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A present or gratuity given at Christmas: In Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas. In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older British tradition in which the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families since they would have had to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. Until the late 20th century, there continued to be a tradition among many in the UK to give a Christmas gift, usually cash, to vendors, although not on Boxing Day, as many would not work on that day.
Date. Saint Stephen's Day, a religious holiday, also falls on 26 December. In the United Kingdom, Boxing Day could not fall on Sunday 26 December. Instead, Boxing Day would be celebrated on Monday 27 December, with the preceding Sunday called Christmas Sunday. This rule was independent of the rule of bank holidays being taken in lieu. Over time Sunday 26 December increasingly became referred to as Boxing Day. Unlike the contemporary understanding of Boxing Day itself, the associated bank holiday or public holiday always falls on a weekday. When 25 December falls on a Saturday and 26 December falls on a Sunday, the Christmas Day substitute holiday is observed on Monday 27 December, with the Boxing Day substitute holiday observed on Tuesday 28 December. When Christmas Day is a Sunday, the Boxing Day holiday is still observed on Monday 26 December, with the substitute holiday for Christmas Day observed on Tuesday 27 December. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which regulates UK bank holidays, does not officially name the 26 December bank holiday as Boxing Day, but states that it falls on "26th December, if it be not a Sunday."
Shopping. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Trinidad and Tobago, Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. Boxing Day sales are common, and shops often allow dramatic price reductions. For many merchants, Boxing Day has become the day of the year with the greatest revenue. In the UK, it was estimated in 2009 that up to 12 million shoppers appeared at the sales (a rise of almost 20% compared to 2008, although this was also affected by the fact that the VAT was about to revert to 17.5% from 1 January, following the temporary reduction to 15%). Many retailers open very early (typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. It is not uncommon for long queues to form early in the morning of 26 December, hours before the opening of shops holding the big sales, especially at big-box consumer electronics retailers. Many stores have a limited quantity of big draw or deeply discounted items. Because of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, many choose to stay at home and avoid the hectic shopping experience. Local media often covers the event, mentioning how early the shoppers began queuing up and showing videos of shoppers queuing and later leaving with their purchased items. Many retailers have implemented practices aimed at managing large numbers of shoppers. They may limit entrances, restrict the number of patrons in a store at a time, provide tickets to people at the head of the queue to guarantee them a hot ticket item, or canvass queued-up shoppers to inform them of inventory limitations.
In some areas of Canada, particularly in Atlantic Canada and parts of Northern Ontario, most retailers are prohibited from opening on Boxing Day, either by provincial law or by municipal bylaw, or by informal agreement among major retailers, to provide a day of relaxation following Christmas Day. In these areas, sales otherwise scheduled for 26 December are moved to the 27th. The city council of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, which was the largest city in Canada to maintain this restriction as of the early 2010s, formally repealed its store hours bylaw on 9 December 2014. While Boxing Day is 26 December, many retailers run the sales for several days before or after 26 December, often up to New Year's Eve, branding it as "Boxing Week". Notably, in the recession of late 2008, a record number of retailers held early promotions because of the weak economy. In 2009, many retailers with both online and High Street stores launched their online sales on Christmas Eve and their High Street sales on Boxing Day. Comparisons to Black Friday.
In terms of seasonal or holiday shopping traditions, Boxing Day sales have been compared to the US phenomenon of Black Friday salesBlack Friday being the Friday following the American Thanksgiving holiday in late November. In the late 2000s, when the Canadian and United States dollars were near parity, many Canadian retailers began to hold Black Friday promotions in an effort to discourage shoppers from crossing the border to visit United States stores. This may have been a contributory factor, since 2013, in a relative decline of traditional Canadian Boxing Day sales, when compared to sales on Black Friday. The traditional Boxing Day sales in the United Kingdom were never as large an event as the Black Friday sales are in the United States. However, many British retailers began to see an opportunity to import the Black Friday tradition into the UK, not to replace Boxing Day sales, but as an addition to their overall seasonal promotions. However, Black Friday and Boxing Day are close enough together that spending on one sale was likely to affect spending on the other. Ultimately, the result was a marked decline in traditional Boxing Day sales in the UK. The change was initially facilitated, although not necessarily by design, by U.S.-owned retailers such as Amazon, and Asda (then a subsidiary of US-based Walmart). This phenomenon was furthered by a general decline in traditional high-street shopping and a growing online marketplace, which is more international by nature. This led, in 2015, to greater November retail sales in the UK than in December for the first time. In 2019, a retail analysis firm estimated that there was a 9.8% drop in British store traffic on Boxing Day in comparison to 2018 (the largest year-over-year drop since 2010), citing several factors, such as the weather, the increased prominence of online shopping, uncertainties in the wake of the general election, and the growing prominence of Black Friday sales.
Boxing Day sales are not a prominent tradition in the United States, although many retailers often begin after-Christmas sales that day. It is typically the earliest starting day after Christmas for people to return unwanted gifts for exchanges or refunds and to redeem gift cards. Sport. In the United Kingdom, it is traditional for the Home Nations' major football leagues (including, most prominently, the Premier League, Scottish Premiership, and NIFL Premiership) to hold a full programme of fixtures on Boxing Day. Originally, matches on Boxing Day were played against local rivals so that teams and their fans would not have to travel long distances to away games on the day after Christmas. The 2022 Premier League Boxing Day fixtures saw the return of domestic top flight football for the 2022–23 Premier League season, following the six-week break for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In Italy, Boxing Day football was played for the first time in the 2018–19 Serie A season. The experiment was successful, with Italian stadiums 69% full on average – more than any other match day in December 2018.
In rugby league, festive fixtures were a staple of the traditional winter season. Since the transition to a summer season in the 1990s, no formal fixtures are now arranged on Boxing Day but some clubs, such as Wakefield Trinity, arrange a traditional local derby friendly fixture instead. Since 1980, the Australian cricket team has traditionally opened one of the test matches of its summer season on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. While several test matches had occasionally been held at the MCG around Boxing Day, it was not until 1980 that the concept was formalized by the Australian Cricket Board. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is also traditionally held on Boxing Day. In horse racing, there is the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park Racecourse in Surrey, England. It is the second most prestigious chase in Britain, after the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In addition to the prestigious race at Kempton, in Britain, it is usually the day with the most racing meetings of the year, with eight in 2016, in addition to three more in Ireland. In Barbados, the final day of horse racing is held on Boxing Day at The Historic Garrison Savannah, a UNESCO world heritage site. This tradition has been going on for decades in this former British colony.
Boxing Day is one of the main days in the hunting calendar for hunts in the UK and US, with most hunts (both mounted foxhound or harrier packs and foot packs of beagles or bassets) holding meets, often in town or village centres. Several ice hockey contests are associated with the day. The IIHF World Junior Championship typically begins on 26 December, while the Spengler Cup also begins on 23 December in Davos, Switzerland; the Spengler Cup competition includes HC Davos, Team Canada, and other top European hockey teams. The National Hockey League traditionally had close to a full slate of games (10 were played in 2011), following the league-wide days off given for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. However, the 2013 collective bargaining agreement (which followed a lock-out) extended the league mandate of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off to include Boxing Day, except when it falls on a Saturday, in which case the league can choose to make 23 December a league-wide off day instead for that year. In Sweden, the related sport of bandy is also associated with the day, with Saint Stephen's Day bandy games having become an established tradition.
In some African Commonwealth nations, particularly Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, professional boxing contests are held on Boxing Day. This practice has also been followed for decades in Guyana and Italy. Food. In the UK it is common to eat leftovers from the previous day's Christmas dinner, with turkey often being used in a Boxing Day sandwich or curry. Boxing Day Tsunami. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred on 26 December and thus has been referred to as "the Boxing Day Tsunami".
Balochistan, Pakistan Balochistan (; ; , ) is a province of Pakistan. Located in the southwestern region of the country, Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan by land area but is the least populated one. It is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the north-east, Punjab to the east and Sindh to the south-east; shares international borders with Iran to the west and Afghanistan to the north; and is bound by the Arabian Sea to the south. Balochistan is an extensive plateau of rough terrain divided into basins by ranges of sufficient heights and ruggedness. It has a large deep sea port, the Port of Gwadar lying in the Arabian Sea. Although it makes up about 44% of the land area of Pakistan, only 5% of it is arable and it is noted for an extremely dry desert climate. Despite this, agriculture and livestock make up about 47% of Balochistan's economy. The name "Balochistan" means "the land of the Baloch people". Largely underdeveloped, its economy is also dominated by natural resources, especially its natural gas fields. Aside from Quetta, the second-largest city of the province is Turbat in the south, while another area of major economic importance is the port city of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, an emerging future business hub.
History. Early history. Balochistan occupies the very southeasternmost portion of the Iranian plateau, the setting for the earliest known farming settlements in the pre-Indus Valley civilisation era, the earliest of which was Mehrgarh, dated at 7000 BCE, within the province. Balochistan marked the westernmost extent of civilisation. Centuries before the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, parts of Balochistan were ruled by the Paratarajas, an Indo-Scythian dynasty. At certain times, the Kushans also held political sway in parts of Balochistan. The Hindu Sewa Dynasty ruled parts of Balochistan, chiefly Kalat. The Sibi Division, which was carved out of Quetta Division and Kalat Division in 1974, derives its name from Rani Sewi, the queen of the Sewa dynasty. The region came under rule during the reign of King Kay Khosrow of Iran of Kayanian dynasty. The Baloch, under the command of Ashkash, conquered this land, which Makran was a part of Balochistan. The remnants of the earliest people in Balochistan were the Brahui people, a Dravidian speaking people. The Brahuis retained the Dravidian language throughout the millennias.
Although during the Stone and Bronze Age and Alexander the Great's empire an indigenous population existed, the Baloch people themselves did not enter the region until the 14th century CE. A theory of the origin of the Baloch people, the largest ethnic group in the region, is that they are of Median descent. Arrival of Islam. In 654, Abdulrehman ibn Samrah, governor of Sistan and the newly emerged Rashidun caliphate at the expense of Sassanid Persia and the Byzantine Empire, sent an Islamic army to crush a revolt in Zaranj, which is now in southern Afghanistan. After conquering Zaranj, a column of the army pushed north, conquering Kabul and Ghazni, in the Hindu Kush mountain range, while another column moved through Quetta District in north-western Balochistan and conquered the area up to the ancient cities of "Dawar" and "Qandabil" (Bolan). It is documented that the major settlements, falling within today's province, became in 654 controlled by the Rashidun caliphate, except for the well-defended mountain town of "QaiQan" which is now Kalat.
During the caliphate of Ali, a revolt broke out in southern Balochistan's Makran region. In 663, during the reign of Umayyad Caliph Muawiyah I, his Muslim rule lost control of north-eastern Balochistan and Kalat when Haris ibn Marah and a large part of his army died in battle against a revolt in Kalat. Pre-modern era. In the 15th century, Mir Chakar Khan Rind became the first Sirdar of Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan. He was a close aide of the Timurid ruler Humayun, and was succeeded by the Khanate of Kalat, which owed allegiance to the Mughal Empire. Later, Nader Shah won the allegiance of the rulers of eastern Balochistan. He ceded Kalhora, one of the Sindh territories of Sibi-Kachi, to the Khanate of Kalat. Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire, also won the allegiance of that area's rulers, and many Baloch fought under him during the Third Battle of Panipat. Most of the area would eventually revert to local Baloch control after Afghan rule. Colonial era.
After independence. In British-ruled Colonial India, Baluchistan contained a Chief Commissioner's province and princely states (including Kalat, Makran, Las Bela and Kharan) that became a part of Pakistan. The province's Shahi Jirga (the grand council of tribal elders) and the non-official members of the Quetta Municipality, according to the Pakistani narrative, agreed to join Pakistan unanimously on 29 June 1947; however, the Shahi Jirga was stripped of its members from the Kalat State prior to the vote. The then-president of the Baluchistan Muslim League, Qazi Muhammad Isa, informed Muhammad Ali Jinnah that "Shahi Jirga in no way represents the popular wishes of the masses" and that members of the Kalat State were "excluded from voting; only representatives from the British part of the province voted and the British part included the leased areas of Quetta, Nasirabad Tehsil, Nushki and Bolan Agency." Following the referendum, on 22 June 1947 the Khan of Kalat received a letter from members of the Shahi Jirga, as well as sardars from the leased areas of Baluchistan, stating that they, "as a part of the Baloch nation, were a part of the Kalat state too" and that if the question of Baluchistan's accession to Pakistan arise, "they should be deemed part of the Kalat state rather than (British) Balochistan". This has brought into question whether an actual vote took place. Political scientist Salman Rafi Sheikh, in locating the origins of the insurgency in Balochistan, says "that Balochistan's accession to Pakistan was, as against the officially projected narrative, not based upon consensus, nor was support for Pakistan overwhelming. What this manipulation indicates is that even before formally becoming a part of Pakistan, Balochistan had fallen a prey to political victimization."
Initially aspiring for independence, the Khan of Kalat finally acceded to Pakistan on 27 March 1948 after period of negotiations with Pakistan. The signing of the Instrument of Accession by Ahmad Yar Khan led his brother, Prince Abdul Karim, to revolt against his brother's decision due to their family rift. in July 1948. Princes Agha Abdul Karim Baloch and Muhammad Rahim refused to lay down arms, leading the Dosht-e Jhalawan in unconventional attacks on the army until 1950. The Prince indulged in Terror activities without any assistance from others. Jinnah and his successors allowed Yar Khan to retain his title until the province's dissolution in 1955. Insurgencies by Baloch nationalists took place in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–77, with a new ongoing insurgency by autonomy-seeking Baloch groups since 2003. While many Baloch support the demand for autonomy, the majority are not interested in seceding from Pakistan. At a press conference on 8 June 2015 in Quetta, Balochistan's Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti accused India's prime minister Narendra Modi of openly supporting terrorism. Bugti implicated India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of being responsible for recent attacks at military bases in Smangli and Khalid, and for subverting the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement.
Gwadar, a region of Balochistan, was a colony of Oman for more than a century, and in the 1960s Pakistan took over the land. Many people in this region are therefore Omani. Geography. Balochistan is situated in the southwest of Pakistan and covers an area of . It is Pakistan's largest province by area, constituting 44% of Pakistan's total landmass. The province is bordered by Afghanistan to the north and north-west, Iran to the south-west, Punjab and Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north-east. To the south lies the Arabian Sea. Balochistan is located on the south-eastern part of the Iranian plateau. It borders the geopolitical regions of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. Balochistan lies at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and provides the shortest route from seaports to Central Asia. Its geographical location has placed the otherwise desolate region in the scope of competing for global interests for all of recorded history. The capital city Quetta is located in a densely populated portion of the Sulaiman Mountains in the northeast of the province. It is situated in a river valley near the Bolan Pass, which has been used as the route of choice from the coast to Central Asia, entering through Afghanistan's Kandahar region. The British and other historic empires have crossed the region to invade Afghanistan by this route.
Balochistan is rich in exhaustible and renewable resources; it is the second major supplier of natural gas in Pakistan. The province's renewable and human resource potential has not been systematically measured or exploited. Local inhabitants have chosen to live in towns and have relied on sustainable water sources for thousands of years. Climate. The climate of the upper highlands is characterised by very cold winters and hot summers. In the lower highlands, winters vary from extremely cold in northern districts Ziarat, Quetta, Kalat, Muslim Baagh and Khanozai, where temperatures can drop to , to milder conditions closer to the Makran coast. Winters are mild on the plains, with temperatures never falling below freezing point. Summers are hot and dry, especially in the arid zones of Chagai and Kharan districts. The plains are also very hot in summer, with temperatures reaching . The record highest temperature, , was recorded in Sibi on 26 May 2010, exceeding the previous record, . Other hot areas include Turbat and Dalbandin. The desert climate is characterised by hot and very arid conditions. Occasionally, strong windstorms make these areas very inhospitable.
Government and politics. In common with the other provinces of Pakistan, Balochistan has a parliamentary form of government. The ceremonial head of the province is the Governor, who is appointed by the President of Pakistan on the advice of the provincial Chief Minister. The Chief Minister, the province's chief executive, is normally the leader of the largest political party or alliance of parties in the provincial assembly. The unicameral Provincial Assembly of Balochistan comprises 65 seats of which 11 are reserved for women and 3 reserved for non-Muslims. The judicial branch of government is carried out by the Balochistan High Court, which is based in Quetta and headed by a Chief Justice. Besides dominant Pakistan-wide political parties (such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party), Balochistan nationalist parties (such as the National Party and the Balochistan National Party (Mengal)) have been prominent in the province. Administrative divisions. For administrative purposes, the province is divided into seven divisions: Kalat, Makran, Nasirabad, Quetta, Sibi, Zhob and Rakhshan. This divisional level was abolished in 2000, but restored after the 2008 election. Each division is under an appointed commissioner. The seven divisions are further subdivided into 36 districts:
As of June 2021, there are eight divisions. The eighth division, Loralai Division was created by bifurcating Zhob Division. Demographics. Balochistan's population density is low due to the mountainous terrain and scarcity of water. In March 2012, preliminary census figures showed that the population of Balochistan, not including the districts of Khuzdar, Kech and Panjgur, had reached 13,162,222, an increase of 139.3% from 5,501,164 in 1998. The population constituted 6.85% of Pakistan's total population. This was the largest increase in population in any province of Pakistan during that time period, almost thrice the national increase of 46.9%. Official estimates of Balochistan's population grew from approximately 7.45 million in 2003 to 7.8 million in 2005. The 2023 Census enumerated a population of 14,894,402. Languages and ethnicities. According to the preliminary results of the 2023 census, the languages with the most native speakers in the province are Balochi, spoken by 39.91% of the population (an increase of 4% compared to the 2017 census), and Pashto whose share is at 34.34%.
The Pashtuns mainly inhabit the north of Balochistan and form the majority in Quetta. Baloch on the other hand are found throughout Balochistan, but most highly concentrated in the west and south of the province. Brahui is spoken by 17.22% mainly in the central part of Balochistan. Other languages include Sindhi (3.81%), Saraiki (2.19%), Punjabi (0.59%), Urdu (0.53%) and others at (1.5%). Balochi forms the majority in 21 districts and Pashto forms majority in 9 districts of Balochistan. Brahui has majority in 4 districts. In the Lasbela, Hub districts and in Kachhi plain region a large minority of the population speaks Lasi and Siraiki, which are dialects of Sindhi. According to the Ethnologue, households speaking Balochi, whose primary dialect is Makrani constitutes 13%, Rukhshani 10%, Sulemani 7%, and Khetrani 3% of the population. Other languages spoken are Lasi, Urdu, Punjabi, Hazargi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Dehvari, Dari, Tajik, Hindko, Uzbek, and Hindki. The 2005 census concerning Afghans in Pakistan showed that a total of 769,268 Afghan refugees were temporarily staying in Balochistan. However, there are probably fewer Afghans living in Balochistan today as many refugees repatriated in 2013. As of 2015, there are only 327,778 registered Afghan refugees according to the UNHCR.
Religion. According to the 2017 Census, nearly all of the population of Balochistan were Muslims. There were also Hindu and Christian minorities in the province. The Hindu population in the province was approximately 49,133 (including the Scheduled Castes). The Shri Hinglaj Mata mandir which is the largest Hindu pilgrimage centre in Pakistan is situated in Balochistan. There was also a Christian minority of 26,462 individuals in the province. Education. The literacy rate of the province in 2017 was 43.6%, an increase from 24.8% in 1998. Economy. The economy of Balochistan is largely based upon agriculture, livestock, fisheries, production of natural gas, coal and other minerals. Though agriculture and livestock play a dominant role in the provincial economy by contributing 47% of its GDP, it faced intense damages due to the 2022 Pakistan floods. The floods killed around 500,000 of Balochistan's livestock and damaged cultivation and agricultural output in 32 out of 35 districts of the province. The Lasbela district was the worst hit as the floods washed away fourt-fifth's of the homes, crops and livestock. Due to the floods and severe drought conditions, the province faces food insecurity and is 85% dependent on the Sindh and Punjab provinces for the supply of wheat.
Furthermore, with the exception of Quetta, Balochistan has been called a "neglected province where a majority of population lacks amenities". Although the province is rich in natural resources capable of uplifting its economy, most of them have not been fully utilised for the welfare of the population and are yet to be explored or developed. Since the mid-1970s, the province's contribution to Pakistan's GDP has dropped from 4.9 to 3.7%, and as of 2007 it had the highest poverty rate and infant and maternal mortality rate, and the lowest literacy rate in comparison to other provinces, factors some allege have contributed to the insurgency. However, in seventh NFC awards, Punjab province and Federal contributed to increase Baluchistan share more than its entitled population based share. In Balochistan poverty is increasing. In 2001–2002 poverty incidences were at 48% and by 2005–2006 these were at 50.9%. According to a report on Dawn, the rate of multidimensional poverty in Balochistan had risen to 71% by 2016.
Several major development projects, including the construction of a new deep sea port at the strategically important town of Gwadar, are in progress in Balochistan. The port is projected to be the hub of an energy and trade corridor to and from China, Middle East and the Central Asian republics. The Mirani Dam on the Dasht River, west of Turbat in the Makran Division, is being built to provide water to expand agricultural land use by where it would otherwise be unsustainable. In the district Lasbela, there is an oil refinery owned by Byco International Incorporated (BII), which is capable of processing 120,000 barrels of oil per day. A power station is located adjacent to the refinery. Several cement plants and a marble factory are also located there. One of the world's largest ship breaking yards is located on the coast. Natural resource extraction. Balochistan's share of Pakistan's national income has historically ranged between 3.7% to 4.9%. Since 1972, Balochistan's gross income has grown in size by 2.7 times. Outside Quetta, the resource extraction infrastructure of the province is gradually developing but still lags far behind other parts of Pakistan. The agreements for royalty rights and ownership of mineral rights were reached during a period of unprecedented natural disasters, economic, social, political, and cultural unrest in Pakistan. The negotiations were widely considered to be insufficiently transparent. Tourism. Following is a list of a few tourist attractions and places of interest in Balochistan:
William M. Tweed William Magear "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878) was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party's political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th-century New York City and State. At the height of his influence, Tweed was the third-largest landowner in New York City, a director of the Erie Railroad, a director of the Tenth National Bank, a director of the New-York Printing Company, the proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel, a significant stockholder in iron mines and gas companies, a board member of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a board member of the Third Avenue Railway Company, a board member of the Brooklyn Bridge Company, and the president of the Guardian Savings Bank. Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852 and the New York County Board of Supervisors in 1858, the year that he became the head of the Tammany Hall political machine. He was also elected to the New York State Senate in 1867. However, Tweed's greatest influence came from being an appointed member of a number of boards and commissions, his control over political patronage in New York City through Tammany, and his ability to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects.
Boss Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen's committee in 1877 at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers by political corruption, but later estimates ranged as high as $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ). Unable to make bail, he escaped from jail once but was returned to custody. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail. Early life and education. Tweed was born April 3, 1823, at 1 Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The son of a third-generation Scottish chair-maker, Tweed grew up on Cherry Street. His grandfather arrived in the United States from a town near the River Tweed close to Edinburgh. Tweed's religious affiliation was not widely known in his lifetime, but at the time of his funeral "The New York Times", quoting a family friend, reported that his parents had been Quakers and "members of the old Rose Street Meeting house". At the age of 11, he left school to learn his father's trade, and then became an apprentice to a saddler. He also studied to be a bookkeeper and worked as a brushmaker for a company he had invested in, before eventually joining in the family business in 1852. On September 29, 1844, he married Mary Jane C. Skaden and lived with her family on Madison Street for two years.
Early career. Tweed became a member of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and joined a volunteer fire company, Engine No. 12. In 1848, at the invitation of state assemblyman John J. Reilly, he and some friends organized the Americus Fire Company No. 6, also known as the "Big Six", as a volunteer fire company, which took as its symbol a snarling red Bengal tiger from a French lithograph, a symbol which remained associated with Tweed and Tammany Hall for many years. At the time, volunteer fire companies competed vigorously with each other; some were connected with street gangs and had strong ethnic ties to various immigrant communities. The competition could become so fierce, that burning buildings would sometimes be ignored as the fire companies fought each other. Tweed became known for his ax-wielding violence, and was soon elected the Big Six foreman. Pressure from Alfred Carlson, the chief engineer, got him thrown out of the crew. However, fire companies were also recruiting grounds for political parties at the time, thus Tweed's exploits came to the attention of the Democratic politicians who ran the Seventh Ward. The Seventh Ward put him up for Alderman in 1850, when Tweed was 26. He lost that election to the Whig candidate Morgan Morgans, but ran again the next year and won, garnering his first political position. Tweed then became associated with the "Forty Thieves", the group of aldermen and assistant aldermen who, up to that point, were known as some of the most corrupt politicians in the city's history.
Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852, but his two-year term was undistinguished. In an attempt by Republican reformers in Albany, the state capital, to control the Democratic-dominated New York City government, the power of the New York County Board of Supervisors was beefed up. The board had 12 members, six appointed by the mayor and six elected, and in 1858 Tweed was appointed to the board, which became his first vehicle for large-scale graft; Tweed and other supervisors forced vendors to pay a 15% overcharge to their "ring" in order to do business with the city. By 1853, Tweed was running the seventh ward for Tammany. The board also had six Democrats and six Republicans, but Tweed often just bought off one Republican to sway the board. One such Republican board member was Peter P. Voorhis, a coal dealer by profession who absented himself from a board meeting in exchange for $2,500 so that the board could appoint city inspectors. Henry Smith was another Republican that was a part of the Tweed ring.
Although he was not trained as a lawyer, Tweed's friend, Judge George G. Barnard, certified him as an attorney, and Tweed opened a law office on Duane Street. He ran for sheriff in 1861 and was defeated, but became the chairman of the Democratic General Committee shortly after the election, and was then chosen to be the head of Tammany's general committee in January 1863. Several months later, in April, he became "Grand Sachem", and began to be referred to as "Boss", especially after he tightened his hold on power by creating a small executive committee to run the club. Tweed then took steps to increase his income: he used his law firm to extort money, which was then disguised as legal services; he had himself appointed deputy street commissioner – a position with considerable access to city contractors and funding; he bought the New-York Printing Company, which became the city's official printer, and the city's stationery supplier, the Manufacturing Stationers' Company, and had both companies begin to overcharge the city government for their goods and services. Among other legal services he provided, he accepted almost $100,000 from the Erie Railroad in return for favors. He also became one of the largest owners of real estate in the city. He also started to form what became known as the "Tweed Ring", by having his friends elected to office: George G. Barnard was elected Recorder of New York City; Peter B. Sweeny was elected New York County District Attorney; and Richard B. Connolly was elected City Comptroller. Other judicial members of the Tweed ring included Albert Cardozo, John McCunn, and John K. Hackett.
When Grand Sachem Isaac Fowler, who had produced the $2,500 to buy off the Republican Voorhis on the Board of Supervisors, was found to have stolen $150,000 in post office receipts, the responsibility for Fowler's arrest was given to Isaiah Rynders, another Tammany operative who was serving as a United States marshal at the time. Rynders made enough ruckus upon entering the hotel where Fowler was staying that Fowler was able to escape to Mexico. With his new position and wealth came a change in style: Tweed began to favor wearing a large diamond in his shirtfront – a habit that Thomas Nast used to great effect in his attacks on Tweed in "Harper's Weekly" beginning in 1869 – and he bought a brownstone to live in at 41 West 36th Street, then a very fashionable area. He invested his now considerable illegal income in real estate, so that by the late 1860s he ranked among the biggest landowners in New York City. Tweed became involved in the operation of the New York Mutuals, an early professional baseball club, in the 1860s. He brought in thousands of dollars per home game by dramatically increasing the cost of admission and gambling on the team. He has been credited with originating the practice of spring training in 1869 by sending the club south to New Orleans to prepare for the season.
Tweed was a member of the New York State Senate (4th D.) from 1868 to 1873, sitting in the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th New York State Legislatures, but not taking his seat in the 95th and 96th New York State Legislatures. While serving in the State Senate, he split his time between Albany, New York and New York City. While in Albany, he stayed in a suite of seven rooms in Delevan House. Accompanying him in his rooms were his favorite canaries. Guests are presumed to have included members of the Black Horse Cavalry, thirty state legislators whose votes were up for sale. In the Senate he helped financiers Jay Gould and Big Jim Fisk to take control of the Erie Railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt by arranging for legislation that legitimized fake Erie stock certificates that Gould and Fisk had issued. In return, Tweed received a large block of stock and was made a director of the company. Tweed was also subsequently elected to the board of the Gould-controlled Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad (future Pennsylvania Railroad) in January 1870.
Corruption. After the election of 1869, Tweed took control of the New York City government. His protégé, John T. Hoffman, the former mayor of the city, won election as governor, and Tweed garnered the support of good-government reformers like Peter Cooper and the Union League Club, by proposing a new city charter which returned power to City Hall at the expense of the Republican-inspired state commissions. The new charter passed, thanks in part to $600,000 in bribes Tweed paid to Republicans, and was signed into law by Hoffman in 1870. Mandated new elections allowed Tammany to take over the city's Common Council when they won all fifteen aldermanic contests. The new charter put control of the city's finances in the hands of a Board of Audit, which consisted of Tweed, who was Commissioner of Public Works, Mayor A. Oakey Hall and Comptroller Richard "Slippery Dick" Connolly, both Tammany men. Hall also appointed other Tweed associates to high offices – such as Peter B. Sweeny, who took over the Department of Public Parks – providing what became known as the Tweed Ring with even firmer control of the New York City government and enabling them to defraud the taxpayers of many more millions of dollars.
Sweeny, who took over the Department of Public Parks – providing what became known as the Tweed Ring with even firmer control of the New York City government and enabling them to defraud the taxpayers of many more millions of dollars. In the words of Albert Bigelow Paine, "their methods were curiously simple and primitive. There were no skilful manipulations of figures, making detection difficult ... Connolly, as Controller, had charge of the books, and declined to show them. With his fellows, he also 'controlled' the courts and most of the bar." Crucially, the new city charter allowed the Board of Audit to issue bonds for debt in order to finance opportunistic capital expenditures the city otherwise could not afford. This ability to float debt was enabled by Tweed's guidance and passage of the Adjusted Claims Act in 1868. Contractors working for the city – "Ring favorites, most of them – were told to multiply the amount of each bill by five, or ten, or a hundred, after which, with Mayor Hall's 'O. K.' and Connolly's endorsement, it was paid ... through a go-between, who cashed the check, settled the original bill and divided the remainder ... between Tweed, Sweeny, Connolly and Hall".
For example, the construction cost of the New York County Courthouse, begun in 1861, grew to nearly $13 million—about $ in dollars, and nearly twice the cost of the Alaska Purchase in 1867. "A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $ in ) for one month's labor in a building with very little woodwork ... a plasterer got $133,187 ($) for two days' work". Tweed bought a marble quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to provide much of the marble for the courthouse at great profit to himself. After the Tweed Charter to reorganize the city's government was passed in 1870, four commissioners for the construction of the New York County Courthouse were appointed. The commission never held a meeting, though each commissioner received a 20% kickback from the bills for the supplies. Tweed and his friends also garnered huge profits from the development of the Upper East Side, especially Yorkville and Harlem. They would buy up undeveloped property, then use the resources of the city to improve the area – for instance by installing pipes to bring in water from the Croton Aqueduct – thus increasing the value of the land, after which they sold and took their profits. The focus on the east side also slowed down the development of the west side, the topography of which made it more expensive to improve. The ring also took their usual percentage of padded contracts, as well as raking off money from property taxes. Despite the corruption of Tweed and Tammany Hall, they did accomplish the development of upper Manhattan, though at the cost of tripling the city's bond debt to almost $90 million.
During the Tweed era, the proposal to build a suspension bridge between New York and Brooklyn, then an independent city, was floated by Brooklyn-boosters, who saw the ferry connections as a bottleneck to Brooklyn's further development. In order to ensure that the Brooklyn Bridge project would go forward, State Senator Henry Cruse Murphy approached Tweed to find out whether New York's aldermen would approve the proposal. Tweed's response was that $60,000 for the aldermen would close the deal, and contractor William C. Kingsley put up the cash, which was delivered in a carpet bag. Tweed and two others from Tammany also received over half the private stock of the Bridge Company, the charter of which specified that only private stockholders had voting rights, so that even though the cities of Brooklyn and Manhattan put up most of the money, they essentially had no control over the project. Tweed bought a mansion on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, and stabled his horses, carriages and sleighs on 40th Street. By 1871, he was a member of the board of directors of not only the Erie Railroad and the Brooklyn Bridge Company, but also the Third Avenue Railway Company and the Harlem Gas Light Company. He was president of the Guardian Savings Banks and he and his confederates set up the Tenth National Bank to better control their fortunes.
Scandal. Tweed's downfall began in 1871. James Watson, who was a county auditor in Comptroller Dick Connolly's office and who also held and recorded the ring's books, died a week after his head was smashed by a horse in a sleigh accident on January 24, 1871. Although Tweed guarded Watson's estate in the week prior to Watson's death, and although another ring member attempted to destroy Watson's records, a replacement auditor, Matthew O'Rourke, associated with former sheriff James O'Brien, provided city accounts to O'Brien. The Orange riot of 1871 in the summer of that year did not help the ring's popularity. The riot was prompted after Tammany Hall banned a parade of Irish Protestants celebrating a historical victory against Catholicism, namely the Battle of the Boyne. The parade was banned because of a riot the previous year in which eight people died when a crowd of Irish Catholic laborers attacked the paraders. Under strong pressure from the newspapers and the Protestant elite of the city, Tammany reversed course, and the march was allowed to proceed, with protection from city policemen and state militia. The result was an even larger riot in which over 60 people were killed and more than 150 injured.
Although Tammany's electoral power base was largely centered in the Irish immigrant population, it also needed both the city's general population and elite to acquiesce in its rule, and this was conditional on the machine's ability to control the actions of its people. The July riot showed that this capability was not nearly as strong as had been supposed. Tweed had for months been under attack from "The New York Times" and Thomas Nast, the cartoonist from "Harper's Weekly" – regarding Nast's cartoons, Tweed reportedly said, "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!" – but their campaign had only limited success in gaining traction. They were able to force an examination of the city's books, but the blue-ribbon commission of six businessmen appointed by Mayor A. Oakey Hall, a Tammany man, which included John Jacob Astor III, banker Moses Taylor and others who benefited from Tammany's actions, found that the books had been "faithfully kept", letting the air out of the effort to dethrone Tweed.
The response to the Orange riot changed everything, and only days afterwards the "Times"/Nast campaign began to garner popular support. More important, the "Times" started to receive inside information from County Sheriff James O'Brien, whose support for Tweed had fluctuated during Tammany's reign. O'Brien had tried to blackmail Tammany by threatening to expose the ring's embezzlement to the press, and when this failed he provided the evidence he had collected to the "Times". Shortly afterward, county auditor Matthew J. O'Rourke supplied additional details to the "Times", which was reportedly offered $5 million to not publish the evidence. The "Times" also obtained the accounts of the recently deceased James Watson, who was the Tweed Ring's bookkeeper, and these were published daily, culminating in a special four-page supplement on July 29 headlined "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed". In August, Tweed began to transfer ownership in his real-estate empire and other investments to his family members. The exposé provoked an international crisis of confidence in New York City's finances, and, in particular, in its ability to repay its debts. European investors were heavily positioned in the city's bonds and were already nervous about its management – only the reputations of the underwriters were preventing a run on the city's securities. New York's financial and business community knew that if the city's credit were to collapse, it could potentially bring down every bank in the city with it.
Thus, the city's elite met at Cooper Union in September to discuss political reform: but for the first time, the conversation included not only the usual reformers, but also Democratic bigwigs such as Samuel J. Tilden, who had been thrust aside by Tammany. The consensus was that the "wisest and best citizens" should take over the governance of the city and attempt to restore investor confidence. The result was the formation of the Executive Committee of Citizens and Taxpayers for Financial Reform of the city (also known as "the Committee of Seventy"), which attacked Tammany by cutting off the city's funding. Property owners refused to pay their municipal taxes, and a judge—Tweed's old friend George Barnard—enjoined the city Comptroller from issuing bonds or spending money. Unpaid workers turned against Tweed, marching to City Hall demanding to be paid. Tweed doled out some funds from his own purse—$50,000—but it was not sufficient to end the crisis, and Tammany began to lose its essential base. Shortly thereafter, the Comptroller resigned, appointing Andrew Haswell Green, an associate of Tilden, as his replacement. Green loosened the purse strings again, allowing city departments not under Tammany control to borrow money to operate. Green and Tilden had the city's records closely examined, and discovered money that went directly from city contractors into Tweed's pocket. The following day, they had Tweed arrested.
Imprisonment, escape, and death. Tweed was released on $1 million bail, and Tammany set to work to recover its position through the ballot box. Tweed was re-elected to the state senate in November 1871, due to his personal popularity and largesse in his district, but in general Tammany did not do well, and the members of the Tweed Ring began to flee the jurisdiction, many going overseas. Tweed was re-arrested, forced to resign his city positions, and was replaced as Tammany's leader. Once again, he was released on bail—$8 million this time—but Tweed's supporters, such as Jay Gould, felt the repercussions of his fall from power. Tweed's first trial before Judge Noah Davis, in January 1873, ended when the jury was unable to deliver a verdict. Tweed's defense counsel included David Dudley Field II and Elihu Root. His retrial, again before Judge Noah Davis in November resulted in convictions on 204 of 220 counts, a fine of $12,750 (the equivalent of $ today) and a prison sentence of 12 years; a higher court, however, reduced Tweed's sentence to one year. After his release from The Tombs prison, New York State filed a civil suit against Tweed, attempting to recover $6 million in embezzled funds. Unable to put up the $3 million bail, Tweed was locked up in the Ludlow Street Jail, although he was allowed home visits. During one of these on December 4, 1875, Tweed escaped and fled to Spain, where he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship. The U.S. government discovered his whereabouts and arranged for his arrest once he reached the Spanish border, where he was recognized from Nast's political cartoons. He was turned over to an American warship, the , which delivered him to authorities in New York City on November 23, 1876, and he was returned to prison.
Desperate and broken, Tweed now agreed to testify about the inner workings of the Tweed Ring to a special committee set up by the Board of Aldermen in return for his release. However, after he did so, Tilden, now governor of New York, refused to abide by the agreement, and Tweed remained incarcerated. Death and burial. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12, 1878, from severe pneumonia, and was buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Mayor Smith Ely Jr. would not allow the flag at City Hall to be flown at half staff. Evaluations. According to Tweed biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman:It's hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed's system ... The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization. A minority view that Tweed was mostly innocent is presented in a scholarly biography by history professor Leo Hershkowitz. He states:Except for Tweed's own very questionable "confession," there really was no evidence of a "Tweed Ring," no direct evidence of Tweed's thievery, no evidence, excepting the testimony of the informer contractors, of "wholesale" plunder by Tweed...[Instead there was] a conspiracy of self-justification of the corruption of the law by the upholders of that law, of a venal irresponsible press and a citizenry delighting in the exorcism of witchery.
In depictions of Tweed and the Tammany Hall organization, most historians have emphasized the thievery and conspiratorial nature of Boss Tweed, along with lining his own pockets and those of his friends and allies. The theme is that the sins of corruption so violated American standards of political rectitude that they far overshadow Tweed's positive contributions to New York City. Although he held numerous important public offices and was one of a handful of senior leaders of Tammany Hall, as well as the state legislature and the state Democratic Party, Tweed was never the sole "boss" of New York City. He shared control of the city with numerous less famous people, such as the villains depicted in Nast's famous circle of guilt cartoon shown above. Seymour J. Mandelbaum has argued that, apart from the corruption he engaged in, Tweed was a modernizer who prefigured certain elements of the Progressive Era in terms of more efficient city management. Much of the money he siphoned off from the city treasury went to needy constituents who appreciated the free food at Christmas time and remembered it at the next election, and to precinct workers who provided the muscle of his machine. As a legislator he worked to expand and strengthen welfare programs, especially those by private charities, schools, and hospitals. With a base in the Irish Catholic community, he opposed efforts of Protestants to require the reading of the King James Bible in public schools, which was done deliberately to keep out Catholics. He facilitated the founding of the New York Public Library, even though one of its founders, Samuel Tilden, was Tweed's sworn enemy in the Democratic Party.
Tweed recognized that the support of his constituency was necessary for him to remain in power, and as a consequence he used the machinery of the city's government to provide numerous social services, including building more orphanages, almshouses and public baths. Tweed also fought for the New York State Legislature to donate to private charities of all religious denominations, and subsidize Catholic schools and hospitals. From 1869 to 1871, under Tweed's influence, the state of New York spent more on charities than for the entire time period from 1852 to 1868 combined. During Tweed's regime, the main business thoroughfare Broadway was widened between 34th Street and 59th Street, land was secured for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side were developed and provided the necessary infrastructure – all to the benefit of the purses of the Tweed Ring. Hershkowitz blames the implications of Thomas Nast in "Harper's Weekly" and the editors of "The New York Times", which both had ties to the Republican party. In part, the campaign against Tweed diverted public attention from Republican scandals such as the Whiskey Ring.
Tweed himself wanted no particular recognition of his achievements, such as they were. When it was proposed, in March 1871, when he was at the height of his power, that a statue be erected in his honor, he declared: "Statues are not erected to living men ... I claim to be a live man, and hope (Divine Providence permitting) to survive in all my vigor, politically and physically, some years to come." One of Tweed's unwanted legacies is that he has become "the archetype of the bloated, rapacious, corrupt city boss". Middle name. Tweed never signed his middle name with anything other than a plain "M.", and his middle name is often mistakenly listed as "Marcy". His actual middle name was Magear, his mother's maiden name. Confusion derived from a Nast cartoon with a picture of Tweed supplemented with a quote from William L. Marcy, the former governor of New York. References. Notes Citations Bibliography
Balsall Heath Balsall Heath is an inner-city area of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It has a diverse cultural mix of people and is the location of the Balti Triangle. History. The name is first found as Bordeshale in 1275, which is derived from the Old English words "Bord's healh" meaning 'Bord's heath' or 'Bord's nook' implying a corner or small area of land, perhaps a sheltered hollow in the landscape, protected by trees, possibly within a river-bend. The name stems from the Anglian personal name of one "Bord", who held property in the area, and in this way shares its origin with that of neighbouring Bordesley, first record as Bordesleie or Bordeslea meaning 'Bord's clearing'. Balsall Heath was largely agricultural and park land between Moseley village and the city of Birmingham until the 1850s when expansion along Moseley Road joined the two. Balsall Heath was formerly a chapelry in the parish of King's Norton, in Worcestershire, it was added to the county borough of Birmingham in Warwickshire on 1 October 1891. On 31 December 1894 Balsall Heath became a separate civil parish being formed from the part of King's Norton in the County Borough of Birmingham, on 1 April 1912 the parish was abolished and merged with Birmingham. In 1911 the parish had a population of 39,884.
During negotiations in the previous year it had been promised a public baths and a free library. In 1895, the library was opened on Moseley Road and, in 1907, Balsall Heath Baths were opened in an adjoining building. In 1900, the city's College of Art was also opened on Moseley Road. By this time the small lake ("Lady Pool" on old maps) at the end of Ladypool Road had been filled in to create a park. Balsall Heath initially had a reasonably affluent population, which can still be seen in the dilapidated grandeur of some of the larger houses. Brighton Road railway station led to further expansion, and the end of the 19th century saw a proliferation of high-density small terraced houses. A Muslim community was started in June 1940 when two Yemenis purchased an artisan cottage on Mary Street. With the mosque being located in the area, more Muslim immigrants began to move into private lodgings in Balsall Heath. Today, Balsall Heath has one of the largest Muslim communities in Birmingham. It is also home to diverse communities from across the Commonwealth.
By the 1980s, many of Balsall Heath's houses were in a dilapidated condition; some still lacked bathrooms or indoor toilets. The local council considered demolishing these properties but chose to refurbish them as part of an urban renewal scheme. Most of these Victorian terraces still exist and, along with more modern social housing, characterise the area today. The area's traditional 'brick' pavements were replaced at this time by the more modern and conventional paving slabs. Balsall Heath's low rents also attracted a bohemian student population. Its proximity to the University of Birmingham, the city centre and the "trendy" area of Moseley were all contributing factors. There was little conflict between the students and locals despite their vastly differing lifestyles. However, a knife-incident in 1991 led to an article in "Redbrick" warning students not to live in the area. In July 2005, Balsall Heath was hit by a tornado, which devastated many buildings around Church Road and Ladypool Road. Birmingham City Council offered loans to those who would otherwise be unable to repair their properties, and the area has now made a full recovery.
Red light era. Street prostitution first appeared in Balsall Heath during the 1950s. Property values fell, attracting Birmingham's poorer migrants. By the 1970s, the area was notorious for street robberies and drug dealing. Cheddar Road was the centre of a red-light district worked by 450 women. About half of the 50 houses on this road had prostitutes advertising themselves in the windows, similar to Amsterdam. It was labelled Britain's busiest cul-de-sac. This period of the area's history is depicted in the 1980 film "Prostitute". In 1986, an organisation called ANAWIM was formed by the Sisters of Charity to provide outreach support to the prostitutes. In September 1992, a report was published encouraging the formation of a zone of tolerance towards prostitution in Balsall Heath. This was opposed by residents and a local police inspector. In the following year Samo Paull, a woman working as a prostitute, was abducted from Balsall Heath and murdered. In 1994, residents began to organise street patrols forcing the prostitutes and street criminals out of the area. These patrols had the qualified support of the police but were regarded as vigilantes by some. There was an immediate two-thirds reduction in street and window prostitution. By November 1995, they had been almost eliminated.
The area has enjoyed a slow revival. House prices are now similar to those in other inner-city areas, while the crime rate is among the lowest. Politics and governance. Balsall Heath is divided by two wards for elections to Birmingham City Council; Balsall Heath West and Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East. Balsall Heath is part of the Birmingham Hall Green constituency for general elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Bunge & Born Bunge & Born was a multinational corporation based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, whose diverse interests included food processing and international trade in grains and oilseeds. It is now known as Bunge Limited. History. Bunge & Born was founded in 1883 by Ernesto Bunge, a German Argentine whose uncle, Karl Bunge, had been Consul General in Argentina for both the Netherlands and Prussia, and his brother-in-law, Jorge Born, who had recently arrived from Antwerp. The company superseded the Bunge Company founded in Amsterdam by Johan Bunge, in 1817. Following the purchase of of prime pampas wheat fields, Bunge & Born established "Centenera", their first food processing plant, in 1898. They had one of the largest wheat mills in the country built on a Puerto Madero lot in 1901, and with it, established "Molinos Río de la Plata" (later a leader in the local retail foods market). The company started Argentina's first burlap bag manufacturer, following which they successfully lobbied government policy makers for protective tariffs on the then-critical commercial staple. They established a mortgage bank, the "Banco Hipotecario Franco Argentino", and a subsidiary in Brazil in 1904, and by 1911, they reportedly controlled 79% of Argentine cereal exports (Argentina was, by then, the world's third-largest grain exporter). They later established paint manufacturer "Alba" (1925), chemical and fertilizer maker "Compañía Química", and textile maker "Grafa" (1932), among others; by the late 1920s, the company's annual export receipts alone reached US$300 million. The company inaugurated its neo-Gothic Buenos Aires headquarters on Leandro Alem Avenue, designed by local architect Pablo Naeff, in 1926.
Bunge & Born's near-monopoly on cereal and flour exports ended with populist President Juan Perón's 1946 establishment of the IAPI, a state agricultural purchasing and export agent. The company responded by extending its reach into the country fast-growing retail processed foods market, and though its prominence as the nation's chief exporter was partly restored by Perón's 1955 ousting and the IAPI's liquidation, its focus remained domestic over the next three decades. A privately held company, Bunge & Born did not release periodical financial statements, though it did report US$2bn in gross receipts in 1962; by then it had become an agribusiness leader, operating 110 offices worldwide. The Bunge, Born, Hirsch, Engels and De La Tour families remained the company's chief stockholders, and by extension, leaders in the domestic textile, paint, chemical, fertilizer, and food processing industries. On September 19, 1974, however, the consortium was shaken by the kidnapping of siblings Jorge and Juan Born by the far-left terrorist group, Montoneros. Freed for a US$60 million ransom (the largest on record at that time), the ordeal triggered the company headquarters' relocation to São Paulo, Brazil, and contributed to the March 1976 coup.
Retaining their Argentine interests (44 companies, by the 1980s), the families continued to suffer from ongoing disputes, and in 1988, CEO Mario Hirsch died from tripping. The election of Carlos Menem to the Argentine Presidency in May 1988, however, resulted in an agreement between the President-elect and Jorge Born that gave the company partial control over national economic policy. Bunge & Born provided the Menem government with its first two economy ministers, and the combination of large rate increases on public services (around 500%), a simplified exchange rate and a massive, mandatory wage hike led to a sharp economic turnaround between July and November 1989. This foray into government policy making, however, ended in a new currency crisis that December and the failure (compounded by the company's lackluster business performance) resulted in Born's 1991 ouster from the board; he was replaced by Chief Operations Officer Octavio Caraballo. Beset by the rift between Jorge Born and his brother, Juan, the prior unity between the shareholders disintegrated as Caraballo struggled to modernize the company. Family frictions intensified when Jorge Born formed a business partnership with one of his former kidnappers, erstwhile Montonero strategist Rodolfo Galimberti.
Bunge International. The company was converted into the Bermuda-registered Bunge International in 1994, retaining the Bunge y Born name only in Argentina. Bunge remained a privately held company of 180 shareholders (including the longtime controlling family interests) and divested itself in 1998, of almost all its retail foods interests in favor of a greater role in international agribusiness and commodity markets; by then the company's gross annual turnover had reached US$13 billion. Bunge ultimately went public on the NYSE in 2001, becoming "Bunge Limited".
Big Apple "The Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the "New York Morning Telegraph". Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities. Origin. Although the history of "Big Apple" was once thought a mystery, a clearer picture of the term's history has emerged due to the work of historian Barry Popik, and Gerald Cohen of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. A number of false theories had previously existed, including a claim that the term derived from a woman named Eve who ran a brothel in the city. This was subsequently exposed as a hoax. The earliest known usage of "big apple" appears in the book "The Wayfarer in New York" (1909), in which Edward Sandford Martin writes: Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city ... It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap. William Safire considered this the coinage, but because the phrase is not quoted in the text, it is likely that it was used as a metaphor, and not as a nickname for the city.
Horse racing origin. "The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of horse-racing articles for the "New York Morning Telegraph" in the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3 May 1921: Fitz Gerald referred to the "big apple" frequently thereafter. He explained his use in a column dated February 18, 1924, under the headline "Around the Big Apple": Fitz Gerald reportedly first heard "The Big Apple" used to describe New York's racetracks by two African American stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds. Using racing records, Popik traced that conversation to January 1920. In recognition of Fitz Gerald's role in promulgating "The Big Apple" as a nickname for New York City, in 1997 Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed legislation designating as "Big Apple Corner" the southwest corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, the corner on which John J. Fitz Gerald lived from 1934 to 1963. The Hotel Ameritania also once had a plaque which was installed in 1996, according to Popik, but it was removed during renovations to the building and was lost.
Evidence can also be found in the "Chicago Defender", an African-American newspaper that had a national circulation. Writing for the "Defender" on September 16, 1922, "Ragtime" Billy Tucker used the name "big apple" to refer to New York in a non-horse-racing context: Tucker had also earlier used "big apple" as a reference to Los Angeles. It is possible that he simply used "big apple" as a nickname for any large city: Popularity. By the late 1920s, New York writers other than Fitz Gerald were starting to use "Big Apple", and were using it in contexts other than horse racing. "The Big Apple" was a popular song and dance in the 1930s. Jazz musicians in the 1930s also contributed to the use of the phrase to refer to New York City, specifically to the city and Harlem as the jazz capital of the world. Beside the song and the dance, two nightclubs in the city used "Big Apple" in their names. Walter Winchell and other writers continued to use the term in the 1940s and early 1950s, but by the late 1950s, if it was known at all, it had come to be considered an outdated nickname for New York.
In the early 1970s, however, during the city's fiscal crisis, "People were looking around desperately and some of them seized that old phrase the Big Apple to remind people of when New York had been a strong and powerful city and might become that again," according to the official Manhattan Borough Historian, Dr. Robert Snyder. It was then that the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau – now "NYC Tourism + Conventions", New York City's official marketing and tourism organization – with the help of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising firm, began to promote the city's "Big Apple" nickname to tourists, under the leadership of its president, Charles Gillett. The campaign was a success, and the nickname has remained popular since then. Today, the name is used exclusively to refer to New York City, and is used with regularity by journalists and news headline writers across the English-speaking world.
Boston Corbett Sergeant Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett (January 29, 1832 – disappeared ) was an English-born American soldier and milliner who killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln on April 26, 1865. Known for his devout religious beliefs and eccentric behavior, Corbett was reportedly a good soldier and had been a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. Corbett shot and mortally wounded Booth when his regiment surrounded the barn Booth was hiding in. For his actions, the American media and public largely considered Corbett a hero. Corbett drifted around the United States before he was committed to Topeka Asylum for the Insane after being declared insane in 1887. Corbett escaped and disappeared in 1888. Early life and education. Corbett was born in London, England, on January 29, 1832, and immigrated with his family to the US in 1840. The Corbetts moved frequently before settling in Troy, New York. As a teenager, Corbett began apprenticing as a milliner, a profession that he would hold intermittently throughout his life. As a milliner, Corbett was regularly exposed to the fumes of mercury(II) nitrate, then used in the treatment of fur to produce felt used on hats. Excessive exposure to the compound can lead to hallucinations, psychosis and erethism. Historians have theorized that the mental issues Corbett exhibited before and after the Civil War were caused by this exposure.
Family and religion. After working as a milliner in Troy, Corbett returned to New York City. In the early 1850s, Corbett met Susan Rebecca, who was thirteen years his senior, and they married. The couple migrated, and on June 9, 1855, Corbett became an American citizen, taking the oath in a Troy courthouse. Corbett had a hard time finding and keeping work in Richmond, Virginia, in large part because of his vociferous opposition to slavery. His wife became ill, and, as they were returning to New York City by ship, she died at sea on August 18, 1856. The body continued to New York, where her death was recorded and she was buried. Following her death, he moved to Boston. Corbett became despondent over the loss of his wife and, according to friends, began drinking heavily. He could not hold a job and eventually became homeless. After a night of heavy drinking, he was confronted by a street preacher whose message persuaded him to join the Methodist Episcopal Church. Corbett reportedly encountered some evangelical temperance Christians and was detained by them until he sobered up, undergoing a religious epiphany in the process.
In 1857, Corbett began working at a hat manufacturer's shop on Washington Street in downtown Boston. He was reported to be a proficient milliner but was known to proselytize frequently and stop work to pray and sing for co-workers who used profanity in his presence. He also began working as a street preacher and would sermonize and distribute religious literature in North Square. Corbett soon earned a reputation around Boston for being a "local eccentric" and religious fanatic. By the summer of 1858, Corbett fell in with members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming a proselytizer and street preacher. On July 16, 1858, Corbett, while trying to remain chaste, struggled against sexual urges and began reading in the Gospel of Matthew ("And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee...and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake"). Years later, a friend recounted Corbett saying "that the Lord directed him, in a vision or in some way, to castrate himself." Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors.
a friend recounted Corbett saying "that the Lord directed him, in a vision or in some way, to castrate himself." Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors. He ate a meal and attended a prayer meeting before someone was sent for medical treatment. Corbett was released on August 15, and a friend recorded that "he was very much gratified with the result as his passion was not trouble any more...his object was that he might preach the gospel without being tormented by his passions." After being baptized on August 29, he subsequently changed his name to Boston, the name of the city where he was converted. He regularly attended meetings at the Fulton and Bromfield Street churches where his enthusiastic behavior earned him the nickname "The Glory to God man". In an attempt to imitate Jesus, Corbett began to wear his hair very long (he was forced to cut it upon enlisting in the Union Army). Corbett was described as friendly and open, helpful to those he saw in need but also quick to condemn those he thought were out of step with God.
Corbett began to wear his hair very long (he was forced to cut it upon enlisting in the Union Army). Corbett was described as friendly and open, helpful to those he saw in need but also quick to condemn those he thought were out of step with God. Corbett routinely gathered up drunken sinners from the New York streets and took them to his room, where he would sober them up and feed them, restoring their health and also trying to help them find work. He continually expended all his own money and frequently borrowed from friends. When his hat-making boss asked Corbett about his lack of decent clothes for himself, Corbett always said he was "doing the Lord's work." His boss later described him as "a good man, for all of his faults were of the head, and not of the heart."
Military career. Enlistment in the Union Army. On April 19, 1861, early in the American Civil War, Corbett, who was anti-slavery, enlisted as a private in Company I of the Union Army's 12th New York State Militia. Corbett's eccentric behavior quickly got him into trouble. He always carried a Bible with him and read passages aloud from it regularly, held unauthorized prayer meetings, and argued with his superior officers. Corbett also condemned officers and superiors for what he perceived as violations of God's word. In one instance, he verbally reprimanded Colonel Daniel Butterfield for using profanity and taking the Lord's name in vain. He was sent to the guardhouse for several days but refused to apologize for his insubordination. Due to his continued disruptive behavior and refusal to take orders, Corbett was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot. His sentence was eventually reduced, and he was discharged in August 1863. Corbett re-enlisted later that month in Company L, 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. On February 26, 1864, he was demoted to private as punishment for an unknown incident.
Andersonville. Despite his religious-oriented eccentricities, Corbett reportedly was a good soldier. On June 24, 1864, after Confederate States Army troops led by John S. Mosby in Culpeper, Virginia had captured a good number of Corbett's comrades, Corbett continued to fire at the enemy from behind a persimmon tree and in a ditch with a seven-shooter repeating rifle. Three attempts were made to capture him before success was finally had when he ran out of ammo. Once Corbett was overtaken, one of the junior officers leaped from his saddle, enraged at Corbett's persistence, knocked the Spencer rifle from Corbett, and aimed a pistol at his head. Captain Chapman objected, "Don’t shoot that man! He has a right to defend himself to the last!" Corbett later related to friends that the man who saved his life was Mosby, though this is dubious. Corbett was to be a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. While on the way to Andersonville, the following incident happened, told by a fellow prisoner of Corbett's named William Collins:
Corbett met Richard Thatcher, a fellow POW who described Corbett as having "qualities that challenged my admiration, even more than the heroism he was capable of displaying in the battlefield. He read passages from the Scriptures to me, and spoke words of sound and wholesome advice, from which I began to learn that he was one who had the courage of his convictions." Corbett, among others, led prayer meetings and patriotic rallies to boost morale, according to John McElroy's eyewitness account in his 1879 memoir "Andersonville". After five months, Corbett was released in a prisoner exchange in November 1864 and was admitted to a military hospital in Annapolis, Maryland where he was treated for scurvy, malnutrition and exposure. Upon Corbett's return to his company, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Corbett later testified for the prosecution in the trial of the commandant of Andersonville Prison, Captain Henry Wirz. Pursuit and death of John Wilkes Booth.
Doherty, Conger, and several soldiers rushed into the burning barn and carried Booth out. Assessing his condition, Corbett and others felt a cosmic justice in that Booth's entry wound was in the same spot he shot Lincoln. The bullet struck Booth in the back of the head behind his left ear and passed through his neck. Three of Booth's vertebrae were pierced and his spinal cord was partially severed, leaving him completely paralyzed. As Mary Clemmer Ames would later put it, "The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trifling difference made an immeasurable difference...Mr. Lincoln was unconscious...Booth suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel." Conger initially thought Booth had shot himself, though Colonel Lafayette C. Baker was certain he had not. Corbett stepped forward and admitted he shot Booth, giving Doherty his gun. Doherty, Baker and Conger questioned Corbett, who said he had intended to merely wound Booth in the shoulder but that either his aim slipped or Booth moved when Corbett fired. Initial statements by Doherty and others made no mention of Corbett having violated any orders, nor did they suggest that he would face disciplinary action for shooting Booth. According to later sources, when asked why he had violated orders, Corbett replied, "Providence directed me." Author Scott Martelle disputes this, noting "his initial statement, and those by Baker, Conger, and Doherty don't mention Providence...those details came long after the shooting itself, amid the swirl of rumor and conjecture and considerable lobbying over the reward money."
Dragged to the porch of Garrett's farmhouse, Booth asked for water. Conger and Baker poured some into his mouth, which he immediately spat out, unable to swallow. Booth asked to be rolled over and turned facedown; Conger rejected the idea. "Then at least turn me on my side," Booth pleaded; the move did not relieve Booth's suffering. Baker said, "He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved...and would several times repeat, 'Kill me!'" At sunrise, Booth remained in agony, and his breathing became more labored and irregular. Unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands to his face and uttered his last words as he gazed at them: "Useless ... useless." Booth then began gasping for air as his throat continued to swell, and he made a gurgling sound before he died from asphyxia, approximately two to three hours after Corbett shot him. Doherty told Corbett to ride to neighboring farms to find breakfast for the men. Corbett did so, but first "rode off to a spot when I could be alone and pray, and when I had gone through my usual morning prayer, I asked the Lord in regard to the shooting. At once, I was filled with praise, for I felt a clear consciousness that it was an act of duty in the sight of God." Corbett found supplies for half the men, and they finished their meal before Booth died. Conger and Corbett rode off to Washington.
Fame. According to Johnson, Corbett was accompanied by Lt. Doherty to the War Department in Washington, D.C. to meet Secretary Edwin Stanton about Booth's shooting. Edward Steers writes that it was "not against orders. Conger (said)..."They had no orders either to fire or not to fire." Corbett maintained that he believed Booth had intended to shoot his way out of the barn and that he acted in self-defense. He told Stanton, "...Booth would have killed me if I had not shot first. I think I did right." Corbett maintained that he did not intend to kill Booth but merely wanted to inflict a disabling wound, but either his aim slipped or Booth moved at the moment Corbett pulled the trigger. Stanton paused and then stated, "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives; he has spared the country expense, continued excitement and trouble. Discharge the patriot." Martelle says that "no other source mentions such a meeting...Johnson's memoir, which came out a half-century later, is just another part of the lore." Corbett was greeted by a cheering crowd. As he made his way to Mathew Brady's studio to have his official portrait taken, the crowd followed him, asking for autographs and requesting that he tell them about shooting Booth. Corbett told the crowd:
Corbett testified in the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, testifying on May 17, 1865. Corbett was largely considered a hero by the public and press. Initial newspaper reporters described him as a simple and humble man devoted, possibly excessively, to his faith; he had eccentricities but also did his duty well. One newspaper editor declared that Corbett would "live as one of the World's great avengers." For his part in Booth's capture, Corbett received a portion of the $100,000 reward money, amounting to $1,653.84 (). His annual salary as a U.S. sergeant was $204 (). Corbett received offers to purchase the gun he used to shoot Booth. He refused, stating, "That is not mine—it belongs to the Government, and I would not sell it for any price." Corbett also declined an offer for one of Booth's pistols as he did not want a reminder of shooting Booth. Negative responses. Later, newspaper accounts began to offer some criticism of Corbett's actions, that he had acted wilfully and against orders when he shot Booth (no orders were issued on whether Booth should be taken alive). Richard Garrett, the owner of the farm on which Booth died, and his 12-year-old son Robert said years later that Booth had never reached for his gun. Steers disputes this, noting that this contradicts original accounts.
Post-war life. Southern sympathizers sent letters threatening to kill Corbett, so he kept a gun nearby at all times to defend himself. After his discharge from the army in August 1865, Corbett returned to work as a milliner in Boston and frequently attended the Bromfield Street Church. When the hatting business in Boston slowed, Corbett moved to Danbury, Connecticut, to continue his work and also "preached in the country round about." By 1870, he had relocated once again to Camden, New Jersey, where he was known as a "Methodist lay preacher" while also continuing to be a milliner. Corbett's inability to hold a job was attributed to his fanatical behavior; he was routinely fired after continuing his habit of stopping work to pray for his co-workers. To earn money, Corbett capitalized on his role as "Lincoln's Avenger". He gave lectures about the shooting of Booth accompanied by illustrated lantern slides at Sunday schools, women's groups and tent meetings. Corbett was never asked back due to his increasingly erratic behavior and incoherent speeches.
R. B. Hoover, a man who later befriended Corbett, recalled that Corbett believed "men who were high in authority at Washington at the time of the assassination" were hounding him. Corbett said the men were angry because he had deprived them of prosecuting and executing John Wilkes Booth themselves. He also believed the same men had gotten him fired from various jobs. Corbett's paranoia was furthered by hate mail he received for killing Booth. He became fearful that "Booth's Avengers" or organizations like the "Secret Order" were planning to seek revenge upon him and took to carrying a pistol with him at all times. As his paranoia increased, Corbett began brandishing his pistol at friends or strangers he deemed suspicious. While attending the Soldiers' Reunion of the Blue and Gray in Caldwell, Ohio, in 1875, Corbett got into an argument with several men over the death of John Wilkes Booth. The men questioned if Booth had been killed at all, which enraged Corbett. He then drew his pistol on the men but was removed from the reunion before he could fire it. In 1878, Corbett moved to Concordia, Kansas, where he acquired a plot of land through homesteading upon which he constructed a dugout home. He continued working as a preacher and attended revival meetings frequently. Throughout the rest of his life, he began to become paranoid that Booth's family or friends would come and kill him, causing him to go insane.
Disappearance. Due to his fame as "Lincoln's Avenger", Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka in January 1887. On February 15, he became convinced that officers of the House were discriminating against him. He jumped to his feet, brandished a revolver, and began chasing the officers out of the building. No one was hurt, and Corbett was arrested. The following day, a judge declared Corbett insane and sent him to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane. On May 26, 1888, he escaped from the asylum on horseback. He then rode to Neodesha, Kansas, where he briefly stayed with Richard Thatcher. When Corbett left, he told Thatcher he was going to Mexico. Conjecture arose that rather than going to Mexico, Corbett may have settled in a cabin he built in the forests near Hinckley, in Pine County in eastern Minnesota and that he died in the Great Hinckley Fire on September 1, 1894. This conjecture was based on speculation about the name "Thomas Corbett" appearing on the list of dead and a secondhand account by someone who said the fire victim had claimed to be Boston Corbett. Scott Martelle cited it as "too tenuous a connection to credit." In September, 2024, a presentation given to the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, showed that the man who died in the Hinckley fire was Thomas Gilbert Corbett, originally from Steuben County, New York, and not Boston Corbett. Proofs included the Civil War "invalid" filing by Thomas G. Corbitt, dated September 19, 1890 in Minnesota and on the same document, the widow's filing on August 9, 1895. Another proof included a newspaper article from the September 24, 1894 edition of the Steuben Farmers Advocate, announcing that Thomas Corbett, formerly of Thurston, Steuben County, New York , had perished in the Hinckley Fire.
Impostors. Several men claimed to be him in the years following Corbett's disappearance. A few years after Corbett was last seen in Neodesha, Kansas, a patent medicine salesman in Enid, Oklahoma, filed an application using Corbett's name to receive pension benefits. After an investigation proved that the man was not Boston Corbett, he was imprisoned. In September 1905, a man arrested in Dallas also claimed to be Corbett. He, too, was proven to be an impostor and was sent to prison for perjury and then to the Government Hospital for the Insane. Legacy. Scott Martelle, who wrote the 2015 biography "The Madman and the Assassin: The Strange Life of Boston Corbett, the Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth", called Corbett "the closest to an average, everyday person...a regular, run-of-the-mill American—albeit a strange one—who did his job as a hatter, and then as a soldier". Memorials. In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31 of Concordia, Kansas, built a roadside monument to Corbett on Key Road. A small sign was also placed to mark the dugout where Corbett had lived.
Portrayals. A fictional version of Corbett appears in the novel "Andersonville" (1955). Dabbs Greer played a fictitious version of Corbett in the "Lawman" episode "The Unmasked" (1962), in which Corbett is living under the name "Joe Brockway" as a Wyoming hotel owner, being searched for by two former vengeful Confederate soldiers (although he gives his name as "Bill Corbett"). Corbett is portrayed by William Mark McCullough in the series "Manhunt" (2024).
Berber languages The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive. The Berber languages have a similar level of variety to the Romance languages, although they are sometimes referred to as a single collective language, often as "Berber", "Tamazight", or "Amazigh". The languages, with a few exceptions, form a dialect continuum. There is a debate as to how to best sub-categorize languages within the Berber branch. Berber languages typically follow verb–subject–object word order. Their phonological inventories are diverse.
Millions of people in Morocco and Algeria natively speak a Berber language, as do smaller populations of Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. There are also probably a few million speakers of Berber languages in Western Europe. Tashlhiyt, Kabyle, Central Atlas Tamazight, Tarifit, and Shawiya are some of the most commonly spoken Berber languages. Exact numbers are impossible to ascertain as there are few modern North African censuses that include questions on language use, and what censuses do exist have known flaws. Following independence in the 20th century, the Berber languages have been suppressed and suffered from low prestige in North Africa. Recognition of the Berber languages has been growing in the 21st century, with Morocco and Algeria adding Tamazight as an official language to their constitutions in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Most Berber languages have a high percentage of borrowing and influence from the Arabic language, as well as from other languages. For example, Arabic loanwords represent 35% to 46% of the total vocabulary of the Kabyle language and represent 44.9% of the total vocabulary of Tarifit. Almost all Berber languages took from Arabic the pharyngeal fricatives /ʕ/ and /ħ/, the (nongeminated) uvular stop /q/, and the voiceless pharyngealized consonant /ṣ/. Unlike the Chadic,
Cushitic, and Omotic languages of the Afro-Asiatic phylum, Berber languages are not tonal languages. Terminology. "Tamazight" and "Berber languages" are often used interchangeably. However, "Tamazight" is sometimes used to refer to a specific subset of Berber languages, such as Central Tashlhiyt. "Tamazight" can also be used to refer to Standard Moroccan Tamazight or Standard Algerian Tamazight, as in the Moroccan and Algerian constitutions respectively. In Morocco, besides referring to all Berber languages or to Standard Moroccan Tamazight, "Tamazight" is often used in contrast to Tashelhit and Tarifit to refer to Central Atlas Tamazight. The use of "Berber" has been the subject of debate due to its historical background as an exonym and present equivalence with the Arabic word for "barbarian." One group, the Linguasphere Observatory, has attempted to introduce the neologism "Tamazic languages" to refer to the Berber languages. Amazigh people typically use "Tamazight" when speaking English. Historically, Berbers did not refer to themselves as Berbers/Amazigh but had their own terms to refer to themselves. For example, the Kabyles use the term "Leqbayel" to refer to their own people, while the Chaouis identified themselves as "Ishawiyen" instead of Berber/Amazigh.
Origin. Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance subfamilies of the Indo-European family. In contrast, the split of the group from the other Afroasiatic sub-phyla is much earlier, and is therefore sometimes associated with the local Mesolithic Capsian culture. A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afroasiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst, linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key loanwords related to pastoralism that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afroasiatic languages.
Orthography. Berber languages are primarily oral languages without a major written component. Historically, they were written with the Libyco-Berber script. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres; the oldest known variations of the script dates to inscriptions in Dugga from 600 BC. Usage of this script, in the form of Tifinagh, has continued into the present day among the Tuareg people. Following the spread of Islam, some Berber scholars also utilized the Arabic script. The Berber Latin alphabet was developed following the introduction of the Latin script in the nineteenth century by the West. The nineteenth century also saw the development of Neo-Tifinagh, an adaptation of Tuareg Tifinagh for use with other Berber languages. There are now three writing systems in use for Berber languages: Tifinagh, the Arabic script, and the Berber Latin alphabet, with the Latin alphabet being the most widely used today. Subclassification. With the exception of Zenaga, Tetserret, and Tuareg, the Berber languages form a dialect continuum. Different linguists take different approaches towards drawing boundaries between languages in this continuum. Maarten Kossmann notes that it is difficult to apply the classic tree model of historical linguistics towards the Berber languages:[The Berber language family]'s continuous history of convergence and differentiation along new lines makes an definition of branches arbitrary. Moreover, mutual intelligibility and mutual influence render notions such as "split" or "branching" rather difficult to apply except, maybe, in the case of Zenaga and Tuareg.Kossmann roughly groups the Berber languages into seven blocks:
The Zenatic block is typically divided into the Zenati and Eastern Berber branches, due to the marked difference in features at each end of the continuum. Otherwise, subclassifications by different linguists typically combine various blocks into different branches. Western Moroccan languages, Zenati languages, Kabyle, and Ghadames may be grouped under Northern Berber; Awjila is often included as an Eastern Berber language alongside Siwa, Sokna, and El Foqaha. These approaches divide the Berber languages into Northern, Southern (Tuareg), Eastern, and Western varieties. Population. The vast majority of speakers of Berber languages are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. The exact population of speakers has been historically difficult to ascertain due to lack of official recognition. Morocco. Morocco is the country with the greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. As of 2022, Ethnologue estimates there to be 13.8 million speakers of Berber languages in Morocco, based on figures from 2016 and 2017. In 1960, the first census after Moroccan independence was held. It claimed that 32 percent of Moroccans spoke a Berber language, including bi-, tri- and quadrilingual people. The 2004 census found that 3,894,805 Moroccans over five years of age spoke Tashelhit, 2,343,937 spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 1,270,986 spoke Tarifit, representing 14.6%, 8.8%, and 4.8% respectively of the surveyed population, or roughly 28.2% of the surveyed population combined. The 2014 census found that 14.1% of the population spoke Tashelhit, 7.9% spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 4% spoke Tarifit, or about 26% of the population combined.
The 2024 census found that 14.2% of the population spoke Tashelhit, 7.4% spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 3.2% spoke Tarifit, which represents 24.8% of the population. These estimates, as well as the estimates from various academic sources, are summarized as follows: Algeria. Algeria is the country with the second greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. In 1906, the total population speaking Berber languages in Algeria, excluding the thinly populated Sahara region, was estimated at 1,305,730 out of 4,447,149, or 29%. Secondary sources disagree on the percentage of self-declared native Berber speakers in the 1966 census, the last Algerian census containing a question about the mother tongue. Some give 17.9% while other report 19%. Kabyle speakers account for the vast majority of speakers of Berber languages in Algeria. Shawiya is the second most commonly spoken Berber language in Algeria. Other Berber languages spoken in Algeria include: Shenwa, with 76,300 speakers; Tashelhit, with 6,000 speakers; Ouargli, with 20,000 speakers; Tamahaq, with 71,400 speakers; Tugurt, with 8,100 speakers; Tidikelt, with 1,000 speakers; Gurara, with 11,000 speakers; and Mozabite, with 150,000 speakers.
Population estimates are summarized as follows: Other countries. As of 1998, there were an estimated 450,000 Tawellemmet speakers, 250,000 Air Tamajeq speakers, and 20,000 Tamahaq speakers in Niger. As of 2018 and 2014 respectively, there were an estimated 420,000 speakers of Tawellemmet and 378,000 of Tamasheq in Mali. As of 2022, based on figures from 2020, Ethnologue estimates there to be 285,890 speakers of Berber languages in Libya: 247,000 speakers of Nafusi, 22,800 speakers of Tamahaq, 13,400 speakers of Ghadamés, and 2,690 speakers of Awjila. The number of Siwi speakers in Libya is listed as negligible, and the last Sokna speaker is thought to have died in the 1950s. There are an estimated 50,000 Djerbi speakers in Tunisia, based on figures from 2004. Sened is likely extinct, with the last speaker having died in the 1970s. Ghadamés, though not indigenous to Tunisia, is estimated to have 3,100 speakers throughout the country. Chenini is one of the rare remaining Berber-speaking villages in Tunisia. There are an estimated 20,000 Siwi speakers in Egypt, based on figures from 2013.
As of 2018 and 2017 respectively, there were an estimated 200 speakers of Zenaga and 117,000 of Tamasheq in Mauritania. As of 2009, there were an estimated 122,000 Tamasheq speakers in Burkina Faso. There are an estimated 1.5 million speakers of various Berber languages in France. A small number of Tawellemmet speakers live in Nigeria. In total, there are an estimated 3.6 million speakers of Berber languages in countries outside of Morocco and Algeria, summarized as follows: Status. After independence, all the Maghreb countries to varying degrees pursued a policy of Arabisation, aimed partly at displacing French from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and literacy. Under this policy the use of the Berber languages was suppressed or even banned. This state of affairs has been contested by Berbers in Morocco and Algeria—especially Kabylie—and was addressed in both countries by affording the language official status and introducing it in some schools. Morocco. After gaining independence from France in 1956, Morocco began a period of Arabisation through 1981, with primary and secondary school education gradually being changed to Arabic instruction, and with the aim of having administration done in Arabic, rather than French. During this time, there were riots amongst the Amazigh population, which called for the inclusion of Tamazight as an official language.
The 2000 Charter for Education Reform marked a change in policy, with its statement of "openness to Tamazight." Planning for a public Tamazight-language TV network began in 2006; in 2010, the Moroccan government launched Tamazight TV. On July 29, 2011, Tamazight was added as an official language to the Moroccan constitution. Algeria. After gaining independence from France in 1962, Algeria committed to a policy of Arabisation, which, after the imposition of the Circular of July 1976, encompassed the spheres of education, public administration, public signage, print publication, and the judiciary. While primarily directed towards the erasure of French in Algerian society, these policies also targeted Berber languages, leading to dissatisfaction and unrest amongst speakers of Berber languages, who made up about one quarter of the population. After the 1994-1995 general school boycott in Kabylia, Tamazight was recognized for the first time as a national language. In 2002, following the riots of the Black Spring, Tamazight was recognized for the second time as a national language, though not as an official one. This was done on April 8, 2003.
Tamazight has been taught for three hours a week through the first three years of Algerian middle schools since 2005. On January 5, 2016, it was announced that Tamazight had been added as a national and official language in a draft amendment to the Algerian constitution; it was added to the constitution as a national and official language on February 7, 2016. Libya. Although regional councils in Libya's Nafusa Mountains affiliated with the National Transitional Council reportedly use the Berber language of Nafusi and have called for it to be granted co-official status with Arabic in a prospective new constitution, it does not have official status in Libya as in Morocco and Algeria. As areas of Libya south and west of Tripoli such as the Nafusa Mountains were taken from the control of Gaddafi government forces in early summer 2011, Berber workshops and exhibitions sprang up to share and spread the Berber culture and language. Other countries. In Mali and Niger, some Tuareg languages have been recognized as national languages and have been part of school curriculums since the 1960s.
Phonology. Notation. In linguistics, the phonology of Berber languages is written with the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the following exceptions: Consonants. The influence of Arabic, the process of spirantization, and the absence of labialization have caused the consonant systems of Berber languages to differ significantly by region. Berber languages found north of, and in the northern half of, the Sahara have greater influence from Arabic, including that of loaned phonemes, than those in more southern regions, like Tuareg. Most Berber languages in northern regions have additionally undergone spirantization, in which historical short stops have changed into fricatives. Northern Berber languages (which is a subset of but not identical to Berber languages in geographically northern regions) commonly have labialized velars and uvulars, unlike other Berber languages.Two languages that illustrate the resulting range in consonant inventory across Berber languages are Ahaggar Tuareg and Kabyle; Kabyle has two more places of articulation and three more manners of articulation than Ahaggar Tuareg.
There is still, however, common consonant features observed across Berber languages. Almost all Berber languages have bilabial, dental, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and laryngeal consonants, and almost all consonants have a long counterpart. All Berber languages, as is common in Afroasiatic languages, have pharyngealized consonants and phonemic gemination. The consonants which may undergo gemination, and the positions in a word where gemination may occur, differ by language. They have also been observed to have tense and lax consonants, although the status of tense consonants has been the subject of "considerable discussion" by linguists. Three (Kabyle, Tarifit and Shawiya) of the most spoken five Tamazight languages have the interdental consonants and which are considered rare cross-linguistically. Vowels. The vowel systems of Berber languages also vary widely, with inventories ranging from three phonemic vowels in most Northern Berber languages, to seven in some Eastern Berber and Tuareg languages. For example, Taselhiyt has the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/, while Ayer Tuareg has the vowels /i/, /ə/, /u/, /e/, /ɐ/, /o/, and /a/. Contrastive vowel length is rare in Berber languages. Tuareg languages had previously been reported to have contrastive vowel length, but this is no longer the leading analysis. A complex feature of Berber vowel systems is the role of central vowels, which vary in occurrence and function across languages; there is a debate as to whether schwa is a proper phoneme of Northern Berber languages.
Suprasegmentals. Most Berber languages: Phonetic correspondences. Phonetic correspondences between Berber languages are fairly regular. Some examples, of varying importance and regularity, include ["g/ž/y"]; ["k/š"]; ["l/ř/r"]; ["l/ž, ll/ddž"]; [trill/ vocalized r]; ["šš/ttš"]; ["ss/ttš"]; ["w/g/b"]; ["q"/"ɣ"]; ["h"/Ø]; and ["s-š-ž/h"]. Words in various Berber languages are shown to demonstrate these phonetic correspondences as follows: Grammar. Berber languages characteristically make frequent use of apophony in the form of ablaut. Berber apophony has been historically analyzed as functioning similarly to the Semitic root, but this analysis has fallen out of favor due to the lexical significance of vowels in Berber languages, as opposed to their primarily grammatical significance in Semitic languages. The lexical categories of all Berber languages are nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions. With the exception of a handful of Arabic loanwords in most languages, Berber languages do not have proper adjectives. In Northern and Eastern Berber languages, adjectives are a subcategory of nouns; in Tuareg, relative clauses and stative verb forms are used to modify nouns instead.
The gender, number, and case of nouns, as well as the gender, number, and person of verbs, are typically distinguished through affixes. Arguments are described with word order and clitics. When sentences have a verb, they essentially follow verb–subject–object word order, although some linguists believe alternate descriptors would better categorize certain languages, such as Taqbaylit. Pronouns. Berber languages have both independent and dependent pronouns, both of which distinguish between person and number. Gender is also typically distinguished in the second and third person, and sometimes in first person plural. Linguist Maarten Kossmann divides pronouns in Berber languages into three morphological groups: When clitics precede or follow a verb, they are almost always ordered with the indirect object first, direct object second, and andative-venitive deictic clitic last. An example in Tarifit is shown as follows: The allowed positioning of different kinds of clitics varies by language. Nouns. Nouns are distinguished by gender, number, and case in most Berber languages, with gender being feminine or masculine, number being singular or plural, and case being in the construct or free state. Some Arabic borrowings in Northern and Eastern Berber languages do not accept these affixes; they instead retain the Arabic article regardless of case, and follow Arabic patterns to express number and gender.
Gender can be feminine or masculine, and can be lexically determined, or can be used to distinguish qualities of the noun. For humans and "higher" animals (such as mammals and large birds), gender distinguishes sex, whereas for objects and "lesser" animals (such as insects and lizards), it distinguishes size. For some nouns, often fruits and vegetables, gender can also distinguish the specificity of the noun. The ways in which gender is used to distinguish nouns is shown in as follows, with examples from Figuig: An example of nouns with lexically determined gender are the feminine "t-lussi" ("butter") and masculine "a-ɣi" ("buttermilk") in Figuig. Mass nouns have lexically determined gender across Berber languages. Most Berber languages have two cases, which distinguish the construct state from the free state. The construct state is also called the "construct case, "relative case," "annexed state" ("état d'annexion")"," or the "nominative case"; the free state ("état libre") is also called the "direct case" or "accusative case." When present, case is always expressed through nominal prefixes and initial-vowel reduction. The use of the marked nominative system and constructions similar to Split-S alignment varies by language. Eastern Berber languages do not have case.
Number can be singular or plural, which is marked with prefixation, suffixation, and sometimes apophony. Nouns usually are made plural by one of either suffixation or apophony, with prefixation applied independently. Specifics vary by language, but prefixation typically changes singular "a-" and "ta-" to plural "i-" and "ti-" respectively. The number of mass nouns are lexically determined. For example, in multiple Berber languages, such as Figuig, "a-ɣi" ("buttermilk") is singular while "am-an" ("water") is plural. Nouns or pronouns—optionally extended with genitival pronominal affixes, demonstrative clitics, or pre-nominal elements, and then further modified by numerals, adjectives, possessive phrases, or relative clauses—can be built into noun phrases. Possessive phrases in noun phrases must have a genitive proposition. There are a limited number of pre-nominal elements, which function similarly to pronoun syntactic heads of the noun phrase, and which can be categorized into three types as follows: Verbs. Verb bases are formed by stems that are optionally extended by prefixes, with mood, aspect, and negation applied with a vocalic scheme. This form can then be conjugated with affixes to agree with person, number, and gender, which produces a word.
Different linguists analyze and label aspects in the Berber languages very differently. Kossman roughly summarizes the basic stems which denote aspect as follows: Different languages may have more stems and aspects, or may distinguish within the above categories. Stem formation can be very complex, with Tuareg by some measures having over two hundred identified conjugation subtypes. The aspectual stems of some classes of verbs in various Berber languages are shown as follows: Verb phrases are built with verb morphology, pronominal and deictic clitics, pre-verbal particles, and auxiliary elements. The pre-verbal particles are "ad", "wər," and their variants, which correspond to the meanings of "non-realized" and "negative" respectively. Numerals. Many Berber languages have lost use of their original numerals from three onwards due to the influence of Arabic; Tarifit has lost all except one. Languages that may retain all their original numerals include Tashelhiyt, Tuareg, Ghadames, Ouargla, and Zenaga. Original Berber numerals agree in gender with the noun they describe, whereas the borrowed Arabic forms do not.
The numerals 1–10 in Tashelhiyt and Mali Tuareg are as follows: Sentence structure. Sentences in Berber languages can be divided into verbal and non-verbal sentences. The topic, which has a unique intonation in the sentence, precedes all other arguments in both types. Verbal sentences have a finite verb, and are commonly understood to follow verb–subject–object word order (VSO). Some linguists have proposed opposing analyses of the word order patterns in Berber languages, and there has been some support for characterizing Taqbaylit as discourse-configurational. Existential, attributive, and locational sentences in most Berber languages are expressed with non-verbal sentences, which have no finite verb. In these sentences, the predicate follows the noun, with the predicative particle "d" sometimes in between. Two examples, one without and one with a subject, are given from Kabyle as follows: Non-verbal sentences may use the verb meaning "to be," which exists in all Berber languages. An example from Tarifit is given as follows:
Lexicon. Above all in the area of basic lexicon, the Berber languages are very similar. However, the household-related vocabulary in sedentary tribes is especially different from the one found in nomadic ones: whereas Tahaggart has only two or three designations for species of palm tree, other languages may have as many as 200 similar words. In contrast, Tahaggart has a rich vocabulary for the description of camels. Some loanwords in the Berber languages can be traced to pre-Roman times. The Berber words "te-ḇăyne" "date" and "a-sḇan" "loose woody tissue around the palm tree stem" originate from Ancient Egyptian, likely due to the introduction of date palm cultivation into North Africa from Egypt. Around a dozen Berber words are probable Phoenician-Punic loanwords, although the overall influence of Phoenician-Punic on Berber languages is negligible. A number of loanwords could be attributed to Phoenician-Punic, Hebrew, or Aramaic. The similar vocabulary between these Semitic languages, as well as Arabic, is a complicating factor in tracing the etymology of certain words.
Words of Latin origin have been introduced into Berber languages over time. Maarten Kossman separates Latin loanwords in Berber languages into those from during the Roman empire ("Latin loans"), from after the fall of the Roman empire ("African Romance loans"), precolonial non-African Romance loans, and colonial and post-colonial Romance loans. It can be difficult to distinguish Latin from African Romance loans. There are about 40 likely Latin or African Romance loanwords in Berber languages, which tend to be agricultural terms, religious terms, terms related to learning, or words for plants or useful objects. Use of these terms varies by language. For example, Tuareg does not retain the Latin agricultural terms, which relate to a form of agriculture not practiced by the Tuareg people. There are some Latin loans that are only known to be used in Shawiya. The Berber calendar uses month names derived from the Julian calendar. Not every language uses every month. For example, Figuig appears to use only eight of the months. These names may be precolonial non-African Romance loans, adopted into Berber languages through Arabic, rather than from Latin directly.
The most influential external language on the lexicon of Berber languages is Arabic. Maarten Kossmann calculates that 0-5% of Ghadames and Awdjila's core vocabularies, and over 15% of Ghomara, Siwa, and Senhadja de Sraïr's core vocabularies, are loans from Arabic. Most other Berber languages loan from 6–15% of their core vocabulary from Arabic. Salem Chaker estimates that Arabic loanwords represent 38% of Kabyle vocabulary, 25% of Tashelhiyt vocabulary, and 5% of Tuareg vocabulary, including non-core words. On the one hand, the words and expressions connected to Islam were borrowed, e.g. Tashlhiyt "bismillah" "in the name of Allah" < Classical Arabic "bi-smi-llāhi", Tuareg "ta-mejjīda" "mosque" (Arabic "masjid"); on the other, Berber adopted cultural concepts such as Kabyle "ssuq" "market" from Arabic "as-sūq", "tamdint" "town" < Arabic "madīna". Even expressions such as the Arabic greeting "as-salāmu ʿalaikum" "Peace be upon you!" were adopted (Tuareg "salāmu ɣlīkum"). Influence on other languages. The Berber languages have influenced local Arabic dialects in the Maghreb. Although Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, it contains a few Berber loanwords which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic. Their influence is also seen in some languages in West Africa. F. W. H. Migeod pointed to strong resemblances between Berber and Hausa in such words and phrases as these:
In addition he notes that the genitive in both languages is formed with n = "of" (though likely a common inheritance from Proto-Afro-Asiatic; cf. A.Eg genitive "n"). Extinct languages. A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afro-Asiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afro-Asiatic languages. Additionally, historical linguistics indicate that the Guanche language, which was spoken on the Canary Islands by the ancient Guanches, likely belonged to the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.
Bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor. Bankrupt is not the only legal status that an insolvent person may have, meaning the term "bankruptcy" is not a synonym for insolvency. Etymology. The word "bankruptcy" is derived from Italian , literally meaning . The term is often described as having originated in Renaissance Italy, where there allegedly existed the tradition of smashing a banker's bench if he defaulted on payment. However, the existence of such a ritual is doubted. History. In Ancient Greece, bankruptcy did not exist. If a man owed and he could not pay, he and his wife, children or servants were forced into "debt slavery" until the creditor recouped losses through their physical labour. Many city-states in ancient Greece limited debt slavery to a period of five years; debt slaves had protection of life and limb, which regular slaves did not have. However, servants of the debtor could be retained beyond that deadline by the creditor and were often forced to serve their new lord for a lifetime, usually under significantly harsher conditions. An exception to this rule was Athens, which by the laws of Solon forbade enslavement for debt; as a consequence, most Athenian slaves were foreigners (Greek or otherwise).
The Statute of Bankrupts of 1542 was the first statute under English law dealing with bankruptcy or insolvency. Bankruptcy is also documented in East Asia. According to al-Maqrizi, the Yassa of Genghis Khan contained a provision that mandated the death penalty for anyone who became bankrupt three times. A failure of a nation to meet bond repayments has been seen on many occasions. In a similar way, Philip II of Spain had to declare four state bankruptcies in 1557, 1560, 1575 and 1596. According to Kenneth S. Rogoff, "Although the development of international capital markets was quite limited prior to 1800, we nevertheless catalog the various defaults of France, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, and the early Italian city-states. At the edge of Europe, Egypt, Russia, and Turkey have histories of chronic default as well." Modern law and debt restructuring. The principal focus of modern insolvency legislation and business debt restructuring practices no longer rests on the elimination of insolvent entities, but on the remodeling of the financial and organizational structure of debtors experiencing financial distress so as to permit the rehabilitation and continuation of the business.
For private households, it is important to assess the underlying problems and to minimize the risk of financial distress to recur. It has been stressed that debt advice, a supervised rehabilitation period, financial education and social help to find sources of income and to improve the management of household expenditures must be equally provided during this period of rehabilitation (Refiner "et al.", 2003; Gerhardt, 2009; Frade, 2010). In most EU member states, debt discharge is conditioned by a partial payment obligation and by a number of requirements concerning the debtor's behavior. In the United States (US), discharge is conditioned to a lesser extent. The spectrum is broad in the EU, with the UK coming closest to the US system (Reifner et al., 2003; Gerhardt, 2009; Frade, 2010). The other member states do not provide the option of a debt discharge. Spain, for example, passed a bankruptcy law () in 2003 which provides for debt settlement plans that can result in a reduction of the debt (maximally half of the amount) or an extension of the payment period of maximally five years (Gerhardt, 2009), but it does not foresee debt discharge.
In the US, it is very difficult to discharge federal or federally guaranteed student loan debt by filing bankruptcy. Unlike most other debts, those student loans may be discharged only if the person seeking discharge establishes specific grounds for discharge under the "Brunner" test, under which the court evaluates three factors: Even if a debtor proves all three elements, a court may permit only a partial discharge of the student loan. Student loan borrowers may benefit from restructuring their payments through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy repayment plan, but few qualify for discharge of part or all of their student loan debt. Fraud. Bankruptcy fraud is a white-collar crime most typically involving concealment of assets by a debtor to avoid liquidation in bankruptcy proceedings. It may include filing of false information, multiple filings in different jurisdictions, bribery, and other acts. While difficult to generalize across jurisdictions, common criminal acts under bankruptcy statutes typically involve concealment of assets, concealment or destruction of documents, conflicts of interest, fraudulent claims, false statements or declarations, and fee fixing or redistribution arrangements. Falsifications on bankruptcy forms often constitute perjury. Multiple filings are not in and of themselves criminal, but they may violate provisions of bankruptcy law. In the U.S., bankruptcy fraud statutes are particularly focused on the mental state of particular actions. Bankruptcy fraud is a federal crime in the United States.