and how she wanted us to be free."
American and other international interests emphasized resource extraction, with rubber production a major industry in the early 20th century. In 1914 Imperial Germany accounted for three quarters of the trade of Liberia. This was a cause for concern among the British colonial authorities of Sierra Leone and the French colonial authorities of French Guinea and the Ivory Coast as tensions with Germany increased.
Liberia remained neutral during World War I until August 4, 1917, when it declared war on Germany. In 1919 Liberia attended the Versailles Peace Conference. Liberia was one of the founding members of the League of Nations when it was founded in January 1920.
In 1929 allegations of modern slavery in Liberia led the League of Nations to establish the Christy commission. Findings included government involvement in widespread "Forced or compulsory labour". Minority ethnic groups especially were exploited in a system that enriched well-connected elites. As a result of the report, President Charles D. B. King and Vice President Allen N. Yancy resigned.
In the mid-20th century Liberia gradually began to modernize with American assistance. During World War II the United States made major infrastructure improvements to support its military efforts in Africa and Europe against Germany. It built the Freeport of Monrovia and Roberts International Airport under the Lend-Lease program before its entry into the Second World War.
After the war President William Tubman encouraged foreign investment in the country. Liberia had the second-highest rate of economic growth in the world during the 1950s.
Liberia also began to take a more active role in international affairs. It was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 and became a vocal critic of the South African apartheid regime. Liberia also served as a proponent both of African independence from European colonial powers and of Pan-Africanism, and helped to fund the Organisation of African Unity.
On April 12, 1980, a military coup led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe of the Krahn ethnic group overthrew and killed President William R. Tolbert, Jr. Doe and the other plotters later executed a majority of Tolbert's cabinet and other Americo-Liberian government officials and True Whig Party members. The coup leaders formed the People's Redemption Council (PRC) to govern the country. A strategic Cold War ally of the West, Doe received significant financial backing from the United States while critics condemned the PRC for corruption and political repression.
After Liberia adopted a new constitution in 1985, Doe was elected president in subsequent elections that were internationally condemned as fraudulent. On November 12, 1985, a failed counter-coup was launched by Thomas Quiwonkpa, whose soldiers briefly occupied the national radio station. Government repression intensified in response, as Doe's troops retaliated by executing members of the Gio and Mano ethnic groups in Nimba County.
The National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, launched an insurrection in December 1989 against Doe's government with the backing of neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. This triggered the First Liberian Civil War. By September 1990, Doe's forces controlled only a small area just outside the capital, and Doe was captured and executed in that month by rebel forces.
The rebels soon split into various factions fighting one another. The Economic Community Monitoring Group under the Economic Community of West African States organized a military task force to intervene in the crisis. From 1989 to 1997 around 60,000 to 80,000 Liberians died, and by 1996 around 700,000 others had been displaced into refugee camps in neighboring countries. A peace deal between warring parties was reached in 1995, leading to Taylor's election as president in 1997.
Under Taylor's leadership, Liberia became internationally known as a pariah state due to its use of blood diamonds and illegal timber exports to fund the Revolutionary United Front in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 when Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a rebel group based in the northwest of the country, launched an armed insurrection against Taylor.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17791
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History of Liberia
Liberia is a country in West Africa which was founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of free people of color, and later former slaves, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest in accurately recorded human history. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.
In 1847, the ACS encouraged Liberia to declare independence, as the organization could no longer support the colony against territorial incursions by the neighboring British and French. The ACS as well as several northern state governments and local colonization chapters continued to provide money and emigrants as late as the 1870s. The United States declined to act on requests from the ACS to make Liberia an American colony or to establish a formal protectorate over Liberia, but it did exercise a "moral protectorate" over Liberia, intervening when European powers threatened its territory or sovereignty. As a result, eleven signatories established the Republic of Liberia on July 26, 1847, eventually electing the Virginia-born Joseph Jenkins Roberts as the nation's first president.
Liberia retained its independence throughout the Scramble for Africa by European colonial powers during the late 19th century, while remaining in the American sphere of influence. President William Howard Taft made American support a priority. From the 1920s, the economy focused on exploitation of natural resources. The rubber industry, specifically the Firestone Company, dominated the economy. Until 1980, Liberia was controlled politically by descendants of the original African-American settlers, known collectively as Americo-Liberians, who were a small minority of the population. From 1980 to 2006, the violent overthrow of the Americo-Liberian regime would lead to years of civil war that devastated the country and its economy.
Historians believe that many of the indigenous peoples of Liberia migrated there from the north and east between the 12th and 16th centuries AD. Portuguese explorers established contacts with people of the land later known as "Liberia" as early as 1462. They named the area "Costa da Pimenta" (Pepper Coast), or Grain Coast, because of the abundance of melegueta pepper, which became desired in European cooking.
In 1602 the Dutch established a trading post at Grand Cape Mount but destroyed it a year later. In 1663, the British installed trading posts on the Pepper Coast. No further known settlements by non-African colonists occurred until the arrival in 1821 of free blacks from the United States.
From around 1800, in the United States, people opposed to slavery were planning ways to achieve freedom of more slaves and, ultimately, to abolish the institution. At the same time, slaveholders in the South opposed having free blacks in their states, as they believed the free people threatened the stability of their slave societies. While they were gradually freed in the North, the former slaves and other free blacks suffered considerable social and legal discrimination. Some Northern states and territories prohibited or severely restricted entry by free people of color.
Some abolitionists, including distinguished blacks such as ship builder Paul Cuffe or Cuffee, believed that blacks should return to "the African homeland", despite many having been in the United States for generations. Cuffe's dream was that free African Americans and freed slaves "could establish a prosperous colony in Africa," one based on emigration and trade. In 1811, Cuffe founded the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a cooperative black group intended to encourage “the Black Settlers of Sierra Leone, and the Natives of Africa generally, in the Cultivation of their Soil, by the Sale of their Produce.” As historian Donald R. Wright put it, "Cuffee hoped to send at least one vessel each year to Sierra Leone, transporting African-American settlers and goods to the colony and returning with marketable African products."
The first ship, the "Elizabeth", departed New York on February 6, 1820, for West Africa carrying 86 settlers. Between 1821 and 1838, the American Colonization Society developed the first settlement, which would be known as Liberia. On July 26, 1847, Liberia declared itself a (free) sovereign nation.
As early as the period of the American Revolution, many white members of American society thought that African Americans could not succeed in living in their society as free people. Some considered blacks physically and mentally inferior to whites, and others believed that the racism and societal polarization resulting from slavery were insurmountable obstacles for integration of the races. Thomas Jefferson was among those who proposed colonization in Africa: relocating free blacks outside the new nation.
In 1787, Britain had started to resettle the black poor of London in the colony of Freetown in modern-day Sierra Leone. Many were Black Loyalists, former American slaves who had been freed in exchange for their services during the American Revolution. The Crown also offered resettlement to former slaves whom they had first resettled in Nova Scotia. The Black Loyalists there found both the discrimination and climate hard to bear. (See Black Nova Scotians.) Wealthy African-American shipowner Paul Cuffe thought that colonization was worth supporting. Aided by support from certain members of Congress and British officials, he transported 38 American blacks to Freetown in 1816 at his own expense. He died in 1817, but his private initiative helped arouse public interest in the idea of colonization.
The American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded in 1817 by Virginia politician Charles F. Mercer and Presbyterian minister Robert Finley of New Jersey. The goal of the ACS was to settle free blacks outside of the United States; its method was to help them relocate to Africa.
Starting in January 1820, the ACS sent ships from New York to West Africa. The first had 88 free black emigrants and three white ACS agents on board. The agents were to find an appropriate area for a settlement. Additional ACS representatives arrived in the . In December 1821, they acquired Cape Mesurado, a strip of land near present-day Monrovia, from the indigenous ruler King Peter (perhaps with some threat of force).
From the beginning, the colonists were attacked by indigenous peoples whose territory this was, such as the Malinké tribes. In addition, they suffered from disease, the harsh climate, lack of food and medicine, and poor housing conditions.
Until 1835, five more colonies were created by the colonization societies of five different states in the U.S. (Republic of Maryland, Kentucky-in-Africa, Mississippi in Africa, Louisiana, Liberia, and that set up by the Pennsylvania state colonization society), and one by the U.S. government in the vicinity of the ACS settlement. The first colony on Cape Mesurado was extended along the coast as well as inland, sometimes by use of force against the native tribes. In 1838 these settlements came together to create the Commonwealth of Liberia. Monrovia was named the capital. By 1842, four of the other American settlements were incorporated into Liberia, and the fifth was destroyed by indigenous people. The colonists of African-American descent became known as Americo-Liberians. Many were of mixed race, including European ancestry. They remained African Americans in their education, religion, and culture, and they did not identify with the indigenous, non-Christian peoples.
Emigrants to Liberia suffered the highest mortality rate of any country since modern record-keeping began. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia from 1820 to 1843, only 1,819 survived until 1843. The ACS knew of the high death rate, but continued to send more people to the colony. Professor Shick writes:
The ACS administrators gradually gave the maturing colony more self-governance. In 1839, it was reorganized into the Commonwealth of Liberia. In 1841, the Commonwealth's first non-white governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, was appointed by ACS's governing board. In early 1847, the ACS directed Liberian leadership to declare independence. On July 26, 1847, eleven signatories to the Liberian Declaration of Independence established the free and independent Republic of Liberia.
Between 1847 and 1980, the state of Liberia was dominated by the small minority of black colonists and their descendants, known collectively as Americo-Liberians. The Americo-Liberian minority, many of whom were mixed race African Americans, tended to marry within their group. They had established plantations and businesses, and were generally richer than the indigenous people of Liberia and exercised overwhelming political power.
Politically, Liberia was dominated by two political parties. The Americo-Liberians had limited the franchise to prevent indigenous Liberians from voting in elections. The Liberian Party (later the Republican Party), was supported primarily by mixed-race African Americans from poorer backgrounds, while the True Whig Party received much of its following from richer blacks. From the first presidential election in 1847, the Liberian Party held political dominance. It used its position of power to attempt to cripple its opposition.
In 1869, however, the Whigs won the presidential election under Edward James Roye. Although Roye was deposed after two years and the Republicans returned to government, the Whigs regained power in 1878. This party maintained power constantly afterward.
A series of rebellions among the indigenous Liberian population took place between the 1850s and 1920s. In 1854, a newly independent African-American state in the region, the Republic of Maryland, was forced by an insurgency of the Grebo and the Kru people to join Liberia. Liberia's expansion brought the colony into border disputes with French and British colonists in French Guinea and Sierra Leone, respectively. The presence and protection of the United States Navy in West Africa until 1916 prevented any military threat to Liberian territory or independence.
The social order in Liberia was dominated by a group of Americo-Liberians. Although descended from peoples of African origin, the ancestors of Americo-Liberians had been born in the United States for generations before emigrating to Africa. As a result, they held American cultural, religious, and social values. Like many Americans and Europeans of the period, the Americo-Liberian held beliefs in the religious superiority of Protestant Christianity and the cultural power of systematic oppression over indigenous animism and culture.
The Americo-Liberians created communities and social infrastructure closely based on what they knew from American society. They spoke English and built churches and houses in styles resembling those found in the southern United States. Although they never constituted more than five percent of the population of Liberia, they controlled key resources that allowed them to enslave the local native peoples, and control their access to the ocean, modern technical skills, literacy and higher levels of education, and valuable relationships with many United States institutions, including the American government.
Reflecting the system of segregation in the United States, the Americo-Liberians created a cultural and racial caste system with themselves at the top and indigenous Liberians at the bottom. They believed in a form of "racial equality" which meant that all residents of Liberia had the potential to become "civilized" through western-style education and conversion to Christianity.
During World War II thousands of indigenous Liberians migrated from the nation's rural interior to the coastal regions in search of jobs. The Liberian Government had long opposed this kind of migration, but was no longer able to restrain it. In the decades after 1945, the Liberian government received hundreds of millions of dollars of unrestricted foreign investment, which destabilized the Liberian economy. Government revenue rose enormously, but was being grossly embezzled by government officials. Growing economic disparities caused increased hostility between indigenous groups and Americo-Liberians.
The social tensions led President Tubman to enfranchise the indigenous Liberians either in 1951 or 1963 (accounts differ). Tubman and his Whig Party continued to repress political opposition, and to rig elections.
The suppression of the slave trade in West Africa by American and British navies after 1808 also produced new settlers, as these two navies would settle liberated slaves in Liberia or Sierra Leone rather than trying to return them to their homelands. In the later 19th century, Liberia had to compete economically with European colonies in Africa. The economy of Liberia was always based on the production of agricultural produce for export. In particular, Liberia's important coffee industry was destroyed in the 1870s by the emergence of production in Brazil.
New technology available in Europe increasingly drove Liberian shipping companies out of business. Although Roye's government attempted to procure funding for a railway in 1871, the plan never materialized. The first railway was not built until 1945. From the late 19th century, European powers such as the United Kingdom and Germany invested in infrastructure in their African colonies, making them more competitive in terms of getting products to market, improving communications, etc.
The national currency, the Liberian dollar, collapsed in 1907. The country was later forced to adopt the United States Dollar. The Liberian government was constantly dependent on foreign loans at high rates of exchange, which endangered the country's independence.
In 1926, Firestone, an American rubber company, started the world's largest rubber plantation in Liberia. This industry created 25,000 jobs, and rubber quickly became the backbone of the Liberian economy; in the 1950s, rubber accounted for 40 percent of the national budget. During the 1930s Liberia signed concession agreements with Dutch, Danish, German and Polish investors in what has been described as an "open door" economic policy.
Between 1946 and 1960, exports of natural resources such as iron, timber and rubber rose strongly. In 1971, Liberia had the world's largest rubber industry, and was the third largest exporter of iron ore. Since 1948, ship registration was another important source of state revenue.
From 1962 until 1980, the U.S. donated $280 million in aid to Liberia, in exchange for which Liberia offered its land free of rent for U.S. government facilities. Throughout the 1970s the price of rubber in the world commodities market was depressed, putting pressure on Liberian state finances.
After 1927, the League of Nations investigated accusations that the Liberian government forcibly recruited and sold indigenous people as contract labor or slaves. In its 1930 report the league admonished the Liberian government for "systematically and for years fostering and encouraging a policy of gross intimidation and suppression", "[suppressing] the native, prevent him from realizing his powers and limitations and prevent him from asserting himself in any way whatever, for the benefit of the dominant and colonizing race, although originally the same African stock as themselves." (see also Presidency Charles King 1920–1930). President Charles D. B. King hastily resigned.
The United States had a long history of intervening in Liberia's internal affairs, repeatedly sending naval vessels to help suppress insurrections by indigenous tribes before and after independence (in 1821, 1843, 1876, 1910, and 1915). The United States had lost interest in Liberia after 1876, and the country became closely tied to British capital. Starting in 1909, the U.S. became heavily involved in the country. By 1909, Liberia faced serious external threats to its sovereignty from the British over unpaid foreign loans and annexation of its borderlands.
In 1912 the U.S. arranged a 40-year international loan of $1.7 million, against which Liberia had to agree to four Western powers (United States, Britain, France and Germany) controlling Liberian Government revenues until 1926. American administration of the border police stabilized the frontier with Sierra Leone (part of the British Empire) and checked French ambitions to annex more Liberian territory. The American navy established a coaling station in Liberia.
President William Howard Taft made American support for Liberian independence and prosperity and reform high priorities. The major American role was training the Liberian army (known as the Liberian Frontier Force, using elite black officers from the regular United States Army. The American presence warned away European imperial powers, defeated a series of local rebellions, and helped bring in American technology to develop the resource-rich interior. Democracy was not a high priority, as the 15,000 Americano-Liberians had full control of 750,000 locals. The Krus and Greboe tribes remained highly reluctant to accept control from Monrovia, but they were not powerful enough to overcome a regime strongly supported by the United States Army and Navy. The American officers including Charles Young, Benjamin Davis, and others were skilled at training recruits, helping the government minimize corruption, and advocating loans from American corporations, while monitoring the resulting flow of funds.
Liberia remained neutral for most of World War I. It joined the war on the Allied side in 4 August 1917. After its declaration of war, Liberia expelled its resident German merchants. As they constituted the country's largest investors and trading partners, Liberia suffered economically as a result.
In 1926, the Liberian government gave a concession to the American rubber company Firestone to start the world's largest rubber plantation at Harbel, Liberia. At the same time, Firestone arranged a $5 million private loan to Liberia. In the 1930s Liberia was again virtually bankrupt. After some United States pressure, it agreed to an assistance plan from the League of Nations. As part of this plan, two key officials of the league were placed in positions to "advise" the Liberian government.
In 1942, Liberia signed a Defense Pact with the United States. Rubber was a strategically important commodity, and Liberia assured the U.S. and its allies of all the natural rubber they needed. Also, Liberia allowed the U.S. to use its territory as a bridgehead for transports of soldiers and war supplies, to construct military bases, airports, the Freeport of Monrovia, roads to the interior, etc. Many of these personnel who passed through Liberia were African-American soldiers (who at the time were in segregated army divisions) being deployed into military service in Europe. The American military presence boosted the Liberian economy; thousands of laborers descended from the interior to the coastal region. The country's huge iron ore deposits were made accessible to commerce.
The Defense Areas Agreement between the U.S. and Liberia entailed the US-financed construction of Roberts Field airport, the Freeport of Monrovia, and roads into the interior of Liberia. By the end of World War II, approximately 5,000 American troops had been stationed in Liberia. Arguments substantiating this notion are that World War II infrastructure developments did not positively affect social and political struggles in Liberia and that, decades after the development from World War II, Americo-Liberians disproportionately controlled and benefited from Liberia's growing economy and increase in foreign investment.
After World War II, the U.S. pressured Liberia to resist the expansion of Soviet influence in Africa during the Cold War. Liberian president Tubman was agreeable to this policy. Between 1946 and 1960 Liberia received some $500 million in unrestricted foreign investment, mainly from the U.S. From 1962 to 1980, the U.S. donated $280 million in aid to Liberia. In the 1970s under president Tolbert, Liberia strove for a more non-aligned and independent posture, and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and Eastern bloc countries. It also severed ties with Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, but announced it supported American involvement in the Vietnam War.
President William R. Tolbert, Jr. pursued a policy of suppressing opposition. Dissatisfaction over governmental plans to raise the price of rice in 1979 led to protest demonstrations in the streets of Monrovia. Tolbert ordered his troops to fire on the demonstrators, and seventy people were killed. Rioting ensued throughout Liberia, finally leading to a military coup d'état in April 1980. Tolbert was killed during the coup, and several of his ministers were executed soon afterwards, marking the end of Americo-Liberian domination of the country.
After a bloody overthrow of the Americo-Liberian régime by indigenous Liberians in 1980, a 'Redemption Council' took control of Liberia. Internal unrest, opposition to the new military regime, and governmental repression steadily grew, until in 1989 Liberia sank into outright tribal and civil war.
Samuel Kanyon Doe (1951–1990) was a member of the Krahn, a small ethnic group. He was a master sergeant in the Liberian army, and had trained with the U.S. Army Special Forces. On April 12, 1980, Doe led a bloody coup d'état against president Tolbert, in which Tolbert and twenty-six of his supporters were murdered. Ten days later, thirteen of Tolbert's Cabinet members were executed publicly. This ended the 133 years of Americo-Liberian political domination. Doe formed a military regime known as the People's Redemption Council (PRC). Many welcomed Doe's takeover, since the majority of the population had always been excluded from power. The PRC also for the time being tolerated a relatively free press.
Doe quickly established good relations with the United States, especially after 1981, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan took office. Reagan more than tripled Liberia's financial aid, from $20 million in 1979 to $75 million per year. This soon rose to $95 million per annum. Liberia again became an important Cold War ally of the United States. Liberia protected important U.S. facilities and investments in Africa, and countered the threatened spread of Soviet influence in the continent. Doe closed the Libyan mission in Monrovia and severed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. He agreed to modify the mutual defense pact with the U.S., allowing the U.S. staging rights at 24 hours notice to use Liberia's harbors and airports for the U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces.
Under Doe, Liberian ports were opened to American, Canadian, and European merchant ships, which brought in considerable foreign investment from shipping firms and earned Liberia a reputation as a tax haven.
Doe had to put down seven coup attempts between 1981 and 1985. In August 1981, he had Thomas Weh Syen and four other PRC members arrested and executed for allegedly conspiring against him. Doe's government then declared amnesty for all political prisoners and exiles, and released sixty political prisoners.
However, there soon were more internal rifts in the PRC. Doe became paranoid about the possibility of a counter-coup, and his government grew increasingly corrupt and repressive, banning all political opposition, shutting down newspapers, and jailing reporters. He began to systematically eliminate PRC members who challenged his authority, and to place people of his own ethnic Krahn background in key positions, which intensified popular anger. Meanwhile, the economy deteriorated precipitously. Popular support for Doe's government evaporated.
A draft constitution providing for a multiparty republic had been issued in 1983 and was approved by referendum in 1984. After the referendum, Doe staged a presidential election on October 15, 1985. Nine political parties sought to challenge Doe's National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL), but only three were allowed to take part. Prior to the election, more than fifty of Doe's opponents were murdered. Doe was ‘elected’ with 51% of the vote, but the election was heavily rigged. Foreign observers declared the elections fraudulent, and most of the elected opposition candidates refused to take their seats.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Chester Crocker testified before Congress that the election was imperfect but that at least it was a step toward democracy. He further justified his support for the election results with the claim that, in any case, all African elections were known to be rigged at that time.
In November 1985 Thomas Quiwonkpa, Doe's former second-in-command, with an estimated number 500 to 600 people, failed in an attempt to seize power; all were killed. Doe was sworn in as president on January 6, 1986. Doe then initiated crackdowns against certain tribes, such as the Gio (or Dan) and Mano, in the north, where most of the coup plotters came from. This government's mistreatment of certain ethnic groups resulted in divisions and violence among indigenous peoples, who until then had coexisted relatively peacefully.
In the late 1980s, as fiscal austerity took hold in the United States and the perceived threat of Communism declined with the waning of the Cold War, the U.S. became disenchanted with Doe's government and began cutting off critical foreign aid to Liberia. This, together with the popular opposition, made Doe's position precarious.
In the late 1980s opposition from abroad to Doe’s regime led to economic collapse. Doe had already been repressing and crushing internal opposition for some time, when in November 1985 another coup attempt against him failed. Doe retaliated against tribes such as the Gio (or Dan) and Mano in the north, where most of the coup plotters had come from. Doe's Krahn tribe began attacking other tribes, particularly in Nimba County in the northeast of Liberia, bordering on Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and on Guinea. Some Liberian northerners fled brutal treatment from the Liberian army into the Ivory Coast.
Charles Taylor, born 1948 in Arthington, Liberia, is son of a Gola mother and either an Americo-Liberian or an Afro-Trinidadian father. Taylor was a student at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S.A., from 1972 to 1977, earning a degree in economics. After the 1980 "coup d’état" he served some time in Doe's government until he was fired in 1983 on accusation of embezzling government funds. He fled Liberia, was arrested in 1984 in Massachusetts on a Liberian warrant for extradition, and jailed in Massachusetts. He escaped from jail the following year and probably fled to Libya. In 1989, while in the Ivory Coast, Taylor assembled a group of rebels into the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), mostly from the Gio and Mano tribes.
December 1989, the NPFL invaded Nimba County in Liberia. Thousands of Gio and Mano joined them, Liberians of other ethnic background as well. The Liberian army (AFL) counterattacked, and retaliated against the whole population of the region. Mid-1990, a war was raging between Krahn on one side, and Gio and Mano on the other. On both sides, thousands of civilians were massacred.
By the middle of 1990, Taylor controlled much of the country, and by June laid siege to Monrovia. In July, Yormie Johnson split off from NPFL and formed the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), based around the Gio tribe. Both NPFL and INPFL continued their siege of Monrovia.
In August 1990, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an organisation of West African states, created a military intervention force called the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) composed of 4,000 troops, to restore order. President Doe and Yormie Johnson (INPFL) agreed to this intervention, Taylor didn't.
On September 9, President Doe paid a visit to the barely established headquarters of ECOMOG in the Free Port of Monrovia. While he was at the ECOMOG headquarters, he was attacked by INPFL, taken to the INPFL's Caldwell base, tortured, and killed.
In November 1990, ECOWAS agreed with some principal Liberian players, but without Charles Taylor, on an Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) under President Dr. Amos Sawyer. Sawyer established his authority over most of Monrovia, with the help of a paramilitary police force, the 'Black Berets', under Brownie Samukai, while the rest of the country was in the hands of the various warring factions.
In June 1991, former Liberian army fighters formed a rebel group, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO). They entered western Liberia in September 1991 and gained territories from the NPFL.
In 1993, ECOWAS brokered a peace agreement in Cotonou, Benin. On 22 September 1993, the United Nations established the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) to support ECOMOG in implementing the Cotonou agreement. In March 1994, the Interim Government of Amos Sawyer was succeeded by a Council of State of six members headed by David D. Kpormakpor. Renewed armed hostilities broke out in 1994 and persisted. During the course of the year, ULIMO split into two militias: ULIMO-J, a Krahn faction led by Roosevelt Johnson, and ULIMO-K, a Mandigo-based faction under Alhaji G.V. Kromah. Faction leaders agreed to the Akosombo peace agreement in Ghana but with little consequence. In October 1994, the UN reduced its number of UNOMIL observers to about 90 because of the lack of will of combatants to honour peace agreements. In December 1994, the factions and parties signed the Accra agreement, but fighting continued. In August 1995, the factions signed an agreement largely brokered by Jerry Rawlings, Ghanaian President; Charles Taylor agreed. In September 1995, Kpormakpor’s "Council of State" was succeeded by one under the civilian Wilton G. S. Sankawulo and with the factional heads Charles Taylor, Alhaji Kromah, and George Boley in it. In April 1996, followers of Taylor and Kromah assaulted the headquarters of Roosevelt Johnson in Monrovia, and the peace accord collapsed. In August 1996, a new ceasefire was reached in Abuja, Nigeria. On September 3, 1996, Ruth Perry followed Sankawulo as chairwoman of the Council of State, with the same three militia leaders in it.
Charles Taylor won the 1997 presidential elections with 75.33 percent of the vote, while the runner-up, Unity Party leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, received a mere 9.58 percent of the vote. Accordingly, Taylor's National Patriotic Party gained 21 of a possible 26 seats in the Senate, and 49 of a possible 64 seats in the House of Representatives. The election was judged free and fair by some observers although it was charged that Taylor had employed widespread intimidation to achieve victory at the polls.
Bloodshed in Liberia did slow considerably, but it did not end. Violence kept flaring up. During his entire reign, Taylor had to fight insurgencies against his government. Suspicions were rife that Taylor continued to assist rebel forces in neighbouring countries like Sierra Leone, trading weapons for diamonds.
President Charles Taylor had fortified his power over Liberia, mostly by purging the security forces of opponents, killing opposition figures, and raising new paramilitary units that were loyal only to him or his most trusted officers. Nevertheless, he still faced a few remaining opponents in the country, mostly former warlords of the First Liberian Civil War who had kept part of their forces to protect themselves from Taylor. His most important domestic rival by early 1998 was Roosevelt Johnson, a Krahn leader and former commander of the ULIMO. After some minor armed altercations, almost all of Johnson's followers were finally killed by Taylor's security forces during a major firefight in September 1998, though Johnson himself managed to flee into the United States embassy. After one last attempt by Taylor's paramilitaries to kill him there, causing a major diplomatic incident, Johnson was evacuated to Ghana.
Some ULIMO forces reformed themselves as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), backed by the government of neighbouring Guinea. In 1999, they emerged in northern Liberia, and in April 2000 they started fighting in Lofa County in northernmost Liberia. By the spring of 2001, they were posing a major threat to the Taylor government. Liberia was now engaged in a complex three-way conflict with Sierra Leone and the Republic of Guinea.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council in March 2001 (Resolution 1343) concluded that Liberia and Charles Taylor played roles in the civil war in Sierra Leone, and therefore:
By the beginning of 2002, Sierra Leone and Guinea were supporting the LURD, while Taylor was supporting opposition factions in both countries. By supporting Sierra Leonean rebels, Taylor also drew the enmity of the British and Americans.
In 2003, other elements of the former ULIMO-factions formed another new small rebel group in the Republic of Ivory Coast, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), headed by Mr Yayah Nimley, and they emerged in the south of Liberia.
In 2002, the women in Liberia were tired of seeing their country torn apart. Organized by social worker Leymah Gbowee, women started gathering and praying in a fish market to protest the violence. They organized the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), and issued a statement of intent: "In the past we were silent, but after being killed, raped, dehumanized, and infected with diseases, and watching our children and families destroyed, war has taught us that the future lies in saying NO to violence and YES to peace! We will not relent until peace prevails."
Joined by Liberian Muslim Women's Organization, Christian and Muslim women joined forces to create Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. They wore white, to symbolize peace. They staged silent nonviolence protests and forced a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extracted a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana.
In 2003, a delegation of Liberian women went to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process. They staged a sit in outside of the Presidential Palace, blocking all the doors and windows and preventing anyone from leaving the peace talks without a resolution. Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace became a political force against violence and against their government. Their actions brought about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. As a result, the women were able to achieve peace in Liberia after a 14-year civil war and later helped bring to power the country's first female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
On March 7, 2003, the war tribunal Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) decided to summon Charles Taylor and charge him with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but they kept this decision and this charge secret until June that year.
Due to concerns over the lack of social, humanitarian and development use of industry revenue by the Liberian government, the UN Security Council enacted a 10-month embargo on timber imports from Liberia on July 7, 2003 (passed in Resolution 1478).
By mid-2003, LURD controlled the northern third of the country and was threatening the capital, MODEL was active in the south, and Taylor's government controlled only a third of the country: Monrovia and central Liberia.
On June 4, 2003, ECOWAS organized peace talks in Accra, Ghana, among the Government of Liberia, civil society, and the rebel groups LURD and MODEL. On the opening ceremony, in Taylor's presence, the SCSL revealed their charge against Taylor which they had kept secret since March, and also issued an international arrest warrant for Taylor. The SCSL indicted Taylor for “bearing the greatest responsibility” for atrocities in Sierra Leone since November 1996. The Ghanaian authorities did not attempt to arrest Taylor, declaring they could not round up a president they themselves had invited as a guest for peace talks. The same day, Taylor returned to Liberia.
June 2003, LURD began a siege of Monrovia. July 9, the Nigerian President offered Taylor safe exile in his country, if Taylor stayed out of Liberian politics. Also in July, American President Bush stated twice that Taylor “must leave Liberia”. Taylor insisted that he would resign only if American peacekeeping troops were deployed to Liberia.
August 1, 2003, the Security Council, (Resolution 1497) decided on a multinational force in Liberia, to be followed-on by a United Nations stabilization force.
ECOWAS sent troops under the banner of 'ECOMIL' to Liberia. These troops started to arrive in Liberia probably as of August 15. The U.S. provided logistical support. President Taylor resigned, and flew into exile in Nigeria. Vice-President Moses Blah replaced Taylor as interim-President.
An ECOWAS-ECOMIL force of 1000 Nigerian troops was airlifted into Liberia on August 15, to halt the occupation of Monrovia by rebel forces. Meanwhile, U.S. stationed a Marine Expeditionary Unit with 2300 Marines offshore Liberia.
On August 18, 2003, the Liberian Government, the rebels, political parties, and leaders from civil society signed the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement that laid the framework for a two-year National Transitional Government of Liberia. August 21, they selected businessman Charles Gyude Bryant as chair of the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL), effective on October 14. These changes paved the way for the ECOWAS peacekeeping mission to expand into a 3,600-strong force, constituted by Benin, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo.
On October 1, 2003, UNMIL took over the peacekeeping duties from ECOWAS. Some 3,500 West African troops were provisionally ‘re-hatted’ as United Nations peacekeepers. The UN Secretary-General commended the African Governments who have contributed to UNMIL, as well as the United States for its support to the regional force. October 14, 2003, Blah handed power to Gyude Bryant.
Fighting initially continued in parts of the country, and tensions between the factions did not immediately vanish.
But fighters were being disarmed; in June 2004, a program to reintegrate the fighters into society began; the economy recovered somewhat in 2004; by year's end, the funds for the re-integration program proved inadequate; also by the end of 2004, more than 100,000 Liberian fighters had been disarmed, and the disarmament program was ended.
In light of the progress made, President Bryant requested an end to the UN embargo on Liberian diamonds (since March 2001) and timber (since May 2003), but the Security Council postponed such a move until the peace was more secure. Because of a supposed ‘fundamentally broken system of governance that contributed to 23 years of conflict in Liberia’, and failures of the Transitional Government in curbing corruption, the Liberian government and the International Contact Group on Liberia signed onto the anti-corruption program GEMAP, starting September 2005.
The transitional government prepared for fair and peaceful democratic elections on October 11, 2005, with UNMIL troops safeguarding the peace. Twenty three candidates stood for the presidential election, with George Weah, international footballer, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and member of the Kru ethnic group, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist and finance minister, Harvard-trained economist and of mixed Americo-Liberian and indigenous descent.
In the first round, no candidate took the required majority, Weah won this round with 28% of the vote. A run-off between the top two vote getters, Weah and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was necessary.
The second round of elections took place on November 8, 2005. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won this runoff decisively. Both the general election and runoff were marked by peace and order, with thousands of Liberians waiting patiently in the Liberian heat to cast their ballots.
Sirleaf claimed victory of this round, winning 59 per cent of the vote. However, Weah alleged electoral fraud, despite international observers declaring the election to be free and fair. Although Weah was still threatening to take his claims to the Supreme Court if no evidence of fraud was found, Johnson-Sirleaf was declared winner on November 23, 2005, and took office on January 16, 2006; becoming the first African woman to do so.
In November 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed an Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) case against Bridgestone, the parent company of Firestone, alleging “forced labor", the modern equivalent of slavery, on the Firestone Plantation in Harbel. In May 2006, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) released a report: “Human Rights in Liberia’s Rubber Plantations: Tapping into the Future” which detailed the results of its investigation into the conditions on the Firestone plantation in Liberia.
Under international pressure, President Sirleaf requested in March 2006 that Nigeria extradite Charles Taylor, who was then brought before an international tribunal in Sierra Leone to face charges of crimes against humanity, arising from events during the Sierra Leone civil war (his trial was later transferred to The Hague for security purposes). In June 2006, the United Nations ended its embargo on Liberian timber (effective since May 2003), but continued its diamond embargo (effective since March 2001) until an effective certificate of origin program was established, a decision that was reaffirmed in October 2006.
In March 2007, former Interim President Bryant was arrested and charged with having embezzled government funds while in office. In August 2007, the Supreme Court of Liberia allowed the criminal prosecution for this to proceed in the lower courts. The court ruled that Bryant was not entitled to immunity as the head of state under the Constitution as he was not elected to the position and he was not acting in accordance with law when he allegedly stole US$1.3 million in property from the government.
In 2014 an Ebola virus disease epidemic struck West Africa (see Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa), and spread to Liberia in early 2014. A few initial cases grew into an Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia.
by Martin Delany
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Geography of Liberia
Liberia is a Sub-Saharan nation in West Africa located at 6 °N, 9 °W. It borders the north Atlantic Ocean to the southwest ( of coastline) and three other African nations on the other three sides, Sierra Leone to the northwest, Guinea to the northeast and Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) to the east.
In total, Liberia comprises of which is land and is water.
Liberia extends from between 4.21°N and 8.34°N to 7.27°W and 11.31°W. It is roughly rectangular measuring about in length from northwest to southeast, with a width of about . The coastline is about , including river mouths ad inlets up to one kilometre wide.
Drainage of the whole country is direct to the sea, with a series of short rivers flowing directly into the sea. These are, from west to east, the Mano River on the border with Sierra Leone, the Mafa River, the Lofa River, the Saint Paul River, the Mesurado River, the Farmington River, the Saint John River, the Timbo River, the Cestos River, the Sehnkwehn River, the Sinoe River, the Dugbe River, the Dubo River, the Grand Cess River and the Cavalla River on the border with Ivory Coast.
In the west, the coast is low and sandy, but in the central and eastern parts of the country it is sandy and rocky and of moderate relief, frequently broken by the mouths of the rivers. The coastal plain varies in width, being narrow between Monrovia and Buchanan, but being much wider in the west and in the Cestos Valley in the centre, narrowing again in the eastern end of the country.
Further inland the land rises, sometimes with escarpments, to a plateau some above sea level. This is divided by the river valleys and there are hilly ridges between some of the river valleys. The land rises further in the north and northwest of the country, with mountains that exceed in several places, the highest point in the country being in the Wologizi Range at .
This is a list of the extreme points of Liberia, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
The total length of Liberia's land borders is : with Sierra Leone on the northwest, with Guinea to the north, and with Ivory Coast. Liberia claims an Exclusive Economic Zone of and .
Liberia has a mostly hilly terrain, from rolling plains along the coast to a rolling plateau and low mountains in the northeast.
The lowest point on Liberia is at sea level on the Atlantic Ocean. The highest point on Liberia is 1,380 m above sea level at Mount Wuteve.
Natural resources that are found in Liberia include iron ore, timber, diamonds, gold and hydropower.
"arable land:"
5.2%
"permanent crops:"
2.1%
"permanent pastures:"
20.8%
"forest:"
44.6%
"other:"
27.3% (2011)
30 square kilometres of Liberia's land was irrigated as of 2012.
The natural hazard that occurs in Liberia is a dust-laden harmattan wind that blows from the Sahara (December to March).
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Demographics of Liberia
As of 2006, Liberia has the highest population growth rate in the world (4.50% per annum). 43.5% of Liberians were below the age of 15 in 2010. With recent civil wars being fought along ethnic lines, Liberia is a multiethnic and multicultural country. Diversity has always been celebrated in Liberian culture — ethnicity-based civil wars aside — in regard to cuisine, music, fashion, language and people.
According to , Liberia's total population was in . This is compared to 911,000 in 1950.
43.5% of Liberians were below the age of 15 in 2010. 53.7% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 2.8% were 65 years or older.
As of 2006, Liberia has the highest population growth rate in the world (4.50% per annum).
Registration of vital events is in Liberia not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Fertility data as of 2013 (DHS Program):
The indigenous ethnic groups of Liberia can be linguistically divided into three groups who speak;
to which must be added the immigrant communities;
The Gola ethnic group originated somewhere in central Africa. During the Empire of Ancient Ghana they were involved in the land-surveying and jurisprudence of the empire.
The other ethnic groups that fall under the Mande-Tan, Mande-Fu were also members of Ancient Ghana. Because of their influence in the judicial aspects of the Ghana, the Gola's social structure dominated through the Poro.
With the influx of Islam many groups adopted it while others resisted. The Golas fought three wars with pro-Islamic elements in a changing Ghana. These wars were known as the Kumba Wars. The Golas lost the third of these wars and were forced to retreat toward Sierra Leone. They were pursued by the Mende, Gbandi and Loma. Their battles with the Mende in Sierra Leone forced them to retreat yet again and settle finally in Liberia where they encountered the Dei.
The Kpelle, Gio, Mano, Mandingo and Vai groups migrated from the Empire of Mali for various reasons, some escaping political intrigue, others looking for a better life. The Vais, settled in Grand Cape Mount county in the west of Liberia, were the first to invent a form of writing in 1833 or 1834. The reported inventor was Dwalu Bukele of Bandakor along the Robertsport (provincial capital) highway.
In the 16th century; Kru (Tajuasohn), Bassa, Belleh, Krahn, Grebo.
In the late 19th century to early 20th century Lebanese merchants, families and businessmen began arriving in Liberia. Lebanese currently own many major businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants, textiles, construction works, factories and other production based companies across the country. Despite living in the country, Lebanese are denied citizenship rights due to Liberia's nationality law and are seen in a political view as foreigners.
According to the 2008 National Census, 85.5% of Liberia's population practices Christianity. Muslims comprise 12.2% of the population, largely coming from the Mandingo and Vai ethnic groups. The vast majority of Muslims are Malikite Sunni, with sizeable Shia and Ahmadiyya minorities. Traditional indigenous religions are practiced by 0.5% of the population, while 1.8% subscribe to no religion.
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
The following demographic are from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.
Christian 85.6%, Muslim 12.2%, Traditional 0.6%, other 0.2%, none 1.5% (2008 est.)
"at birth:"
1.03 male(s)/female
"under 15 years:"
1.02 male(s)/female
"15–64 years:"
1.01 male(s)/female
"65 years and over:"
0.96 male(s)/female
"total population:"1 male(s)/female (2018 est.)
There are officially 17 ethnic groups that make up Liberia's indigenous African population, making up maybe 95% of the total: Kpelle, the largest group; Bassa, Gio, Kru, Grebo, Mandingo, Mano, Krahn, Gola, Gbandi, Loma, Kissi, Vai, Sapo, Belleh (Kuwaa), Mende and Dey.
There are also more or less nomadic groups like the Fula, who engage mostly in trade, and the Fanti, who are often fishermen or traders of fish, usually from Ghana, living seasonally and more and more often permanently in Liberia.
Then there are Americo-Liberians, who are descendants of free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans who arrived in Liberia from 1822 onward and Congo People (descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean), making up an estimated 5% of the population. They used to dominate political life in Liberia and still have a lot of influence.
There are about 5,000 people of European descent, many of them having settled down as miners, missionaries, business people, and so on. There also is a sizeable number of Lebanese, Indians, and other people with Asian roots who make up a significant part of Liberia's business community. Because of the civil war and its accompanying problem of insecurity, the number of non-Africans in Liberia is low and confined largely to Monrovia and its immediate surroundings. The Liberian constitution restricts citizenship to people of African descent.
English 20% (official), some 20 ethnic group languages, of which a few can be written and are used in correspondence.
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.)
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Politics of Liberia
The Politics of Liberia takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic modeled on the government of the United States, whereby the President is the head of state and head of government; unlike the United States, however, Liberia is a unitary state as opposed to a federation and has a pluriform rather than the two-party system that characterizes US politics. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the legislature.
Liberia is still in transition from dictatorship and civil war to democracy. Liberia's government is based on the American model of a republic with three equal branches of government, though in reality, the President of Liberia has usually been the dominant force in Liberian politics. Following the dissolution of the Republican Party in 1876, the True Whig Party dominated the Liberian government until the 1980 coup, eventually creating what was effectively a stable, one-party state, with little politics in the usual sense. The longest-serving president in Liberian history was William Tubman, serving from 1944 until his death in 1971. The shortest term was held by James Skivring Smith, who was interim president for all of two months in 1871. However, the political process from Liberia's founding in 1847, despite widespread corruption, was very stable until the end of the First Republic in 1980.
This situation changed abruptly in 1980, with the revolt against the Americo-Liberians and their True Whig Party. Currently, no party has majority control of the legislature.
Between 1980 and 2006, Liberia was governed by a series of military and transitional governments. The president of the last of these, Charles Taylor, was forced to step down in 2003, and the United Nations installed a transitional government. Elections to select a government to replace the transitional government took place in October and November 2005. ("see 2005 Liberian general election").
In the 1980s, Samuel K. Doe's government increasingly adopted an ethnic outlook as members of his Krahn ethnic group soon dominated political and military life in Liberia. This caused a heightened level of ethnic tension leading to frequent hostilities between the politically and militarily dominant Krahns and other ethnic groups in the country.
Political parties remained banned until 1984. Elections were held on 15 October 1985 in which Doe's National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL) was declared the winner. The elections were characterized by widespread fraud and rigging. The period after the elections saw increased human rights abuses, corruption, and ethnic tensions. The standard of living, which had been rising in the 1970s, declined drastically.
On 12 November 1985, former Army Commanding General Thomas Quiwonkpa invaded Liberia by way of neighboring Sierra Leone and almost succeeded in toppling the government of Samuel Doe. Members of the Krahn-dominated Armed Forces of Liberia repelled Quiwonkpa's attack and executed him in Monrovia.
On 24 December 1989, a small band of rebels led by Doe's former procurement chief, Charles Taylor invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast. Taylor and his National Patriotic Front rebels rapidly gained the support of Liberians because of the repressive nature of Samuel Doe and his government. Barely six months after the rebels first attacked, they had reached the outskirts of Monrovia.
The First and Second Liberian Civil War, which was one of Africa's bloodiest, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and further displaced a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened and succeeded in preventing Charles Taylor from capturing Monrovia. Prince Johnson who had been a member of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) but broke away because of policy differences, formed the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL). Johnson's forces captured and killed Doe on 9 September 1990.
An Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) was formed in Gambia under the auspices of ECOWAS in October 1990 and Dr. Amos Sawyer became President. Taylor refused to work with the interim government and continued war.
By 1992, several warring factions had emerged in the Liberian civil war, all of which were absorbed in the new transitional government. After several peace accords and declining military power, Taylor finally agreed to the formation of a five-man transitional government.
After considerable progress in negotiations conducted by the United States, United Nations, Organization of African Unity, and the Economic Community of West African States, disarmament and demobilization of warring factions were hastily carried out and special elections were held on 19 July 1997 with Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Party emerging victorious. Taylor won the election by a large majority, primarily because Liberians feared a return to war had Taylor lost.
Unrest continued, and by 2003, two rebel groups were challenging Taylor's control of the country. In August 2003, Taylor resigned and fled the country and vice-president Moses Blah became acting president. On 18 August 2003, the warring parties signed the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement which marked the political end of the conflict.
The international community again intervened and helped set up a transitional government (National Transitional Government of Liberia) which was led by Gyude Bryant until the Liberian general election of 2005.
For more than a year, over 9,000 census-takers combed the densely forested nation mapping every structure. For three days starting 21 March 2008, they revisited each dwelling and counted the inhabitants.
The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term (renewable). The cabinet is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Liberia has a bicameral Legislature that consists of the Senate (30 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve nine-year terms) and the House of Representatives (73 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve six-year terms)
There is a Supreme Court, criminal courts, and appeals court and magistrate courts in the counties. There also are traditional courts and lay courts in the counties. Trial by ordeal is practiced in various parts of Liberia.
The basic unit of local government is the town chief. There are clan chiefs, paramount chiefs, and district commissioners. The counties are governed by superintendents appointed by the President. There are fifteen counties in Liberia.
ACP,
AfDB,
CCC,
ECA,
ECOWAS,
FAO,
G-77,
IAEA,
IBRD,
ICAO,
ICFTU,
ICRM,
IDA,
IFAD,
IFC,
IFRCS,
ILO,
IMF,
IMO,
Inmarsat,
Intelsat (nonsignatory user),
Interpol,
IOC,
IOM,
ITU,
NAM,
OAU,
OPCW,
UN,
UNCTAD,
UNESCO,
UNIDO,
UPU,
WCL,
WFTU,
WHO,
WIPO,
WMO
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Economy of Liberia
The economy of Liberia is extremely underdeveloped, largely due to the First Liberian Civil War from 1989–96. Liberia itself is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world.
Until 1979, Liberia's economy was among the more developed and fastest-growing in Sub-Saharan Africa, but after the 1980 coup d'état, it declined, and the civil war destroyed much of Liberia's economy and infrastructure, especially the infrastructure in and around the nation's capital, Monrovia. The war also caused a brain drain and the loss of capital, as the civil war involved overthrowing the Americo-Liberian minority that ruled the country. Some have returned since 1997, but many have not.
Richly endowed with water, mineral resources, forests, and a climate favorable to agriculture, but poor in human capital, infrastructure, and stability, Liberia has a fairly typical profile for Sub-Saharan African economies – the majority of the population is reliant on subsistence agriculture, while exports are dominated by raw commodities such as rubber and iron ore. Local manufacturing, such as it exists, is mainly foreign-owned.
The democratically elected government, installed in August 1997, inherited massive international debts and currently relies on revenues from its maritime registry to provide the bulk of its foreign exchange earnings. The restoration of the infrastructure and the raising of incomes in this ravaged economy depend on the implementation of sound macro- and microeconomic policies of the new government, including the encouragement of foreign investment.
In 1926, the Liberian government gave the Firestone Tire company the right to lease up to 1 million acres of land for 99 years at a cost of 6 cents per acre. Firestone then set about establishing rubber tree plantations of the non-native South American rubber tree, "Hevea brasiliensis" in the country. By the 1950s, the company was Liberia's largest private employer and also its largest exporter. Today, Firestone's rubber plantation in Liberia is the world's largest contiguous rubber plantation, operated by the Firestone (now Bridgestone) subsidiary, the Firestone Natural Rubber Company.
The Liberian economy had relied heavily on the mining of iron ore prior to the civil war. Liberia was a major exporter of iron ore on the world market. In the 1970s and 1980s, iron mining accounted for more than half of Liberia's export earnings. Since the coup d'état of 1980, the country's economic growth rate has slowed down because of a decline in the demand for iron ore on the world market and political upheavals in Liberia.
Following a peak in growth in 1979, the Liberian economy began a steady decline due to economic mismanagement following the 1980 coup. This decline was accelerated by the outbreak of civil war in 1989; GDP was reduced by an estimated 90% between 1989 and 1995, one of the fastest declines in history.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Liberia in May 2001 for its support to the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in neighboring Sierra Leone. These sanctions have been lifted following elections in 2005.
Upon the end of the war in 2003, GDP growth began to accelerate, reaching 9.4% in 2007. The global financial crisis slowed GDP growth to 4.6% in 2009, though a strengthening agricultural sector led by rubber and timber exports increased growth to 5.1% in 2010 and an expected 7.3% in 2011, making the economy one of the 20 fastest growing in the world.
In March 2010, Bob Johnson, founder of BET, funded the first hotel constructed in Liberia in 20 years. The luxury resort was built in the Paynesville section of Monrovia.
Liberia's external debt was estimated in 2006 at approximately $4.5 billion, 800% of GDP. As a result of bilateral, multilateral and commercial debt relief from 2007 to 2010, the country's external debt fell to $222.9 million by 2011.
Liberia's business sector is largely controlled by foreigners mainly of Lebanese and Indian descent. There also are limited numbers of Chinese engaged in agriculture. The largest timber concession, Oriental Timber Corporation (OTC), is Indonesian owned. There also are significant numbers of West Africais engaged in cross-border trade. Legal monopolies are possible; for example, Cemenco holds a monopoly on cement production.
Unlike almost all other countries in the world, Liberia has not adopted the metric system as its primary system of measurement.
Timber and rubber are Liberia's main export items since the end of the war. Liberia earns more than $100 million and more than $70 million annually from timber and rubber exports, respectively.
Alluvial diamond and gold mining activities also account for some economic activity. In recent years (2005 - 2012), foreign investment from ArcelorMittal Steel, BHP Biliton, and China Union is aiding the revitalization of the iron-ore mining sector.
Liberia has begun exploration for offshore oil; unproven oil reserves may be in excess of one billion barrels. The government divided its offshore waters into 17 blocks and began auctioning off exploration licenses for the blocks in 2004, with further auctions in 2007 and 2009. An additional 13 ultra-deep offshore blocks were demarcated in 2011 and planned for auction. Among the companies to have won licenses are Repsol YPF, Chevron Corporation, and Woodside Petroleum.
Liberia maintains an open maritime registry, meaning that owners of ships can register their vessels as Liberian with relatively few restrictions. This has meant that Liberian ship registration is usually understood as the employment of a flag of convenience. Liberia has the second-largest maritime registry in the world behind Panama, with 4,300 vessels registered under its flag accounting for 12% of ships worldwide. This includes 35% of the world's tanker fleet. Liberia earned more than $18 million from its maritime program in 2000.
Liberia has relied heavily on vast amounts of foreign assistance, particularly from the United States, Sweden, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the People's Republic of China, and Romania. But because of the Liberian Government's perceived disregard for human rights, foreign assistance to Liberia has declined drastically.
The Republic of China (Taiwan) and Libya are currently the largest donors of direct financial aid to the Liberian Government. Significant amounts of aid continue to come in from Western countries through international aid agencies and non-governmental organizations, avoiding direct aid to the government.
Communications in Liberia is the press, radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet. There are six major newspapers in Liberia, and 45% of the population has a mobile phone service. Also, the radio stations in Liberia are abundant to the extent that there are over 70 radio stations in the entire country (Liberia). As for Montserrado County, there exist about 30 radio stations.
Even as it struggles with economic and political constraints, Liberia's media environment is expanding. The number of registered newspapers and radio stations (many of them community stations) is on the rise despite limited market potential. And politically critical content and investigative pieces do get published or broadcast.
Formal electricity services are solely provided by the state-owned Liberia Electricity Corporation, which operates a small grid almost exclusively in the Greater Monrovia District. The vast majority of electric energy services is provided by small privately owned generators. At $0.54 per kWh, the electricity tariff in Liberia is among the highest in the world. Total installed capacity in 2013 was 20 MW, a sharp decline from a peak of 191 MW in 1989.
Liberia is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). With Guinea and Sierra Leone, it formed the Mano River Union (MRU) for development and the promotion of regional economic integration. The MRU became all but defunct because of the Liberian civil war which spilled over into neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.
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Mass media in Liberia
Mass media in Liberia include the press, radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Much of Liberia's communications infrastructure was destroyed or plundered during the two civil wars (1989-1996 and 1999-2003). With low rates of adult literacy and high poverty rates, television and newspaper use is limited, leaving radio as the predominant means of communicating with the public.
Even as it struggles with economic and political constraints, Liberia's media environment is expanding. The number of registered newspapers and radio stations (many of them community stations) is on the rise despite limited market potential. And politically critical content and investigative pieces do get published or broadcast.
The main newspapers are:
Defunct newspapers and magazines include:
The fixed line infrastructure of Liberia was nearly completely destroyed during the civil wars (1989-1996 and 1999-2003).
Prior to the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 2007, the state-owned Liberia Telecommunications Corporation (LIBTELCO) held a legal monopoly for all fixed line services in Liberia, and remains the sole licensed fixed line telephone service provider in the country.
Four licensed GSM cellular mobile service providers operate in the country: Lonestar Cell, CellCom, LiberCell, and Comium. Approximately 45% of the population has cell phone service.
While Liberia's commercial internet sector is still behind the majority of African countries there are still a few classifieds sites:
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms.
The constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. Libel and national security laws place some limits on freedom of speech. Individuals can generally criticize the government publicly or privately without reprisal. Some journalists practice self-censorship.
The constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice.
President Sirleaf endorsed and signed the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers' Declaration of Table Mountain in Monrovia on 21 July 2012, committing to the core principles of a free press and calling for the repeal of the criminal defamation and insult laws regularly used against journalists.
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Transport in Liberia
Transport in Liberia consist of railways, highways, seaports and airports.
Historically, three railways were built in Liberia to export ore from mines; they were damaged during civil war. In 2010, only the Bong mine railway was operational but the Lamco Railway was at least partially rebuilt by Arcelor Mittal and put back into service in 2011. There are no rail connections with other countries, although there has been a proposal to extend the Bong mine railway to serve a mine across the border in Guinea.
"Total:"
10,600 km (6,586 mi) (there is major deterioration on all highways due to heavy rains and lack of maintenance)
"Paved:"
657 km (408 mi)
"Unpaved:"
9,943 km (6,178 mi) (2018)
When construction and reconstruction of roads in Liberia is complete, the Trans–West African Coastal Highway will cross the country, connecting it to Freetown (Sierra Leone), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), and eventually to 11 other nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Liberia is an international flag of convenience for freight shipping.
"Total:"
3,321 ships (1,000 GT or over)
"Ships by type:"
barge carrier 1086, container ship 834, general cargo 130, oil tanker 723, other 548 (2018)
20 (2017)
The main international airport in the country is Roberts International Airport.
"Total:"
2
"Over 3,047 m (10,000 ft):"
1
"1,524 to 2,437 m (5,000 to 8,000 ft):"
1 (2017)
"Total:"
27
"1,524 to 2,437 m (5,000 to 8,000 ft):"
5
"914 to 1,523 m (3,000 to 4,999 ft):"
8
"Under 914 m (3,000 ft):"
14 (2013)
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Armed Forces of Liberia
The Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) are the armed forces of the Republic of Liberia. Tracing its origins to a militia that was formed by the first black colonists in what is now Liberia, it was founded as the Liberian Frontier Force in 1908, and retitled in 1956. For almost all of its history, the AFL has received considerable materiel and training assistance from the United States. For most of the 1941–89 period, training was largely provided by U.S. advisers, though this assistance has not prevented the same generally low levels of effectiveness common to most of the armed forces in the developing world.
For most of the Cold War, the AFL saw little action, apart from a reinforced company group which was sent to ONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1960s. This changed with the advent of the First Liberian Civil War in 1989. The AFL became entangled in the conflict, which lasted from 1989 to 1996–97, and then the Second Liberian Civil War, which lasted from 1999 to 2003.
As of 2014, the AFL consists of two infantry battalions, a Service Support Company, a Military Police Company, a Logistics Command, and the Liberian National Coast Guard. For several years after the war, a Nigerian Army officer served as head of the armed forces. After President Weah was elected, Prince C. Johnson III became Chief of Staff, promoted to Major General, and Geraldine George Deputy Chief of Staff, promoted to Brigadier General.
The New National Defense Act of 2008 was approved on August 21, 2008. It repeals the National Defense Act of 1956, the Coast Guard Act of 1959, and the Liberian Navy Act of 1986. The duties and functions of the AFL are officially stated as follows:
The modern Armed Forces of Liberia grew out of a militia that was formed by the first black colonists from the United States. The militia was first formed when in August 1822 an attack was feared on Cape Mesurado (where Monrovia now is) and the agent of the settlements directed the mobilization of all "able-bodied males into a militia and declared martial law." By 1846, the size of the militia had grown to two regiments. Following independence in 1847, the militia continued to serve as the country's defense force. In 1900, Liberian men between the ages of sixteen and fifty were considered liable for service in the militia. The militia also had a navy consisting of two small gunboats. In the 1850s, the Liberian president requested naval support from the British government to transport Liberian troops to the Gallinas territory to punish Liberians there who persisted in slave trafficking.
On February 6, 1908, the militia was established on a permanent basis as the 500-strong Liberian Frontier Force (LFF). The LFF's original mission was "to patrol the border in the Hinterland [against British and French territorial ambitions] and to prevent disorders." The LFF was initially placed under the command of a British major, who was quickly replaced after he complained the Force was not being properly paid.
In 1912, the United States established military ties with Liberia by sending some five black American officers to help reorganize the force. The LFF in its early years was frequently recruited by inducing men from the interior forcibly. When dispatched to the interior to quell tribal unrest, units often lived off the areas that they were pacifying, as a form of communal punishment. The Force's officers were drawn from either the coastal aristocracy or tribal elites.
Liberia joined the Allies in both World War I and World War II. The only troops dispatched overseas were a few individuals to France during World War I, and Liberian volunteers under the command of the United States during World War II. During World War II, U.S. involvement in the country increased greatly. To guarantee a steady supply of rubber from the world's largest rubber plantation, operated at Harbel by the Firestone Company since 1926, the US government built roads throughout the country, created an international airport (known as Robertsfield), and transformed the capital by building a deep water port (the Freeport of Monrovia). During the war, funding provided by the United States allowed an increase in the Force's strength to around 1,500. The armed forces came to rely almost exclusively on American assistance in terms of training, with non-US training "tend[ing] to be brief and uninspired [with little] accomplished other than some desultory close-order drill."
As a result of American arms sales, by the 1920s Liberian forces were equipped with the American Krag and Peabody rifles, as well as German Mausers.
U.S. forces also established an officer candidate school during the later part of the war, using instructors selected from the American troops in the country. The school conducted two courses and graduated nearly 300 new officers. Just under twenty years later in 1964, the group still made up over 50% of the officer corps of the AFL.
From 1945 to 1964, the officers appointed were nearly all college graduates. From 1951, there was a US military mission based in Liberia to assist in training the AFL. A Reserve Officers' Training Corps was established in 1956 with units at the University of Liberia in Monrovia and the Booker Washington Institute in Kakata. By 1978 the program had been redesignated the Army Student Training Program (ASTP) and had a total of 46 students at the University of Liberia, the Booker Washington Institute, and three smaller institutions. However it was not until the late 1960s that the Tubman Military Academy was established in Todee District, upper Montserrado County, as an officer training facility.
The LFF was renamed as the Armed Forces of Liberia under the Amended National Defense Law of 1956, though other sources say 1962, which appears to have been the date the land force became the Liberian National Guard. From this period, Liberia's armed forces consisted of the Liberian National Guard, the Liberian Militia, whose ostensible structure is depicted below, and the Liberian Coast Guard. Until 1980, by law every able-bodied male between the ages of 16 and 45 years was to serve in the militia, though this stipulation was not enforced.
In 1957, Armed Forces Day was designated. Speaking in 2012, the Jonathan B. B. Hart, the Bishop of the Espicopal Church of Liberia recalled that on Jan 26, 1957, the Liberian Legislature set aside Armed Forces Day as Feb 11, 1957, "the day we remembered the mutiny that was started in 1909." The bishop said that in 1909, "the army was put together under the name Frontier Force and one year after, it was established that it should be called the Liberian Frontier Force but with a foreign commander. He recalled how the Sierra Leoneans were sent to Liberia to take over the army by the British government because it had given Liberia a loan." .. "The Sierra Leonean commanders took orders from the British government and not the President of Liberia, then Arthur Barclay. When they began to misbehave, the army was turned over to a Liberian who refused. It was during that time that some soldiers took to the streets in demand of salary arrears, so soldiers getting in the streets.. in demand of salary is not new."
At the start of the 1960s, Liberia dispatched troops, including a movement control unit, to support ONUC during the Congo Crisis, and were airlifted into the Congo by the United States Air Force. The Liberian troops were initially in Équateur province. In 1961, during their first combat action in country, 300 Liberian troops repelled an attack by 5,000 Baluba tribesmen and their European officers.
The National Guard was not a high status force: "It was a skeleton brigade of soldiers who were predominantly from the lower economic and social stratum of society. They were poorly paid, and had less than decent facilities for accommodation and care." Despite this, a Liberian company, designated the Reinforced Security Company, was contributed to the United Nations Operation in the Congo in the early 1960s. Six rotations were made. The 1964 US Army Area Handbook described the company's actions as "...After a poor start, the performance of the contingent improved steadily; the last company, which returned home in May 1963, had performed creditably and, by its conduct and appearance, gave the impression of being a well-trained and disciplined military organization."
Liebenow writes that the head of the National Guard was arrested, along with others, in February 1963, to forestall an alleged coup, and that Tubman had announced that following the labour strikes of 1966, a foreign power had attempted to bribe army officers to stage a coup. In addition, Albert T. White, Commanding Officer of the LNG, was 'rusticated' by Tubman to become the Superintendent of Grand Gedeh in 1966, though he was later 'rehabilitated'.
In 1964 the US Army Area Handbook described the National Guard as 3,000 strong with a headquarters company, the Executive Mansion Guard Battalion in Monrovia, three infantry battalions and one engineer battalion (which was newly formed at Camp Naama in 1962 and only had one company organized). The three infantry battalions were the 1st Infantry Battalion, at Camp Schiefflin, situated on the airport road between Monrovia and Roberts International Airport, the 2nd Infantry Battalion, HQ at Barclay Training Center (BTC), Monrovia, and the 3rd Infantry Battalion, HQ at Baworobo, Maryland County.
By 1978, the LNG Brigade had been established and the Brigade was described as comprising a Headquarters and Headquarters Company at the Barclay Training Center, Monrovia, the Executive Mansion Guard Battalion on Capitol Hill, Monrovia, the Engineer Battalion and the First Field Artillery Battalion (both at Camp Jackson, Naama) two tactical combat battalions (the First Infantry Battalion, at Schiefflin and the Second Infantry Battalion which in the intervening period had moved from the BTC to Camp Tolbert, Todee) and three non-tactical battalions, tasked with providing guard services to government officials, tax collection, and 'other non-military duties'.
The Third Infantry Battalion covered Montserrado, Grand Cape Mount, and Grand Bassa counties from BTC. The Fourth Infantry Battalion covered Grand Gedeh, Sinoe County and Maryland counties from Camp Whisnant, Zwedru. The Fifth Infantry Battalion was at Gbarnga.
Other field units of the brigade were the Armoured Unit, at Camp Ram Rod, Paynesward City (possibly Paynesville), Monrovia, and the Bella Yella Special Detachment, Camp Bella Yella, Lofa. The Service Support Battalion was located at BTC, and comprised the Medical Company, the Brigade Band, the Brigade Special Unit (a parade unit) and the Military Police Unit. Also at BTC was the Logistical Command, consisting of a depot, arsenal (whose location had been declared unsafe), the AFL Quartermaster Corps, and the AFL Transportation Company. Strength was reported to be 4,822 in 1978.
While militia service was compulsory by law for all eligible males, the law was only enforced in a lax manner. From the mid-1960s, and in its later years, members of the militia met only quarterly for sparsely attended drill practice. Estimates of men enrolled over the years vary. The 1964 US Army Area Handbook said that "some 20,000 men are estimated to be enrolled." The IISS estimated militia numbers at 5,000 in 1967 and 6,000 in 1970.
By the early 1970s the militia reported a strength of some 4,000 poorly trained and ill-equipped men. The 1978 Annual Report of the Liberian Ministry of National Defense said that "The various militia regiments, in accordance with the law, held quarterly parades. ...Furthermore, the entire Regiments were out in full strength during burial occasions." By the time it was disbanded in 1980, the militia was considered to be completely ineffective as a military force.
The armed forces' third arm, the Liberian National Coast Guard, was established in 1959. Throughout the Tubman period the coastguard was little more than a few sometimes unserviceable patrol craft manned by ill-trained personnel, though its training improved in the 1980s to the point where it was considered the best trained of the armed services.
From 1952 onwards, Chiefs of Staff of the AFL included Major General Alexander Harper (1952–54), Lieutenant General Abraham Jackson (1954–60), Albert T. White (1964–65), Lieutenant General George T. Washington (late 1960s), Lieutenant General Henry Johnson (1970–74), Lieutenant General Franklin Smith, and Lieutenant General Henry Dubar (1980–1990).
When William Tolbert replaced the long-serving William Tubman as President in 1971, he retired more than 400 aging soldiers. Sawyer comments that "retired soldiers were replaced by young recruits from urban areas, many of whom were then poorly trained at the Tubman Military Academy. This development dramatically changed the character of the military in Liberia." (Samuel Doe was among this group.) Amos Sawyer also comments that "recruitment of such individuals for the military was part of Tolbert's efforts to replace aging, illiterate soldiers with younger, literate men who were capable of absorbing technical and professional training."
The AFL became involved in politics when seventeen soldiers launched a coup on April 12, 1980. The group was made up of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, two staff sergeants, four sergeants, eight corporals, and two privates. They found President Tolbert sleeping in his office in the Executive Mansion and there they killed him. While then-Sergeant Thomas Quiwonkpa led the plotters, it was the group led by Samuel Doe that found Tolbert in his office, and it was Doe, as a master sergeant the highest ranking of the group, who went on the radio the next day to announce the overthrow of the long-entrenched True Whig Party government.
Doe became Head of State and co-chair of the new People's Redemption Council government. Quiwonkpa became commander of the army and the other co-chair of the PRC. (In the aftermath of the coup, the title of LNG Brigade commanding general was confusingly changed to commanding general of the AFL, reporting to the chief of staff, and it was this position that Quiwonkpa inherited.)
Henry Dubar (who had helped recruit Doe personally years before) was promoted in one leap from captain to lieutenant general as Chief of Staff. From 1980 onward, Doe's systematic promotion of ethnic Krahn to sensitive posts in the government and military, began to drive deepening divisions within the AFL, among others with Quiwonkpa's Gio tribe, and to hamper morale.
"... Military discipline was an early casualty of the coup. The revolt had been an enlisted men's affair, and one of the first instructions broadcast over the radio had ordered soldiers not to obey their officers. Over four years later, according to observers, the reluctance of most officers to impose discipline had combined with the unwillingness of more than a few enlisted men to accept it."
The launch of Doe's coup meant that Major William Jarbo, another soldier with political ambitions who was said to have excellent connections to U.S. security officials, had had his takeover plans forestalled. He tried to escape abroad but was hunted down and killed by the new government. The junta started to split in 1983, with Doe telling Quiwonkpa that he was planning to move Quiwonkpa from command of the army to a position as secretary-general of the People's Redemption Council. Unhappy with this proposed change, Quiwonkpa fled into exile in late 1983, along with his aide-de-camp Prince Johnson.
In 1984 the AFL included the Liberian National Guard (LNG) Brigade and related units (6,300 men), and the Liberian National Coast Guard (about 450 men). The brigade, formed between 1964 and 1978, was based at the Barclay Training Center (BTC) in Monrovia, and was composed of six infantry battalions, a military engineer battalion (which circa 1974 under the command of Colonel Robert M. Blamo completed an airstrip at Belefania Town), a field artillery battalion (the First Field Artillery Battalion, reportedly at Camp Naama in Bong County) and a support battalion.
Three of the infantry units—the First Infantry Battalion, stationed at Camp Schieffelin, the Second Infantry Battalion at Camp Todee in northern Montserrado County, and the Sixth Infantry Battalion at Bomi Hills—were tactical elements designed to operate against hostile forces. The other battalions, the Third Infantry Battalion based at the Barclay Training Centre in Monrovia, the Fourth Infantry Battalion at Zwedru in Grand Gedeh County, and the Fifth Infantry Battalion at Gbarnga in Bong County served mostly as providers of personnel for non-military duties. Soldiers in these units were used extensively as policemen, customs and immigration officials, and as tax collectors.
In the aftermath of the rigged elections of 1985, which Doe manipulated to solidify his power, Quiwonkpa returned from his U.S. exile to enter Liberia from Sierra Leone. On November 12, 1985 he entered Monrovia with a group of dissident soldiers, took over the national Liberia Broadcasting System radio station and announced that the 'National Patriotic Forces of Liberia' had seized power. Adekeye says that Quiwonkpa erred in 'fail[ing] to establish control over the country's communications system and resisted a frontal attack on the Executive Mansion.'
These mistakes allowed Doe the time to rally the Krahn-dominated Executive Mansion Guard and 1st Infantry Battalion from Camp Schiefflin to reestablished control. Quiwonkpa was captured, killed, and mutilated, his body being dismembered and parts eaten. In the aftermath of the attempted coup, purges took place in Monrovia and in Nimba County, Quiwonkpa's home, against those who had rejoiced after the coup announcement. As many as 1,500 people may have been killed. The AFL was purged of Gio soldiers.
Under Samuel Doe the Coast Guard was retitled the Liberian Navy in 1986 through the passage of The Liberian Navy Act of 1986. The Aviation Unit was founded in 1970 with the delivery of three Cessna U-17C light aircraft. An Aviation Unit aircraft crashed at Spriggs-Payne in 1984. In 1985 it operated three fixed-wing aircraft from Spriggs Payne Airport in Monrovia, including Cessna 172s. Their duties included reconnaissance and transport of light cargo and VIPs. The Aviation Unit was expanded in the 1980s with the delivery of more Cessna aircraft: three 172s, a 206, 207 and two single engined turboprop 208s.
The Liberian Air Force was established from the Aviation Unit by an Act of Legislature on August 12, 1987. Its statutory responsibilities were to: protect and defend the air space of the Republic of Liberia; protect lives and properties; provide air mobility for military and civil personnel; assist in search and rescue operations; undertake emergency operations; conduct reconnaissance patrols; participate in joint military operations and perform other duties as may be designated by the Ministry of Defense. The LAF was to be headed by a colonel in his capacity as Assistant Chief of Defense Staff for the Air Force and was mandated to do the following: to train personnel and develop doctrine; advise the Chief of Staff of the AFL on matters relating to the Air Force.
In 1989 two refurbished DHC-4 Caribou, a single Piper Aztec light twin and three IAI Arava STOL twins were delivered.
Charles Taylor invaded the country at Butuo in Nimba County on Christmas Eve 1989 with a force of around 150 men, initiating the First Liberian Civil War. Doe responded by sending two AFL battalions to Nimba in December 1989 – January 1990, under then-Colonel Hezekiah Bowen. The Liberian government forces assumed that most of the Mano and Gio peoples in the Nimba region were supporting the rebels. They thus acted in a very brutal and scorched-earth fashion which quickly alienated the local people. Taylor's support rose rapidly, as the Mano and Gio flocked to his National Patriotic Front of Liberia seeking revenge. Many government soldiers deserted, some to join the NPFL. The inability of the AFL to make any headway was one of the reasons why Doe changed his field commander in the area five times in the first six months of the war.
Field commanders apparently included Brigadier General Edward Smith. By May 1990 the AFL had been forced back to Gbarnga, still under the control of Bowen's troops, but they lost the town to a NPFL assault by the end of May 1990, at which time the NPFL also captured Buchanan on the coast. The NPFL had now gathered an estimated 10,000 fighters while the AFL, splintering, could only summon 2,000.
The revolt reached Monrovia by July 1990, and General Dubar left the country for exile in the United States. In place of Dubar, Brigadier General Charles Julu, former commander of the Executive Mansion Guard Battalion, was appointed Chief of Staff. Two Liberian Coast Guard vessels were sunk in the battles for the city. The NPFL had been distributing weapons to Gio civilians after it arrived in Nimba, where many were very interested in taking their revenge on the government after Doe had punished Nimba country for its support of Quiwonkpa in 1983 and 1985.
By July 1990 the government began to distribute weapons to civilians in turn, to Krahn and Mandingo who wished to protect themselves. These hastily enlisted civilians became known as '1990 soldiers.' A '1990 soldier' which the President had personally picked, Tailey Yonbu, led a massacre of refugees, mostly Gio and Mandingo civilians, on the night of July 29/30, 1990 at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Sinkor, Monrovia. Some 600 were killed. Because of the previous ethnic purges carried out by Doe's forces, the conflict took on characteristics of an ethnic pogrom.
In August 1990 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) despatched a peacekeeping force, ECOMOG, to Liberia. The force arrived at the Freeport of Monrovia on August 24, 1990, landing from Nigerian and Ghanaian vessels. By the time ECOMOG arrived, Prince Johnson's INPFL and Taylor's NPFL were fighting on the outside bounds of the port. A series of peacemaking conferences in regional capitals followed. There were meetings in Bamako in November 1990, Lome in January 1991, and Yamoussoukro in June–October 1991. The first seven peace conferences, including the Yamoussoukro I-IV processes and the Carter Center negotiation leading to the Cotonou Accords, failed due to lack of agreement between the warring factions. The NPFL launched an assault on Monrovia in 1992, which they named 'Operation Octopus.' The civil war lasted until the Abuja Accords of August 1996.
The AFL was confined to an enclave around the capital during the conflict, and did not play a significant part in the fighting. Elections in July 1997 finally brought Taylor to power. Under the accords, which led to a break in fighting in 1996 and the Liberian general election, 1997, ECOMOG was to retrain a new national army based on fair ethnic and geographical representation. Yet Taylor denied ECOMOG any role in the restructuring of the AFL, and the force eventually left Liberia by the end of 1998.
During the 1990–99 period, Chiefs of Staff included Lieutenant Colonel Davis S. Brapoh, Lieutenant General Hezekiah Bowen (later Minister of Defense), Lieutenant General A.M.V. Doumuyah, and Lieutenant General Kalilu Abe Kromah, appointed during the interim rule of the Council of State in 1996, who was chief of staff from May 1996 to April 1997. Following Kromah, Lieutenant General Prince C. Johnson was appointed, who died in October 1999 following a car accident.
Shortly after the induction of Taylor as elected president of Liberia in August 1997, the Ministry of National Defense determined that the strength of the AFL had risen during the war from 6,500 to 14,981 service members. To begin demobilization, the AFL Chief of Staff published Special Orders No. 1 on January 1, 1998, demobilizing and retiring 2,250 personnel. The demobilization process was delayed and badly managed, and only on April 22, 1998 did payments began to be issued to the demobilizing personnel, without prior explanation of what exactly the payments represented.
Demonstrations and protests by the demobilized personnel eventually led to a riot in which three died on May 5, 1998. As a result, Taylor authorised the formation of a commission to submit recommendations on how the AFL should be reorganized. The commission, led by Blamoh Nelson, Director of the Cabinet, submitted its report on December 17, 1998, recommending a 6,000-strong armed forces (5,160 Army, 600 Navy, and 240 Air Force) but the proposal was never implemented.
Instead Taylor ran down the Armed Forces, letting go 2,400–2,600 former personnel, many of whom were Krahn brought in by former President Doe, in December 1997 – January 1998, and building up instead the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), the Special Operations Division of the Liberian National Police, and the Special Security Service. On November 19, 1999, Taylor named General Kpenkpah Konah as the new Chief of Staff of the AFL (where he would stay until 2006) and John Tarnue as head of the army. Tarnue was later implicated in a land dispute in 1999, while acting as AFL commander.
The International Crisis Group writes that the AFL was reduced practically to the point of non-existence by Fall 2001, by which time a total of 4,000 personnel had been retired. The Second Liberian Civil War, originated in clashes in April 1999 but was not a major threat to Taylor until 2000–01. However, on the government side the AFL played only a minor role; irregular ex National Patriotic Front of Liberia militias backed by more privileged Taylor partisans such as the Anti-Terrorist Unit saw most of the fighting.
As a result of the Civil War, all aircraft, equipment, materiel, and facilities belonging to the Liberian Air Force were badly damaged, rendering the force inoperable. During the Civil War the Taylor government made a variety of different air support arrangements; a seemingly inoperable Mil Mi-2 and Mil Mi-8, one in Anti-Terrorist Unit markings, could be seen at Spriggs Payne Airport in central Monrovia in mid-2005, apparently a hangover from the war. Meanwhile, during the Taylor era, the Navy consisted of a couple of small patrol craft. However, on shore, both late 1990s and 2005 sources indicate the Navy included the 2nd Naval District, Buchanan, the 3rd Naval District, Greenville, and the 4th Naval District, Harper.
Part 4 (Articles VI and VII) of the August 2003 Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended the Second Liberian Civil War addressed security sector reform. It declared that future recruits for the new AFL would be screened for their fitness for service as well as prior human rights violations, that the new force would be ethnically balanced and without political bias, and that the new force's mission would be to defend national sovereignty and "in extremis" respond to natural disasters.
By March 1, 2005, over a year after the war ended, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) had disarmed and demobilized 103,018 people who claimed to have fought for former president Charles Taylor or the two rebel groups, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) or the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). That year most former AFL elements were concentrated at Camp Schiefflin. The previous AFL personnel, including those of the Navy and Air Force, were slowly retired with pensions obtained by the MND and international partners from a number of international donors.
In 2005, the United States provided funding for DynCorp International and Pacific Architects & Engineers, private military contractors, to train a new 4,000-man Liberian military. DynCorp was made responsible for individual training and PA&E unit training. In June–July 2005 the projected force strength was reduced to 2000 men. DynCorp and the U.S. Embassy scrutinized the personnel for the new armed forces thoroughly. Recruits had to pass a literacy test, an aptitude test, a drug test and an HIV test, and their names and faces were put on posters which are distributed to try to make sure none have a history of war crimes or other human rights violations. A new batch of 500 screened personnel started to arrive at the Camp Ware base at VOA Careysburg, inland from Monrovia, for initial training in early November 2007, joining 608 others who had graduated earlier.
The Minister of Defense that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appointed in early 2006, Brownie Samukai, had a good public reputation.
There appears to be some lack of coordination, at least according to "The Wall Street Journal", between the Ministry of National Defense and DynCorp, who is training the new army.
The newspaper said in an August 2007 report:
Mr. Samukai also complains that he feels sidelined from the formation of an army that, as defense minister, he is supposed to oversee. Neither the State Department nor DynCorp will let him see the company's contract, for instance. And the U.S. insists that instead of talking directly to DynCorp managers, he go through Major Wyatt [chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia] on all matters related to the training.
Whether well regarded or not, Samukai has been accused of misusing his power; there have been allegations that he has ordered soldiers to manhandle other senior Liberian government officials—the Comptroller General of the Ministry of Finance in August 2008.
On January 11, 2008 a total 485 soldiers graduated from Initial Entry Training class 08-01. The addition of this third class of soldiers, consisting of 468 men and 17 women, raised the total strength of the AFL from 639 to 1,124. As the new Liberian force developed, UNMIL started winding down its initially 15,000 strong peacekeeping mission; by 2008 the force had been reduced to 11,000.
In the interim buildup period, President Johnson-Sirleaf decided that a Nigerian officer would act as the Command Officer-In-Charge of the new armed forces. Major General Suraj Abdurrahman succeeded the previous incumbent, Lieutenant General Luka Yusuf, in early June 2007; Lieutenant General Yusuf had been posted home to Nigeria to become Chief of Army Staff.
Luka had succeeded the previous Liberian Chief of Staff, Kpenkpa Y. Konah, in 2006. In mid-July 2008, five reinstated AFL officers returned from the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College after training there. These officers include Lt Cols. Sekou S. Sheriff, Boakai B. Kamara, Aaron T. Johnson, Daniel K. Moore and Major Andrew J. Wleh. Subsequently, Aaron T. Johnson was promoted to colonel and confirmed by the Liberian Senate as Deputy Chief of Staff of the AFL, immediately subordinate to General Abdurrahman. A number of the current senior AFL officers have been drawn from the ranks of the previous 1993–94 Interim Government of National Unity paramilitary police force, the 'Black Berets.'
Facility reconstruction has not been limited to VOA/Camp Ware and Schiefflin/EBK. The Chinese Government offered in 2006 to rebuild Camp Tubman in Gbarnga, and the new facility was opened in April 2009. There is also a plan to rebuild Camp Todee in Todee District, upper Montserrado. The Barclay Training Center (BTC) was handed back to the Government of Liberia on July 31, 2009 at a ceremony attended by the Minister for National Defense and the United States Ambassador after four years of management by DynCorp.
In October 2009 a State Partnership Program relationship was begun between the AFL and the U.S. state of Michigan's Michigan National Guard. Of the other large number of security agencies, plans existed as of mid-2008 at least to dissolve the Ministry of National Security, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The 2009–2010 budget appears to indicate however that this consolidation has not taken place.
In 2013, the AFL deployed a platoon as part of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), marking the first time that the AFL had operated abroad since the United Nations Operation in the Congo in the early 1960s. Initially under Nigerian command, the AFL platoon came under Togo Contingent Command when Nigeria withdrew from the mission. Despite some initial logistical problems the platoon performed admirably, performing patrols and VIP escort duties. The deployment has now seen a number of rotations:
From February 2017 the Mali deployment was increased to a 75-strong contingent, growing to a company of 105 personnel, with additional military observers and staff officers, from September 2018. In August 2019 training was completed of another company, the sixth rotation, due for deployment in September 2019.
May 3, 2017, saw the first Liberian soldier killed on deployment with MINUSMA. Corporal Sheriff Ousmane was killed when a rebel group fired mortars into a UN base near Timbuktu. Seven other Liberians were wounded in the bombardment, three seriously so, together with a Swedish peacekeeper.
During January 2019 the Ministry of National Defense announced plans to send a platoon-size contingent of peacekeepers to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
The Liberian ground forces currently consist of two infantry battalions and supporting units. The 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Brigade, was formed on August 29, 2008, at the Barclay Training Center in Monrovia, and the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Brigade in December that year. Both battalions are currently based at the former Camp Schiefflin, which has now been renamed the Edward Binyah Kesselly Barracks, often known simply as 'EBK Barracks.'
As a result of the concentration of troops at EBK, the camp is overcrowded, and disturbances among the soldiers have occurred. As of mid-2009, the Ministry of Defense is attempting to alleviate the problem by relocating some personnel to Camp Tubman in Gbarnga.
The two battalions and supporting units went through training and preparation for an assessment exercise, a modified US Army Readiness Training Evaluation Program (ARTEP), which was held in late 2009. When declared operational, the 23rd Infantry Brigade was planned to be commanded by a colonel with a headquarters of 113 personnel. Supporting units were to include a band platoon (40 members), engineer company (220 strong), Brigade Training Unit (162 strong, now retitled the Armed Forces Training Command, located at Camp Ware under Major Wleh), and a military police company (105 strong).
The force operates according to slightly modified United States Army practices, and uses U.S. doctrine.
"..The first battalion started the United States Army Training and Evaluation Programme, which it will complete in September [2009], while the second battalion will complete the programme in December [2009]. At that time, the United States contractors currently training and equipping the force will hand over to the Ministry of National Defense, which will assume responsibility for training and standing up the new army. The United States has indicated that it plans to assign as many as 60 United States serving military personnel to continue mentoring the Armed Forces of Liberia, beginning in January 2010."
As of December 2010, a Logistics Command is being established within the AFL, taking the same name as a pre-Civil War AFL formation.
Colonel Eric Wayma Dennis was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff on 11 February 2013 and served in that position until his death, of natural causes, on 8 August 2016. Dennis was a pre-Civil War officer who rejoined in 2006 and re-rose to the rank of colonel. Dennis replaced Col. Daniel Moore as Deputy Chief of Staff. Lt. Col. Prince Charles Johnson III was promoted to Brig. Gen. and appointed Deputy Chief of Staff on 14 November 2016.
The Coast Guard was reactivated on the 53rd Armed Forces Day on February 11, 2010, with an initial strength of 40 personnel who had been trained in the United States. A United States Coast Guard officer is now serving at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia supporting efforts to reestablish the Liberian Coast Guard.
A detachment from SeaBee Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 7, based at Naval Station Rota, Spain, constructed a United States Africa Command-funded boat ramp and concrete perimeter wall for the Coast Guard, which was handed over in December 2010. In February 2011, the United States turned over two donated USCG Defender class boats to the Coast Guard.
The ranks and insignia of the Armed Forces of Liberia are based on those of the United States Department of Defense, and are laid out in the Liberian Defense Act of 2008.
Infantry weapons
Vehicles
The Liberian Air Force was formally dissolved in 2005 as part of the armed forces demobilization programme, though it had effectively ceased to exist during the civil war. There was also a Paramilitary Justice Air Wing operating some Mil Mi-2s. After 2003, only the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) operated military aircraft in Liberia - Mil Mi-8 transport and Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters from Roberts International Airport with several subsidiary locations. These aircraft left the country on or before the cessation of UNMIL operations on 31 March 2018.
The Liberian Air Force inventory for its entire existence included:
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Foreign relations of Liberia
Liberian foreign relations were traditionally stable and cordial throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. During the 1990s, Charles Taylor's presidency and the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars underscored Liberian relations with the Western world, the People's Republic of China, and its neighboring countries in Western Africa.
Stabilization in the 21st century brought a return to cordial relations with neighboring countries and much of the Western world. Liberia holds diplomatic relations with many western nations, as well as Libya, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China.
Liberia is a founding member of the United Nations (see Permanent Representative of Liberia to the United Nations) and its specialized agencies and is a member of the African Union (AU), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), African Development Bank (ADB), Mano River Union (MRU) and the Non-Aligned Movement. Liberia is also a member of the International Criminal Court with a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of protection for the US-military (as covered under Article 98).
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Geography of Libya
Libya is fourth in size among the countries of Africa and seventeenth among the countries of the world. It is on the Mediterranean between Egypt and Tunisia, with Niger and Chad to the south and Sudan to the southeast. Although the oil discoveries of the 1960s have brought immense wealth, at the time of its independence it was an extremely poor desert state whose only important physical asset appeared to be its strategic location at the midpoint of Africa's northern rim.
Libya lay within easy reach of the major European nations and linked the Arab countries of North Africa with those of the Middle East, facts that throughout history had made its urban centres bustling crossroads rather than isolated backwaters without external social influences. Consequently, an immense social gap developed between the cities, cosmopolitan and peopled largely by foreigners, and the desert hinterland, where tribal chieftains ruled in isolation and where social change was minimal.
The Mediterranean coast and the Sahara Desert are the country's most prominent natural features. There are several highlands but no true mountain ranges except in the largely empty southern desert near the Chadian border, where the Tibesti Massif rises to over 2,200 metres. A relatively narrow coastal strip and highland steppes immediately south of it are the most productive agricultural regions. Still farther south a pastoral zone of sparse grassland gives way to the vast Sahara Desert, a barren wasteland of rocky plateaus and sand. It supports minimal human habitation, and agriculture is possible only in a few scattered oases.
The Sahara desert is connected to the Gulf of Sidra on the coast by a barren zone, known as the Sirtica, which has great historical significance.
Along the shore of Tripolitania for more than 300 km, coastal oases alternate with sandy areas and lagoons. Inland from these lies the Jifarah Plain, a triangular area of some 15,000 square km. About 120 km inland the plain terminates in an escarpment that rises to form the Nafusa Mountains, with elevations of up to 1,000 metres, which is the northern edge of the Tripolitanian Plateau.
In Cyrenaica there are fewer coastal oases, and the Marj Plain – the lowland area corresponding to the Jifarah Plain of Tripolitania – covers a much smaller area. The lowlands form a crescent about 210 km long between Benghazi and Derna and extend inland a maximum of 50 km. Elsewhere along the Cyrenaican coast, the precipice of an arid plateau reaches to the sea. Behind the Marj Plain, the terrain rises abruptly to form Jabal al Akhdar (Green Mountain), so called because of its leafy cover of pine, juniper, cypress, and wild olive. It is a limestone plateau with maximum altitudes of about 900 metres.
From Jabal al Akhdar, Cyrenaica extends southward across a barren grazing belt that gives way to the Sahara Desert, which extends still farther southwest across the Chadian frontier. Unlike Cyrenaica, Tripolitania does not extend southward into the desert. The southwestern desert region, known as Fezzan, was administered separately during both the Italian regime and the federal period of the Libyan monarchy. The large dune seas known as ergs of the Idehan Ubari and the Idehan Murzuq cover much of the land of Fezzan.
In 1969 the revolutionary government officially changed the regional designation of Tripolitania to Western Libya, of Cyrenaica to Eastern Libya, and of Fezzan to Southern Libya; however, the old names were intimately associated with the history of the area, and during the 1970s they continued to be used frequently. Cyrenaica comprises 51%, Fezzan 33%, and Tripolitania 16% of the country's area.
Before Libya achieved independence, its name was seldom used other than as a somewhat imprecise geographical expression. The people preferred to be referred to as natives of one of the three constituent regions. The separateness of the regions is much more than simply geographical and political, for they have evolved largely as different socioeconomic entities – each with a culture, social structure, and values different from the others. Cyrenaica became Arabized at a somewhat earlier date than Tripolitania, and Beduin tribes dominated it. The residual strain of the indigenous Berber inhabitants, however, still remains in Tripolitania. Fezzan has remained a kind of North African outback, its oases peopled largely by minority ethnic groups.
The border between Tripolitania and Tunisia is subject to countless crossings by legal and illegal migrants. No natural frontier marks the border, and the ethnic composition, language, value systems, and traditions of the two peoples are nearly identical. The Cyrenaica region is contiguous with Egypt, and here, too, the border is not naturally defined; illegal as well as legal crossings are frequent. In contrast, Fezzan's borders with Algeria, Niger, and Chad are seldom crossed because of the almost total emptiness of the desert countryside.
Other factors, too, such as the traditional forms of land tenure, have varied in the different regions. In the 1980s their degrees of separation were still sufficiently pronounced to represent a significant obstacle to efforts toward achieving a fully unified Libya.
Area:
"Total:"
1 759 540 km²
"Land:"
1 759 540 km²
"Water:"
0 km²
Area - comparative:
Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa, seven times the size of the United Kingdom, and slightly larger than Alaska.
Land boundaries:
"Total:"
4 348 km
"Border countries:"
Algeria 982 km, Chad 1,055 km, Egypt 1,115 km, Niger 354 km, Sudan 383 km, Tunisia 459 km
Coastline:
1,770 km
Maritime claims:
"Territorial sea:"
"note:"
Gulf of Sidra closing line – 32 degrees, 30 minutes north.
"Exclusive economic zone:"
Within Libya as many as five different climatic zones have been recognized, but the dominant climates are the hot-summer Mediterranean climate and the hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification "Csa" and "BWh"). In most of the coastal lowland, the climate is Mediterranean, with hot or very hot summers and extremely mild winters. Rainfall is scant.
The weather is cooler in the highlands, and frosts occur at maximum elevations. In the desert interior, despite the relatively high elevation, the climate has long, extremely hot summers and high diurnal temperature ranges due to the permanence of cloudless skies and excessively dry atmosphere. The highest official temperature ever recorded was on 13 September 1922 at 'Aziziya, Libya, but that reading is queried.
Less than 2% of the national territory receives enough rainfall for settled agriculture, the heaviest precipitation occurring in the Jabal al Akhdar zone of Cyrenaica, where annual rainfall of is recorded. All other areas of the country receive less than , and in the Sahara Desert or less occurs. Rainfall is often erratic, and a pronounced drought may extend over two seasons. For example, epic floods in 1945 left Tripoli underwater for several days, but two years later an unprecedentedly severe drought caused the loss of thousands of head of cattle.
Deficiency in rainfall is reflected in an absence of permanent rivers or streams, and the approximately twenty perennial lakes are brackish or salty. In 1987 these circumstances severely limited the country's agricultural potential as a basis for the sound and varied economy Gaddafi sought to establish. The allocation of limited water is considered of sufficient importance to warrant the existence of the Secretariat of Dams and Water Resources, and damaging a source of water can be punished by a heavy fine or imprisonment.
The government has constructed a network of dams in wadis, dry watercourses that become torrents after heavy rains. These dams are used both as water reservoirs and for flood and erosion control. The wadis are heavily settled because soil in their bottoms is often suitable for agriculture, and the high water table in their vicinity makes them logical locations for digging wells. In many wadis, however, the water table is declining at an alarming rate, particularly in areas of intensive agriculture and near urban centers. The government has expressed concern over this problem and because of it has diverted water development projects, particularly around Tripoli, to localities where the demand on underground water resources is less intense. It has also undertaken extensive reforestation projects.
There are also numerous springs, those best suited for future development occurring along the scarp faces of the Jabal Nafusah and the Jabal al Akhdar. The most talked-about of the water resources, however, are the great subterranean aquifers of the desert. The best known of these lies beneath Kufra Oasis in southeastern Cyrenaica. An aquifer with even greater reputed capacity is located near the oasis community of Sabha in the southwestern desert.
In the late 1970s, wells were drilled at Kufra and at Sabha as part of a major agricultural development effort. An even larger undertaking is the so-called Great Manmade River, initiated in 1984. It is intended to tap the tremendous aquifers of the Kufra, Sarir, and Sabha oases and to carry the resulting water to the Mediterranean coast for use in irrigation and industrial projects.
Terrain:
mostly barren, flat to undulating plains, plateaus, depressions
Elevation extremes:
"lowest point:"
Sabkhat Ghuzayyil -47 m
"highest point:"
Bikku Bitti 2,267 m
Natural resources:
petroleum, natural gas, gypsum
Land use:
"arable land:"
0.99%
"permanent crops:"
0.19%
"other:"
98.82% (2011)
Irrigated land:
4,700 km² (2003)
Total renewable water resources:
0.7 (2011)
Natural hazards:
hot, dry, dust-laden ghibli is a southern wind lasting one to four days in spring and fall; dust storms, sandstorms
Environment - current issues:
desertification; very limited natural fresh water resources; the Great Manmade River Project, the largest water development scheme in the world, is being built to bring water from large aquifers under the Sahara to coastal cities
Environment - international agreements:
"party to:"
Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands
"signed, but not ratified:"
Law of the Sea
This is a list of the extreme points of Libya, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
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Demographics of Libya
Libyans (ليبيون) and their population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the Libyan population. No complete population or vital statistics registration exists in Libya. Of the over 6,000,000 Libyans that lived in Libya prior to the Libyan Crisis, more than a million were immigrants. The estimates in this article are from which was prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, unless otherwise indicated.
The Libyan population resides in the country of Libya, a territory located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, to the west of and adjacent to Egypt. Most Libyans live in Tripoli. It is the capital of the country and first in terms of urban population, as well as Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.
Historically Berber, over the centuries, Libya has been occupied by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Italians. The Phoenicians had a big impact on Libya. Many of the coastal towns and cities of Libya were founded by the Phoenicians as trade outposts within the southern Mediterranean coast in order to facilitate the Phoenician business activities in the area. Starting in the 8th century BCE, Libya was under the rule of the Phoenician Carthage. After the Romans defeated Carthage in the Third Punic War, Libya became a Roman province under the name of Tripolitania until the 7th century CE when Libya was conquered by the Arab Muslims as part of the Arab conquest of North Africa. Centuries after that, the Ottoman Empire conquered Libya in 1551. It remained in control of its territory until 1911 when the country was conquered by Italy. In the 18th century Libya was used as the base for various pirates.
In the Second World War Libya was one of the main battlegrounds of North Africa. During the war, the territory was under an Anglo-French military government until it was overrun by the Axis Powers, who, in turn, were defeated by the Allies in 1943.
In 1951, the country was granted independence by the United Nations, being governed by King Idris. In 1969, a military coup led by Muammar Gaddafi resulted in the overthrow of King Idris I. Gaddafi then established an anti-Western leadership. In 1970, Gaddafi ordered all British and American military bases closed.
The Libyan population has increased rapidly after 1969. They were only 2 million in 1968, and 5 million in 2006. . Many migrant workers came to Libya since 1969. Among the workers were construction workers and laborers from Tunisia, teachers and laborers from Egypt, teachers from Palestine, and doctors and nurses from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. 1,000,000 workers, mainly from other neighboring African countries like Sudan, Niger, Chad and Mali, migrated to Libya in the 1990s, after changes were made to Libya's Pan-African policies.
Gaddafi used money from the sale of oil to improve the living conditions of the population and to assist Palestinian guerrillas in their fight against the Israelis. In 1979, Libya fought in Uganda to assist the government of Idi Amin in the Ugandan Civil War, and in 1981, fought in the Libyan-Chadian War. Libya had occupied the Aozou Strip; however, in 1990 the International Court of Justice submitted the case and allowed the full recuperation of territory to Chad.
In September 2008, Italy and Libya signed a memorandum by which Italy would pay $5 billion over the next 20 years to compensate Libya for its dominion over Libya for its reign of 30 years.
Since 2011, the country is swept by Libyan Civil War, which broke out between the Anti-Gaddafi rebels and the Pro-Gaddafi government in 2011, culminating in the death and overthrow of Gaddafi. Nevertheless, even today Libya still continues to generate problems within the area and beyond, greatly affecting its population and the migrant route to Europe.
Libya has a small population residing in a large land area. Population density is about 50 persons per km² (130/sq. mi.) in the two northern regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, but falls to less than one person per km² (2.7/sq. mi.) elsewhere. Ninety percent of the people live in less than 10% of the area, primarily along the coast. About 90% of the population is urban, mostly concentrated in the four largest cities, Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata and Bayda. Thirty percent of the population is estimated to be under the age of 15, but this proportion has decreased considerably during the past decades.
Eight population censuses have been carried out in Libya, the first in 1931 and the most recent one in 2006. The population multiplied sixfold between 1931 and 2006.
During the past 60 years the demographic situation of Libya changed considerably. Since the 1950s, life expectancy increased steadily and the infant mortality rates decreased. As the fertility rates remained high until the 1980s (the number of births tripled between 1950–55 and 1980–85), population growth was very high for three decades. However, after 1985 a fast decrease in fertility was observed from over 7 children per woman in the beginning of the 1980s to less than 3 in 2005-2010. Because of this decrease in fertility the population growth slowed down and also the proportion of Libyans under the age of 15 decreased from 47% in 1985 to 30% in 2010.
Births and deaths
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
Population
Age structure
Median age
Population growth rate
Birth rate
Death rate
Net migration rate
Total fertility rate
Urbanization
Sex ratio
Infant mortality rate
Life expectancy at birth
Although the CIA World Factbook claims that Libya's population is 97% Arab and Berber, the 1936 census, which allowed citizens to declare their ethnicity, showed a more diverse population:
The population of Libya is primarily of Arab and Berber ancestral origin. Among the non-Arabized Berber groups are the nomadic Tuareg, who inhabit the southern areas as well as parts of Algeria, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. A few other tribal groups that still speak the native Berber languages are concentrated in the northwestern portion of Tripolitania. In the southeast, there are small populations of Toubou (Tibbu). They occupy between a quarter and a third of the country and also inhabit Niger and Chad. Among foreign residents, the largest groups are from other African nations, including citizens of other North African nations (primarily Egyptians) and West Africans.
Libyan society is to a large extent structured along tribal lines, with more than 20 major tribal groups.
The major tribal groups of Libya in 2011 were listed:
Some of the ancient Berber tribes include: Adyrmachidae, Auschisae, Es'bet, Temeh’u, Teh’nu, Rebu, Kehek, KeyKesh, Imukehek, Meshwesh, Macetae, Macatutae, Nasamones, Nitriotae, and Tautamaei.
The foreign population is estimated at 3%, most of whom are migrant workers in the oil industry from Tunisia and Egypt, but also including small numbers of Greeks, Maltese, Italians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Turks, Indians, and people from former Yugoslavia. Due to the Libyan Civil War, most of these migrant workers have returned to their homelands or simply left the country for a different one.
However, according to news accounts in Allafrica.com, and the Libya Herald, between 1 million and 2 million Egyptians are resident in Libya and the Sudanese number in the hundreds of thousands. If this is correct, the foreign population could be as high as 30% of the country, as simultaneously at least two million Libyans have fled since the NATO intervention of 2011, toppling the previous Libyan government.
Analysis of Y-chromosome have found three Y-chromosome lineages (E1b1b-M81, J-M267 and E1b1b-M78) at high frequency in Libya like in other North African populations. Some studies suggest a Paleolithic component for E-M81 and E-M78, while other studies point to a Neolithic origin. E1b1b-M78 has probably emerged in the Egypt/Libya area and is today widely distributed in North Africa, East Africa, and West Asia. E1b1b-M81 show high frequencies in Northwestern Africa and a high prevalence among Berbers (it is sometimes referred to as a genetic "Berber marker"). Its frequency declines towards Egypt and the Levant. On the other hand, E-M78 and E-M123 are frequent in the Levant and Egypt and decline towards Northwest Africa. Another common paternal lineage in Libya and North Africa is haplogroup J through its subtypes J1 (M267) and J2 (M172). J1 is prevalent in some North African and all Levantine groups and found at high frequencies in the Arabian Peninsula. It has been previously associated with the Islamic expansion. J2 is sporadically detected in North Africa and Iberia and is very frequent in the Levant/Anatolia/Iran region. Its spread in the Mediterranean is believed to have been facilitated by the maritime trading culture of the Phoenicians (1550 BC- 300 BC). E-M2 is the predominant lineage in Western Africa.
Listed here are the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups in Libya.
Almost all Libyans are Sunni Muslim. Foreigners contribute very little Christian presence, but there are some local Christian church adherents in Eastern Libya - the Copts. A small Jewish community historically lived in Libya since antiquity (see History of the Jews in Libya), but the entire Jewish community in Libya eventually fled the country for Italy, Israel, or the United States, particularly after anti-Jewish riots in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War between Arab countries and Israel.
Libyan cuisine is heavily influenced by Mediterranean and North African (Berber cuisine) traditions. Notable dishes include Shorba Arabiya, or Arabian soup, which is a thick, highly spiced soup. Like other Maghrebi countries, couscous and tajine are traditional of Libya. Bazeen is a traditional Libyan food, made from a mix of barley flour and a small amount of plain flour.
Libyan origin instruments are the Zukra (a bagpipe), a flute (made of bamboo), the tambourine, the oud (a fretless lute) and the darbuka (a goblet drum held sideways and played with the fingers). Bedouin poet-singers had a great influence on the musical folklore of Libya, particularly the style of "huda", the camel driver's song.
The official language of Libya is Standard Arabic, while the most prevalent spoken language is Libyan Arabic. Berber is also common, spoken by about 300,000 Libyans. Arabic varieties are partly spoken by immigrant workers and partly by local Libyan populations. These varieties include Egyptian, Tunisian, Sudanese, Moroccan, Ta'izzi-Adeni, Hassaniyya and South Levantine Arabic.
Berber languages are primarily still spoken by the Tuareg, a rural Berber population inhabiting Libya's south.
Indigenous minority languages in Libya:
Non-Arabic languages had largely been spoken by foreign workers (who had been massively employed in Libya in various infrastructure projects prior to the 2011 civil war), and those languages with more than 10,000 speakers included Punjabi, Urdu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Sinhala, Bengal, Tamil, Tagalog, French, Italian, Ukrainian, Serbian, and English.
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Politics of Libya
The Politics of Libya is in an uncertain state due to the collapse of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 2011 and an ongoing civil war between the House of Representatives in Tobruk and its supporters, the New General National Congress in Tripoli and its supporters, and various jihadists and tribal elements controlling parts of the country.
Members of the House of Representatives and the New General National Congress signed a political agreement on 18 December 2015. Under the terms of the agreement, a nine-member Presidential Council and a seventeen-member interim Government of National Accord was formed, with a view to holding new elections within two years. The House of Representatives would continue to exist as a legislature and an advisory body, to be known as the State Council, was formed with members nominated by the New General National Congress.
The House of Representatives was formed following June 2014 elections, when the General National Congress formed as a transitional body after the Libyan Revolution dissolved. However, Islamists fared poorly in the low-turnout elections, and members of the Islamist-led GNC reconvened in August 2014, refusing to recognise the new parliament dominated by secularist and federalist lawmakers. Supporters of the New General National Congress swiftly seized control of Tripoli, Libya's constitutional capital, forcing the newly elected parliament into virtual exile in Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. The House of Representatives enjoys widespread international recognition as Libya's official government. However, the Tripoli-based Supreme Court declared it illegal and voided the results of the election in November 2014. The court ruling was hailed by the GNC and its backers, but it was rejected as invalid by the House of Representatives and its loyalists.
Against this backdrop of division, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Ansar al-Sharia, as well as other militant groups both religious and tribal in nature, have seized control of several cities and districts across Libya, especially in Cyrenaica, which is theoretically under the control of the Tobruk-based government. A number of commentators have described Libya as a failed state or suggested it is on the verge of failure.
The General National Congress (also translated as "General National Council") was the legislative authority of Libya. It was elected by popular vote on 7 July 2012, and from 8 August replaced the National Transitional Council that had governed the country since the end of the Libyan Civil War. The General National Congress was composed of 200 members of which 80 were elected through a party list system of proportional representation, and 120 were elected as independents in multiple-member districts.
The executive branch was appointed by the GNC and led by the Prime Minister, while the President of the GNC was the "de facto" head of state, though not explicitly described as such in the Declaration.
The main responsibility of the GNC was to form a constituent assembly which would write Libya's permanent constitution, for approval by a referendum. The law of Libya is based on sharia.
On 30 March 2014, the General National Congress voted to replace itself with a new House of Representatives. The new legislature would allocate 30 seats for women, would have 200 seats overall (with individuals able to run as members of political parties) and allow Libyans of foreign nationalities to run for office. While elections were held and lawmakers took office, the former General National Congress rejected the results and reconvened in opposition to the new parliament, which now meets in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk.
In early December 2015 both parliaments, the GNC and the House of Representatives, agreed a declaration of principles calling for the formation of a joint ten-person committee to name an interim prime minister and two deputies, leading to new elections within two years.
Political parties were banned in Libya from 1972 until the removal of Gaddafi's government, and all elections were nonpartisan under law. However, during the revolution, the National Transitional Council (NTC), a body formed on 27 February 2011 by anti-Gaddafi forces to act as the "political face of the revolution", made the introduction of multiparty democracy a cornerstone of its agenda. In June 2011, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said his father would agree to internationally monitored general elections, and would step down if he lost them, but his offer was refused by the rebels and ignored by the UN Security Council.
On 8 March, the NTC issued a statement in which it declared itself to be the "sole representative all over Libya".
The council formed an interim governing body on 23 March. As of 20 October 100 countries declared full support to the council by severing all relations with Gaddafi's rule and recognizing the National Transitional Council as the rightful representative of Libya.
On 3 August 2011, the NTC issued a Constitutional Declaration which declared the statehood of Libya as a democracy with Islam as its state religion, in which the state guarantees the rule of law and an independent judiciary as well as civic and human basic rights (including freedom of religion and women's rights), and which contains provisions for a phase of transition to a presidential republic with an elected national assembly and a democratically legitimized constitution by 2013. Vice Chairman Abdul Hafiz Ghoga declared Libya to be "liberated" on 23 October 2011, announcing an official end to the war. Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil said Libya would become an Islamic democracy in the wake of Gaddafi's death, though the extent of Islamic law's influence would be determined by elected lawmakers. Ghoga lottery confirmed that Libya will continue to adhere to all international agreements to which it was signatory prior to the uprising.
On 7 July 2012 an election was held for the General National Congress (GNC) to replace the NTC. There were 2,501 candidates for the 200 seats - 136 for political parties and 64 for independent candidates. About 300 candidates' views were considered unacceptable and removed from candidates list, suspected of sympathizing with the defeated forces of the Jamahiriya. Accreditation centers have also been organized in European cities with larger Libyan communities like Berlin and Paris, in order to allow Libyan nationals there to cast their vote. On 8 August 2012 the NTC officially dissolved and transferred power to the General National Congress.
On 7 July 2012, the Legislative body – the General National Congress – was elected.
The National Transitional Council has pledged to honour Libya's international commitments until the 2012 elections.
Libya is a member of ABEDA, AfDB, AFESD, AL, AMF, AMU, AU, CAEU, ECA, FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ISO, ITU, MONUC, NAM, OAPEC, OIC, OPEC, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHRC (suspended), UNIDO, UPU, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, UNWTO and UNHABITAT.
After originally rising to power through a military "coup d'état" in 1969, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's governance of Libya became increasingly centric on the teachings of his "Green Book", which he published in the mid-1970s chapter by chapter as a foundation for a new form of government. This "jamahiriya", as he called it, was supposedly a form of direct democracy in which power was balanced between a General People's Congress, consisting of 2,700 representatives of Basic People's Congresses, and an executive General People's Committee, headed by a General Secretary, who reported to the Prime Minister and the President. However, Gaddafi retained virtually all power, continuing to operate and control vestiges of the military junta put in place in 1969.
Interpol on 4 March 2011 issued a security alert concerning the "possible movement of dangerous individuals and assets" based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970, which imposed a travel ban and asset freeze. The warning lists Gaddafi himself and 15 key members of his government:
The NTC has been in negotiations with Algeria and Niger, neighboring countries to which members of the government and defecting military commanders have fled, attempting to secure the arrest and extradition of Al-Saadi Gaddafi and others.
Of these officials, Baghdadi Mahmudi and Abuzed Omar Dorda were arrested, while Saif al-Arab Gaddafi was killed by a NATO airstrike during the war, Khamis Gaddafi was killed in action after the fall of Tripoli, and Muammar and Mutassim Gaddafi, as well as Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, were killed during the fall of Sirte.
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Economy of Libya
The economy of Libya depends primarily on revenues from the petroleum sector, which represents over 95% of export earnings and 60% of GDP. These oil revenues and a small population have given Libya one of the highest nominal per capita GDP in Africa.
After 2000, Libya recorded favourable growth rates with an estimated 10.6% growth of GDP in 2010. This development was interrupted by the Libyan Civil War, which resulted in contraction of the economy by 62.1% in 2011. After the war the economy rebounded by 104.5% in 2012, but then crashed again following the Second Libyan Civil War. As of 2017, Libya's per capita PPP GDP stands at 60% of its pre-wars level.
Libya had seen a fantastic growth rate, however, these proved unsustainable in the face of global oil recession and international sanctions. Consequently, the GDP per capita shrank by 40% in the 1980s. Successful diversification and integration into the international community helped current GDP per capita to cut further deterioration to just 3.2% in the 1990s.
Libyan GDP per capita was about $40 in the early 1920s and it rose to $1,018 by 1967. In 1947 alone, per capita GDP rose by 42 percent.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation below 5% is in green.
Notes:
1. For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US Dollar is exchanged at 0.77 Libyan Dinars only.
Mean wages were $9.51 per man-hour in 2009 (amounts to a compensation of $1598 for 21 working days of 8 hours).
Libya is an OPEC member and holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa (followed by Nigeria and Algeria), as of January 2007, up from in 2006. About 80% of Libya's proven oil reserves are located in the Sirte Basin, which is responsible for 90% of the country's oil output. The state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC) dominates Libya's oil industry, along with smaller subsidiaries, which combined account for around 50% of the country's oil output. Among NOC's subsidiaries, the largest oil producer is the Waha Oil Company (WOC), followed by the Agoco, Zueitina Oil Company (ZOC), and Sirte Oil Company (SOC). Oil resources, which account for approximately 95% of export earnings, 75% of government receipts, and over 50% of GDP. Oil revenues constitute the principal foreign exchange source. Reflecting the heritage of the command economy, three-quarters of employment is in the public sector, and private investment remains small at around 2% of GDP.
Falling world oil prices in the early 1980s and economic sanctions caused a serious decline in economic activity, eventually leading to a slow private sector rehabilitation. At 2.6% per year on average, real GDP growth was modest and volatile during the 1990s. Libya's GDP grew in 2001 due to high oil prices, the end of a long cyclical drought, and increased foreign direct investment following the suspension of UN sanctions in 1999. Real GDP growth has been boosted by high oil revenues, reaching 4.6% in 2004 and 3.5% in 2005. Despite efforts to diversify the economy and encourage private sector participation, extensive controls of prices, credit, trade, and foreign exchange constrain growth.
Although UN sanctions were suspended in 1999, foreign investment in the Libyan gas and oil sectors were severely curtailed due to the U.S. Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which capped the amount foreign companies can invest in Libya yearly at $20 million (lowered from $40 million in 2001). As of May 2006, the U.S. has removed Libya from its list of states that sponsor terrorism and has normalised ties and removed sanctions. This clears the road for U.S. oil companies to exploit Libyan oil and is expected to have a positive impact on the Libyan economy.
The NOC hopes to raise oil production from 1.80 million bpd in 2006 to 2 million bpd by 2008. FDI into the oil sector is likely, which is attractive due to its low cost of oil recovery, high oil quality, and proximity to European markets. Most Libyan oil is sold on a term basis, including to the country's Oilinvest marketing network in Europe; to companies like Agip, OMV, Repsol YPF, Tupras, CEPSA, and Total; and small volumes to Asian and South African companies.
Notes:
1. Energy Information Administration (2007)
In November 2005, Repsol YPF discovered a significant oil deposit of light, sweet crude in the Murzuq Basin. Industry experts believe the discovery to be one of the biggest made in Libya for several years. Repsol YPF is joined by a consortium of partners including OMV, Total and Norsk Hydro. Also located in Murzuq Basin is Eni's Elephant field. In October 1997, a consortium led by British company Lasmo, along with Eni and a group of five South Korean companies, announced that it had discovered large recoverable crude reserves about south of Tripoli. Lasmo estimated field production would cost around $1 per barrel. Elephant began production in February 2004.
WOC's Waha fields currently produce around . In 2005, ConocoPhillips and co-venturers reached an agreement with NOC to return to its operations in Libya and extend the Waha concession 25 years. ConocoPhillips operates the Waha fields with a 16.33% share in the project. NOC has the largest share of the Waha concession, and additional partners include Marathon and Amerada Hess.
Libya has five domestic refineries:
Notes:
1. Amounts in barrels per day.
In 2007, mining and hydrocarbon industries accounted for well over 95 percent of the Libyan economy. Diversification of the economy into manufacturing industries remain a long-term issue.
Although agriculture is the second-largest sector in the economy, Libya depends on imports in most foods. Climatic conditions and poor soils severely limit farm output, and domestic food production meets only about 25% of demand. Domestic conditions limit output, while higher incomes and a growing population have caused food consumption to rise. Because of low rainfall levels in Libya, agricultural projects such as the Kufra oasis rely on underground water sources. Libya's primary agricultural water source remains the Great Manmade River (GMMR), but significant resources are being invested in desalinization research to meet growing demand. Libyan agricultural projects and policies are overseen by a General Inspector; there is no Ministry of Agriculture, "per se".
Libya posted a 3.3% rate of population growth during 1960–2003. In 2003, 86% of the population was urban, compared to 45% in 1970. Although no reliable estimates are available, unemployment is reportedly acute: over 50% of the population under the age of 20. Moreover, despite the bias of labor market regulations favoring Libyan workers, the mismatch of the educational system with market demand has produced a large pool of expatriate workers, with typically better-suited education and higher productivity. However, because of shortages for manual labor, Libya has also attracted important numbers of less skilled immigrants. Expatriate workers represent an estimated fifth of the labor force.
Although significant, the proportion of expatriate workers is still below oil producing countries in the Persian Gulf. Foreign workers mainly come from the Maghreb, Egypt, Turkey, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland, Chad, Sudan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They tend to earn relatively high wages, taking either skilled or hard manual jobs. Census data for 2000 show the share of expatriates earning over LD 300 (US$230) per month was 20%, compared to 12% for Libyan nationals. A campaign encouraging conversion of qualified civil servants to entrepreneurs, in the face of public sector over employment and declining productivity, does not seem to be producing the desired results thus far.
The Government is in the process of preparing a financial sector reform program. Recent legislation setting corporate governance standards for financial institutions makes progress towards better management and greater operational independence of public banks. However, Libyan public banks still lack management structures supported by skills in critical areas like credit, investment, risk management, and information and control systems.
The new banking law reinforces the independence of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) and offers a legal framework for regulating banking activities, even if some provisions call for improvement. Despite progress brought by the new banking Law that specifies and limits its duties and responsibilities, the CBL remains the owner of the public banks, with the associated potential conflict of interest between ownership and regulation.
Financial sector reform has also progressed with partial interest rate liberalization. Interest rates have been liberalized on deposits, while a lending rate ceiling has been set above the discount rate. The Libyan Stock Exchange, established in 2007, is the first exchange of its kind in the country.
In 2011, Libya Oil Holdings had its €38m stake in Irish exploration firm Circle Oil frozen on foot of a European Union order that's been put in place to put pressure on the Gaddafi regime.
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
"lowest 11%:"
NA%
"highest 10%:"
NA%
Industrial production growth rate:
2.7% (2009)
Electricity - production:
24 billion kWh (2007 est)
Electricity - production by source:
"fossil fuel:"
100%
"hydro:"
0%
"nuclear:"
0%
"other:"
0% (1998)
Electricity - consumption:
22.17 billion kWh (2007 est)
Electricity - exports:
104 million kWh (2007)
Electricity - imports:
77 million kWh (2007)
Agriculture - products:
wheat, barley, olives, dates, citrus, vegetables, peanuts, soybeans, cattle, corn
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Mass media in Libya
Mass media in Libya describes the overall environment for the radio, television, telephone, Internet, and newspaper markets in Libya.
The control of the media by Colonel Gaddafi's regime came to an end after the fall of Tripoli in August 2011, resulting in a mushrooming of new media outlets. Journalists are still experiencing extortion and blackmail, and are subject to assassinations since the beginning of the second civil war circa 2012 - 2016. Libya has adopted a few media laws outlawing the slander of the 17th February revolution, and active political parties that used to have affiliation with Gaddafi.
[Update 2016]: On 2013, Sharia law was adopted by Islamic Supreme court of Tripoli. Internet censorship has been invoked. Since the second civil war, journalists have been persecuted through kidnapping, assassination, and blackmail. Media outlets have been bombed and some strafed with small arms fire, over the course of 2013 - 2016. Freedom of speech has suffered a few blows since the killing of activists and bloggers making the country unsafe to freely report news or protest. These events appear to have happened during the period when Islamic brotherhood - or "more inclined to Islamic values" GNC political parties led by Nouri Abusahmein, who have issued a number of reforms or decrees that would formulate a more Islamic nation in Tripoli, that led to the creation of more fundamentalist laws (such as Internet censorship and adaptation of vague rules in reporting news banning critique of the February 17th revolution).
However, due to the breakup of country politically and the infighting between militia and authorities, and the rivalry to the Muslim brotherhood or, simply known as 'more salafi or fundamentalist Islamists' parties or groups, the country has fragmented in a plethora of different political beliefs. Including, the laws recently adopted by the Libyan Supreme court that affect the running of the country, which do not represent the rights and interests of all Libyan people, but seemingly, only the Islamic majority.
As of 2016, the new Unity government of national accord led by Faiez Seraj agreed to and organised with the help of the UN, is attempting to bring about political unity between the HoR of Tobruk and other governments to assess unity in the country, by removing the illegitimate and expired governments set up during the second civil war (such as Nouri Abusahmein's GNC), to in good faith re-balance the Libyan crisis.
Libyan Radio and Television (LRT) is the successor to the Gaddafi-era state broadcaster. More than 20 TV stations, many privately owned, broadcast from Libyan cities and from Middle East media hubs.
In the course of the 2011 Libyan civil war, the government severed the physical communications links between the rebel-held east and the rest of Libya. However, the newer and less centralised Libyana network held copies of the HLR and engineers were able to restore some local services. With some assistance from the international community, and funded by an expatriate Libyan, a limited international service became available in mid-April. NTC officials were reported to be negotiating with Qtel, the Qatari-owned service provider, to restore full service to the rebel-held areas.
International dialing code: +218
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube played important roles in bringing news to the world audience during the revolt. Facebook remains a favorite platform to view and comment on the news.
[references outdated] Please update
The Internet and telecommunications are mainly run by the government through a semi-private telecommunication company Libya Telecom & Technology. The company moderates and controls the use of the Internet in Libya.
In 2006 Reporters Without Borders (RWB) removed Libya from their list of Internet enemies after a fact-finding visit found no evidence of Internet censorship. The OpenNet Initiative’s 2007–2008 technical test results contradicted that conclusion, however. In 2009 ONI classified Internet filtering in Libya as selective in the political area and as no evidence in social, conflict/security, and Internet tools.
Prior to the Libyan revolution, Internet filtering under the Gaddafi regime had become more selective, focusing on a few political opposition Web sites. This relatively lenient filtering policy coincided with what was arguably a trend toward greater openness and increasing freedom of the press. However, the legal and political climate continued to encourage self-censorship in online media.
On 18 February 2011, the day after the first protests that were to lead to the 2011 Libyan revolution, Libya appeared to have withdrawn all of its BGP prefix announcements from the Internet for a short period, cutting it off from the rest of the global Internet. The prefix were re-advertised six hours later.
There was no traffic for several hours on 19 and 20 February. Service picked up over the next few days to almost normal levels until, at 6:00am on 3 March, traffic effectively ceased (except for very limited satellite links). The government had severed the underwater backbone fibre-optic cable that runs along the coast, linking networks in the east and servers in the west of the country. Engineers reckon the break is between the cities of Misrata and Khoms, and may be a physical or electronic rupture.
From 10 July traffic began increasing again, and after a brief shutdown on 15 July, it was reaching about 15% of its pre-17 February levels up to 22 August, the day Tripoli fell to the rebels. Traffic began increasing again at that point, and as of 2 September was reaching daily levels in excess of 50% and often as high as 75% of pre-war levels.
The overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in the fall of 2011 did not end an era of censorship. In 2012, RWB removed Libya from its list of countries under surveillance.
Following the fall of the Gaddafi regime in August 2011 former state-affiliated dailies have closed and new titles have appeared, many short-lived. Benghazi has emerged as a publishing hub. There are as yet few daily newspapers and print runs are small.
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Transport in Libya
Libya has had no railway in operation since 1965, all previous narrow gauge lines having been dismantled. Plans for a new network have been under development for some time (earthworks were begun between Sirte and Ras Ajdir, Tunisia border, in 2001-5), and in 2008 and 2009 various contracts were placed and construction work started on a standard gauge railway parallel to the coast from the Tunisian border at Ras Ajdir to Tripoli, and on to Misrata, Sirte, Benghazi and Bayda. Another railway line will run inland from Misrata to Sabha at the centre of a mineral-rich area.
"Total:"
83,200 km
"Paved:"
47,590 km
"Unpaved:"
35,610 km (1996 est.)
There are about 83,200 km of roads in Libya, 47,590 km of which are surfaced. 483 out of 1000 Libyans have cars, which is the highest rate in Africa. The best roads run along the coast between Tripoli and Tunis in Tunisia; also between Benghazi and Tobruk, connecting with Alexandria in Egypt. A fairly efficient bus service operates along these routes, with two main bus transport companies. One covers long-distance, international routes, while the other is chiefly engaged in shorter trips between towns. Bus fares are low and the standard of comfort, particularly on international routes is good, with air-conditioned vehicles and good service.
Taxis are available in the larger towns, and are usually hired on a shared basis, although individual hire can be negotiated. Driving skills of taxi drivers are extremely variable. Taxis may have meters, but these are rarely in use. Car hire for self-drive is not recommended in Libya, although it is possible to hire a vehicle from agents in larger hotels. Vehicles are often old and poorly maintained, however, and are unequal to long-distance driving. Driving itself can be hazardous and there is a high rate of road accidents.
Libya has two routes in the Trans-African Highway network, but only one currently functions as such, the Cairo-Dakar Highway.
Total:
17 ships (1000 GT or over) 96,062 GT/
By type:
Cargo 9, Liquified Gas 3, Passenger/Cargo 2, Petroleum Tanker 1, Roll on/Roll off 2
Foreign-owned: 4 (Kuwait 1, Turkey 2, UAE 1) (2005)
139 (2005)
Most international flights arrive in and through Tripoli International Airport.
Total: 59
over 3,047 m: 23
2,438 to 3,047 m: 6
1,524 to 2,437 m: 23
914 to 1,523 m: 5
under 914 m: 2 (2005)
Total: 80
over 3,047 m: 5
2,438 to 3,047 m: 2
1,524 to 2,437 m: 14
914 to 1,523 m: 41
under 914 m: 18 (2008)
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Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
The Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya consisted of the Libyan Army, Libyan Air Force and the Libyan Navy and other services including the People's Militia. In November 2010, before the Libyan Civil War in 2011, the total number of Libyan personnel was estimated at 76,000 though that war wore the military's numbers away. There was no separate defence ministry; all defence activities were centralised under Gaddafi. There was a High Command of the Armed Forces (al-Qiyada al-ulya lil-quwwat al-musallaha). Arms production was limited and manufacturers were state-owned. Colonel Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr was the last minister of defence of the Gaddafi-era military.
The roots of the 1951–2011 Libyan armed forces can be traced to the Libyan Arab Force (popularly known as the Sanusi Army) of World War II. Shortly after Italy entered the war, a number of Libyan leaders living in exile in Egypt called on their compatriots to organise themselves into military units and join the British in the war against the Axis powers. Five battalions, which were initially designed for guerrilla warfare in the Jabal al Akhdar region of Cyrenaica, were established under British command. Because the high mobility of the desert campaigns required a considerable degree of technical and mechanical expertise, the Libyan forces were used primarily as auxiliaries, guarding military installations and prisoners. One battalion, however, participated in the fighting at Tobruk.
After Britain succeeded in occupying the Libyan territories, the need for the British-trained and equipped Sanusi troops appeared to be over. The Sanusi Army was reluctant to disband, however, and the majority of its members arranged to be transferred to the local police force in Cyrenaica under the British military administration. When Libya gained its independence in 1951, veterans of the original Sanusi Army formed the nucleus of the Royal Libyan Army. British Army troops, part of Middle East Command and comprising 25th Armoured Brigade and briefly 10th Armoured Division, were still present after independence and stayed in Libya until at least 1957. Despite the Sanussi lineage of the new army, King Idris I quickly came to distrust them. The Free Officers' coup of 1952 in Egypt led many Libyan officers to be disenchanted with Idris and become great followers of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This situation reached the stage that the British Army officers retained by Idris to train and advise the new armed forces deemed the force entirely untrustworthy. They increasingly saw their role as to watch the army rather than to raise its effectiveness.
Meanwhile, Idris formed a navy in 1962 and an air force in 1963. He attempted to counter his growing doubts about the loyalty of the army by stripping it of potential. He placed loyal but often unqualified Cyrenaicans in all senior command positions, limited the armed forces to 6,500 men, kept the army lightly armed, and built up two rival paramilitary units, the National Security Force and the Cyrenaican Defence Force which was recruited from Cyrenaican Bedouin loyal to the Sanussi. Together the two forces had a total of 14,000 men armed with helicopters, armoured cars, anti-tank weapons, and artillery.
These measures did not prevent, however, a group of army officers led by then Captain Muammar Gaddafi (a signals officer) seizing power on 1 September 1969. Pollack says that the defeat of the Arabs during the Six-Day War of July 1967 was an important factor in the coup, as the officers believed that Libya should have dispatched forces to aid Egypt and the other Arab states. Idris had also tried to reform the military, but only half-heartedly, further frustrating young Libyan officers. Immediately after the coup, Gaddafi began to dismiss, arrest, or execute every officer above the rank of colonel in the armed forces, as well as some other lower-ranking officers closely linked to the monarchy. Then he began to reorganise the armed forces in line with his foreign policy plans. Expansion of the army and amalgamation of the CDF and NSF into the army was the first priority, and by 1970 the force numbered nearly 20,000. Attention was also focused on the Air Force, with the pre-coup strength of 400 personnel and ten Northrop F-5 'Freedom Fighter' jet fighters planned to be supplemented with large-scale purchases of Mirage III fighters from France.
In 2009, the Libyan Army consisted of 25,000 volunteers with an additional 25,000 conscripts (total 50,000). At that time, the army was organised into 11 Border Defence and 4 Security Zones, one regime security brigade, 10 Tank Battalions, 10 Mechanized Infantry Battalions, 18 Infantry Battalions, 6 Commando Battalions, 22 Artillery Battalions, 4 SSM Brigade and 7 Air Defence Artillery Battalions. Khamis Gaddafi's 32nd Brigade was one of the main regime protection forces. The 'Khamis Brigade' was considered by US diplomats in 2009 as the most capable of defending the regime. In addition, the Revolutionary Guard Corps also served as a brigade-sized protection force for Gaddafi. In 2009, it emerged that a British Special Air Service team were training Libyan special forces. Under Gaddafi, conscription was listed as 18 months.
In addition, seven military regions had been listed in various sources as part of the Gaddafi-era military. These regions appear to have included the Western Military Region (Tripoli), the Middle Military Region (Sirte), the Eastern Military Region (Tobruk), the Mountain Military Region (Gharyan), and regions headquartered at Kufra and Benghazi. The final military region appears to have been the Southern Military Region headquartered at Sabha in the southeast.
Though the Libyan army had a large amount of fighting equipment at its disposal, the vast majority was bought from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and eventually became largely obsolete. A high percentage remained in storage and a large amount of equipment was also sold to various African countries. No major purchases of equipment had been made in recent years largely due to the decline of the economy and military sanctions experienced throughout the 1990s. This and various other internal factors had seriously decayed the strength of the whole of the Libyan Armed Forces over the years and it lagged behind its major neighbours in terms of its military capabilities and real war fighting capability.
Libya dispatched a contingent to the Arab Deterrent Force in Lebanon in 1976 as the Lebanese Civil War escalated. In the spring of 1979, after the Arab League had extended the mandate of the Arab Deterrent Force, the Sudanese, the Saudis and the UAE troops departed Lebanon, the Libyan troops were essentially abandoned and had to find their own way home, if at all.
From the late 1970s to around 1987, the armed forces were involved in the Chadian–Libyan conflict with four major incursions into Chad. The Libyan Army suffered great losses in these conflicts, especially that of the Toyota War of 1987, largely due to poor tactics and Western aid to Chad. All of these incursions were eventually repulsed and Libya no longer occupies the Aouzou Strip or any other part of Chad.
The Libyan Army has ceased to function following the rebel victory in the Libyan civil war.
The Libyan ground forces had a large amount of mostly Soviet equipment in service. These numbers do not take into account equipment destroyed or captured during the 2011 Libyan civil war.
The IISS estimated tank numbers in 2009 as 2,025:
Russian official sources reported in 2010 that T-72s would be modernised with help from Russia. 750 BTR-50 and BTR-60s were also reported by the IISS.
The IISS estimated there were 500 BRDM-2 and 700 EE-9 Cascavel reconnaissance vehicles, 1,000 BMP-1s, plus BMDs. Other reported wheeled vehicles in service include 1000 EE-11 Urutu and Czechoslovak OT-64 SKOT.
The IISS estimated artillery in service in 2009 as totaling 2,421 pieces.
444 SP artillery pieces were reported:
647+ towed artillery pieces were reported:
830 multiple rocket launchers were reported:
The IISS also estimated that Libya had 500 mortars:
Surface-to-surface missiles reported in service included FROG-7 and SCUD-B (416 missiles).
Anti-tank missiles reported in service included 400 French/German MILAN, and 620+ AT-3, AT-4, and AT-5, all of Soviet manufacture.
In 2009 the IISS estimated that Libya had Crotale, SA-7 Grail, SA-9/SA-13 surface-to-air missiles, and AA guns in Army service. A separate Air Defence Command had SA-2 Guideline, SA-3 Goa, SA-5 Gammon, and SA-8b Gecko, plus guns.
Reported anti-aircraft artillery included Soviet 57 mm 57 mm S-60, 23 mm self-propelled ZSU-23-4 and ZU-23-2, Czech M53/59 Praga, and Swedish Bofors 40 mm guns.
Small arms reported in service included TT pistol, Browning Hi-Power, Beretta M12, FN P90, FN FAL, SKS, AK-47, AKM and AK-103 assault rifles, the FN F2000, Soviet RPD machine gun, RPK machine gun, PK machine guns, DShK heavy machine gun, KPV heavy machine guns, SG-43 Goryunov, and a number of RPG-type and anti-aircraft missile systems: RPG-2, RPG-7, 9K32 Strela-2.
Even in the five years between 2005 and 2009, large quantities of arms and ammunition were delivered to Libya. It is not always clear which armed service or police organisation received the weaponry.
The Libyan Air Force was created after the US and UK pressured then-ruling King Idris to modernise his armed forces so that they could better stand off against revolutionary regimes in the Middle East. The LAF was created in 1963. The Libyan Air Force had an estimated personnel strength of 22,000 in 2005. There were 13 military airbases in Libya.
After US forces had left Libya in 1970, Wheelus Air Base, a previous US facility about seven miles from Tripoli, became a Libyan Air Force installation and was renamed Okba Ben Nafi Air Base. The base housed the LPAF's headquarters and a large share of its major training facilities.
All combat aircraft of the Libyan Air Force that were not in the rebel forces' hands were destroyed by NATO bombings during the civil war, effectively leading to the destruction of the Libyan Air Force.
Surface-to-Air Missiles include:
The Libyan Navy is the maritime force of Libya, established in November 1962. It is a fairly typical small navy with a few missile frigates, corvettes and patrol boats to defend the coastline, but with a very limited self-defence capability. The Navy has always been the smallest of Libya's services and has always been dependent on foreign sources for equipment, spare parts, and training. The total personnel of the Libyan Navy is about 8,000.
Its first warship was delivered in 1966. Initially the effective force was limited to smaller vessels, but this changed after the rise of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 1969. From this time, Libya started to buy armaments from Europe and the Soviet Union. The Customs and Harbour police were amalgamated with the Navy in 1970, extending the Navy's mission to include anti-smuggling and customs duties. Originally Libya received six submarines from the Soviet union in 1982, but it is very unlikely that the submarines are still operational.
Much of the Libyan Navy was rendered inoperable by NATO bombing in 2011, and the exact number of surviving vessels is unknown.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps ("Liwa Haris al-Jamahiriya") or Jamahiriya Guard was a Libyan paramilitary key protection force of the government of Muammar Gaddafi, until his death in October 2011. Composed of 3,000 men hand-picked from Gaddafi's tribal group in the Sirte region, the Guard was well armed, being provided with T-54 and T-62 tanks, APCs, MRLs, SA-8 and ZSU-23-4 SAMs taken from the army inventory. As of 2005, its commander was Hasan al-Kabir al-Gaddafi, a cousin of the former Libyan leader.
The Revolutionary Guard developed from the Revolutionary Committees, even if the latter had at first been introduced only into workplaces and communities, and not extended to the military. After the early 1980s, however, the Revolutionary Guard, as a paramilitary wing of the Revolutionary Committees, became entrenched within the armed forces. They served as a parallel channel of control, a means of ideological indoctrination in the barracks, and an apparatus for monitoring suspicious behavior. The Revolutionary Guards reportedly held the keys to ammunition stockpiles at the main military bases, doling it out in small quantities as needed by the regular forces. Their influence increased after a coup attempt in May 1985, that was blocked mainly thanks to the action of the Revolutionary Guard that engaged regular army units in a series of street battles.
In about 1980, Muammar Gaddafi introduced the Islamic Pan-African Legion, a body recruited primarily among dissidents from Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Mali, and Chad. West African states with Muslim populations have also been the source of some personnel. Believed to consist of about 7,000 individuals, the force has received training from experienced Palestinian and Syrian instructors. Some of those recruited to the legion were said to have been forcibly impressed from among nationals of neighboring countries who migrated to Libya in search of work.
According to the Military Balance published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the force was organized into one armored, one infantry, and one paratroop/commando brigade. It has been supplied with T-54 and T-55 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and EE-9 armored cars. The Islamic Pan-African Legion was reported to have been committed during the fighting in Chad in 1980 and was praised by Gaddafi for its success there. However, it was believed that many of the troops who fled the Chadian attacks of March 1987 were members of the Legion.
In an effort to realise Gaddafi's vision of a united Arab military force, plans for the creation of an Islamic Arab Legion were being announced from time to time. The goal, according to the Libyan press, would be to assemble an army of one million men and women fighters to prepare for the great Arab battle – "the battle of liberating Palestine, of toppling the reactionary regimes, of annihilating the borders, gates, and barriers between the countries of the Arab homeland, and of creating the single Arab Jamahiriya from the ocean to the gulf". In March 1985, it was announced that the National Command of the Revolutionary Forces Command in the Arab Nation had been formed with Gaddafi at its head. A number of smaller radical Arab groups from Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, and Jordan were represented at the inaugural meeting. Syrian Ba'ath Party and radical Palestinian factions were also present. Each of these movements was expected to earmark 10 per cent of its forces for service under the new command. As of April 1987, there was no information confirming the existence of such a militia.
In 1987 the mission of the 45,000 People's Militia was territorial defence, and it was to function under the leadership of local military commanders. Gaddafi contended that it was the People's Militia that met the Egyptian incursions during the border clash of 1977, although the Egyptians insisted that their successful raids had been contested by regular army units. The militia forces are not known to have faced any other test that would permit an appraisal of their performance in home defence or as auxiliaries to the regular army. There was some evidence that local commanders had not responded energetically to their responsibility for training and supervising militia units. Militia units were reportedly generously equipped with arms, transport, and uniforms. In November 1985, it was announced that the first contingent of "armed people" trained as paratroopers had made a demonstration drop. Thousands of People's Militiamen were part of the Libyan expeditionary force that was airlifted to Uganda in 1979. The Libyan troops were supposed to help defend the collapsing regime of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, an ally of Gaddafi, amid the Uganda–Tanzania War. Like the other Libyan units sent to Uganda, the People's Militia was ill-prepared (some militiamen were not even informed that they were supposed to fight, and had believed theirs to be a pure training mission) and consequently suffered heavy losses during the Battle of Lukaya and Battle of Entebbe. Amin's government was overthrown, and the surviving Libyans were forced to flee Uganda.
It is not clear whether the force still existed by the time of the 2011 civil war.
When the army and navy were formed, the uniforms adopted by each service reflected British military and naval tradition. Modifications have occurred over the intervening years, however, and in early 1987 Libyan uniforms were similar to those worn by military personnel of a number of Middle-Eastern Arab countries. The standard field uniform for Libyan paratroopers (Army commandos) was a two-piece camouflage uniform made of water repellent cotton. The shirt was similar in design to the United States Army fatigue shirt. The shirt and trousers were camouflaged in blue-green, light green, and dark brown. The standard headgear for paratroopers was a sky-blue beret. The uniforms of the air force, however, continued to resemble in both style and colour the uniforms of the United States Air Force, which served as a model when the Libyan Air Force was established.
Originally the rank structure of all three services was similar to that of the British Armed Forces, but some modifications were introduced in light of the small size of the Libyan military establishment. In early 1979, the system prescribed by law still included nine officer grades and five enlisted ranks; there were no warrant officer equivalents. Although three general officer grades continued to be authorised, they have not been used since the 1969 coup. Promoted to the grade of colonel (aqid) after assuming power, Gaddafi maintained a ceiling on the grade level of his officer corps in keeping with his desire to avoid the ostentatious public image that the generals of the monarchy had conveyed. In January 1976, the Arab Socialist Union's National Congress attempted to promote Gaddafi to major general. The Libyan leader stated that he would accept the honour as an expression of gratitude from his compatriots but would retain the title of colonel because it had become an accepted and traditional part of his name.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17808
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Foreign relations of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi
The foreign relations of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1969–2011) underwent much fluctuation and change. They were marked by severe tension with the West (especially the United States, although relations were normalised in the early 21st century prior to the Libyan Civil War) and by other national policies in the Middle East and Africa, including the Libyan government's financial and military support for numerous paramilitary and rebel groups.
Beginning in 1969, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi determined Libya's foreign policy. His principal foreign policy goals were Arab unity, elimination of Israel, advancement of Islam, support for Palestinians, elimination of outside influence in the Middle East and Africa, and support for a range of "revolutionary" causes.
After the 1969 coup d'état, U.S.-Libyan relations became increasingly strained.
Gaddafi closed American and British bases on Libyan territory and partially nationalized all foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya.
Export controls on military equipment and civil aircraft were imposed during the 1970s.
On 11 June 1972, Gaddafi announced that any Arab wishing to volunteer for Palestinian armed groups "can register his name at any Libyan embassy will be given adequate training for combat". He also promised financial support for attacks. In response, the United States withdrew its ambassador.
Gaddafi played a key role in promoting the use of oil embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West—especially the United States—to end support for Israel. Gaddafi rejected both Soviet communism and Western capitalism because he believed that communism was a violation against religion and capitalism was a violation against humanity.
In 1973 the Irish Naval Service intercepted the vessel "Claudia" in Irish territorial waters, which carried Soviet arms from Libya to the Provisional IRA.
In 1976 after a series of terror attacks by the Provisional IRA, Gaddafi announced that "the bombs which are convulsing Britain and breaking its spirit are the bombs of Libyan people. We have sent them to the Irish revolutionaries so that the British will pay the price for their past deeds".
Together with Fidel Castro and other Communist leaders, Gaddafi supported Soviet protege Haile Mariam Mengistu, the military ruler of Ethiopia, who was later convicted for a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands.
In October 1978, Gaddafi sent Libyan troops to aid Idi Amin in the Uganda–Tanzania War when Amin tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of Kagera, and Tanzania counterattacked. Amin lost the battle and later fled to exile in Libya, where he remained for almost a year.
Libya also was one of the main supporters of the Polisario Front in the former Spanish Sahara – a nationalist group dedicated to ending Spanish colonialism in the region. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed by Polisario on 28 February 1976, and Libya began to recognize the SADR as the legitimate government of Western Sahara starting 15 April 1980. It is still common for Sahrawi students to attend their schooling in Libya.
Gaddafi also aided Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the short-lived Central African Empire.
U.S. embassy staff members were withdrawn from Tripoli after a mob attacked and set fire to the embassy in December 1979. The U.S. government declared Libya a "state sponsor of terrorism" on 29 December 1979.
In May 1981, the U.S. government closed the Libyan "people's bureau" (embassy) in Washington, D.C. and expelled the Libyan staff in response their conduct generally violating internationally accepted standards of diplomatic behavior.
In August 1981, in the first incident of the Gulf of Sidra, two Libyan jets fired on U.S. aircraft participating in a routine naval exercise over international waters of the Mediterranean Sea claimed by Libya. The U.S. planes returned fire and shot down the attacking Libyan aircraft. On 11 December 1981, the State Department invalidated U.S. passports for travel to Libya (a "de facto" travel ban) and, for purposes of safety, advised all U.S. citizens in Libya to leave. In March 1982, the U.S. government prohibited imports of Libyan crude oil into the United States and expanded the controls on U.S.-origin goods intended for export to Libya. Licenses were required for all transactions, except food and medicine. In March 1984, U.S. export controls were expanded to prohibit future exports to the Ra's Lanuf petrochemical complex. In April 1985, all Export-Import Bank financing was prohibited.
In October 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. Gaddafi applauded the murder and remarked that it was a "punishment" for Sadat's signing of the Camp David Accords with the United States and Israel.
In April 1984, Libyan refugees in London protested against the execution of two dissidents. Libyan diplomats shot at 11 people and killed Yvonne Fletcher, a British policewoman. The incident led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya for over a decade. Two months later, Gaddafi asserted that he wanted his agents to assassinate dissident refugees, even if they were just on pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca—in August 1984, a Libyan plot in Mecca was thwarted by Saudi Arabian police.
After the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, which killed 19 and wounded around 140, Gaddafi indicated that he would continue to support the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army as long as European countries support anti-Gaddafi Libyans. The Foreign Minister of Libya also called the massacres "heroic acts".
In 1986 Libyan state television announced that Libya was training suicide squads to attack American and European interests.
Gaddafi claimed the Gulf of Sidra as his territorial water and his navy was involved in a conflict from January to March 1986.
On 5 April 1986, Libyan agents bombed "La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people and injuring 229 people who were spending the evening there. Gaddafi's plan was intercepted by Western intelligence. More detailed information was retrieved years later when Stasi archives were investigated by the reunited Germany. Libyan agents who had carried out the operation from the Libyan embassy in East Germany were prosecuted by reunited Germany in the 1990s.
Germany and the United States learned that the bombing in West Berlin had been ordered from Tripoli. On 14 April 1986, the United States carried out Operation El Dorado Canyon against Gaddafi and members of his regime. Air defenses, three army bases, and two airfields in Tripoli and Benghazi were bombed. The surgical strikes failed to kill Gaddafi but he lost a few dozen military officers. There were around 30 military deaths, and around 15 civilian deaths, including Gaddafi's 6 month old adopted daughter, allegedly.
Gaddafi announced that he had won a spectacular military victory over the United States and the country was officially renamed the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah". However, his speech appeared devoid of passion and even the "victory" celebrations appeared unusual. Criticism of Gaddafi by ordinary Libyan citizens became more bold, such as defacing of Gaddafi posters. The raids against Gaddafi had brought the regime to its weakest point in 17 years.
The Chadian–Libyan conflict (1978–1987) ended in disaster for Libya in 1987 with the Toyota War. France supported Chad in this conflict and two years later on 19 September 1989, a French airliner, UTA Flight 772, was destroyed by an in-flight explosion for which Libyan agents were convicted "in absentia". The incident bore close similarities to the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 (the "Lockerbie Bombing") a year earlier. The downing of these two airliners along with the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing seemed to establish a pattern of reprisal attacks—in the form of terrorist bombings—by Libya or at least Libyan agents. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya for these two acts (with UN Security Council Resolutions 731, 748 and 883). The UN eventually lifted these sanctions (with Resolution 1506) in 2003 when Libya "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials, renounced terrorism and arranged for payment of appropriate compensation for the families of the victims." In 2008 Libya established a fund to compensate victims of these three terrorist acts (and the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi).
Gaddafi fueled a number of Islamist and communist terrorist groups in the Philippines, as well as paramilitaries in Oceania. He attempted to radicalize New Zealand's Māori people in a failed effort to destabilise the U.S. ally. In Australia, he financed trade unions and some politicians who opposed the ANZUS alliance with the United States. In May 1987, Australia deported diplomats and broke off relations with Libya because of its activities in Oceania.
In late 1987 French authorities stopped a merchant vessel, the "MV Eksund", which was delivering a 150-ton Libyan arms shipment to European terrorist groups.
In 1988, Libya was found to be in the process of constructing a chemical weapons plant at Rabta; former CIA Director Webster has called the Libyan facility "the largest chemical plant that I know for chemical warfare."
Libya's relationship with the Soviet Union involved massive Libyan arms purchases from the Soviet bloc and the presence of thousands of east bloc advisers. Libya's use—and heavy loss—of Soviet-supplied weaponry in its war with Chad was a notable breach of an apparent Soviet-Libyan understanding not to use the weapons for activities inconsistent with Soviet objectives. As a result, Soviet-Libyan relations reached a nadir in mid-1987.
In January 1989, there was another encounter over the Gulf of Sidra between U.S. and Libyan aircraft which resulted in the downing of two Libyan jets.
In 1991, two Libyan intelligence agents were indicted by prosecutors in the United States and United Kingdom for their involvement in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Six other Libyans were put on trial in absentia for the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772 over Chad and Niger. The UN Security Council demanded that Libya surrender the suspects, cooperate with the Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families, and cease all support for terrorism. Libya's refusal to comply led to the approval of Security Council Resolution 748 on 31 March 1992, imposing international sanctions on the state designed to bring about Libyan compliance. Continued Libyan defiance led to further sanctions by the UN against Libya in November 1993.
After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, Libya concentrated on expanding diplomatic ties with Third World countries and increasing its commercial links with Europe and East Asia. Following the imposition of U.N. sanctions in 1992, these ties significantly diminished. Following a 1998 Arab League meeting in which fellow Arab states decided not to challenge U.N. sanctions, Gaddafi announced that he was turning his back on pan-Arab ideas, one of the fundamental tenets of his philosophy.
Instead, Libya pursued closer bilateral ties, particularly with Egypt and Northwest African nations Tunisia and Morocco. It also has sought to develop its relations with Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to Libyan involvement in several internal African disputes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Central African Republic, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Libya also has sought to expand its influence in Africa through financial assistance, ranging from aid donations to impoverished neighbors such as Niger to oil subsidies to Zimbabwe. Gaddafi has proposed a borderless "United States of Africa" to transform the continent into a single nation-state ruled by a single government. This plan has been moderately well received, although more powerful would-be participants such as Nigeria and South Africa are skeptical.
Gaddafi also trained and supported Charles Taylor, who was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict in Sierra Leone.
Libya had close ties with Slobodan Milošević's regime in Yugoslavia. Gaddafi aligned himself with the Orthodox Serbs against Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslims and Kosovo's Albanians. Gaddafi supported Milošević even when Milošević was charged with large-scale ethnic cleansing against Albanians in Kosovo. In 2011, former Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Mihaylova (Neynsky) revealed in a TV documentary that the Bulgarian government had turned over to Germany an unverified report compiled by its military agency which "made clear" the existence of the plan, even though the military intelligence warned that the information could not be verified.
Gaddafi continued the denunciation of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia. Intimating that the allegations against the state were deliberate efforts by the "imperialist axis" to falsely image armed ARBiH death squads in Srebrenica and elsewhere.
In 1996, the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) was enacted, seeking to penalize non-U.S. companies which invest more than $40 million in Libya's oil and gasoline sector in any one year. ILSA was renewed in 2001, and the investment cap lowered to $20 million.
In 1999, less than a decade after the UN sanctions were put in place, Libya began to make dramatic policy changes in regard to the Western world, including turning over the Lockerbie suspects for trial. This diplomatic breakthrough followed years of negotiation, including a visit by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to Libya in December 1998, and personal appeals by Nelson Mandela. Eventually UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook persuaded the Americans to accept a trial of the suspects in the Netherlands under Scottish law, with the UN Security Council agreeing to suspend sanctions as soon as the suspects arrived in the Netherlands for trial. Libya also paid compensation in 1999 for the death of British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, a move that preceded the reopening of the British embassy in Tripoli and the appointment of ambassador Sir Richard Dalton, after a 17-year break in diplomatic relations.
As of January 2002, Libya was constructing another chemical weapons production facility at Tarhuna. Citing Libya's support for terrorism and its past regional aggressions the United States voiced concern over this development. In cooperation with like-minded countries, the United States has since sought to bring a halt to the foreign technical assistance deemed essential to the completion of this facility. See Chemical weapon proliferation#Libya.
Following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Gaddafi decided to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs and pay almost 3 billion euros in compensation to the families of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772. The decision was welcomed by many western nations and was seen as an important step toward Libya rejoining the international community. Since 2003 the country has made efforts to normalize its ties with the European Union and the United States and has even coined the catchphrase, 'The Libya Model', an example intended to show the world what can be achieved through negotiation, rather than force, when there is goodwill on both sides. By 2004 George W. Bush had lifted the economic sanctions and official relations resumed with the United States. Libya opened a liaison office in Washington, and the United States opened an office in Tripoli. In January 2004, Congressman Tom Lantos led the first official Congressional delegation visit to Libya.
Libya has supported Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir despite charges of a genocide in Darfur.
The release, in 2007, of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who had been held since 1999, charged with conspiring to deliberately infect over 400 children with HIV, was seen as marking a new stage in Libyan-Western relations.
The United States removed Gaddafi's regime, after 27 years, from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.
On 16 October 2007, Libya was elected to serve on the United Nations Security Council for two years starting in January 2008.
In August 2008 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed an agreement to pay Libya $5 billion over 25 years – this was a "complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era", the Italian prime minister said. In September 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Gaddafi and announced that US-Libya relations have entered a 'new phase'.
Libyan-Swiss relations strongly suffered after the arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi for beating up his domestic servants in Geneva in 2008. In response, Gaddafi removed all his money held in Swiss banks and asked the United Nations to vote to abolish Switzerland as a sovereign nation.
In February 2009, Gaddafi was selected to be chairman of the African Union for one year. The same year, the United Kingdom and Libya signed a prisoner-exchange agreement and then Libya requested the transfer of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who finally returned home in August 2009.
On 23 September 2009, Colonel Gaddafi addressed the 64th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, his first visit to the United States.
As of 25 October 2009, Canadian visa requests were being denied and Canadian travelers were told they were not welcome in Libya. Specifically, Harper's government was planning to publicly criticize Gaddafi for praising the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
The sincerity of the good faith efforts of the Libyan government may be questionable since Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri, told a U.S. diplomat in 2009 that the Libyans were willing to host wounded Guinean junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara after a failed assassination attempt in 2009. Libya also still provided bounties for heads of refugees who criticized Gaddafi, including 1 million dollars for Ashur Shamis, a Libyan-British journalist.
During the start of the Arab Spring, Gaddafi condemned the Tunisian revolution in January 2011, saying protesters were misled by WikiLeaks and voicing solidarity with ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The progress made by Gaddafi's government in improving relations with the Western world was swiftly set back by the regime's authoritarian crackdown on protests that began the following month. Many Western countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and eventually Italy condemned Libya for the brutal crackdown on the dissidents. Peru became the first of several countries to sever diplomatic relations with Tripoli on 22 February 2011, followed closely by African Union member state Botswana the following day.
Libya was suspended from Arab League proceedings on 22 February 2011, the same day Peru terminated bilateral relations. In response, Gaddafi declared that in the view of his government, "The Arab League is finished. There is no such thing as the Arab League."
On 10 March 2011, France became the first country to not just break off relations with the "jamahiriya", but transfer diplomatic recognition to the rebel National Transitional Council established in Benghazi, declaring it to be "the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people". As of 20 September 2011, a total of 98 countries have taken this step.
On 19 March 2011, a coalition of United Nations member states led by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States began military operations in Libyan airspace and territorial waters after the United Nations Security Council approved UNSCR 1973, ostensibly to prevent further attacks on civilians as loyalist forces closed in on Benghazi, the rebel headquarters. In response, Gaddafi declared that a state of "war with no limits" existed between Libya and the members of the coalition. Despite this, he sent a three-page letter to US President Barack Obama imploring him to "annul a wrong and mistaken action" and stop striking Libyan targets, repeatedly referring to him as "our son" and blaming the uprising on the terrorist group al Qaeda.
In 2003 Libya began to make policy changes with the open intention of pursuing a Western-Libyan détente. The Libyan government announced its decision to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs and pay almost $3 billion in compensation to the families of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772.
Starting in 2003, the Libyan government restored normal diplomatic ties with the European Union and the United States and has even coined the catchphrase, "The Libya Model", an example intended to show the world what can be achieved through negotiation rather than force when there is goodwill on both sides.
On 30 August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation. In exchange, Libya will take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. The treaty was ratified by Italy on 6 February 2009, and by Libya on 2 March, during a visit to Tripoli by Berlusconi.
On 31 October 2008, Libya paid $1.5 billion, sought through donations from private businesses, to a fund that would be used to compensate both US victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and the 1986 bombing of the La Belle disco in Germany. In addition, Libyan victims of US airstrikes that followed the Berlin attack will also be compensated with $300 million from the fund. US state department spokesman, Sean McCormack called the move a "laudable milestone ... clearing the way for continued and expanding US-Libyan partnership." This final payment under the US-Libya Claims Settlement Agreement was seen as a major step towards improving ties between the two, which had begun easing after Tripoli halted its arms programmes. George Bush also signed an executive order restoring Libya's immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing pending compensation cases.
On 17 November 2008, FCO minister Bill Rammell signed five agreements with Libya. Rammell said: "I will today sign four bilateral agreements with my Libyan counterpart, Abdulatti al-Obidi, which will strengthen our judicial ties, as agreed during Tony Blair's visit to Libya in May last year. In addition, we are signing today a Double Taxation Convention which will bring benefits to British business in Libya and Libyan investors in the UK – benefits in terms of certainty, clarity and transparency and reducing tax compliance burdens. We are also in the final stages of negotiating an agreement to protect and promote investment."
"UK/Libya relations have significantly improved in recent years, following Libya's voluntary renunciation of WMD. Today we are partners in the UN Security Council. We also wish to assist Libya to establish closer relations with the European Union to continue and strengthen the reintegration of Libya within the international community. We therefore support the commencement of negotiations between Libya and the EU on a framework agreement which should cover a range of issues including political, social, economic, commercial and cultural relations between the EU and Libya."
On 21 November 2008, the US Senate confirmed the appointment of Gene Cretz to be the first US ambassador to Libya since 1972.
In June 2009, Gaddafi made his first visit to Rome, where he met Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Giorgio Napolitano, Senate President Renato Schifani, and Chamber President Gianfranco Fini, among others. The Democratic Party and Italy of Values opposed the visit, and many protests were staged throughout Italy by human rights organizations and the Radical Party. Gaddafi also took part in the G8 summit in L'Aquila in July as Chairman of the African Union.
In the 2005–2009 period, Italy has been the first EU arms exporter towards Libya, with a total value of €276.7m, of which one third only in the last 2008–2009 years. Italian exports cover one third of total EU arms exports towards Libya, and include mainly military aircraft but also missiles and electronic equipment.
During the Libyan Civil War, Italy terminated relations with Tripoli and recognized the rebel authority in Benghazi as Libya's legitimate representative, effectively starting relations with the anti-Gaddafi government. The Italian government has urged the international community to follow suit.
During the Libyan Civil War, all European Union and NATO member states withdrew diplomatic staff from Tripoli and shut their embassies in the Libyan capital. Several foreign embassies and UN offices were badly damaged by vandals on 1 May 2011, drawing condemnation from the United Kingdom and Italy. The UK also expelled the Libyan ambassador in London from the country.
On 1 July 2011, Gaddafi threatened to sponsor attacks against civilians and businesses in Europe in what would be a resumption of his policies of the 1970s and 1980s.
On 13 November 2001, a German court found four persons, including a former employee of the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, guilty in connection with the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, in which 229 people were injured and two U.S. servicemen were killed. The court also established a connection to the Libyan government.
In November 1991, two Libyan intelligence agents, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were charged with the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Libya refused to extradite the two accused to the U.S. or to Scotland. As a result, United Nations Security Council Resolution 748 was approved on 31 March 1992, requiring Libya to surrender the suspects, cooperate with the Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772 investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families, and cease all support for terrorism. The UN imposed further sanctions with Resolution 883, a limited assets freeze and an embargo on selected oil equipment, in November 1993. In 1999, six other Libyans who had been accused of the September 1989 bombing of Union Air Transport Flight 772 were put on trial in their absence by a Paris court. They were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Libyan government eventually surrendered the two Lockerbie bombing suspects in 1999 for trial at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands and UN sanctions were suspended. On 31 January 2001, at the end of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fhimah was found not guilty and was freed to return to Libya. Megrahi appealed against his conviction but this was rejected in February 2002. In 2003, Libya wrote to the UN Security Council admitting "responsibility for the actions of its officials" in relation to the Lockerbie bombing, renouncing terrorism and agreeing to pay compensation to the relatives of the 270 victims. The previously suspended UN sanctions were then cancelled.
In June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and referred Megrahi's case back to Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh for a second appeal. Expected to last for a year, the appeal began in April 2009 and was adjourned in May 2009. Having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Megrahi dropped the appeal and on 20 August 2009, was granted compassionate release from jail and repatriated to Libya. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on 24 September 2009, the day after his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Colonel Gaddafi said: "As a case, the Lockerbie question: I would say it's come to an end, legally, politically, financially, it is all over."
In the late 1990s, a Benghazi children's hospital was the site of an outbreak of HIV infection that spread to over 400 patients. Libya blamed the outbreak on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who were arrested and eventually sentenced to death (eventually overturned and a new trial ordered). The international view is that Libya has used the medics as scapegoats for poor hygiene conditions, and Bulgaria and other countries including the European Union and the United States repeatedly called on Tripoli to release them. A new trial began 11 May 2006, in Tripoli. On 6 December a study was released showing that some children had been infected before the six arrived in Libya, but it was too late for inclusion as evidence. On 19 December 2006, the six were again convicted and sentenced to death. They were finally released in June 2007, after mediation of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in exchange for a variety of agreements with the EU, and they were returned to Bulgaria safely.
On 15 July 2008 the fifth eldest son of Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal Gaddafi, and his wife were held for two days and charged with assaulting two of their staff in Geneva, Switzerland and then released on bail on 17 July. Hannibal Gaddafi has a history of violent and aggressive behaviour having been charged with battery by his later wife and having attacked Italian police officers.
The government of Libya subsequently put a boycott on Swiss imports, reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens, recalled diplomats from Bern, and forced all Swiss companies such as ABB and Nestlé to close offices. General National Maritime Transport Company, which owns a large refinery in Switzerland, also halted oil shipments to Switzerland.
Two Swiss businessmen, Rachid Hamdani and Max Göldi, Libya head of ABB, who were in Libya at the time were denied permission to leave the country and were forced to take shelter at the Swiss embassy in Tripoli. Both were initially sentenced to 6 months in prison for immigration offenses, but Hamdani was cleared on appeal and Göldi's sentence was reduced to four months. Göldi surrendered to Libyan authorities on 22 February 2010, while Hamdani returned to Switzerland on 24 February.
At the 35th G8 summit in July 2009, Muammar Gaddafi called Switzerland a "world mafia" and called for the country to be split between France, Germany and Italy.
In August 2009 Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz visited Tripoli and issued a public apology to Libya for the arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi and his wife. Geneva's prosecutor dropped the case against the Gaddafis when the employees withdrew their formal complaint after reaching an undisclosed settlement.
In February 2010, the dispute with Switzerland spread, with Libya refusing to issue entry visas to nationals of any of the countries within the Schengen Area, of which Switzerland is a part. This action was apparently taken in retaliation for Switzerland blacklisting 188 high-ranking officials from Libya.
As a result of the ban, foreign nationals from certain countries were not permitted entry into Libya at Tripoli airport, including 22 Italians and eight Maltese citizens, one of whom was forced to wait for 20 hours before he was able to return home. Three Italians, nine Portuguese nationals, a Frenchman and a European citizen who arrived from Cairo were repatriated. In addition to citizens of Schengen Area countries being refused entry, it has been reported that several Irish citizens have been turned away, despite Republic of Ireland not being a member of the Schengen agreement. An unnamed Libyan official at the airport asked to confirm the ban told Reuters: "This is right. This decision has been taken. No visas for Europeans, except Britain."
In response, the European Commission criticised the actions, describing them as "unilateral and disproportionate", although no immediate 'tit-for-tat' response was announced.
The government of Libya had in the past received criticism and trade restrictions from Western countries and organisations for allegedly providing several armed rebel groups with weapons, explosives and combat training.
Paramilitaries supported by Libya past and present include:
Libya has in the past claimed a strip along their border of about in northern Niger and part of southeastern Algeria. In addition, it is involved in a maritime boundary dispute with Tunisia.
As with all other African countries, Libya is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. As with most international organizations to which Tripoli is a party, NAM recognizes it under the name Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Algeria–Libya relations have generally been amicable. Libyan support for the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara facilitated early post independence Algerian relations with Libya. Libyan inclinations for full-scale political union, however, have obstructed formal political collaboration because Algeria has consistently backed away from such cooperation with its unpredictable neighbour.
Libya long claimed the Aouzou Strip, a strip of land in northern Chad rich with uranium deposits that was intensely involved in Chad's civil war in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1973, Libya engaged in military operations in the Aouzou Strip to gain access to minerals and to use it as a base of influence in Chadian politics. Libya argued that the territory was inhabited by indigenous people who owed allegiance to the Senussi Order and subsequently to the Ottoman Empire, and that this title had been inherited by Libya. It also supported its claim with an unratified 1935 treaty between France and Italy, the colonial powers of Chad and Libya, respectively. After consolidating its hold on the strip, Libya annexed it in 1976. Chadian forces were able to force the Libyans to retreat from the Aouzou Strip in 1987.
A cease-fire between Chad and Libya held from 1987 to 1988, followed by unsuccessful negotiations over the next several years, leading finally to the 1994 International Court of Justice decision granting Chad sovereignty over the Aouzou Strip, which ended Libyan occupation.
Chadian-Libyan relations were ameliorated when Libyan-supported Idriss Déby unseated Habré on 2 December. Gaddafi was the first head of state to recognize the new regime, and he also signed treaties of friendship and cooperation on various levels; but regarding the Aouzou Strip Déby followed his predecessor, declaring that if necessary he would fight to keep the strip out of Libya's hands.
The Aouzou dispute was concluded for good on 3 February 1994, when the judges of the ICJ by a majority of 16 to 1 decided that the Aouzou Strip belonged to Chad. The court's judgement was implemented without delay, the two parties signing as early as 4 April an agreement concerning the practical modalities for the implementation of the judgement. Monitored by international observers, the withdrawal of Libyan troops from the Strip began on 15 April and was completed by 10 May. The formal and final transfer of the Strip from Libya to Chad took place on 30 May, when the sides signed a joint declaration stating that the Libyan withdrawal had been effected.
During the Libyan Civil War, after meeting with high-level representatives of the Chadian government, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that N'Djamena opposes Gaddafi and has reached out to the rival National Transitional Council in rebel-held Benghazi. This claim was disputed by at least one foreign policy analyst, who brought up previous remarks made by Ambassador Daoussa Déby, the Chadian president's half-brother, and said, "Déby's words seem to echo Gaddafi's claims that the terrorist group al-Qaeda masterminded the national uprising in Libya."
After the neighboring countries of Egypt and Libya both gained independence in the early 1950s, relations were initially cooperative. Libya assisted Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Later, tensions arose due to Egypt's rapprochement with the west. Following the 1977 Libyan–Egyptian War, relations were suspended for twelve years. However, since 1989 relations have steadily improved. With the progressive lifting of UN and US sanctions from 2003 to 2008, the two countries have been working together to jointly develop their oil and natural gas industries.
In early 2004, the U.S. State Department ended its ban on U.S. citizens using their passports for travel to Libya or spending money there. U.S. citizens began legally heading back to Libya for the first time since 1981.
On 15 May 2006 David Welch, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, announced that the U.S. had decided, after a 45-day comment period, to renew full diplomatic relations with Libya and remove Libya from the U.S. list of countries that foster terrorism. During this announcement, it was also said that the U.S. has the intention of upgrading the U.S. liaison office in Tripoli into an embassy. The U.S. embassy in Tripoli opened in May, a product of gradual normalization of international relations after Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing. Libya's dismantling of its weapons of mass destruction was a major step towards this announcement.
The United States suspended its relations with Gaddafi's government indefinitely on 10 March 2011, when it announced it would begin treating the National Transitional Council in Benghazi as legitimate negotiating parties for the country's future.
On 15 July 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that America would now recognize the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya, thus severing any and all recognition of Gaddafi's government as legitimate.
Beginning in 1989, Libya supported the Free Aceh Movement through GAM's second wave with troops and aid. This led to the second GAM wave being better trained than the previous wave.
Since gaining independence from their respective colonial powers, both nations have had a strong relationship, partially due to their historic religious similarities.
Vanuatu and Libya established official diplomatic relations in 1986, at the initiative of the former. The aim, for Vanuatu, was to obtain access to favourable economic relations with a major oil-producing country, and to strengthen its policy of non-alignment by establishing relations with a notable country not aligned with the Western Bloc.
As of 18 October 2011, at least 100 UN member states have explicitly recognised the National Transitional Council, as have all international organisations to which Libya is a member. Only the 8 countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the African countries of Namibia and Zimbabwe have explicitly continued to denounce the NTC and insist on Gaddafi's legitimacy.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17809
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Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein ( ; ), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (), is a German-speaking microstate situated in the Alps and in the southwest of Central Europe. The principality is a semi-constitutional monarchy headed by the Prince of Liechtenstein; the Prince's extensive powers are equivalent to those of a President in a semi-presidential system.
Liechtenstein is bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and Austria to the east and north. It is Europe's fourth-smallest country, with an area of just over and a population of 38,749. Divided into 11 municipalities, its capital is Vaduz, and its largest municipality is Schaan. It is also the smallest country to border two countries. Liechtenstein is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world, along with Uzbekistan.
Economically, Liechtenstein has one of the highest gross domestic products per person in the world when adjusted for purchasing power parity. It was once known as a billionaire tax haven, but is no longer on any blacklists of uncooperative tax haven countries.
An Alpine country, Liechtenstein is mountainous, making it a winter sport destination. The country has a strong financial sector centered in Vaduz. Liechtenstein is a member of the United Nations, the European Free Trade Association, and the Council of Europe, and although not a member of the European Union, it participates in both the Schengen Area and the European Economic Area. It also has a customs union and a monetary union with Switzerland.
The oldest traces of human existence in what is now Liechtenstein date back to the Middle Paleolithic era. Neolithic farming settlements were initially founded in the valleys around 5300 BC.
The Hallstatt and La Tène cultures flourished during the late Iron Age, from around 450 BC—possibly under some influence of both the Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most important tribal groups in the Alpine region were the Helvetii. In 58 BC, at the Battle of Bibracte, Julius Caesar defeated the Alpine tribes, therefore bringing the region under close control of the Roman Republic. By 15 BC, Tiberius—later the second Roman emperor—with his brother, Drusus, conquered the entirety of the Alpine area. Liechtenstein was then integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. The area was maintained by the Roman military, who also maintained large legionary camps at Brigantium (Austria), near Lake Constance, and at Magia (Swiss). A Roman road which ran through the territory was also created and maintained by these groups. In c.260, Brigantium was destroyed by the Alemanni, a Germanic people who settled in the area in around 450 AD.
In the Early Middle Ages, the Alemanni settled the eastern Swiss plateau by the 5th century and the valleys of the Alps by the end of the 8th century, with Liechtenstein located at the eastern edge of Alemannia. In the 6th century, the entire region became part of the Frankish Empire following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD.
The area that later became Liechtenstein remained under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties), until the empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 AD, following the death of Charlemagne. The territory of present-day Liechtenstein was under the possession of East Francia. It would later be reunified with Middle Francia under the Holy Roman Empire, around 1000 AD. Until about 1100, the predominant language of the area was Romansch, but thereafter German began to gain ground in the territory. In 1300, an Alemannic population—the Walsers, who originated in Valais—entered the region and settled. The mountain village of Triesenberg still preserves features of Walser dialect into the present century.
By 1200, dominions across the Alpine plateau were controlled by the Houses of Savoy, Zähringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Other regions were accorded the Imperial immediacy that granted the empire direct control over the mountain passes. When the Kyburg dynasty fell in 1264, the Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) extended their territory to the eastern Alpine plateau that included the territory of Liechtenstein. This region was enfeoffed to the Counts of Hohenems until the sale to the Liechtenstein dynasty in 1699.
In 1396 Vaduz (the southern region of Liechtenstein) gained imperial immediacy, i.e. it became subject to the Holy Roman Emperor alone.
The family, from which the principality takes its name, originally came from Liechtenstein Castle in Lower Austria which they had possessed from at least 1140 until the 13th century (and again from 1807 onwards). The Liechtensteins acquired land, predominantly in Moravia, Lower Austria, Silesia, and Styria. As these territories were all held in feudal tenure from more senior feudal lords, particularly various branches of the Habsburgs, the Liechtenstein dynasty was unable to meet a primary requirement to qualify for a seat in the Imperial diet (parliament), the "Reichstag". Even though several Liechtenstein princes served several Habsburg rulers as close advisers, without any territory held directly from the Imperial throne, they held little power in the Holy Roman Empire.
For this reason, the family sought to acquire lands that would be classed as "unmittelbar" (not sellable) or held without any intermediate feudal tenure, directly from the Holy Roman Emperor. During the early 17th century Karl I of Liechtenstein was made a "Fürst" (prince) by the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias after siding with him in a political battle. Hans-Adam I was allowed to purchase the minuscule "Herrschaft" ("Lordship") of Schellenberg and county of Vaduz (in 1699 and 1712 respectively) from the Hohenems. Tiny Schellenberg and Vaduz had exactly the political status required: no feudal lord other than their comital sovereign and the suzerain Emperor.
On 23 January 1719, after the lands had been purchased, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, decreed that Vaduz and Schellenberg were united and elevated the newly formed territory to the dignity of "Fürstentum" ("principality") with the name "Liechtenstein" in honour of "[his] true servant, Anton Florian of Liechtenstein". It was on this date that Liechtenstein became a sovereign member state of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a testament to the pure political expediency of the purchase that the Princes of Liechtenstein did not visit their new principality for almost 100 years.
By the early 19th century, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire came under the effective control of France, following the crushing defeat at Austerlitz by Napoleon in 1805. Emperor Francis II abdicated, ending more than 960 years of feudal government. Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine. This political restructuring had broad consequences for Liechtenstein: the historical imperial, legal, and political institutions had been dissolved. The state ceased to owe an obligation to any feudal lord beyond its borders.
Modern publications generally attribute Liechtenstein's sovereignty to these events. Its prince ceased to owe an obligation to any suzerain. From 25 July 1806, when the Confederation of the Rhine was founded, the Prince of Liechtenstein was a member, in fact, a vassal, of its hegemon, styled "protector", the French Emperor Napoleon I, until the dissolution of the confederation on 19 October 1813.
Soon afterward, Liechtenstein joined the German Confederation (20 June 181524 August 1866), which was presided over by the Emperor of Austria.
In 1818, Prince Johann I granted the territory a limited constitution. In that same year Prince Aloys became the first member of the House of Liechtenstein to set foot in the principality that bore their name. The next visit would not occur until 1842.
Developments during the 19th century included:
Until the end of World War I, Liechtenstein was closely tied first to the Austrian Empire and later to Austria-Hungary; the ruling princes continued to derive much of their wealth from estates in the Habsburg territories, and spent much of their time at their two palaces in Vienna. The economic devastation caused by the war forced the country to conclude a customs and monetary union with its other neighbour, Switzerland.
At the time of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was argued that Liechtenstein, as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, was no longer bound to the emerging independent state of Austria, since the latter did not consider itself the legal successor to the empire. This is partly contradicted by the Liechtenstein perception that the dethroned Austro-Hungarian Emperor still maintained an abstract heritage of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1929, 75-year-old Prince Franz I succeeded to the throne. He had just married Elisabeth von Gutmann, a wealthy woman from Vienna whose father was a Jewish businessman from Moravia. Although Liechtenstein had no official Nazi party, a Nazi sympathy movement arose within its National Union party. Local Liechtenstein Nazis identified Elisabeth as their Jewish "problem".
In March 1938, just after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Franz named as regent his 31-year-old grandnephew and heir-presumptive, Prince Franz Joseph. Franz died in July that year, and Franz Joseph succeeded to the throne. Franz Joseph II first moved to Liechtenstein in 1938, a few days after Austria's annexation.
During World War II, Liechtenstein remained officially neutral, looking to neighbouring Switzerland for assistance and guidance, while family treasures from dynastic lands and possessions in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were taken to Liechtenstein for safekeeping. At the close of the conflict, Czechoslovakia and Poland, acting to seize what they considered German possessions, expropriated the entirety of the Liechtenstein dynasty's properties in those three regions. The expropriations (subject to modern legal dispute at the International Court of Justice) included over of agricultural and forest land (most notably the UNESCO listed Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape), and several family castles and palaces.
In 2005 it was revealed that Jewish labourers from the Strasshof concentration camp, provided by the "SS", had worked on estates in Austria owned by Liechtenstein's Princely House.
Citizens of Liechtenstein were forbidden to enter Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. More recently the diplomatic conflict revolving around the controversial postwar Beneš decrees resulted in Liechtenstein not sharing international relations with the Czech Republic or Slovakia. Diplomatic relations were established between Liechtenstein and the Czech Republic on 13 July 2009, and with Slovakia on 9 December 2009.
Liechtenstein was in dire financial straits following the end of the war in Europe. The Liechtenstein dynasty often resorted to selling family artistic treasures, including the portrait "Ginevra de' Benci" by Leonardo da Vinci, which was purchased by the National Gallery of Art of the United States in 1967 for 5 million ($ million in dollars), then a record price for a painting.
By the late 1970s, Liechtenstein used its low corporate tax rates to draw many companies, and became one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Liechtenstein has a monarch as Head of State, and an elected parliament that enacts the law. It is also a direct democracy, where voters can propose and enact constitutional amendments and legislation independently of the legislature. The Constitution of Liechtenstein was adopted in March 2003, replacing the 1921 constitution. The 1921 constitution had established Liechtenstein as a constitutional monarchy headed by the reigning prince of the Princely House of Liechtenstein; a parliamentary system had been established, although the reigning Prince retained substantial political authority.
The reigning Prince is the head of state and represents Liechtenstein in its international relations (although Switzerland has taken responsibility for much of Liechtenstein's diplomatic relations). The Prince may veto laws adopted by parliament. The Prince can call referenda, propose new legislation, and dissolve parliament, although dissolution of parliament may be subject to a referendum.
Executive authority is vested in a collegiate government comprising the head of government (prime minister) and four government councilors (ministers). The head of government and the other ministers are appointed by the Prince upon the proposal and concurrence of parliament, reflecting the partisan balance of parliament. The constitution stipulates that at least two members of the government be chosen from each of the two regions. The members of the government are collectively and individually responsible to parliament; parliament may ask the Prince to remove an individual minister or the entire government.
Legislative authority is vested in the unicameral Landtag, made up of 25 members elected for maximum four-year terms according to a proportional representation formula. Fifteen members are elected from the Oberland (Upper Country or region) and ten from the Unterland (Lower Country or region). Parties must receive at least 8% of the national vote to win seats in parliament, i.e. enough for 2 seats in the 25-seat legislature. Parliament proposes and approves a government, which is formally appointed by the Prince. Parliament may also pass votes of no confidence in the entire government or individual members.
Parliament elects from among its members a "Landesausschuss" (National Committee) made up of the president of the parliament and four additional members. The National Committee is charged with performing parliamentary oversight functions. Parliament can call for referenda on proposed legislation. Parliament shares the authority to propose new legislation with the Prince and with the number of citizens required for an initiative referendum.
Judicial authority is vested in the Regional Court at Vaduz, the Princely High Court of Appeal at Vaduz, the Princely Supreme Court, the Administrative Court, and the State Court. The State Court rules on the conformity of laws with the constitution and has five members elected by parliament.
On 1 July 1984, Liechtenstein became the last country in Europe to grant women the right to vote. The referendum on women's suffrage, in which only men were allowed to participate, passed with 51.3% in favour.
In a national referendum in March 2003, nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted in support of Hans-Adam II's proposed new constitution. The proposed constitution was criticised by many, including the Council of Europe, as expanding the powers of the monarchy (continuing the power to veto any law, and allowing the Prince to dismiss the government or any minister). The Prince threatened that if the constitution failed, he would, among other things, convert some royal property for commercial use and move to Austria. The princely family and the Prince enjoy tremendous public support inside the nation, and the resolution passed with about 64% in favour. A proposal to revoke the Prince's veto powers was rejected by 76% of voters in a 2012 referendum.
Municipalities in Liechtenstein are entitled to secede from the union by majority vote.
In 2013, Liechtenstein won for the first time a SolarSuperState Prize in the category Solar recognizing the achieved level of the usage of photovoltaics per population within the state territory. The SolarSuperState Association justified this prize with the cumulative installed photovoltaic power of some 290 Watt per capita at the end of 2012. This placed Liechtenstein second in the world after Germany. Also in 2014, the SolarSuperState Association awarded the second place SolarSuperState Prize in the category Solar to Liechtenstein. In the years 2015 and 2016, Liechtenstein was honored with the first place SolarSuperState Prize in the category Solar because it had the world's biggest cumulative installed photovoltaic power per population.
Liechtenstein is situated in the Upper Rhine valley of the European Alps and is bordered to the east by the Austrian region of Vorarlberg and to the south by the canton of Grisons (Switzerland) and to the west by the canton of St. Gallen (Switzerland). The entire western border of Liechtenstein is formed by the Rhine. Measured south to north the country is about long. Its highest point, the Grauspitz, is . Despite its Alpine location, prevailing southerly winds make the climate comparatively mild. In winter, the mountain slopes are well suited to winter sports.
New surveys using more accurate measurements of the country's borders in 2006 have set its area at , with borders of . Liechtenstein's borders are longer than previously thought.
Liechtenstein is one of the world's two doubly landlocked countries — countries wholly surrounded by other landlocked countries (the other is Uzbekistan). Liechtenstein is the sixth-smallest independent nation in the world by area.
The principality of Liechtenstein is divided into 11 communes called "Gemeinden" (singular "Gemeinde"). The "Gemeinden" mostly consist of only a single town or village. Five of them (Eschen, Gamprin, Mauren, Ruggell, and Schellenberg) fall within the electoral district "Unterland" (the lower county), and the remainder (Balzers, Planken, Schaan, Triesen, Triesenberg, and Vaduz) within "Oberland" (the upper county).
Despite its limited natural resources, Liechtenstein is one of the few countries in the world with more registered companies than citizens; it has developed a prosperous, highly industrialized free-enterprise economy and boasts a financial service sector as well as a living standard that compares favourably with those of the urban areas of Liechtenstein's much larger European neighbours.
Liechtenstein participates in a customs union with Switzerland and employs the Swiss franc as the national currency. The country imports about 85% of its energy. Liechtenstein has been a member of the European Economic Area (an organization serving as a bridge between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the European Union) since May 1995.
The government is working to harmonize its economic policies with those of an integrated Europe. In 2008, the unemployment rate stood at 1.5%. Liechtenstein has only one hospital, the Liechtensteinisches Landesspital in Vaduz. As of 2014 the CIA World Factbook estimated the gross domestic product (GDP) on a purchasing power parity basis to be $4.978 billion. As of 2009 the estimate per capita was $139,100, the highest listed for the world.
Industries include electronics, textiles, precision instruments, metal manufacturing, power tools, anchor bolts, calculators, pharmaceuticals, and food products. Its most recognizable international company and largest employer is Hilti, a manufacturer of direct fastening systems and other high-end power tools. Many cultivated fields and small farms are found both in the Oberland and Unterland. Liechtenstein produces wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, dairy products, livestock, and wine. Tourism accounts for a large portion of its economy.
The government of Liechtenstein taxes personal income, business income, and principal (wealth). The basic rate of personal income tax is 1.2%. When combined with the additional income tax imposed by the communes, the combined income tax rate is 17.82%. An additional income tax of 4.3% is levied on all employees under the country's social security programme. This rate is higher for the self-employed, up to a maximum of 11%, making the maximum income tax rate about 29% in total. The basic tax rate on wealth is 0.06% per annum, and the combined total rate is 0.89%. The tax rate on corporate profits is 12.5%.
Liechtenstein's gift and estate taxes vary depending on the relationship the recipient has to the giver and the amount of the inheritance. The tax ranges between 0.5% and 0.75% for spouses and children and 18% to 27% for non-related recipients. The estate tax is progressive.
Liechtenstein has previously received significant revenues from "Stiftungen" ("foundations"), financial entities created to hide the true owner of nonresident foreigners' financial holdings. The foundation is registered in the name of a Liechtensteiner, often a lawyer. This set of laws used to make Liechtenstein a popular tax haven for extremely wealthy individuals and businesses attempting to avoid or evade taxes in their home countries. In recent years, Liechtenstein has displayed stronger determination to prosecute international money launderers and worked to promote an image as a legitimate finance center. In February 2008, the country's LGT Bank was implicated in a tax-fraud scandal in Germany, which strained the ruling family's relationship with the German government. Crown Prince Alois has accused the German government of trafficking in stolen goods, referring to its $7.3 million purchase of private banking information offered by a former employee of LGT Group. The United States Senate's subcommittee on tax haven banks said that the LGT bank, owned by the princely family, and on whose board they serve, "is a willing partner, and an aider and abettor to clients trying to evade taxes, dodge creditors or defy court orders".
The 2008 Liechtenstein tax affair is a series of tax investigations in numerous countries whose governments suspect that some of their citizens have evaded tax obligations by using banks and trusts in Liechtenstein; the affair broke open with the biggest complex of investigations ever initiated for tax evasion in Germany. It was also seen as an attempt to put pressure on Liechtenstein, then one of the remaining uncooperative tax havens—along with Andorra and Monaco—as identified by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2007. On 27 May 2009 the OECD removed Liechtenstein from the blacklist of uncooperative countries.
In August 2009, the British government department HM Revenue & Customs agreed with Liechtenstein to start exchanging information. It is believed that up to 5,000 British investors have roughly £3 billion deposited in accounts and trusts in the country.
In October 2015, the European Union and Liechtenstein signed a tax agreement to ensure the automatic exchange of financial information in case of tax disputes. The collection of data started in 2016, and is another step to bring the principality in line with other European countries with regard to its taxation of private individuals and corporate assets.
Population-wise, Liechtenstein is Europe's fourth-smallest country; Vatican City, San Marino, and Monaco have fewer residents. Its population is primarily Alemannic-speaking, although one third is foreign-born, primarily German speakers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, along with other Swiss, Italians, and Turks. Foreign-born people make up two-thirds of the country's workforce.
Liechtensteiners have an average life expectancy at birth of 82.0 years, subdividing as male: 79.8 years, female: 84.8 years (2018 est.). The infant mortality rate is 4.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to 2018 estimates.
The official language is German; most speak an Alemannic dialect of German that is highly divergent from Standard German but closely related to dialects spoken in neighbouring regions such as Switzerland and Vorarlberg, Austria. In Triesenberg, a Walser German dialect promoted by the municipality is spoken. Swiss Standard German is also understood and spoken by most Liechtensteiners.
According to the Constitution of Liechtenstein, Catholicism is its official state religion:
Liechtenstein offers protection to adherents of all religions, and considers the "religious interests of the people" a priority of the government. In Liechtenstein schools, although exceptions are allowed, religious education in Roman Catholicism or Protestantism (either Reformed or Lutheran, or both) is legally required. Tax exemption is granted by the government to religious organizations. According to the Pew Research Center, social conflict caused by religious hostilities is low in Liechtenstein, and so is government restriction on the practice of religion.
According to the 2010 census, 85.8% of the total population is Christian, of whom 75.9% adhere to the Roman Catholic faith, constituted in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vaduz, while 9.6% are either Protestant, mainly organized in the Evangelical Church in Liechtenstein (a United church, Lutheran & Reformed) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Liechtenstein, or Orthodox, mainly organized in the Christian-Orthodox Church. The largest minority religion is Islam (5.4% of the total population).
The literacy rate of Liechtenstein is 100%. In 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment report, coordinated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ranked Liechtenstein's education as the 10th best in the world. In 2012, Liechtenstein had the highest PISA-scores of any European country.
Within Liechtenstein, there are four main centres for higher education:
There are nine public high schools in the country. These include:
There are about of paved roadway within Liechtenstein, with of marked bicycle paths.
A railway connects Austria and Switzerland through Liechtenstein. The country's railways are administered by the Austrian Federal Railways as part of the route between Feldkirch, Austria, and Buchs, Switzerland. Liechtenstein is nominally within the Austrian Verkehrsverbund Vorarlberg tariff region.
There are four railway stations in Liechtenstein, namely Schaan-Vaduz, Forst Hilti, Nendeln and Schaanwald, served by an irregularly stopping train service between Feldkirch and Buchs provided by Austrian Federal Railways. While EuroCity and other long-distance international trains also travel along the route, they do not normally call at the stations within the borders of Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein Bus is a subsidiary of the Swiss Postbus system, but separately run, and connects to the Swiss bus network at Buchs and at Sargans. Buses also run to the Austrian town of Feldkirch.
Liechtenstein has no airport. The nearest large airport is Zurich Airport near Zürich, Switzerland (130 km/80 mi by road). The nearest small airport is St. Gallen Airport (50 km/30 mi). Friedrichshafen Airport also provides access to Liechtenstein, as it is 85 km away. Balzers Heliport is available for chartered helicopter flights.
As a result of its small size, Liechtenstein has been strongly affected by external cultural influences, most notably those originating in the southern regions of German-speaking Europe, including Austria, Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Switzerland, and specifically Tirol and Vorarlberg. The "Historical Society of the Principality of Liechtenstein" plays a role in preserving the culture and history of the country.
The largest museum is the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, an international museum of modern and contemporary art with an important international art collection. The building by the Swiss architects Morger, Degelo, and Kerez is a landmark in Vaduz. It was completed in November 2000 and forms a "black box" of tinted concrete and black basalt stone. The museum collection is also the national art collection of Liechtenstein.
The other important museum is the Liechtenstein National Museum ("Liechtensteinisches Landesmuseum") showing permanent exhibition on the cultural and natural history of Liechtenstein as well as special exhibitions. There is also a stamp museum, ski museum, and a 500-year-old Rural Lifestyle Museum.
The Liechtenstein State Library is the library that has legal deposit for all books published in the country.
The most famous historical sites are Vaduz Castle, Gutenberg Castle, the Red House and the ruins of Schellenberg.
The Private Art Collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, one of the world's leading private art collections, is shown at the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna.
On the country's national holiday all subjects are invited to the castle of the head of state. A significant portion of the population attends the national celebration at the castle where speeches are made and complimentary beer is served.
Music and theatre are an important part of the culture. There are numerous music organizations such as the Liechtenstein Musical Company, the annual Guitar Days, and the International Josef Gabriel Rheinberger Society, which play in two main theatres.
The primary internet service provider and mobile network operator of Liechtenstein is Telecom Liechtenstein, located in Schaan. There is only one television channel in the country, the private channel 1FLTV created in 2008. At the moment, 1FLTV is not a member of the European Broadcasting Union. L-Radio, which was established in 2004, serves as Liechtenstein's radio station and is based in Triesen. L-Radio has a listener base of 50,000 and began as "air Radio Liechtenstein" on 15 October 1938. Liechtenstein also has two major newspapers; "Liechtensteiner Volksblatt" and "Liechtensteiner Vaterland". The primary multimedia company in Liechtenstein is "ManaMedia", located in Vaduz.
Amateur radio is a hobby of some nationals and visitors. However, unlike virtually every other sovereign nation, Liechtenstein does not have its own ITU prefix. It uses Switzerland's callsign prefixes (typically "HB") followed by a zero.
Liechtenstein football teams play in the Swiss football leagues. The Liechtenstein Football Cup allows access for one Liechtenstein team each year to the UEFA Europa League; FC Vaduz, a team playing in the Swiss Challenge League, the second division in Swiss football, is the most successful team in the Cup, and scored their greatest success in the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1996 when they drew with and defeated the Latvian team FC Universitate Riga by 1–1 and 4–2, to go on to a lucrative fixture against Paris Saint-Germain F.C., which they lost 0–3 and 0–4.
The Liechtenstein national football team is regarded as an easy target for any team drawn against them; this was the basis for a book about Liechtenstein's unsuccessful qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup by British author, Charlie Connelly. In one surprising week during autumn 2004, however, the team managed a 2–2 draw with Portugal, who only a few months earlier had been the losing finalists in the European Championships. Four days later, the Liechtenstein team traveled to Luxembourg, where they defeated the home team 4–0 in a 2006 World Cup qualifying match. In the qualification stage of the European Championship 2008, Liechtenstein beat Latvia 1–0, a result which prompted the resignation of the Latvian coach. They went on to beat Iceland 3–0 on 17 October 2007, which is considered one of the most dramatic losses of the Icelandic national football team. On 7 September 2010, they came within seconds of a 1–1 draw against Scotland in Glasgow, having led 1–0 earlier in the second half, but Liechtenstein lost 2–1 thanks to a goal by Stephen McManus in the 97th minute. On 3 June 2011, Liechtenstein defeated Lithuania 2–0. On 15 November 2014, Liechtenstein defeated Moldova 0–1 with Franz Burgmeier's late free kick goal in Chișinău.
As an alpine country, the main sporting opportunity for Liechtensteiners to excel is in winter sports such as downhill skiing: the country's single ski area is Malbun. Hanni Wenzel won two gold medals and one silver medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics (she won bronze in 1976), her brother Andreas won one silver medal in 1980 and one bronze medal in 1984 in the giant slalom event, and her daughter Tina Weirather won a bronze medal in 2018 in the Super-G. With ten medals overall (all in alpine skiing), Liechtenstein has won more Olympic medals per capita than any other nation. It is the smallest nation to win a medal in any Olympics, Winter or Summer, and the only nation to win a medal in the Winter Games but not in the Summer Games. Other notable skiers from Liechtenstein are Marco Büchel, Willi Frommelt, Paul Frommelt and Ursula Konzett. Liechtenstein is also the home country of Stephanie Vogt, a professional women's tennis player.
In March 2020 swiss Comedian Michael v. Tell set a new world record with the E-Harley LiveWire. Within 24 hours he drove under standard conditions, with a single driver. The Record was reported all over the world and was done in cooperation with Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Liechtenstein. Finish line was Ruggell in Liechtenstein so it was a highlight in the of Liechtenstein Motorsport history.
Liechtenstein competes in the Switzerland U16 Cup Tournament, which offers young players an opportunity to play against top football clubs.
The Liechtenstein National Police is responsible for keeping order within the country. It consists of 87 field officers and 38 civilian staff, totaling 125 employees. All officers are equipped with small arms. The country has one of the world's lowest crime rates. Liechtenstein's prison holds few, if any, inmates, and those with sentences over two years are transferred to Austrian jurisdiction. The Liechtenstein National Police maintains a trilateral treaty with Austria and Switzerland that enables close cross-border cooperation among the police forces of the three countries.
Liechtenstein follows a policy of neutrality and is one of the few countries in the world that maintain no military. The army was abolished soon after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, in which Liechtenstein fielded an army of 80 men, although they were not involved in any fighting. No casualties were incurred, in fact the unit numbered 81 upon return due to an Italian joining with the unit to escape the war zone. The demise of the German Confederation in that war freed Liechtenstein from its international obligation to maintain an army, and parliament seized this opportunity and refused to provide funding for one. The Prince objected, as such a move would leave the country defenceless, but relented on 12 February 1868 and disbanded the force. The last soldier to serve under the colors of Liechtenstein died in 1939 at age 95.
During the 1980s the Swiss army fired off shells during an exercise and mistakenly burned a patch of forest inside Liechtenstein. The incident was said to have been resolved "over a case of white wine".
In March 2007, a 170-man Swiss infantry unit got lost during a training exercise and inadvertently crossed into Liechtenstein. The accidental invasion ended when the unit realized their mistake and turned back. The Swiss army later informed Liechtenstein of the incursion and offered official apologies, to which an internal ministry spokesperson responded, "No problem, these things happen."
In 2017, Liechtenstein signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
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Demographics of Liechtenstein
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Liechtenstein, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Liechtenstein is the fourth smallest country of Europe, after the Vatican City, Monaco, and San Marino. Its population is primarily ethnic Alemannic, although a third of its resident population are foreign nationals, primarily German speakers from the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and the Swiss Confederation, other Swiss, Italians, and Turks. Nationals are referred to by the plural: Liechtensteiners.
The official language is German; most speak Alemannic, a German dialect highly divergent from Standard German, but closely related to those dialects spoken in neighbouring regions.
In Triesenberg a quite distinct dialect promoted by the municipality is spoken. According to the 2000 census, 87.9% of the population is Christian, of which 76% adhere to the Roman Catholic faith, while about 7% are Protestant. The religious affiliation for most of the remainder is Islam - 4.8%, undeclared - 4.1%, and no religion - 2.8%.
Resident population by municipalities as of 30 June 2019.
66.2% are Liechtensteiners, the rest are foreigners.
Alemannic Germans 86%, Italians, Turks, Albanians, Yugoslavs, and others 14%.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
Age structure:
"0–14 years:" 16.1% (male 2,809/female 2,856)
"15–64 years:" 69% (male 11,970/female 12,326)
"65 years and over:" 15% (male 2,304/female 2,971) (2011 est.)
Sex ratio:
"at birth:" 1.26 male(s)/female
"under 15 years:" 1.09 male(s)/female
"15–64 years:" 1 male(s)/female
"65 years and over:" 0.81 male(s)/female
"total population:" 0.98 male(s)/female (2011 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 4.4 deaths/1,000 live births (2011 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: (14 in the world)
"total population:" 81.5 years
"male:" 79.37 years
"female:" 84.19 years (2011 est.)
Total fertility rate: 1.69 children born/woman (2011 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: N/A%
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS: N/A
HIV/AIDS - deaths: N/A
Nationality:
"noun:" Liechtensteiner(s)
"adjective:" Liechtenstein
Languages: German (official), Italian, Turkish, English (Spoken, not official)
Literacy: (1 in the world)
"definition:" age 10 and over can read and write
"total population:" 100%
"male:" 100%
"female:" 100%
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Politics of Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein is a principality governed under a constitutional monarchy. It has a form of mixed constitution in which political power is shared by the monarch and a democratically elected parliament. There is a two-party system (though there are two minor parties as well) and a form of representative democracy in which the prime minister and head of government is responsible to parliament. However the Prince of Liechtenstein is head of state and exercises considerable political powers.
The executive power is exercised by the Cabinet of Liechtenstein (government). Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Landtag (Parliament). The party system is dominated by the conservative Progressive Citizens' Party and the liberal-conservative Patriotic Union. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
On 15 August 2002, in his National Day Address, Prince Hans-Adam II announced that after months of intensive negotiations, a compromise in the debate on constitutional reform had been reached. On 13 September, Prime Minister Otmar Hasler confirmed to Parliament that his government was drafting a bill for Parliament based on the compromise reached between the Prince and the Citizens' Forum. The draft bill, which would increase the executive powers of the monarch, went before Parliament for a first reading in November. Once approved by Parliament, the bill was then presented to voters in a referendum, and approved by 64% of those voting on 16 March 2003.
The monarch is hereditary. Following legislative elections, the head of government is appointed by the prince and proposed and voted on by the parliament. Thus the government is usually composed of the members of the majority party. It is, however, also customary that the leader of the largest minority party in the Diet is appointed the deputy head of government by the monarch.
According to the constitution of Liechtenstein, the government is a collegiate body and consists of the head of government and four governmental councilors.
Amendment to the constitution or new law have to be adopted by Parliament, signed by both the Prince and the head of government, and published in the Principality's Law Gazette.
Prince Hans Adam II is the current head of state. His constitutional powers include the power to veto any legislation, to be used at his discretion, as well as the dissolution of the parliament (this may be subject to a referendum). He represents the state vis-à-vis foreign states. He signs international treaties either in person or delegates this function to a plenipotentiary. Some treaties under international law only become valid when they have been ratified by Parliament. On the basis of the names put forward by Parliament, the Prince nominates the government, district and high court judges, the judges of the Supreme Court, and the presidents and their deputies of the Constitutional Court and of the Administrative Court of Appeal. The Prince's other authorities include exercising the right to mitigate and commute punishments that have been imposed with legal force and the abolition — i.e., the dismissal — of investigations that have been initiated. All judgments are issued in the name of the Prince.
The Government of Liechtenstein is based on the principle of collegiality; namely, of colleagues collaborating with each other. The government consists of the head of government and four Councilors. The members of the government are proposed by the Parliament and are appointed by the Prince. Only men or women born in Liechtenstein, and who are eligible to be elected to Parliament, may be elected to the government committee. The two electoral areas of the country, the highlands and the lowlands, are entitled to at least two members of the government, and their respective deputies must come from the same area.
The Prince's involvement in legislation consists in a right to take initiatives in the form of government bills and in the right to veto parliamentary proposals. The Prince has the power to enact princely decrees. Emergency princely decrees are possible when the security and welfare of the country is at stake. A countersignature by the head of government is, nevertheless, required. The Prince has the right to convene and adjourn parliament and, for serious reasons, to adjourn it for 3 months or to dissolve it.
The Landtag of Liechtenstein has 25 members, elected for a four-year term by proportional representation in two multi-seat constituencies. Until 1989, 15 members represented the population of the two constituencies (six for the lowland area and nine for the highland area). Since 1989 the lowland constituency has been entitled to have 10 members and the highland area 15.
The Landtag's main task is to discuss and adopt resolutions on constitutional proposals and draft government bills. It has the additional duties of giving its assent to important international treaties; of electing members of the government, judges, and board members of the Principality's institutions; setting the annual budget and approving taxes and other public charges; and supervising the administration of the state.
The Landtag observes its rights and duties in the course of sessions of the whole Landtag and through the parliamentary commissions that it elects. All members of the Landtag exercise their mandates in addition to their normal professions or occupations. The President of the Landtag and his deputy are both elected at the opening meeting for the current year. The president convenes the individual meetings during the session, leads them, and represent the Landtag externally. During the parliamentary recess — normally from January to February/March — a "state committee" assumes Parliament's duties, and such a committee must also be elected in the case of any adjournment or dissolution of Parliament. A "state committee" consists of the president of Parliament and four other members.
The duties and working procedures of Parliament are laid down in the constitution and in Parliament's standing orders.
Moreover, the people of Liechtenstein have very strong direct democratic rights. At least 1000 citizens can initiate a referendum on any law. Referendums can suspend parliament or change the constitution, but at least 1500 citizens must vote affirmative, so referendums to suspend parliament or change the constitution fail if they have low turnout even if the required percentage of total voters is met.
The political parties are in practice politically decisive and are the moving forces with regard to the composition of the government. In the 2001-05 legislature period of office, one Councillor and three deputies were women.
From 1938 to 1997 Liechtenstein had a coalition government. Until recently there were only two parties in Parliament: the Patriotic Union and the Progressive Citizens' Party. Liechtenstein's distinctive form of coalition government came to an end in April 1997, when the Patriotic Union won an absolute majority of seats. It took sole responsibility for the government during the 1997 to 2001 Parliament, with its members filling all the positions on the government committee. Between 2001 and 2009, the Progressive Citizen's Party formed the government, winning an absolute majority in the 2001 elections and the most seats in the 2005 elections. The Patriotic Union once again won an absolute majority of seats in the February 2009 elections. Minority parties, as opposition parties, act as a check on the government in Parliament and on parliamentary commissions.
The Judiciary of Liechtenstein is made up of the Supreme Court (), the Princely Superior Court (), and the Princely Court ().
Liechtenstein is divided in eleven communes (""); Balzers, Eschen, Gamprin, Mauren, Planken, Ruggell, Schaan, Schellenberg, Triesen, Triesenberg, and Vaduz.
Council of Europe, EBRD, U.N. Economic Commission for Europe, European Free Trade Association, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Criminal Court, ICRM, IFRCS, Intelsat, Interpol, International Olympic Committee, ITU, OPCW, Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, PCA, United Nations, UNCTAD, Universal Postal Union, WCL, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization
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Economy of Liechtenstein
The economy of Liechtenstein is based roughly equally on services (especially financial services) and industry, with a small but significant agricultural sector. The country participates in a customs union with Switzerland and uses the Swiss franc as its national currency. It imports more than 85% of its energy requirements. Liechtenstein has been a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) since 1991 (previously its interests had been represented by Switzerland). It also has been a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) since May 1995 and participates in the Schengen Agreement for passport-free intra-European travel.
Liechtenstein's historical customs union with Austria was dissolved in 1919. A customs treaty was signed in 1923 and since its entering into force in 1924, Liechtenstein and Switzerland have been in a customs union with each other and as such the borders between the two countries are open. The German village Büsingen am Hochrhein and the Italian village Campione d'Italia also form part of this customs union (the latter albeit in a "de facto" manner), which is often referred to as the "Swiss customs area".
Liechtenstein utilizes the Swiss franc as its national currency. Swiss border police and customs officers secure its frontier with Austria. Currently there are 21 Swiss border guards stationed in Liechtenstein and 20 Austrian border guards securing its border (as of 2011).
Liechtenstein is a member of EFTA, and joined the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1995 in order to benefit from the EU internal market. The capitalist economy and tax system make Liechtenstein a safe, trustworthy and success-oriented place for private and business purposes, especially with its highly modern, internationally laid-out infrastructure and close connections to Switzerland.
The Principality of Liechtenstein has gone through economic and cultural development in the last 50 years like no other Western country. In the last half century, Liechtenstein has developed from a mainly agricultural state to one of the most highly industrialized countries in the world.
Besides its efficient industry, there also is a strong services sector. Four out of ten employees work in the services sector, a relatively high proportion of whom are foreigners, including those who commute across the border from neighboring Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Industrial exports more than doubled in 20 years from $1.21 billion (SFr. 2.2 billion) in 1988 to $2.9 billion (SFr. 4.6 billion) in 2008. Some 15.7% of Liechtenstein goods are exported to Switzerland, 62.6% to the EU and 21.1% to the rest of the world.
The United States has been the most important export market for Liechtenstein in recent times, totaling $561 million (SFr. 876 million); Germany is second, with $479 million (SFr. 748 million) worth of imports, and Switzerland third, with $375 million (SFr. 587 million).
About 32% of the country's revenues are invested in research and development, one of the driving forces of the success of Liechtenstein's economy. Total R&D spending in 2000 rose by 20.7% to approximately $140 million (213 million francs).
The Principality of Liechtenstein also is known as an important financial centre, primarily because it specializes in financial services for foreign entities. The country's low tax rate, loose incorporation and corporate governance rules, and traditions of strict bank secrecy have contributed significantly to the ability of financial intermediaries in Liechtenstein to attract funds from outside the country's borders. The same factors made the country attractive and vulnerable to money launderers, although late 2009 legislation has strengthened regulatory oversight of illicit funds transfers.
Liechtenstein has chartered 17 banks, three non-bank financial companies, and 71 public investment companies, as well as insurance and reinsurance companies. Its 270 licensed fiduciary companies and 81 lawyers serve as nominees for, or manage, more than 73,000 entities (primarily corporations, institutions, or trusts), partly for non-Liechtenstein residents. About one-third of these entities hold the controlling interest in other entities, chartered in countries other than Liechtenstein. The Principality's laws permit the corporations it charters to issue bearer shares. Until recently, the Principality's banking laws permitted banks to issue numbered accounts, but new regulations require strict know-your-customer practices for all new accounts.
Liechtenstein's standard rate of VAT (Mehrwertsteuer) is identical to Switzerland's for it must mirror the latter's continually and is currently 7.7%. The reduced rate is 2.5%. A special rate of 3.7% is in use in the hotel industry.
In July 2015, Liechtenstein and Switzerland signed a new agreement on double taxation, which took effect in December 2016, superseding the previous one from 1995. Some differences on the withholding tax arose, but Switzerland did not agree to introduce this practice to residents of Liechtenstein working in Switzerland.
In November 2016, the parliament of the principality decided with a large majority to introduce an agreement of automatic information exchange with 27 new treaty partners, including Switzerland. Data collection will start in 2018, and effectual exchange of account information is planned for 2019.
The principal industries are electronics, metal manufacturing, textiles, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, food products, precision instruments, and tourism.
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Telecommunications in Liechtenstein
This article concerns the systems of communications in Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein possesses a number of modern communications systems, some of which are shared with the neighbouring country of Switzerland. The country code and top-level domain for Liechtenstein is .li.
Liechtenstein's automatic telephone system is connected to the Swiss telephone networks via cable and microwave radio relay systems. There are 20,072 main line telephones in the country served by the network. In April 1999, Liechtenstein ceased to be a part of the Swiss telephone numbering plan, in which the country used the Swiss area code "075", opting instead to have a unique country calling code, "+423". There are 44 internet service providers in Liechtenstein and Switzerland combined.
There are four FM radio broadcast stations in Liechtenstein serving 21,000 radios. The television broadcast system is linked to the Swiss networks, with the Swiss services serving 12,000 televisions in Liechtenstein.
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Foreign relations of Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein's foreign economic policy has been dominated by its customs union with Switzerland (and with Austria-Hungary until World War I). This union also led to its independent membership in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1991. Unlike Switzerland however (where citizens rejected membership in a referendum), Liechtenstein is part of the European Economic Area.
Liechtenstein was admitted to the United Nations in 1990. It is also a member of most specialized organizations of the UN system, an exception being UNESCO.
Liechtenstein has resorted two times to international dispute settlement by the International Court of Justice, in the "Nottebohm (Liechtenstein v. Guatemala)" case against Guatemala in the 1950s and in a case concerning art property of the Liechtenstein family against Germany in 2005. It lost in both cases.
Liechtenstein maintains resident embassies in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Holy See, Switzerland and the United States, along with a number of missions to international organisations. Under a 1919 agreement between Liechtenstein and Switzerland, ambassadors of Switzerland are authorised to represent Liechtenstein in countries and in diplomatic situations unless Liechtenstein opts to send its own ambassador.
Apart from Vatican City, Liechtenstein is the only country in the world not to host any embassy. There are, however, a number of honorary consulates in the principality. Most of these are situated in the capital Vaduz, however, some are found in Schaan, Schellenberg and Triesen.
The country has an international dispute with Czech Republic and Slovakia concerning the estates of its princely family in those countries. After World War II, Czechoslovakia, as it then was, acting to seize what they considered to be German possessions, expropriated the entirety of the Liechtenstein dynasty's hereditary lands and possessions in the Czech regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. The expropriations (which were the subject of an unsuccessful court case brought by Liechtenstein in the German courts and the International Court of Justice) included over 1,600 km² (which is ten times the size of Liechtenstein) of agricultural and forest land mostly in Moravia, also including several family castles and palaces. An offer from the Czech Republic to return the palaces and castles (without the surrounding land) was rejected by Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein recognised and established diplomatic relations with the Czech Republic on 13 July 2009 and with Slovakia on 9 December 2009. Liechtenstein's ruling prince, Hans-Adam II, has announced that the principality will take no further legal action to recover the appropriated assets.
UN, CE, EBRD, ECE, EEA, EFTA, IAEA, ICC, ICRM, IFRCS, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ITU, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, UNCTAD, UPU, WCL, WIPO, WTO
Liechtenstein was never a member of the League of Nations. Its application to join that international organisation was refused in 1920 due to its small size.
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History of Lithuania
The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded many thousands of years ago, but the first written record of the name for the country dates back to 1009 AD. Lithuanians, one of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands and established the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century (and also a short-lived Kingdom of Lithuania). The Grand Duchy was a successful and lasting warrior state. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity (beginning in the 14th century). A formidable power, it became the largest state in Europe in the 15th century through the conquest of large groups of East Slavs who resided in Ruthenia. In 1385, the Grand Duchy formed a dynastic union with Poland through the Union of Krewo. Later, the Union of Lublin (1569) created the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that lasted until 1795, when the last of the Partitions of Poland erased both Lithuania and Poland from the political map. Afterward, the Lithuanians lived under the rule of the Russian Empire until the 20th century.
On February 16, 1918, Lithuania was re-established as a democratic state. It remained independent until the outset of World War II, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Following a brief occupation by Nazi Germany after the Nazis waged war on the Soviet Union, Lithuania was again absorbed into the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years. In 1990–1991, Lithuania restored its sovereignty with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. Lithuania joined the NATO alliance in 2004 and the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004.
The first humans arrived on the territory of modern Lithuania in the second half of the 10th millennium BC after the glaciers receded at the end of the last glacial period. According to the historian Marija Gimbutas, these people came from two directions: the Jutland Peninsula and from present-day Poland. They brought two different cultures, as evidenced by the tools they used. They were traveling hunters and did not form stable settlements. In the 8th millennium BC, the climate became much warmer, and forests developed. The inhabitants of what is now Lithuania then traveled less and engaged in local hunting, gathering and fresh-water fishing. During the 6th–5th millennium BC, various animals were domesticated and dwellings became more sophisticated in order to shelter larger families. Agriculture did not emerge until the 3rd millennium BC due to a harsh climate and terrain and a lack of suitable tools to cultivate the land. Crafts and trade also started to form at this time.
Speakers of North-Western Indo-European might have arrived with the Corded Ware culture around 3200/3100 BC.
The first Lithuanian people were a branch of an ancient group known as the Balts. The main tribal divisions of the Balts were the West Baltic Old Prussians and Yotvingians, and the East Baltic Lithuanians and Latvians. The Balts spoke forms of the Indo-European languages. Today, the only remaining Baltic nationalities are the Lithuanians and Latvians, but there were more Baltic groups or tribes in the past. Some of these merged into Lithuanians and Latvians (Samogitians, Selonians, Curonians, Semigallians), while others no longer existed after they were conquered and assimilated by the State of the Teutonic Order (Old Prussians, Yotvingians, Sambians, Skalvians, and Galindians).
The Baltic tribes did not maintain close cultural or political contacts with the Roman Empire, but they did maintain trade contacts (see Amber Road). Tacitus, in his study "Germania", described the Aesti people, inhabitants of the south-eastern Baltic Sea shores who were probably Balts, around the year 97 AD. The Western Balts differentiated and became known to outside chroniclers first. Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD knew of the Galindians and Yotvingians, and early medieval chroniclers mentioned Prussians, Curonians and Semigallians.
Lithuania, located along the lower and middle Neman River basin, comprised mainly the culturally different regions of Samogitia (known for its early medieval skeletal burials), and further east Aukštaitija, or Lithuania proper (known for its early medieval cremation burials). The area was remote and unattractive to outsiders, including traders, which accounts for its separate linguistic, cultural and religious identity and delayed integration into general European patterns and trends.
The Lithuanian language is considered to be very conservative for its close connection to Indo-European roots. It is believed to have differentiated from the Latvian language, the most closely related existing language, around the 7th century. Traditional Lithuanian pagan customs and mythology, with many archaic elements, were long preserved. Rulers' bodies were cremated up until the conversion to Christianity: the descriptions of the cremation ceremonies of the grand dukes Algirdas and Kęstutis have survived.
The Lithuanian tribe is thought to have developed more recognizably toward the end of the first millennium. The first known reference to Lithuania as a nation ("Litua") comes from the Annals of the Quedlinburg monastery, dated March 9, 1009. In 1009, the missionary Bruno of Querfurt arrived in Lithuania and baptized the Lithuanian ruler "King Nethimer."
From the 9th to the 11th centuries, coastal Balts were subjected to raids by the Vikings, and the kings of Denmark collected tribute at times. During the 10–11th centuries, Lithuanian territories were among the lands paying tribute to Kievan Rus', and Yaroslav the Wise was among the Ruthenian rulers who invaded Lithuania (from 1040). From the mid-12th century, it was the Lithuanians who were invading Ruthenian territories. In 1183, Polotsk and Pskov were ravaged, and even the distant and powerful Novgorod Republic was repeatedly threatened by the excursions from the emerging Lithuanian war machine toward the end of the 12th century.
In the 12th century and afterwards, mutual raids involving Lithuanian and Polish forces took place sporadically, but the two countries were separated by the lands of the Yotvingians. The late 12th century brought an eastern expansion of German settlers (the Ostsiedlung) to the mouth of the Daugava River area. Military confrontations with Lithuanians followed at that time and at the turn of the century, but for the time being the Lithuanians had the upper hand.
From the late 12th century, an organized Lithuanian military force existed; it was used for external raids, plundering and the gathering of slaves. Such military and pecuniary activities fostered social differentiation and triggered a struggle for power in Lithuania. This initiated the formation of early statehood, from which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed.
From the early 13th century, frequent foreign military excursions became possible due to the increased cooperation and coordination among the Baltic tribes. Forty such expeditions took place between 1201 and 1236 against Ruthenia, Poland, and Latvia, which was then being conquered by the Livonian Order. Pskov was pillaged and burned in 1213. In 1219, twenty-one Lithuanian chiefs signed a peace treaty with the state of Galicia–Volhynia. This event is widely accepted as the first proof that the Baltic tribes were uniting and consolidating.
From the early 13th century, two German crusading military orders, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and the Teutonic Knights, became established at the mouth of the Daugava River and in Chełmno Land respectively. Under the pretense of converting the population to Christianity, they proceeded to conquer much of the area that is now Latvia and Estonia, in addition to parts of Lithuania. In response, a number of small Baltic tribal groups united under the rule of Mindaugas. Mindaugas, originally a "kunigas" or major chief, one of the five senior dukes listed in the treaty of 1219, is referred to as the ruler of all Lithuania as of 1236 in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle.
In 1236 the pope declared a crusade against the Lithuanians. The Samogitians, led by Vykintas, Mindaugas' rival, soundly defeated the Livonian Brothers and their allies in the Battle of Saule in 1236, which forced the Brothers to merge with the Teutonic Knights in 1237. But Lithuania was trapped between the two branches of the Order.
Around 1240, Mindaugas ruled over all of Aukštaitija. Afterwards, he conquered the Black Ruthenia region (which consisted of Grodno, Brest, Navahrudak and the surrounding territories). Mindaugas was in process of extending his control to other areas, killing rivals or sending relatives and members of rival clans east to Ruthenia so they could conquer and settle there. They did that, but they also rebelled. The Ruthenian duke Daniel of Galicia sensed an occasion to recover Black Ruthenia and in 1249–1250 organized a powerful anti-Mindaugas (and "anti-pagan") coalition that included Mindaugas' rivals, Yotvingians, Samogitians and the Livonian Teutonic Knights. Mindaugas, however, took advantage of the divergent interests in the coalition he faced.
In 1250, Mindaugas entered into an agreement with the Teutonic Order; he consented to receive baptism (the act took place in 1251) and relinquish his claim over some lands in western Lithuania, for which he was to receive a royal crown in return. Mindaugas was then able to withstand a military assault from the remaining coalition in 1251, and, supported by the Knights, emerge as a victor to confirm his rule over Lithuania.
On July 17, 1251, Pope Innocent IV signed two papal bulls that ordered the Bishop of Chełmno to crown Mindaugas as King of Lithuania, appoint a bishop for Lithuania, and build a cathedral. In 1253, Mindaugas was crowned and a Kingdom of Lithuania was established for the first and only time in Lithuanian history. Mindaugas "granted" parts of Yotvingia and Samogitia that he did not control to the Knights in 1253–1259. A peace with Daniel of Galicia in 1254 was cemented by a marriage deal involving Mindaugas' daughter and Daniel's son Shvarn. Mindaugas' nephew Tautvilas returned to his Duchy of Polotsk and Samogitia separated, soon to be ruled by another nephew, Treniota.
In 1260, the Samogitians, victorious over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Durbe, agreed to submit themselves to Mindaugas' rule on the condition that he abandons the Christian religion; the king complied by terminating the emergent conversion of his country, renewed anti-Teutonic warfare (in the struggle for Samogitia) and expanded further his Ruthenian holdings. It is not clear whether this was accompanied by his personal apostasy. Mindaugas thus established the basic tenets of medieval Lithuanian policy: defense against the German Order expansion from the west and north and conquest of Ruthenia in the south and east.
Mindaugas was the principal founder of the Lithuanian state. He established for a while a Christian kingdom under the pope rather than the Holy Roman Empire, at a time when the remaining pagan peoples of Europe were no longer being converted peacefully, but conquered.
Mindaugas was murdered in 1263 by Daumantas of Pskov and Treniota, an event that resulted in great unrest and civil war. Treniota, who took over the rule of the Lithuanian territories, murdered Tautvilas, but was killed himself in 1264. The rule of Mindaugas' son Vaišvilkas followed. He was the first Lithuanian duke known to become an Orthodox Christian and settle in Ruthenia, establishing a pattern to be followed by many others. Vaišvilkas was killed in 1267. A power struggle between Shvarn and Traidenis resulted; it ended in a victory for the latter. Traidenis' reign (1269–1282) was the longest and most stable during the period of unrest. Tradenis reunified all Lithuanian lands, repeatedly raided Ruthenia and Poland with success, defeated the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and in Livonia at the Battle of Aizkraukle in 1279. He also became the ruler of Yotvingia, Semigalia and eastern Prussia. Friendly relations with Poland followed, and in 1279, Tradenis' daughter Gaudemunda of Lithuania married Bolesław II of Masovia, a Piast duke.
Pagan Lithuania was a target of northern Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. In 1241, 1259 and 1275, Lithuania was also ravaged by raids from the Golden Horde, which earlier (1237–1240) debilitated Kievan Rus'. After Traidenis' death, the German Knights finalized their conquests of Western Baltic tribes, and they could concentrate on Lithuania, especially on Samogitia, to connect the two branches of the Order. A particular opportunity opened in 1274 after the conclusion of the Great Prussian Rebellion and the conquest of the Old Prussian tribe. The Teutonic Knights then proceeded to conquer other Baltic tribes: the Nadruvians and Skalvians in 1274–1277 and the Yotvingians in 1283. The Livonian Order completed its conquest of Semigalia, the last Baltic ally of Lithuania, in 1291.
The family of Gediminas, whose members were about to form Lithuania's great native dynasty, took over the rule of the Grand Duchy in 1285 under Butigeidis. Vytenis (r. 1295–1315) and Gediminas (r. 1315–1341), after whom the Gediminid dynasty is named, had to deal with constant raids and incursions from the Teutonic orders that were costly to repulse. Vytenis fought them effectively around 1298 and at about the same time was able to ally Lithuania with the German burghers of Riga. For their part, the Prussian Knights instigated a rebellion in Samogitia against the Lithuanian ruler in 1299–1300, followed by twenty incursions there in 1300–15. Gediminas also fought the Teutonic Kights, and besides that made shrewd diplomatic moves by cooperating with the government of Riga in 1322–23 and taking advantage of the conflict between the Knights and Archbishop Friedrich von Pernstein of Riga.
Gediminas expanded Lithuania's international connections by conducting correspondence with Pope John XXII as well as with rulers and other centers of power in Western Europe, and he invited German colonists to settle in Lithuania. Responding to Gediminas' complaints about the aggression from the Teutonic Order, the pope forced the Knights to observe a four-year peace with Lithuania in 1324–1327. Opportunities for the Christianization of Lithuania were investigated by the pope's legates, but they met with no success. From the time of Mindaugas, the country's rulers attempted to break Lithuania's cultural isolation, join Western Christendom and thus be protected from the Knights, but the Knights and other interests had been able to block the process. In the 14th century, Gediminas' attempts to become baptized (1323–1324) and establish Catholic Christianity in his country were thwarted by the Samogitians and Gediminas' Orthodox courtiers. In 1325, Casimir, the son of the Polish king Władysław I, married Gediminas' daughter Aldona, who became queen of Poland when Casimir ascended the Polish throne in 1333. The marriage confirmed the prestige of the Lithuanian state under Gediminas, and a defensive alliance with Poland was concluded the same year. Yearly incursions of the Knights resumed in 1328–1340, to which the Lithuanians responded with raids into Prussia and Latvia.
The reign of Grand Duke Gediminas constituted the first period in Lithuanian history in which the country was recognized as a great power, mainly due to the extent of its territorial expansion into Ruthenia. Lithuania was unique in Europe as a pagan-ruled "kingdom" and fast-growing military power suspended between the worlds of Byzantine and Latin Christianity. To be able to afford the extremely costly defense against the Teutonic Knights, it had to expand to the east. Gediminas accomplished Lithuania's eastern expansion by challenging the Mongols, who from the 1230s sponsored a Mongol invasion of Rus'. The collapse of the political structure of Kievan Rus' created a partial regional power vacuum that Lithuania was able to exploit. Through alliances and conquest, in competition with the Principality of Moscow, the Lithuanians eventually gained control of vast expanses of the western and southern portions of the former Kievan Rus'. Gediminas' conquests included the western Smolensk region, southern Polesia and (temporarily) Kiev, which was ruled around 1330 by Gediminas' brother Fiodor. The Lithuanian-controlled area of Ruthenia grew to include most of modern Belarus and Ukraine (the Dnieper River basin) and comprised a massive state that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea in the 14th and 15th centuries.
In the 14th century, many Lithuanian princes installed to govern the Ruthenia lands accepted Eastern Christianity and assumed Ruthenian custom and names in order to appeal to the culture of their subjects. Through this means, integration into the Lithuanian state structure was accomplished without disturbing local ways of life. The Ruthenian territories acquired were vastly larger, more densely populated and more highly developed in terms of church organization and literacy than the territories of core Lithuania. Thus the Lithuanian state was able to function because of the contributions of the Ruthenian culture representatives. Historical territories of the former Ruthenian dukedoms were preserved under the Lithuanian rule, and the further they were from Vilnius, the more autonomous the localities tended to be. Lithuanian soldiers and Ruthenians together defended Ruthenian strongholds, at times paying tribute to the Golden Horde for some of the outlying localities. Ruthenian lands may have been ruled jointly by Lithuania and the Golden Horde as condominiums until the time of Vytautas, who stopped paying tribute. Gediminas' state provided a counterbalance against the influence of Moscow and enjoyed good relations with the Ruthenian principalities of Pskov, Veliky Novgorod and Tver. Direct military confrontations with the Principality of Moscow under Ivan I occurred around 1335.
Around 1318, Gediminas' elder son Algirdas married Maria of Vitebsk, the daughter of Prince Yaroslav of Vitebsk, and settled in Vitebsk to rule the principality. Of Gediminas' seven sons, four remained pagan and three converted to Orthodox Christianity. Upon his death, Gediminas divided his domains among the seven sons, but Lithuania's precarious military situation, especially on the Teutonic frontier, forced the brothers to keep the country together. From 1345, Algirdas took over as the Grand Duke of Lithuania. In practice, he ruled over Lithuanian Ruthenia only, whereas Lithuania proper was the domain of his equally able brother Kęstutis. Algirdas fought the Golden Horde Tatars and the Principality of Moscow; Kęstutis took upon himself the demanding struggle with the Teutonic Order.
The warfare with the Teutonic Order continued from 1345, and in 1348, the Knights defeated the Lithuanians at the Battle of Strėva. Kęstutis requested King Casimir of Poland to mediate with the pope in hopes of converting Lithuania to Christianity, but the result was negative, and Poland took from Lithuania in 1349 the Halych area and some Ruthenian lands further north. Lithuania's situation improved from 1350, when Algirdas formed an alliance with the Principality of Tver. Halych was ceded by Lithuania, which brought peace with Poland in 1352. Secured by those alliances, Algirdas and Kęstutis embarked on the implementation of policies to expand Lithuania's territories further.
Bryansk was taken in 1359, and in 1362, Algirdas captured Kiev after defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Blue Waters. Volhynia, Podolia and left-bank Ukraine were also incorporated. Kęstutis heroically fought for the survival of ethnic Lithuanians by attempting to repel about thirty incursions by the Teutonic Knights and their European guest fighters. Kęstutis also attacked the Teutonic possessions in Prussia on numerous occasions, but the Knights took Kaunas in 1362. The dispute with Poland renewed itself and was settled by the peace of 1366, when Lithuania gave up a part of Volhynia including Volodymyr. A peace with the Livonian Knights was also accomplished in 1367. In 1368, 1370 and 1372, Algirdas invaded the Grand Duchy of Moscow and each time approached Moscow itself. An "eternal" peace (the Treaty of Lyubutsk) was concluded after the last attempt, and it was much needed by Lithuania due to its involvement in heavy fighting with the Knights again in 1373–1377.
The two brothers and Gediminas' other offspring left many ambitious sons with inherited territory. Their rivalry weakened the country in the face of the Teutonic expansion and the newly assertive Grand Duchy of Moscow, buoyed by the 1380 victory over the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo and intent on the unification of all Rus' lands under its rule.
Algirdas died in 1377, and his son Jogaila became grand duke while Kęstutis was still alive. The Teutonic pressure was at its peak, and Jogaila was inclined to cease defending Samogitia in order to concentrate on preserving the Ruthenian empire of Lithuania. The Knights exploited the differences between Jogaila and Kęstutis and procured a separate armistice with the older duke in 1379. Jogaila then made overtures to the Teutonic Order and concluded the secret Treaty of Dovydiškės with them in 1380, contrary to Kęstutis' principles and interests. Kęstutis felt he could no longer support his nephew and in 1381, when Jogaila's forces were preoccupied with quenching a rebellion in Polotsk, he entered Vilnius in order to remove Jogaila from the throne. A Lithuanian civil war ensued. Kęstutis' two raids against Teutonic possessions in 1382 brought back the tradition of his past exploits, but Jogaila retook Vilnius during his uncle's absence. Kęstutis was captured and died in Jogaila's custody. Kęstutis' son Vytautas escaped.
Jogaila agreed to the Treaty of Dubysa with the Order in 1382, an indication of his weakness. A four-year truce stipulated Jogaila's conversion to Catholicism and the cession of half of Samogitia to the Teutonic Knights. Vytautas went to Prussia in seek of the support of the Knights for his claims, including the Duchy of Trakai, which he considered inherited from his father. Jogaila's refusal to submit to the demands of his cousin and the Knights resulted in their joint invasion of Lithuania in 1383. Vytautas, however, having failed to gain the entire duchy, established contacts with the grand duke. Upon receiving from him the areas of Grodno, Podlasie and Brest, Vytautas switched sides in 1384 and destroyed the border strongholds entrusted to him by the Order. In 1384, the two Lithuanian dukes, acting together, waged a successful expedition against the lands ruled by the Order.
By that time, for the sake of its long-term survival, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had initiated the processes leading to its imminent acceptance of European Christendom. The Teutonic Knights aimed at a territorial unification of their Prussian and Livonian branches by conquering Samogitia and all of Lithuania proper, following the earlier subordination of the Prussian and Latvian tribes. To dominate the neighboring Baltic and Slavic people and expand into a great Baltic power, the Knights used German and other volunteer fighters. They unleashed 96 onslaughts in Lithuania during the period 1345–1382, against which the Lithuanians were able to respond with only 42 retributive raids of their own. Lithuania's Ruthenian empire in the east was also threatened by both the unification of Rus' ambitions of Moscow and the centrifugal activities pursued by the rulers of some of the more distant provinces.
The Lithuanian state of the later 14th century was primarily binational, Lithuanian and Ruthenian (in territories that correspond to the modern Belarus and Ukraine). Of its 800,000 square kilometers total area, 10% comprised ethnic Lithuania, probably populated by no more than 300,000 inhabitants. Lithuania was dependent for its survival on the human and material resources of the Ruthenian lands.
The increasingly differentiated Lithuanian society was led by princes of the Gediminid and Rurik dynasties and the descendants of former "kunigas" chiefs from families such as the Giedraitis, Olshanski and Svirski. Below them in rank was the regular Lithuanian nobility (or boyars), in Lithuania proper strictly subjected to the princes and generally living on modest family farms, each tended by a few feudal subjects or, more often, slave workers if the boyar could afford them. For their military and administrative services, Lithuanian boyars were compensated by exemptions from public contributions, payments, and Ruthenian land grants. The majority of the ordinary rural workers were free. They were obligated to provide crafts and numerous contributions and services; for not paying these types of debts (or for other offences), one could be forced into slavery.
The Ruthenian princes were Orthodox, and many Lithuanian princes also converted to Orthodoxy, even some who resided in Lithuania proper, or at least their wives. The masonry Ruthenian churches and monasteries housed learned monks, their writings (including Gospel translations such as the Ostromir Gospels) and collections of religious art. A Ruthenian quarter populated by Lithuania's Orthodox subjects, and containing their church, existed in Vilnius from the 14th century. The grand dukes' chancery in Vilnius was staffed by Orthodox churchmen, who, trained in the Church Slavonic language, developed Chancery Slavonic, a Ruthenian written language useful for official record keeping. The most important of the Grand Duchy's documents, the Lithuanian Metrica, the Lithuanian Chronicles and the Statutes of Lithuania, were all written in that language.
German, Jewish and Armenian settlers were invited to live in Lithuania; the last two groups established their own denominational communities directly under the ruling dukes. The Tatars and Crimean Karaites were entrusted as soldiers for the dukes' personal guard.
Towns developed to a much lesser degree than in nearby Prussia or Livonia. Outside of Ruthenia, the only cities were Vilnius (Gediminas' capital from 1323), the old capital of Trakai and Kaunas. Kernavė and Kreva were the other old political centers. Vilnius in the 14th century was a major social, cultural and trading center. It linked economically central and eastern Europe with the Baltic area. Vilnius merchants enjoyed privileges that allowed them to trade over most of the territories of the Lithuanian state. Of the passing Ruthenian, Polish and German merchants (many from Riga), many settled in Vilnius and some built masonry residencies. The city was ruled by a governor named by the grand duke and its system of fortifications included three castles. Foreign currencies and Lithuanian currency (from the 13th century) were widely used.
The Lithuanian state maintained a patrimonial power structure. Gediminid rule was hereditary, but the ruler would choose the son he considered most able to be his successor. Councils existed, but could only advise the duke. The huge state was divided into a hierarchy of territorial units administered by designated officials who were also empowered in judicial and military matters.
The Lithuanians spoke in a number of Aukštaitian and Samogitian (West-Baltic) dialects. But the tribal peculiarities were disappearing and the increasing use of the name "Lietuva" was a testimony to the developing Lithuanian sense of separate identity. The forming Lithuanian feudal system preserved many aspects of the earlier societal organization, such as the family clan structure, free peasantry and some slavery. The land belonged now to the ruler and the nobility. Patterns imported primarily from Ruthenia were used for the organization of the state and its structure of power.
Following the establishment of Western Christianity at the end of the 14th century, the occurrence of pagan cremation burial ceremonies markedly decreased.
As the power of the Lithuanian warlord dukes expanded to the south and east, the cultivated East Slavic Ruthenians exerted influence on the Lithuanian ruling class. They brought with them the Church Slavonic liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion, a written language (Chancery Slavonic) that was developed to serve the Lithuanian court's document-producing needs for a few centuries, and a system of laws. By these means, Ruthenians transformed Vilnius into a major center of Kievan Rus' civilization. By the time of Jogaila's acceptance of Catholicism at the Union of Krewo in 1385, many institutions in his realm and members of his family had been to a large extent assimilated already into the Orthodox Christianity and became Russified (in part a result of the deliberate policy of the Gediminid ruling house).
Catholic influence and contacts, including those derived from German settlers, traders and missionaries from Riga, had been increasing for some time around the northwest region of the empire, known as Lithuania proper. The Franciscan and Dominican friar orders existed in Vilnius from the time of Gediminas. Kęstutis in 1349 and Algirdas in 1358 negotiated Christianization with the pope, the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish king. The Christianization of Lithuania thus involved both Catholic and Orthodox aspects. Conversion by force as practiced by the Teutonic Knights had actually been an impediment that delayed the progress of Western Christianity in the grand duchy.
Jogaila, a grand duke since 1377, was himself still a pagan at the start of his reign. He agreed to become a Catholic when offered the Polish crown and for wife the child (13 years old) crowned king (not queen) Jadwiga by leading Polish nobles, who were eager to take advantage of Lithuania's expansion. For the near future, Poland gave Lithuania a valuable ally against increasing threats from the Teutonic Knights and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Lithuania, in which Ruthenians outnumbered ethnic Lithuanians by several times, could ally with either the Grand Duchy of Moscow or Poland. A Russian deal was also negotiated with Dmitry Donskoy in 1383–1384, but Moscow was too distant to be able to assist with the problems posed by the Teutonic orders and presented a difficulty as a center competing for the loyalty of the Orthodox Lithuanian Ruthenians.
Jogaila was baptized, given the baptismal name Władysław, married Queen Jadwiga, and was crowned King of Poland in February 1386.
Jogaila's baptism and crowning were followed by the final and official Christianization of Lithuania. In the fall of 1386, the king returned to Lithuania and the next spring and summer participated in mass conversion and baptism ceremonies for the general population. The establishment of a bishopric in Vilnius in 1387 was accompanied by Jogaila's extraordinarily generous endowment of land and peasants to the Church and exemption from state obligations and control. This instantly transformed the Lithuanian Church into the most powerful institution in the country (and future grand dukes lavished even more wealth on it). Lithuanian boyars who accepted baptism were rewarded with a more limited privilege improving their legal rights. Vilnius' townspeople were granted self-government. The Church proceeded with its civilizing mission of literacy and education, and the estates of the realm started to emerge with their own separate identities.
Jogaila's orders for his court and followers to convert to Catholicism were meant to deprive the Teutonic Knights of the justification for their practice of forced conversion through military onslaughts. In 1403 the pope prohibited the Order from conducting warfare against Lithuania, and its threat to Lithuania's existence (which had endured for two centuries) was indeed neutralized. In the short term, Jogaila needed Polish support in his struggle with his cousin Vytautas.
The Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392 involved the Teutonic Knights, the Poles, and the competing factions loyal to Jogaila and Vytautas in Lithuania. Amid ruthless warfare, the grand duchy was ravaged and threatened with collapse. Jogaila decided that the way out was to make amends and recognize the rights of Vytautas, whose original goal, now largely accomplished, was to recover the lands he considered his inheritance. After negotiations, Vytautas ended up gaining far more than that; from 1392 he became practically the ruler of Lithuania, a self-styled "Duke of Lithuania," under a compromise with Jogaila known as the Ostrów Agreement. Technically, he was merely Jogaila's regent with extended authority. Jogaila realized that cooperating with his able cousin was preferable to attempting to govern (and defend) Lithuania directly from Kraków.
Vytautas had been frustrated by Jogaila's Polish arrangements and rejected the prospect of Lithuania's subordination to Poland. Under Vytautas, a considerable centralization of the state took place, and the Catholicized Lithuanian nobility became increasingly prominent in state politics. The centralization efforts began in 1393–1395, when Vytautas appropriated their provinces from several powerful regional dukes in Ruthenia. Several invasions of Lithuania by the Teutonic Knights occurred between 1392 and 1394, but they were repelled with the help of Polish forces. Afterwards, the Knights abandoned their goal of conquest of Lithuania proper and concentrated on subjugating and keeping Samogitia. In 1395, Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, the Order's formal superior, prohibited the Knights from raiding Lithuania.
In 1395, Vytautas conquered Smolensk, and in 1397, he conducted a victorious expedition against a branch of the Golden Horde. Now he felt he could afford independence from Poland and in 1398 refused to pay the tribute due to Queen Jadwiga. Seeking freedom to pursue his internal and Ruthenian goals, Vytautas had to grant the Teutonic Order a large portion of Samogitia in the Treaty of Salynas of 1398. The conquest of Samogitia by the Teutonic Order greatly improved its military position as well as that of the associated Livonian Brothers of the Sword. Vytautas soon pursued attempts to retake the territory, an undertaking for which needed the help of the Polish king.
During Vytautas' reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its territorial expansion, but his ambitious plans to subjugate all of Ruthenia were thwarted by his disastrous defeat in 1399 at the Battle of the Vorskla River, inflicted by the Golden Horde. Vytautas survived by fleeing the battlefield with a small unit and realized the necessity of a permanent alliance with Poland.
The original Union of Krewo of 1385 was renewed and redefined on several occasions, but each time with little clarity due to the competing Polish and Lithuanian interests. Fresh arrangements were agreed to in the "unions" of Vilnius (1401), Horodło (1413), Grodno (1432) and Vilnius (1499). In the Union of Vilnius, Jogaila granted Vytautas a lifetime rule over the grand duchy. In return, Jogaila preserved his formal supremacy, and Vytautas promised to "stand faithfully with the Crown and the King." Warfare with the Order resumed. In 1403, Pope Boniface IX banned the Knights from attacking Lithuania, but in the same year Lithuania had to agree to the Peace of Raciąż, which mandated the same conditions as in the Treaty of Salynas.
Secure in the west, Vytautas turned his attention to the east once again. The campaigns fought between 1401 and 1408 involved Smolensk, Pskov, Moscow and Veliky Novgorod. Smolensk was retained, Pskov and Veliki Novgorod ended up as Lithuanian dependencies, and a lasting territorial division between the Grand Duchy and Moscow was agreed in 1408 in the treaty of Ugra, where a great battle failed to materialize.
The decisive war with the Teutonic Knights (the Great War) was preceded in 1409 with a Samogitian uprising supported by Vytautas. Ultimately the Lithuanian–Polish alliance was able to defeat the Knights at the Battle of Grunwald on 15 July 1410, but the allied armies failed to take Marienburg, the Knights' fortress-capital. Nevertheless, the unprecedented total battlefield victory against the Knights permanently removed the threat that they had posed to Lithuania's existence for centuries. The Peace of Thorn (1411) allowed Lithuania to recover Samogotia, but only until the deaths of Jogaila and Vytautas, and the Knights had to pay a large monetary reparation.
The Union of Horodło (1413) incorporated Lithuania into Poland again, but only as a formality. In practical terms, Lithuania became an equal partner with Poland, because each country was obliged to choose its future ruler only with the consent of the other, and the Union was declared to continue even under a new dynasty. Catholic Lithuanian boyars were to enjoy the same privileges as Polish nobles ("szlachta"). 47 top Lithuanian clans were colligated with 47 Polish noble families to initiate a future brotherhood and facilitate the expected full unity. Two administrative divisions (Vilnius and Trakai) were established in Lithuania, patterned after the existing Polish models.
Vytautas practiced religious toleration and his grandiose plans also included attempts to influence the Eastern Orthodox Church, which he wanted to use as a tool to control Moscow and other parts of Ruthenia. In 1416, he elevated Gregory Tsamblak as his chosen Orthodox patriarch for all of Ruthenia (the established Orthodox Metropolitan bishop remained in Vilnius to the end of the 18th century). These efforts were also intended to serve the goal of global unification of the Eastern and Western churches. Tsamblak led an Orthodox delegation to the Council of Constance in 1418. The Orthodox synod, however, would not recognize Tsamblak. The grand duke also established new Catholic bishoprics in Samogitia (1417) and in Lithuanian Ruthenia (Lutsk and Kiev).
The Gollub War with the Teutonic Knights followed and in 1422, in the Treaty of Melno, the grand duchy permanently recovered Samogitia, which terminated its involvement in the wars with the Order. Vytautas' shifting policies and reluctance to pursue the Order made the survival of German East Prussia possible for centuries to come. Samogitia was the last region of Europe to be Christianized (from 1413). Later, different foreign policies were prosecuted by Lithuania and Poland, accompanied by conflicts over Podolia and Volhynia, the grand duchy's territories in the southeast.
Vytautas' greatest successes and recognition occurred at the end of his life, when the Crimean Khanate and the Volga Tatars came under his influence. Prince Vasily I of Moscow died in 1425, and Vytautas then administered the Grand Duchy of Moscow together with his daughter, Vasily's widow Sophia of Lithuania. In 1426–1428 Vytautas triumphantly toured the eastern reaches of his empire and collected huge tributes from the local princes. Pskov and Veliki Novgorod were incorporated to the grand duchy in 1426 and 1428. At the Congress of Lutsk in 1429, Vytautas negotiated the issue of his crowning as the King of Lithuania with Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and Jogaila. That ambition was close to being fulfilled, but in the end was thwarted by last-minute intrigues and Vytautas' death. Vytautas' cult and legend originated during his later years and have continued until today.
The dynastic link to Poland resulted in religious, political and cultural ties and increase of Western influence among the native Lithuanian nobility, and to a lesser extent among the Ruthenian boyars from the East, Lithuanian subjects. Catholics were granted preferential treatment and access to offices because of the policies of Vytautas, officially pronounced in 1413 at the Union of Horodło, and even more so of his successors, aimed at asserting the rule of the Catholic Lithuanian elite over the Ruthenian territories. Such policies increased the pressure on the nobility to convert to Catholicism. Ethnic Lithuania proper made up 10% of the area and 20% of the population of the Grand Duchy. Of the Ruthenian provinces, Volhynia was most closely integrated with Lithuania proper. Branches of the Gediminid family as well as other Lithuanian and Ruthenian magnate clans eventually became established there.
During the period, a stratum of wealthy landowners, important also as a military force, was coming into being, accompanied by the emerging class of feudal serfs assigned to them. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was for the time being largely preserved as a separate state with separate institutions, but efforts, originating mainly in Poland, were made to bring the Polish and Lithuanian elites and systems closer together. Vilnius and other cities were granted the German system of laws (Magdeburg rights). Crafts and trade were developing quickly. Under Vytautas a network of chanceries functioned, first schools were established and annals written. Taking advantage of the historic opportunities, the great ruler opened Lithuania for the influence of the European culture and integrated his country with European Western Christianity.
The Jagiellonian dynasty founded by Jogaila (a member of one of the branches of the Gediminids) ruled Poland and Lithuania continuously between 1386 and 1572.
Following the deaths of Vytautas in 1430, another civil war ensued, and Lithuania was ruled by rival successors. Afterwards, the Lithuanian nobility on two occasions technically broke the union between Poland and Lithuania by selecting grand dukes unilaterally from the Jagiellonian dynasty. In 1440, the Lithuanian great lords elevated Casimir, Jogaila's second son, to the rule of the grand duchy. This issue was resolved by Casimir's election as king by the Poles in 1446. In 1492, Jogaila's grandson John Albert became the king of Poland, whereas his grandson Alexander became the grand duke of Lithuania. In 1501 Alexander succeeded John as king of Poland, which resolved the difficulty in the same manner as before. A lasting connection between the two states was beneficial to Poles, Lithuanians, and Ruthenians, Catholic and Orthodox, as well as the Jagiellonian rulers themselves, whose hereditary succession rights in Lithuania practically guaranteed their election as kings in accordance with the customs surrounding the royal elections in Poland.
On the Teutonic front, Poland continued its struggle, which in 1466 led to the Peace of Thorn and the recovery of much of the Piast dynasty territorial losses. A secular Duchy of Prussia was established in 1525. Its presence would greatly impact the futures of both Lithuania and Poland.
The Tatar Crimean Khanate recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire from 1475. Seeking slaves and booty, the Tatars raided vast portions of the grand duchy of Lithuania, burning Kiev in 1482 and approaching Vilnius in 1505. Their activity resulted in Lithuania's loss of its distant territories on the Black Sea shores in the 1480s and 1490s. The last two Jagiellon kings were Sigismund I and Sigismund II Augustus, during whose reign the intensity of Tatar raids diminished due to the appearance of the military caste of Cossacks at the southeastern territories and the growing power of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
Lithuania needed a close alliance with Poland when, at the end of the 15th century, the increasingly assertive Grand Duchy of Moscow threatened some of Lithuania's Rus' principalities with the goal of "recovering" the formerly Orthodox-ruled lands. In 1492, Ivan III of Russia unleashed what turned out to be a series of Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars and Livonian Wars.
In 1492, the border of Lithuania's loosely controlled eastern Ruthenian territory ran less than one hundred miles from Moscow. But as a result of the warfare, a third of the grand duchy's land area was ceded to the Russian state in 1503. Then the loss of Smolensk in July 1514 was particularly disastrous, even though it was followed by the successful Battle of Orsha in September, as the Polish interests were reluctantly recognizing the necessity of their own involvement in Lithuania's defense. The peace of 1537 left Gomel as the grand duchy's eastern edge.
In the north, the Livonian War took place over the strategically and economically crucial region of Livonia, the traditional territory of the Livonian Order. The Livonian Confederation formed an alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian side in 1557 with the Treaty of Pozvol. Desired by both Lithuania and Poland, Livonia was then incorporated into the Polish Crown by Sigismund II. These developments caused Ivan the Terrible of Russia to launch attacks in Livonia beginning in 1558, and later on Lithuania. The grand duchy's fortress of Polotsk fell in 1563. This was followed by a Lithuanian victory at the Battle of Ula in 1564, but not a recovery of Polotsk. Russian, Swedish and Polish-Lithuanian occupations subdivided Livonia.
The Polish ruling establishment had been aiming at the incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into Poland since before the Union of Krewo. The Lithuanians were able to fend off this threat in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the dynamics of power changed in the 16th century. In 1508, the Polish Sejm voted funding for Lithuania's defense against Muscovy for the first time, and an army was fielded. The Polish nobility's executionist movement called for full incorporation of the Grand Duchy because of its increasing reliance on the support of the Polish Crown against Moscow's encroachments. This problem only grew more acute during the reign of Sigismund II Augustus, the last Jagiellonian king and grand duke of Lithuania, who had no heir who would inherit and continue the personal union between Poland and Lithuania. The preservation of the Polish-Lithuanian power arrangement appeared to require the monarch to force a decisive solution during his lifetime. The resistance to a closer and more permanent union was coming from Lithuania's ruling families, increasingly Polonized in cultural terms, but attached to the Lithuanian heritage and their patrimonial rule.
Legal evolution had lately been taking place in Lithuania nevertheless. In the Privilege of Vilnius of 1563, Sigismund restored full political rights to the Grand Duchy's Orthodox boyars, which had been restricted up to that time by Vytautas and his successors; all members of the nobility were from then officially equal. Elective courts were established in 1565–66, and the Second Lithuanian Statute of 1566 created a hierarchy of local offices patterned on the Polish system. The Lithuanian legislative assembly assumed the same formal powers as the Polish Sejm.
The Polish Sejm of January 1569, deliberating in Lublin, was attended by the Lithuanian lords at Sigismund's insistence. Most left town on March 1, unhappy with the proposals of the Poles to establish rights to acquire property in Lithuania and other issues. Sigismund reacted by announcing the incorporation of the Grand Duchy's Volhynia and Podlasie voivodeships into the Polish Crown. Soon the large Kiev Voivodeship and Bratslav Voivodeship were also annexed. Ruthenian boyars in the formerly southeastern Grand Duchy mostly approved the territorial transfers, since it meant that they would become members of the privileged Polish nobility. But the king also pressured many obstinate deputies to agree on compromises important to the Lithuanian side. The arm twisting, combined with reciprocal guarantees for Lithuanian nobles' rights, resulted in the "voluntary" passage of the Union of Lublin on July 1. The combined polity would be ruled by a common Sejm, but the separate hierarchies of major state offices were to be retained. Many in the Lithuanian establishment found this objectionable, but in the end they were prudent to comply. For the time being, Sigismund managed to preserve the Polish-Lithuanian state as great power. Reforms necessary to protect its long-term success and survival were not undertaken.
From the 16th to the mid-17th century, culture, arts, and education flourished in Lithuania, fueled by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The Lutheran ideas of the Reformation entered the Livonian Confederation by the 1520s, and Lutheranism soon became the prevailing religion in the urban areas of the region, while Lithuania remained Catholic.
An influential book dealer was the humanist and bibliophile Francysk Skaryna (c. 1485—1540), who was the founding father of Belarusian letters. He wrote in his native Ruthenian (Chancery Slavonic) language, as was typical for literati in the earlier phase of the Renaissance in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the middle of the 16th century, Polish predominated in literary productions. Many educated Lithuanians came back from studies abroad to help build the active cultural life that distinguished 16th-century Lithuania, sometimes referred to as Lithuanian Renaissance (not to be confused with Lithuanian National Revival in the 19th century).
At this time, Italian architecture was introduced in Lithuanian cities, and Lithuanian literature written in Latin flourished. Also at this time, the first printed texts in the Lithuanian language emerged, and the formation of written Lithuanian language began. The process was led by Lithuanian scholars Abraomas Kulvietis, Stanislovas Rapalionis, Martynas Mažvydas and Mikalojus Daukša.
With the Union of Lublin of 1569, Poland and Lithuania formed a new state referred to as the Republic of Both Nations, but commonly known as Poland-Lithuania or the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, which officially consisted of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was ruled by Polish and Lithuanian nobility, together with nobility-elected kings. The Union was designed to have a common foreign policy, customs and currency. Separate Polish and Lithuanian armies were retained, but parallel ministerial and central offices were established according to a practice developed by the Crown. The Lithuanian Tribunal, a high court for the affairs of the nobility, was created in 1581.
The Lithuanian language fell into disuse in the circles of the grand ducal court in the second half of the 15th century in favor of Polish. A century later, Polish was commonly used even by the ordinary Lithuanian nobility. Following the Union of Lublin, Polonization increasingly affected all aspects of Lithuanian public life, but it took well over a century for the process to be completed. The 1588 Statutes of Lithuania were still written in the Ruthenian Chancery Slavonic language, just as earlier legal codifications were. From about 1700, Polish was used in the Grand Duchy's official documents as a replacement for Ruthenian and Latin use. The Lithuanian nobility became linguistically and culturally Polonized, while retaining a sense of Lithuanian identity. The integrating process of the Commonwealth nobility was not regarded as Polonization in the sense of modern nationality, but rather as participation in the Sarmatism cultural-ideological current, erroneously understood to imply also a common (Sarmatian) ancestry of all members of the noble class. The Lithuanian language survived, however, in spite of encroachments by the Ruthenian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian and German languages, as a peasant vernacular, and from 1547 in written religious use.
Western Lithuania had an important role in the preservation of the Lithuanian language and its culture. In Samogitia, many nobles never ceased to speak Lithuanian natively. Northeastern East Prussia, sometimes referred to as Lithuania Minor, was populated mainly by Lithuanians and predominantly Lutheran. The Lutherans promoted publishing of religious books in local languages, which is why the "Catechism" of Martynas Mažvydas was printed in 1547 in East Prussian Königsberg.
The predominantly East Slavic population of the Grand Duchy was mostly Eastern Orthodox, and much of the Lithuanian state's nobility also remained Orthodox. Unlike the common people of the Lithuanian realm, at about the time of the Union of Lublin in 1569 large portions of the nobility converted to Western Christianity. Following the Protestant Reformation movement, many noble families converted to Calvinism in the 1550s and 1560s, and typically a generation later, conforming to the Counter-Reformation trends in the Commonwealth, to Roman Catholicism. The Protestant and Orthodox presence must have been very strong, because according to an undoubtedly exaggerated early 17th-century source, "merely one in a thousand remained a Catholic" in Lithuania at that time. In the early Commonwealth, religious toleration was the norm and was officially enacted by the Warsaw Confederation in 1573.
By 1750, nominal Catholics comprised about 80% of the Commonwealth's population, the vast majority of the noble citizenry, and the entire legislature. In the east, there were also the Eastern Orthodox Church adherents. However, Catholics in the Grand Duchy itself were split. Under half were Latin rite with strong allegiance to Rome. The others (mostly non-noble Ruthenians) followed the Eastern rite. They were the so-called Uniates, whose church was established at the Union of Brest in 1596, and they acknowledged only nominal obedience to Rome. At first the advantage went to the advancing Roman Catholic Church pushing back a retreating Orthodox Church. However, after the first partition of the Commonwealth in 1772, the Orthodox had the support of the government and gained the upper hand. The Russian Orthodox Church paid special attention to the Uniates (who had once been Orthodox), and tried to bring them back. The contest was political and spiritual, utilizing missionaries, schools, and pressure exerted by powerful nobles and landlords. By 1800, over 2 million of the Uniates had become Orthodox, and another 1.6 million by 1839.
The Union of Lublin and the integration of the two countries notwithstanding, Lithuania continued to exist as a grand duchy within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for over two centuries. It retained separate laws as well as an army and a treasury. At the time of Union of Lublin, King Sigismund II Augustus removed Ukraine and other territories from Lithuania and incorporated them directly into the Polish Crown. The grand duchy was left with today's Belarus and parts of western Russia, in addition to the core ethnic Lithuanian lands. From 1573, the kings of Poland and the grand dukes of Lithuania were always the same person and were elected by the nobility, who were granted ever increasing privileges in a unique aristocratic political system known as the Golden Liberty. These privileges, especially the "liberum veto", led to political anarchy and the eventual dissolution of the state.
Within the Commonwealth, the grand duchy made important contributions to European economic, political and cultural life: Western Europe was supplied with grain, along the Danzig to Amsterdam sea route; the early Commonwealth's religious tolerance and democracy among the ruling noble class were unique in Europe; Vilnius was the only European capital located on the border of the worlds of the Western and Eastern Christianity and many religious faiths were practiced there; to the Jews, it was the "Jerusalem of the North" and the town of the Vilna Gaon, their great religious leader; Vilnius University produced numerous illustrious alumni and was one of the most influential centers of learning in its part of Europe; the Vilnius school made significant contributions to European architecture in Baroque style; the Lithuanian legal tradition gave rise to the advanced legal codes known as the Statutes of Lithuania; at the end of the Commonwealth's existence, the Constitution of May 3, 1791 was the first comprehensive written constitution produced in Europe. After the Partitions of Poland, the Vilnius school of Romanticism produced the two great poets: Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki.
The Commonwealth was greatly weakened by a series of wars, beginning with the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine in 1648. During the Northern Wars of 1655–1661, the Lithuanian territory and economy were devastated by the Swedish army in an invasion known as the Deluge, and Vilnius was burned and looted by the Russian forces. Before it could fully recover, Lithuania was again ravaged during the Great Northern War of 1700–1721.
Besides war, the Commonwealth suffered the Great Northern War plague outbreak and famine (the worst caused by the Great Frost of 1709). These calamities resulted in the loss of approximately 40% of the country's inhabitants. Foreign powers, especially Russia, became dominant players in the domestic politics of the Commonwealth. Numerous factions among the nobility, controlled and manipulated by the powerful Magnates of Poland and Lithuania, themselves often in conflict, used their "Golden Liberty" to prevent reforms. Some Lithuanian clans, such as the Radziwiłłs, counted among the most powerful of Commonwealth nobles.
The Constitution of May 3, 1791, was a culmination of the belated reform process of the Commonwealth. It attempted to integrate Lithuania and Poland more closely, although the separation was preserved by the added Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations. Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, 1793 and 1795 terminated its existence and saw the Grand Duchy of Lithuania divided between the Russian Empire, which took over 90% of the Duchy's territory, and the Kingdom of Prussia. The Third Partition of 1795 took place after the failure of the Kościuszko Uprising, the last war waged by Poles and Lithuanians to preserve their statehood. Lithuania ceased to exist as a distinct entity for more than a century.
Following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire controlled the majority of Lithuania, including Vilnius, which was a part of the Vilna Governorate. In 1803, Tsar Alexander I revived and upgraded the old Jesuit academy as the imperial Vilnius University, the largest in the Russian Empire. The university and the regional educational system was directed on behalf of the tsar by Prince Adam Czartoryski. In the early years of the 19th century, there were signs that Lithuania might be allowed some separate recognition by the Empire, however this never happened.
In 1812, the Lithuanians eagerly welcomed Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée as liberators, with many joining the French invasion of Russia. After the French army's defeat and withdrawal, Tsar Alexander I decided to keep the University of Vilnius open and the Polish-language poet Adam Mickiewicz, a resident of Vilnius in 1815–1824, was able to receive his education there. The southwestern part of Lithuania that was taken over by Prussia in 1795, then incorporated into the Duchy of Warsaw (a French puppet state that existed between 1807 and 1815), became a part of the Russian-controlled Kingdom of Poland ("Congress Poland") in 1815. The rest of Lithuania continued to be administered as a Russian province.
The Poles and Lithuanians revolted against Russian rule twice, in 1830-31 (the November Uprising) and 1863-64 (the January Uprising), but both attempts failed and resulted in increased repression by the Russian authorities. After the November Uprising, Tsar Nicholas I began an intensive program of Russification and the University of Vilnius was closed. Lithuania became part of a new administrative region called the Northwestern Krai. In spite of the repression, Polish language schooling and cultural life were largely able to continue in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the failure of the January Uprising. The Statutes of Lithuania were annulled by the Russian Empire only in 1840, and serfdom was abolished as part of the general Emancipation reform of 1861 that applied to the entire Russian Empire. The Uniate Church, important in the Belarusian part of the former Grand Duchy, was incorporated into the Orthodox Church in 1839.
The Polish poetry of Adam Mickiewicz, who was emotionally attached to the Lithuanian countryside and associated medieval legends, influenced ideological foundations of the emerging Lithuanian national movement. Simonas Daukantas, who studied with Mickiewicz at Vilnius University, promoted a return to Lithuania's pre-Commonwealth traditions and a renewal of the local culture, based on the Lithuanian language. With those ideas in mind, he wrote already in 1822 a history of Lithuania in Lithuanian (though still not yet published at that time). Teodor Narbutt wrote in Polish a voluminous "Ancient History of the Lithuanian Nation" (1835–1841), where he likewise expounded and expanded further on the concept of historic Lithuania, whose days of glory had ended with the Union of Lublin in 1569. Narbutt, invoking the German scholarship, pointed out the relationship between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages. It indicated the closeness of Lithuanian to its ancient Indo-European roots and would later provide the "antiquity" argument for activists associated with the Lithuanian National Revival. By the middle of the 19th century, the basic ideology of the future Lithuanian nationalist movement was defined with linguistic identity in mind; in order to establish a modern Lithuanian identity, it required a break with the traditional dependence on Polish culture and language.
Around the time of the January Uprising, there was a generation of Lithuanian leaders of the transitional period between a political movement bound with Poland and the modern nationalist Lithuanian movement based on language. Jakób Gieysztor, Konstanty Kalinowski and Antanas Mackevičius wanted to form alliances with the local peasants, who, empowered and given land, would presumably help defeat the Russian Empire, acting in their own self-interest. This created new dilemmas that had to do with languages used for such inter-class communication and later led to the concept of a nation as the "sum of speakers of a vernacular tongue."
The failure of the January Uprising in 1864 made the connection with Poland seem outdated to many Lithuanians and at the same time led to the creation of a class of emancipated and often prosperous peasants who, unlike often Polonized urban residents, were effectively custodians of the Lithuanian language. Educational opportunities, now more widely available to young people of such common origins, were one of the crucial factors responsible for the Lithuanian national revival. As schools were being de-Polonized and Lithuanian university students sent to Saint Petersburg or Moscow rather than Warsaw, a cultural void resulted, and it was not being successfully filled by the attempted Russification policies.
Russian nationalists regarded the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an East Slavic realm that ought to be (and was being) "reunited" with Russia. In the following decades however, a Lithuanian national movement emerged, composed of activists of different social backgrounds and persuasions, often primarily Polish-speaking, but united by their willingness to promote the Lithuanian culture and language as a strategy for building a modern nation. The restoration of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania was no longer the objective of this movement, and the territorial ambitions of its leaders were limited to the lands they considered historically Lithuanian.
In 1864, the Lithuanian language and the Latin alphabet were banned in junior schools. The prohibition on printing in the Lithuanian language reflected the Russian nationalist policy of "restoration" of the supposedly Russian beginnings of Lithuania. The tsarist authorities implemented a number of Russification policies, including a Lithuanian press ban and the closing of cultural and educational institutions. Those were resisted by Lithuanians, led by Bishop Motiejus Valančius, among others. Lithuanians resisted by arranging printing abroad and smuggling of the books in from neighboring East Prussia.
Lithuanian was not considered a prestigious language. There were even expectations that the language would become extinct, as more and more territories in the east were slavicized, and more people used Polish or Russian in daily life. The only place where Lithuanian was considered more prestigious and worthy of books and studying was in East Prussia, sometimes referred to by Lithuanian nationalists as "Lithuania Minor." At the time, northeastern East Prussia was home to numerous ethnic Lithuanians, but even there Germanization pressure threatened their cultural identity.
The language revival spread into more affluent strata, beginning with the release of the Lithuanian newspapers "Aušra" and "Varpas", then with the writing of poems and books in Lithuanian many of which glorified the historic Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The two most prominent figures in the revival movement, Jonas Basanavičius and Vincas Kudirka, both originated from affluent Lithuanian peasantry and attended the Marijampolė (Mariampol) secondary school in the Suvalkai region. The school was a Polish educational center, Russified after the January Uprising, with Lithuanian language classes introduced at that time.
Basanavičius studied medicine at the Moscow State University, where he developed international connections, published (in Polish) on Lithuanian history and graduated in 1879. From there he went to Bulgaria, and in 1882 moved to Prague. In Prague he met and became influenced by the Czech National Revival movement. In 1883, Basanavičius began working on a Lithuanian language review, which assumed the form of a newspaper named "Aušra" ("The Dawn"), published in Ragnit, East Prussia, Germany (now Neman, Russia). "Aušra" was printed in Latin characters banned under Russian law, which mandated the Cyrillic alphabet for printing Lithuanian. It was smuggled to Lithuania, together with other Lithuanian publications and books printed in East Prussia. The paper (forty issues in total), building on the work of the earlier writers, sought to demonstrate continuities with the medieval Grand Duchy and lionize the Lithuanian people.
Russian restrictions at Marijampolė secondary school were eased in 1872 and Kudirka learned Polish there. He went on to study at the University of Warsaw, where he was influenced by Polish socialists. In 1889, Kudirka returned to Lithuania and worked on incorporating the Lithuanian peasantry into mainstream politics as the main building block of a modern nation. In 1898, he wrote a poem inspired by the opening strophe of Mickiewicz's masterpiece "Pan Tadeusz": "Lithuania, my fatherland! You are like health." The poem became the national anthem of Lithuania, "Tautiška giesmė": ("Lithuania, Our Homeland").
As the revival grew, Russian policy became harsher. Attacks took place against Catholic churches while the ban forbidding the Lithuanian press continued. However, in the late 19th century, the language ban was lifted). and some 2,500 books were published in the Lithuanian Latin alphabet. The majority of these were published in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Russian Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast), although some publications reached Lithuania from the United States. A largely standardized written language was achieved by 1900, based on historical and Aukštaitijan (highland) usages. The letters -č-, -š- and -v- were taken from the modern (redesigned) Czech orthography, to avoid the Polish usage for corresponding sounds. The widely accepted "Lithuanian Grammar", by Jonas Jablonskis, appeared in 1901.
Large numbers of Lithuanians had emigrated to the United States in 1867–1868 after a famine in Lithuania. Between 1868 and 1914, approximately 635,000 people, almost 20 percent of the population, left Lithuania. Lithuanian cities and towns were growing under the Russian rule, but the country remained underdeveloped by the European standards and job opportunities were limited; many Lithuanians left also for the industrial centers of the Russian Empire, such as Riga and Saint Petersburg. Many of Lithuania's cities were dominated by non-Lithuanian-speaking Jews and Poles.
Lithuania's nationalist movement continued to grow. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, a large congress of Lithuanian representatives in Vilnius known as the Great Seimas of Vilnius demanded provincial autonomy for Lithuania (by which they meant the northwestern portion of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania) on 5 December of that year. The tsarist regime made a number of concessions as the result of the 1905 uprising. The Baltic states once again were permitted to use their native languages in schooling and public discourse, and Catholic churches were built in Lithuania. Latin characters replaced the Cyrillic alphabet that had been forced upon Lithuanians for four decades. But not even Russian liberals were prepared to concede autonomy similar to that that had already existed in Estonia and Latvia, albeit under Baltic German hegemony. Many Baltic Germans looked toward aligning the Baltics (Lithuania and Courland in particular) with Germany.
After the outbreak of hostilities in World War I, Germany occupied Lithuania and Courland in 1915. Vilnius fell to the Germans on 19 September 1915. An alliance with Germany in opposition to both tsarist Russia and Lithuanian nationalism became for the Baltic Germans a real possibility. Lithuania was incorporated into Ober Ost under a German government of occupation. As open annexation could result in a public-relations backlash, the Germans planned to form a network of formally independent states that would in fact be dependent on Germany.
The German occupation government permitted a Vilnius Conference to convene between September 18 and September 22, 1917, with the demand that Lithuanians declare loyalty to Germany and agree to an annexation. The intent of the conferees was to begin the process of establishing a Lithuanian state based on ethnic identity and language that would be independent of the Russian Empire, Poland, and the German Empire. The mechanism for this process was to be decided by a constituent assembly, but the German government would not permit elections. Furthermore, the publication of the conference's resolution calling for the creation of a Lithuanian state and elections for a constituent assembly was not allowed. The Conference nonetheless elected a 20-member Council of Lithuania ("Taryba") and empowered it to act as the executive authority of the Lithuanian people. The Council, led by Jonas Basanavičius, declared Lithuanian independence as a German protectorate on December 11, 1917, and then adopted the outright Act of Independence of Lithuania on February 16, 1918. It proclaimed Lithuania as an independent republic, organized according to democratic principles. The Germans, weakened by the losses on the Western Front, but still present in the country, did not support such a declaration and hindered attempts to establish actual independence. To prevent being incorporated into the German Empire, Lithuanians elected Monaco-born King Mindaugas II as the titular monarch of the Kingdom of Lithuania in July 1918. Mindaugas II never assumed the throne, however.
In the meantime, an attempt to revive the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a socialist multi-national federal republic was also taking place under the German occupation. In March 1918, Anton Lutskevich and his Belarusian National Council proclaimed a Belarusian People's Republic that was to stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and include Vilnius. Lutskevich and the Council fled the Red Army approaching from Russia and left Minsk before it was taken over by the Bolsheviks in December 1918. Upon their arrival in Vilnius, they proposed a Belarusian-Lithuanian federation, which however generated no interest on the part of the Lithuanian leaders, who were in advanced stages of promoting national plans of their own. The Lithuanians were interested only in a state "within ethnographic frontiers," as they perceived it.
In spite of its success in knocking Russia out of World War I by the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk early in 1918, Germany lost the war and signed the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918. Lithuanians quickly formed their first government, adopted a provisional constitution, and started organizing basic administrative structures. The prime minister of the new government was Augustinas Voldemaras. As the German army was withdrawing from the Eastern Front of World War I, it was followed by Soviet forces whose intention was to spread the global proletarian revolution. They created a number of puppet states, including the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic on December 16, 1918. By the end of December, the Red Army reached Lithuanian borders and started the Lithuanian–Soviet War.
On January 1, 1919, the German occupying army withdrew from Vilnius and turned the city over to local Polish self-defense forces. The Lithuanian government evacuated Vilnius and moved west to Kaunas, which became the temporary capital of Lithuania. Vilnius was captured by the Soviet Red Army on January 5, 1919. As the Lithuanian army was in its infant stages, the Soviet forces moved largely unopposed and by mid-January 1919 controlled about ⅔ of the Lithuanian territory. Vilnius was now the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Republic, and soon of the combined Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
From April 1919, the Lithuanian–Soviet War dragged on parallel with the Polish–Soviet War. Polish troops captured Vilnius from the Soviets on April 21, 1919. Poland had territorial claims over Lithuania, especially the Vilnius Region, and these tensions spilled over into the Polish–Lithuanian War. Józef Piłsudski of Poland, seeking a Polish-Lithuanian federation, but unable to find common ground with Lithuanian politicians, in August 1919 made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Lithuanian government in Kaunas.
In mid-May 1919, the Lithuanian army commanded by General Silvestras Žukauskas began an offensive against the Soviets in northeastern Lithuania. By the end of August 1919, the Soviets were pushed out of Lithuanian territory. The Lithuanian army was then deployed against the paramilitary West Russian Volunteer Army, who invaded northern Lithuania. They were armed by Germany and supported German and Russian soldiers who sought to retain German control over the former Ober Ost. West Russian Volunteers were defeated and pushed out by the end of 1919. Thus the first phase of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence was over and Lithuanians could direct attention to internal affairs.
The Constituent Assembly of Lithuania was elected in April 1920 and first met the following May. In June it adopted the third provisional constitution and on July 12, 1920, signed the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty. In the treaty the Soviet Union recognized fully independent Lithuania and its claims to the disputed Vilnius Region; Lithuania secretly allowed the Soviet forces passage through its territory as they moved against Poland. On July 14, 1920, the advancing Soviet army captured Vilnius for a second time from Polish forces. The city was handed back to Lithuanians on August 26, 1920, following the defeat of the Soviet offensive. The victorious Polish army returned and the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty increased hostilities between Poland and Lithuania. To prevent further fighting, the Suwałki Agreement was signed with Poland on October 7, 1920; it left Vilnius on the Lithuanian side of the armistice line. It never went into effect, however, because Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski, acting on Józef Piłsudski's orders, staged the Żeligowski's Mutiny, a military action presented as a mutiny. He invaded Lithuania on October 8, 1920, captured Vilnius the following day, and established a short-lived Republic of Central Lithuania in eastern Lithuania on October 12, 1920. The "Republic" was a part of Piłsudski's federalist scheme, which never materialized due to opposition from both Polish and Lithuanian nationalists.
For 19 years, Kaunas was the temporary capital of Lithuania while the Vilnius region remained under Polish administration. The League of Nations attempted to mediate the dispute, and Paul Hymans proposed plans for a Polish–Lithuanian union, but negotiations broke down as neither side could agree to a compromise. Central Lithuania held a general election in 1922 that was boycotted by the Jews, Lithuanians and Belarusians, then was annexed into Poland on March 24, 1922. The Conference of Ambassadors awarded Vilnius to Poland in March 1923. Lithuania did not accept this decision and broke all relations with Poland. The two countries were officially at war over Vilnius, the historical capital of Lithuania, inhabited at that time largely by Polish-speaking and Jewish populations between 1920 and 1938. The dispute continued to dominate Lithuanian domestic politics and foreign policy and doomed the relations with Poland for the entire interwar period.
For administrative purposes, the de facto territory of the country was divided into 23 counties (lt:apskritis). A further 11 counties (including Vilnius) were allocated for the territory occupied by Poland (see also Administrative divisions of Lithuania).
The Constituent Assembly, which adjourned in October 1920 due to threats from Poland, gathered again and initiated many reforms needed in the new state. Lithuania obtained international recognition and membership in the League of Nations, passed a law for land reform, introduced a national currency (the litas), and adopted a final constitution in August 1922. Lithuania became a democratic state, with Seimas (parliament) elected by men and women for a three-year term. The Seimas elected the president. The First Seimas of Lithuania was elected in October 1922, but could not form a government as the votes split equally 38–38, and it was forced to dissolve. Its only lasting achievement was the Klaipėda Revolt from January 10 to January 15, 1923. The revolt involved Lithuania Minor, a region traditionally sought by Lithuanian nationalists that remained under German rule after World War I, except for the Klaipėda Region with its large Lithuanian minority. (Various sources give the region's interwar ethnic composition as 41.9 percent German, 27.1 percent "Memelländisch", and 26.6 percent Lithuanian.)
Lithuania took advantage of the Ruhr Crisis in western Europe and captured the Klaipėda Region, a territory detached from East Prussia by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and placed under a French administration sponsored by the League of Nations. The region was incorporated as an autonomous district of Lithuania in May 1924. For Lithuania, it provided the country's only access to the Baltic Sea, and it was an important industrial center, but the region's numerous German inhabitants resisted Lithuanian rule during the 1930s. The Klaipėda Revolt was the last armed conflict in Lithuania before World War II.
The Second Seimas of Lithuania, elected in May 1923, was the only Seimas in independent Lithuania that served its full term. The Seimas continued the land reform, introduced social support systems, and started repaying foreign debt. The first Lithuanian national census took place in 1923.
The Third Seimas of Lithuania was elected in May 1926. For the first time, the bloc led by the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party lost their majority and went into opposition. It was sharply criticized for signing the Soviet–Lithuanian Non-Aggression Pact (even though it affirmed Soviet recognition of Lithuanian claims to Poland-held Vilnius) and was accused of "Bolshevizing" Lithuania. As a result of growing tensions, the government was deposed during the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état in December. The coup, organized by the military, was supported by the Lithuanian Nationalists Union ("tautininkai") and Lithuanian Christian Democrats. They installed Antanas Smetona as the president and Augustinas Voldemaras as the prime minister. Smetona suppressed the opposition and remained as an authoritarian leader until June 1940.
The Seimas thought that the coup was just a temporary measure and that new elections would be called to return Lithuania to democracy. Instead, the legislative body was dissolved in May 1927. Later that year members of the Social Democrats and other leftist parties tried to organize an uprising against Smetona, but were quickly subdued. Voldemaras grew increasingly independent of Smetona and was forced to resign in 1929. Three times in 1930 and once in 1934, he unsuccessfully attempted to return to power. In May 1928, Smetona announced the fifth provisional constitution without consulting the Seimas. The constitution continued to claim that Lithuania was a democratic state while the powers of the president were vastly increased. Smetona's party, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, steadily grew in size and importance. He adopted the title "tautos vadas" (leader of the nation) and slowly started building a cult of personality. Many prominent political figures married into Smetona's family (for example, Juozas Tūbelis and Stasys Raštikis).
When the Nazi Party came into power in Germany, German–Lithuanian relations worsened considerably as the Nazis did not want to accept the loss of the Klaipėda Region (German: Memelland). The Nazis sponsored anti-Lithuanian organizations in the region. In 1934, Lithuania put the activists on trial and sentenced about 100 people, including their leaders Ernst Neumann and Theodor von Sass, to prison terms. That prompted Germany, one of the main trade partners of Lithuania, to declare an embargo of Lithuanian products. In response, Lithuania shifted its exports to Great Britain. That measure did not go far enough to satisfy many groups, and peasants in Suvalkija organized strikes, which were violently suppressed. Smetona's prestige was damaged, and in September 1936, he agreed to call the first elections for the Seimas since the coup of 1926. Before the elections, all political parties were eliminated except for the National Union. Thus 42 of the 49 members of the Fourth Seimas of Lithuania were from the National Union. This assembly functioned as an advisory board to the president, and in February 1938, it adopted a new constitution that granted the president even greater powers.
As tensions were rising in Europe following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany (the Anschluss), Poland presented the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania in March of that year. Poland demanded the re-establishment of the normal diplomatic relations that were broken after the Żeligowski Mutiny in 1920 and threatened military actions in case of refusal. Lithuania, having a weaker military and unable to enlist international support for its cause, accepted the ultimatum. In the event of Polish military action, Adolf Hitler ordered a German military takeover of southwest Lithuania up to the Dubysa River, and his armed forces were being fully mobilized until the news of the Lithuanian acceptance. Relations between Poland and Lithuania became somewhat normalized after the acceptance of the ultimatum, and the parties concluded treaties regarding railway transport, postal exchange, and other means of communication.
Lithuania offered diplomatic support to Germany and the Soviet Union in opposition to powers such as France and Estonia that backed Poland in the conflict over Vilnius, but both Germany and the Soviet Union saw fit to encroach on Lithuania's territory and independence anyway. Following the Nazi electoral success in Klaipėda in December 1938, Germany decided to take action to secure control of the entire region. On March 20, 1939, just a few days after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia of March 15, Lithuania received the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania from foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. It demanded the immediate cession of the Klaipėda Region to Germany. The Lithuanian government accepted the ultimatum to avoid an armed intervention. The Klaipėda Region was directly incorporated into the East Prussian province of the German Reich. This triggered a political crisis in Lithuania and forced Smetona to form a new government that included members of the opposition for the first time since 1926. The loss of Klaipėda was a major blow to the Lithuanian economy and the country shifted into the sphere of German influence. When Germany and the Soviet Union concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 and divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, Lithuania was assigned to Germany at first, but that changed after Smetona's refusal to participate in the German invasion of Poland.
The interwar period of independence gave birth to the development of Lithuanian press, literature, music, arts, and theater as well as a comprehensive system of education with Lithuanian as the language of instruction. The network of primary and secondary schools was expanded and institutions of higher learning were established in Kaunas. Lithuanian society remained heavily agricultural with only 20% of the people living in cities. The influence of the Catholic Church was strong and birth rates high: the population increased by 22% to over three million during 1923–1939, despite emigration to South America and elsewhere.
In almost all cities and towns, traditionally dominated by Jews, Poles, Russians and Germans, ethnic Lithuanians became the majority. Lithuanians, for example, constituted 59% of the residents of Kaunas in 1923, as opposed to 7% in 1897. The right-wing dictatorship of 1926–1940 had strangely stabilizing social effects, as it prevented the worst of antisemitic excesses as well as the rise of leftist and rightist political extremism.
Secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, adjusted by the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty, divided Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. The three Baltic states fell to the Soviet sphere. During the subsequent invasion of Poland, the Red Army captured Vilnius, regarded by Lithuanians as their capital. According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Pact of October 10, 1939, Soviet Union transferred Vilnius and surrounding territory to Lithuania in exchange for the stationing of 20,000 Soviet troops within the country. It was a virtual sacrifice of independence, as reflected in a known slogan "Vilnius – mūsų, Lietuva – rusų" (Vilnius is ours, but Lithuania is Russia's). Similar Mutual Assistance Pacts were signed with Latvia and Estonia. When Finland refused to sign its pact, the Winter War broke out.
In spring 1940, once the Winter War in Finland was over, the Soviets heightened their diplomatic pressure on Lithuania and issued the 1940 Soviet ultimatum to Lithuania on June 14. The ultimatum demanded the formation of a new pro-Soviet government and admission of an unspecified number of Russian troops. With Soviet troops already stationed within the country, Lithuania could not resist and accepted the ultimatum. President Antanas Smetona fled Lithuania as 150,000 Soviet troops crossed the Lithuanian border. Soviet representative Vladimir Dekanozov formed the new pro-Soviet puppet government, known as the People's Government, headed by Justas Paleckis, and organized show elections for the so-called People's Seimas. During its first session on July 21, the People's Seimas unanimously voted to convert Lithuania into the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and petitioned to join the Soviet Union. The application was approved by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on August 3, 1940, which completed the formalization of the annexation.
Immediately following the occupation, Soviet authorities began rapid Sovietization of Lithuania. All land was nationalized. To gain support for the new regime among the poorer peasants, large farms were distributed to small landowners. However, in preparation for eventual collectivization, agricultural taxes were dramatically increased in an attempt to bankrupt all farmers. Nationalization of banks, larger enterprises, and real estate resulted in disruptions in production that caused massive shortages of goods. The Lithuanian litas was artificially undervalued and withdrawn by spring 1941. Standards of living plummeted. All religious, cultural, and political organizations were banned, leaving only the Communist Party of Lithuania and its youth branch. An estimated 12,000 "enemies of the people" were arrested. During the June deportation campaign of 1941, some 12,600 people (mostly former military officers, policemen, political figures, intelligentsia and their families) were deported to Gulags in Siberia under the policy of elimination of national elites. Many deportees perished due to inhumane conditions; 3,600 were imprisoned and over 1,000 were killed.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. In Franz Walter Stahlecker's report of October 15 to Heinrich Himmler, Stahlecker wrote that he had succeeded in covering up actions of the "Vorkommando" (German vanguard unit) and made it look like an initiative of the local population to carry out the Kaunas pogrom. The German forces moved rapidly and encountered only sporadic Soviet resistance. Vilnius was captured on June 24, 1941, and Germany controlled all of Lithuania within a week. The retreating Soviet forces murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 people, mostly ethnic Lithuanians (see Rainiai massacre). The Lithuanians generally greeted the Germans as liberators from the oppressive Soviet regime and hoped that Germany would restore some autonomy to their country. The Lithuanian Activist Front organized an anti-Soviet revolt known as the June Uprising in Lithuania, declared independence, and formed a Provisional Government of Lithuania with Juozas Ambrazevičius as prime minister. The Provisional Government was not forcibly dissolved; stripped by the Germans of any actual power, it resigned on August 5, 1941. Germany established the civil administration known as the Reichskommissariat Ostland.
Initially, there was substantial cooperation and collaboration between the German forces and some Lithuanians. Lithuanians joined the Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas (TDA) and "Schutzmannschaft" police battalions in hopes that these police units would be later transformed into the regular army of independent Lithuania. Instead, these units were employed by the Germans as auxiliaries in perpetrating the Holocaust. However, soon Lithuanians became disillusioned with harsh German policies of collecting large war provisions, gathering people for forced labor in Germany, conscripting men into the German army, and the lack of true autonomy. These feelings only naturally led to the creation of a resistance movement. The most notable resistance organization, the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, was formed in 1943. Due to passive resistance, a Waffen-SS division was not established in Lithuania. As a compromise, the Lithuanian general Povilas Plechavičius formed the short-lived Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (LTDF). Lithuanians did not organize armed resistance, still considering Soviet Union their primary enemy. Armed resistance was conducted by pro-Soviet partisans (mainly Russians, Belarusians and Jews) and Polish Armia Krajowa (AK) in eastern Lithuania.
Before the Holocaust, Lithuania was home to a disputed number of Jews: 210,000 according to one estimate, 250,000 according to another. About 90% or more of the Lithuanian Jews were murdered, one of the highest rates in Europe. The Holocaust in Lithuania can be divided into three stages: mass executions (June–December 1941), a ghetto period (1942 – March 1943), and a final liquidation (April 1943 – July 1944). Unlike in other Nazi-occupied countries where the Holocaust was introduced gradually, Einsatzgruppe A started executions in Lithuania on the first days of the German occupation. The executions were carried out by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators in three main areas: Kaunas (marked by the Ninth Fort), in Vilnius (marked by the Ponary massacre), and in the countryside (sponsored by the Rollkommando Hamann). An estimated 80% of Lithuanian Jews were killed before 1942. The surviving 43,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilnius Ghetto, Kaunas Ghetto, Šiauliai Ghetto, and Švenčionys Ghetto and forced to work for the benefit of German military industry. In 1943, the ghettos were either liquidated or turned into concentration camps. Only about 2,000–3,000 Lithuanian Jews were liberated from these camps. More survived by withdrawing into the interior of Russia before the war broke out or by escaping the ghettos and joining the Jewish partisans.
In the summer of 1944, the Soviet Red Army reached eastern Lithuania. By July 1944, the area around Vilnius came under control of the Polish Resistance fighters of the Armia Krajowa, who also attempted a takeover of the German-held city during the ill-fated Operation Ostra Brama. The Red Army captured Vilnius with Polish help on 13 July. The Soviet Union re-occupied Lithuania and Joseph Stalin re-established the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944 with its capital in Vilnius. The Soviets secured the passive agreement of the United States and Great Britain (see Yalta Conference and Potsdam Agreement) to this annexation. By January 1945, the Soviet forces captured Klaipėda on the Baltic coast. The heaviest physical losses in Lithuania during World War II were suffered in 1944–1945, when the Red Army pushed out the Nazi invaders. It is estimated that Lithuania lost 780,000 people between 1940 and 1954 under the Nazi and Soviet occupations.
The Soviet deportations from Lithuania between 1941 and 1952 resulted in the exile of tens of thousands of families to forced settlements in the Soviet Union, especially in Siberia and other remote parts of the country. Between 1944 and 1953, nearly 120,000 people (5% of the population) were deported, and thousands more became political prisoners. Many leading intellectual figures and most Catholic priests were among the deported; many returned to Lithuania after 1953. Approximately 20,000 Lithuanian partisans participated in unsuccessful warfare against the Soviet regime in the 1940s and early 1950s. Most were killed or deported to Siberian gulags. During the years following the German surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, between 40 and 60 thousand civilians and combatants perished in the context of the anti-Soviet insurgency. Considerably more ethnic Lithuanians died after World War II than during it.
Soviet authorities encouraged the immigration of non-Lithuanian workers, especially Russians, as a way of integrating Lithuania into the Soviet Union and encouraging industrial development, but in Lithuania this process did not assume the massive scale experienced by other European Soviet republics.
To a great extent, Lithuanization rather than Russification took place in postwar Vilnius and elements of a national revival characterize the period of Lithuania's existence as a Soviet republic. Lithuania's boundaries and political integrity were determined by Joseph Stalin's decision to grant Vilnius to the Lithuanian SSR again in 1944. Subsequently, most Poles were resettled from Vilnius (but only a minority from the countryside and other parts of the Lithuanian SSR) by the implementation of Soviet and Lithuanian communist policies that mandated their partial replacement by Russian immigrants. Vilnius was then increasingly settled by Lithuanians and assimilated by Lithuanian culture, which fulfilled, albeit under the oppressive and limiting conditions of the Soviet rule, the long-held dream of Lithuanian nationalists. The economy of Lithuania did well in comparison with other regions of the Soviet Union.
The national developments in Lithuania followed tacit compromise agreements worked out by the Soviet communists, Lithuanian communists and the Lithuanian intelligentsia. Vilnius University was reopened after the war, operating in the Lithuanian language and with a largely Lithuanian student body. It became a center for Baltic studies. General schools in the Lithuanian SSR provided more instruction in Lithuanian than at any previous time in the country's history. The literary Lithuanian language was standardized and refined further as a language of scholarship and Lithuanian literature. The price the Lithuanian intelligentsia ended up paying for the national privileges was their much increased Communist Party membership after Stalin's death.
Between the death of Stalin in 1953 and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, Lithuania functioned as a Soviet society, with all its repressions and peculiarities. Agriculture remained collectivized, property nationalized, and criticism of the Soviet system was severely punished. The country remained largely isolated from the non-Soviet world because of travel restrictions, the persecution of the Catholic Church continued and the nominally egalitarian society was extensively corrupted by the practice of connections and privileges for those who served the system.
The communist era is memorialized in Grūtas Park.
Until mid-1988, all political, economic, and cultural life was controlled by the Communist Party of Lithuania (CPL). Lithuanians as well as people in the other two Baltic republics distrusted the Soviet regime even more than people in other regions of the Soviet state, and they gave their own specific and active support to Mikhail Gorbachev's program of social and political reforms known as perestroika and glasnost. Under the leadership of intellectuals, the Reform Movement of Lithuania Sąjūdis was formed in mid-1988, and it declared a program of democratic and national rights, winning nationwide popularity. Inspired by Sąjūdis, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR passed constitutional amendments on the supremacy of Lithuanian laws over Soviet legislation, annulled the 1940 decisions on proclaiming Lithuania a part of the Soviet Union, legalized a multi-party system, and adopted a number of other important decisions, including the return of the national state symbols — the flag of Lithuania and the national anthem. A large number of CPL members also supported the ideas of Sąjūdis, and with Sąjūdis support, Algirdas Brazauskas was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPL in 1988. On August 23, 1989, 50 years after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands in a human chain that stretched 600 kilometres from Tallinn to Vilnius in order to draw the world's attention to the fate of the Baltic nations. The human chain was called the Baltic Way. In December 1989, the Brazauskas-led CPL declared its independence from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and became a separate social democratic party, renaming itself the Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania in 1990.
In early 1990, candidates backed by Sąjūdis won the Lithuanian parliamentary elections. On March 11, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR proclaimed the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. The Baltic republics were in the forefront of the struggle for independence, and Lithuania was the first of the Soviet republics to declare independence. Vytautas Landsbergis, a leader of the Sąjūdis national movement, became the head of state and Kazimira Prunskienė led the Cabinet of Ministers. Provisional fundamental laws of the state were passed.
On March 15, the Soviet Union demanded revocation of the independence and began employing political and economic sanctions against Lithuania. The Soviet military was used to seize a few public buildings, but violence was largely contained until January 1991. During the January Events in Lithuania, the Soviet authorities attempted to overthrow the elected government by sponsoring the so-called National Salvation Committee. The Soviets forcibly took over the Vilnius TV Tower, killing 14 unarmed civilians and injuring 140. During this assault, the only means of contact to the outside world available was an amateur radio station set up in the Lithuanian Parliament building by Tadas Vyšniauskas whose call sign was LY2BAW. The initial cries for help were received by an American amateur radio operators with the call sign N9RD in Indiana and WB9Z in Illinois, USA. N9RD, WB9Z and other radio operators from around the world were able to relay situational updates to relevant authorities until official United States Department of State personnel were able to go on-air. Moscow failed to act further to crush the Lithuanian independence movement, and the Lithuanian government continued to function.
During the national referendum on February 9, 1991, more than 90% of those who took part in the voting (76% of all eligible voters) voted in favor of an independent, democratic Lithuania. During the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in August, Soviet military troops took over several communications and other government facilities in Vilnius and other cities, but returned to their barracks when the coup failed. The Lithuanian government banned the Communist Party and ordered confiscation of its property. Following the failed coup, Lithuania received widespread international recognition and was admitted to the United Nations on September 17, 1991.
As in many countries of the former Soviet Union, the popularity of the independence movement (Sąjūdis in the case of Lithuania) diminished due to worsening economic situation (rising unemployment, inflation, etc.). The Communist Party of Lithuania renamed itself as the Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania (LDDP) and gained a majority of seats against Sąjūdis in the Lithuanian parliamentary elections of 1992. LDDP continued building the independent democratic state and transitioning from a centrally planned economy to a free market economy. In the Lithuanian parliamentary elections of 1996, the voters swung back to the rightist Homeland Union, led by the former Sąjūdis leader Vytautas Landsbergis.
As part of the economic transition to capitalism, Lithuania organized a privatization campaign to sell government-owned residential real estate and commercial enterprises. The government issued investment vouchers to be used in privatization instead of actual currency. People cooperated in groups to collect larger amounts of vouchers for the public auctions and the privatization campaign. Lithuania, unlike Russia, did not create a small group of very wealthy and powerful people. The privatization started with small organizations, and large enterprises (such as telecommunication companies or airlines) were sold several years later for hard currency in a bid to attract foreign investors. Lithuania's monetary system was to be based on the Lithuanian litas, the currency used during the interwar period. Due to high inflation and other delays, a temporary currency, the Lithuanian talonas, was introduced (it was commonly referred to as the "Vagnorėlis" or "Vagnorkė" after Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius). Eventually the litas was issued in June 1993, and the decision was made to set it up with a fixed exchange rate to the United States dollar in 1994 and to the Euro in 2002.
Despite Lithuania's achievement of complete independence, sizable numbers of Russian forces remained in its territory. Withdrawal of those forces was one of Lithuania's top foreign policy priorities. Russian troop withdrawal was completed by August 31, 1993. The first military of the reborn country were the Lithuanian National Defence Volunteer Forces, who first took an oath at the Supreme Council of Lithuania soon after the declaration of independence. The Lithuanian military built itself to the common standard with the Lithuanian Air Force, Lithuanian Naval Force and Lithuanian Land Force. Interwar paramilitary organisations such as the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union, Young Riflemen, and the Lithuanian Scouts were re-established.
On April 27, 1993, a partnership with the Pennsylvania National Guard was established as part of the State Partnership Program.
Seeking closer ties with the West, Lithuania applied for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership in 1994. The country had to go through a difficult transition from planned to free market economy in order to satisfy the requirements for European Union (EU) membership. In May 2001, Lithuania became the 141st member of the World Trade Organization. In October 2002, Lithuania was invited to join the European Union and one month later to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; it became a member of both in 2004.
As a result of the broader global financial crisis, the Lithuanian economy in 2009 experienced its worst recession since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. After a boom in growth sparked by Lithuania's 2004 accession to the European Union, the Gross domestic product contracted by 15% in 2009. Especially since Lithuania's admission into the European Union, large numbers of Lithuanians (up to 20% of the population) have moved abroad in search of better economic opportunities to create a significant demographic problem for the small country.
Krapauskas (2010) identifies three main tendencies in the recent historiography. The "postmodern school" is heavily influenced by the French Annales School and presents an entirely new agenda of topics and interdisciplinary research methodologies. Their approach is methodologically controversial and focuses on social and cultural history. It is largely free from the traditional political debates and does not look back to the interwar Šapoka era. Secondly, the "critical-realists" are political revisionists. They focus on controversial political topics in the twentieth century, and reverse 180° the Soviet era interpretations of what was good and bad for Lithuania. They use traditional historical methodologies, with a strong focus on political history. They are often opposed by the third school, the "romantic-traditionalists." After severe constraints in the communist era, the romantic-traditionalists now are eager to emphasize the most positive version of the Lithuanian past and its cultural heritage. They pay less attention to the niceties of documentation and historiography, but they are not the puppets of political conservatives. Indeed, they include many of Lithuania's most respected historians.
"a."This tiny fraction of Catholics in the early 17th century Grand Duchy is given by Kasper Cichocki (1545-1616), a Catholic parish priest near Sandomierz, who wrote on the subject of the extent of the heresies in the Commonwealth. According to Wacław Urban, Calvinism and Eastern Orthodoxy predominated, and were followed by Catholicism and the Polish Brethren, with Lutheranism being numerically the least significant of the Christian denominations in Lithuania.
"b."Piłsudski's family roots in the Polonized gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the resulting point of view (seeing himself and people like him as legitimate Lithuanians) put him in conflict with the modern Lithuanian nationalists (who in Piłsudski's lifetime redefined the scope of the "Lithuanian" connotation), by extension with other nationalists, and also with the Polish modern nationalist movement.
"c."Vilnius was claimed and contested by Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian communists before being granted by Joseph Stalin to the Lithuanian SSR in 1944.
"d."About 90% of Vilnius Jews had been exterminated by the Nazis in 1941-1944 and about 80% of Vilnius Poles were deported under the Soviet rule in 1944–1946, which left the city open to settlement by Lithuanians, or possibly Russians.
"e." It was a sizable force in comparison with the similar number (20,000) of underground anti-communist fighters operating at that time in Poland. Poland was a country with an over eight times the population of Lithuania, but legal opposition (the Polish People's Party) was primarily active there in the 1940s.
"f." The main western powers recognized Lithuania only in 1922, when, after the Treaty of Riga, it had become clear that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was not going to be reestablished.
"g." Historically, there has been a scholarly dispute concerning the origin of the Balts. According to one major point of view, the Baltic peoples descend directly from the original Indo-European arrivals, who might have settled this part of Europe possibly as far back as about 3000 BC as the archeological Corded Ware culture. The linguistic argument has been the most "archaic" status of the Lithuanian language among the existing Indo-European languages of Europe. The competing idea takes into account the many words common to both the Baltic and Slavic languages and postulates a shared, more recent Balto-Slavic ancestry. There has been no agreement regarding which archeological formation such hypothetical Proto-Balto-Slavic community would correspond to.
"h." The preservation of the rural Polish-speaking minority in the Vilnius Region (the intelligentsia element was mostly expelled after the war) turned out to be a source of lasting friction. After 1950 Stalin, playing on the Lithuanian against the Polish insecurities, allowed the formation of a network of Polish, communist ideology-preaching schools. This Soviet policy continued also after 1956, despite Lithuanian objections. The Polish community reacted with fear to the rebirth of assertive Lithuanian nationalism after 1988 and attempted to established a Polish autonomy in the Vilnius region in 1990–91. After some Polish activists supported the attempted communist coup in Moscow the Lithuanian authorities eliminated the Polish self-rule. The presently existing Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania is seen by many Lithuanians as a communist rule residue with a nationalistic tint and conflicts over the language of education and naming rights continue, with an uneasy involvement of the government of Poland. The rural Polish-speaking areas are among the economically most depressed regions of Lithuania and high unemployment there has caused significant permanent emigration. The Lithuanian relations with the Russian minority, the actual left-over of the Soviet-imposed settlement, have not been a source of comparable tensions.
"i." The widely used term "Russian Jews" is somewhat misleading, because the Jews within the Russian Empire were allowed to live only within the Pale of Settlement, as determined by Catherine the Great. The Pale coincided largely with the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, under Russia the western part of the Empire.
"j." Political-cultural autonomy for the Jews was offered by the Lithuanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in August 1919, but the idea was abandoned in 1924. During the interwar period the Lithuanian government supported financially Jewish education and religious activities and the Jewish minority remained very active in the social, cultural and scientific fields, economy, law and medicine. Antisemitic incidents became more pronounced in the 1930s. In a clearly less favorable situation was at that time the Polish minority in Lithuania.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17820
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