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Reception.
Be did not disclose the number of BeOS users, but it was estimated to be running on between 50,000 and 100,000 computers in 1999, and Release 5 reportedly had over one million downloads. For a time it was viewed as a viable competitor to Mac OS and Windows, but its status as the "alternative operating system" was quickly surpassed by Linux by 1998.
Reception of the operating system was largely positive citing its true and "reliable" multitasking and support for multiple processors. Though its market penetration was low, it gained a niche multimedia userbase and acceptance by the audio community. Consequently, it was styled as a "media OS" due to its well-regarded ability to handle audio and video. BeOS received significant interest in Japan, and was also appealing to Amiga developers and users, who were looking for a newer platform.
BeOS and its successors have been used in media appliances, such as the Edirol DV-7 video editors from Roland Corporation, which run on a modified BeOS and the Tunetracker Radio Automation software that used to run it on BeOS and Zeta, and it was also sold as a "Station-in-a-Box" with the Zeta operating system included. In 2015, Tunetracker released a Haiku distribution bundled with its broadcasting software.
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Legacy.
The Tascam SX-1 digital audio recorder runs a heavily modified version of BeOS that will only launch the recording interface software. The RADAR 24, RADAR V and RADAR 6, hard disk-based, 24-track professional audio recorders from iZ Technology Corporation were based on BeOS 5. Magicbox, a manufacturer of signage and broadcast display machines, uses BeOS to power their Aavelin product line. Final Scratch, a 12-inch vinyl timecode record-driven DJ software and hardware system, was first developed on BeOS. The "ProFS" version was sold to a few dozen DJs prior to the 1.0 release, which ran on a Linux virtual partition.
Spiritual successors.
After BeOS came to an end, Palm created PalmSource which used parts of BeOS's multimedia framework for its failed Palm OS Cobalt product (with the takeover of PalmSource, the BeOS rights were assigned to Access Co.). However, Palm refused the request of BeOS users to license the operating system. As a result, a few projects formed to recreate BeOS or its key elements with the eventual goal of then continuing where Be Inc. quit.
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BeUnited, a BeOS oriented community, converted itself into a nonprofit organization in August 2001 to "define and promote open specifications for the delivery of the Open Standards BeOS-compatible Operating System (OSBOS) platform".
ZETA.
Immediately after Palm's purchase of Be, a German company named yellowTAB started developing Zeta based on the BeOS R5.1 codebase and released it commercially. It was later distributed by magnussoft. During development by yellowTAB, the company received criticism from the BeOS community for refusing to discuss its legal position with regard to the BeOS codebase. Access Co. (which bought PalmSource, until then the holder of the intellectual property associated with BeOS) declared that yellowTAB had no right to distribute a modified version of BeOS, and magnussoft was forced to cease distribution of the operating system in 2007.
Haiku (OpenBeOS).
Haiku is a complete open source reimplementation of BeOS. It was originally named OpenBeOS and its first release in 2002 was a community update. Unlike Cosmoe and BlueEyedOS, it is directly compatible with BeOS applications. It is open source software. As of 2024, it was the only BeOS clone still under development, with the fifth beta in September 2024 still keeping BeOS 5 compatibility in its x86 32-bit images, with an increased number of ported modern drivers and GTK apps.
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Others.
BlueEyedOS tried to create a system under LGPL based on the Linux kernel and an X server that is compatible with BeOS. Work began under the name BlueOS in 2001 and a demo CD was released in 2003. The project was discontinued in February 2005.
Cosmoe, with an interface like BeOS, was designed by Bill Hayden as an open source operating system based on the source code of AtheOS and later OpenBeOS, but using the Linux kernel. ZevenOS was designed to continue where Cosmoe left off. In mid 2024, Cosmoe was resurrected by its original author after 17 years, with a much improved codebase based on contemporary Haiku.
BeFree started in 2003, initially developed under FreeBSD and later Linux. |
Biome
A biome () is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. In 1935, Tansley added the climatic and soil aspects to the idea, calling it "ecosystem". The International Biological Program (1964–74) projects popularized the concept of biome.
However, in some contexts, the term "biome" is used in a different manner. In German literature, particularly in the Walter terminology, the term is used similarly as "biotope" (a concrete geographical unit), while the biome definition used in this article is used as an international, non-regional, terminology—irrespectively of the continent in which an area is present, it takes the same biome name—and corresponds to his "zonobiome", "orobiome" and "pedobiome" (biomes determined by climate zone, altitude or soil).
In the Brazilian literature, the term "biome" is sometimes used as a synonym of "biogeographic province", an area based on species composition (the term "floristic province" being used when plant species are considered), or also as synonym of the "morphoclimatic and phytogeographical domain" of Ab'Sáber, a geographic space with subcontinental dimensions, with the predominance of similar geomorphologic and climatic characteristics, and of a certain vegetation form. Both include many biomes in fact.
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Classifications.
To divide the world into a few ecological zones is difficult, notably because of the small-scale variations that exist everywhere on earth and because of the gradual changeover from one biome to the other. Their boundaries must therefore be drawn arbitrarily and their characterization made according to the average conditions that predominate in them.
A 1978 study on North American grasslands found a positive logistic correlation between evapotranspiration in mm/yr and above-ground net primary production in g/m2/yr. The general results from the study were that precipitation and water use led to above-ground primary production, while solar irradiation and temperature lead to below-ground primary production (roots), and temperature and water lead to cool and warm season growth habit. These findings help explain the categories used in Holdridge's bioclassification scheme (see below), which were then later simplified by Whittaker. The number of classification schemes and the variety of determinants used in those schemes, however, should be taken as strong indicators that biomes do not fit perfectly into the classification schemes created.
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Holdridge (1947, 1964) life zones.
In 1947, the American botanist and climatologist Leslie Holdridge classified climates based on the biological effects of temperature and rainfall on vegetation under the assumption that these two abiotic factors are the largest determinants of the types of vegetation found in a habitat. Holdridge uses the four axes to define 30 so-called "humidity provinces", which are clearly visible in his diagram. While this scheme largely ignores soil and sun exposure, Holdridge acknowledged that these were important.
Allee (1949) biome-types.
The principal biome-types by Allee (1949):
Kendeigh (1961) biomes.
The principal biomes of the world by Kendeigh (1961):
Whittaker (1962, 1970, 1975) biome-types.
Whittaker classified biomes using two abiotic factors: precipitation and temperature. His scheme can be seen as a simplification of Holdridge's; more readily accessible, but missing Holdridge's greater specificity.
Whittaker based his approach on theoretical assertions and empirical sampling. He had previously compiled a review of biome classifications.
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Key definitions for understanding Whittaker's scheme.
Whittaker's distinction between biome and formation can be simplified: formation is used when applied to plant communities only, while biome is used when concerned with both plants and animals. Whittaker's convention of biome-type or formation-type is a broader method to categorize similar communities.
Whittaker's parameters for classifying biome-types.
Whittaker used what he called "gradient analysis" of ecocline patterns to relate communities to climate on a worldwide scale. Whittaker considered four main ecoclines in the terrestrial realm.
Along these gradients, Whittaker noted several trends that allowed him to qualitatively establish biome-types:
Whittaker summed the effects of gradients (3) and (4) to get an overall temperature gradient and combined this with a gradient (2), the moisture gradient, to express the above conclusions in what is known as the Whittaker classification scheme. The scheme graphs average annual precipitation (x-axis) versus average annual temperature (y-axis) to classify biome-types.
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Goodall (1974–) ecosystem types.
The multi-authored series "Ecosystems of the World", edited by David W. Goodall, provides a comprehensive coverage of the major "ecosystem types or biomes" on Earth:
Walter (1976, 2002) zonobiomes.
The eponymously named Heinrich Walter classification scheme considers the seasonality of temperature and precipitation. The system, also assessing precipitation and temperature, finds nine major biome types, with the important climate traits and vegetation types. The boundaries of each biome correlate to the conditions of moisture and cold stress that are strong determinants of plant form, and therefore the vegetation that defines the region. Extreme conditions, such as flooding in a swamp, can create different kinds of communities within the same biome.
Schultz (1988) eco-zones.
Schultz (1988, 2005) defined nine "ecozones" (his concept of ecozone is more similar to the concept of biome than to the concept of ecozone of BBC):
Bailey (1989) ecoregions.
Robert G. Bailey nearly developed a biogeographical classification system of ecoregions for the United States in a map published in 1976. He subsequently expanded the system to include the rest of North America in 1981, and the world in 1989. The Bailey system, based on climate, is divided into four domains (polar, humid temperate, dry, and humid tropical), with further divisions based on other climate characteristics (subarctic, warm temperate, hot temperate, and subtropical; marine and continental; lowland and mountain).
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Olson & Dinerstein (1998) biomes for WWF / Global 200.
A team of biologists convened by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) developed a scheme that divided the world's land area into biogeographic realms (called "ecozones" in a BBC scheme), and these into ecoregions (Olson & Dinerstein, 1998, etc.). Each ecoregion is characterized by a main biome (also called major habitat type).
This classification is used to define the Global 200 list of ecoregions identified by the WWF as priorities for conservation.
For the terrestrial ecoregions, there is a specific EcoID, format XXnnNN (XX is the biogeographic realm, nn is the biome number, NN is the individual number).
Biogeographic realms (terrestrial and freshwater).
The applicability of the realms scheme above - based on Udvardy (1975)—to most freshwater taxa is unresolved.
Biomes (freshwater).
According to the WWF, the following are classified as freshwater biomes:
Biomes (marine).
Biomes of the coastal and continental shelf areas (neritic zone):
Summary of the scheme.
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Example:
Other biomes.
Marine biomes.
Pruvot (1896) zones or "systems":
Longhurst (1998) biomes:
Other marine habitat types (not covered yet by the Global 200/WWF scheme):
Anthropogenic biomes.
Humans have altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. As a result, vegetation forms predicted by conventional biome systems can no longer be observed across much of Earth's land surface as they have been replaced by crops and rangelands or cities. Anthropogenic biomes provide an alternative view of the terrestrial biosphere based on global patterns of sustained direct human interaction with ecosystems, including agriculture, human settlements, urbanization, forestry and other uses of land. Anthropogenic biomes offer a way to recognize the irreversible coupling of human and ecological systems at global scales and manage Earth's biosphere and anthropogenic biomes.
Major anthropogenic biomes:
Microbial biomes.
Endolithic biomes.
The endolithic biome, consisting entirely of microscopic life in rock pores and cracks, kilometers beneath the surface, has only recently been discovered, and does not fit well into most classification schemes.
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Effects of climate change.
Anthropogenic climate change has the potential to greatly alter the distribution of Earth's biomes. Meaning, biomes around the world could change so much that they would be at risk of becoming new biomes entirely. More specifically, between 54% and 22% of global land area will experience climates that correspond to other biomes. 3.6% of land area will experience climates that are completely new or unusual. An example of a biome shift is woody plant encroachment, which can change grass savanna into shrub savanna.
Average temperatures have risen more than twice the usual amount in both arctic and mountainous biomes, which leads to the conclusion that arctic and mountainous biomes are currently the most vulnerable to climate change. South American terrestrial biomes have been predicted to go through the same temperature trends as arctic and mountainous biomes. With its annual average temperature continuing to increase, the moisture currently located in forest biomes will dry up. |
Behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. While some behavior is produced in response to an organism's environment (extrinsic motivation), behavior can also be the product of intrinsic motivation, also referred to as "agency" or "free will".
Taking a behavior informatics perspective, a behavior consists of actor, operation, interactions, and their properties. This can be represented as a behavior vector.
Models.
Biology.
Definition.
Behavior may be defined as "the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal or external stimuli".
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A broader definition of behavior, applicable to plants and other organisms, is similar to the concept of phenotypic plasticity. It describes behavior as a response to an event or environment change during the course of the lifetime of an individual, differing from other physiological or biochemical changes that occur more rapidly, and excluding changes that are a result of development (ontogeny).
Behaviour can be regarded as any action of an organism that changes its relationship to its environment. Behavior provides outputs from the organism to the environment.
Determination by genetics or the environment.
Behaviors can be either innate or learned from the environment, or both, dependent on the organism. The more complex nervous systems (or brains) are, the more influence learning has on behavior. However, even in mammals, a large fraction of behavior is genetically determined. For instance, prairie voles tend to be monogamous while, while meadow voles are more promiscuous, a difference that is strongly determined by a single gene, Avpr1a, encoding a receptor for the peptide hormone Vasopressin.
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Human behavior.
The endocrine system and the nervous system likely influence human behavior. Complexity in the behavior of an organism may be correlated to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with more complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior.
Animal behavior.
Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, usually with a focus on behavior under natural conditions, and viewing behavior as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviorism is a term that also describes the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, usually referring to measured responses to stimuli or trained behavioral responses in a laboratory context, without a particular emphasis on evolutionary adaptivity.
Consumer behavior.
Consumers behavior.
Consumer behavior involves the processes consumers go through, and reactions they have towards products or services. It has to do with consumption, and the processes consumers go through around purchasing and consuming goods and services. Consumers recognize needs or wants, and go through a process to satisfy these needs. Consumer behavior is the process they go through as customers, which includes types of products purchased, amount spent, frequency of purchases and what influences them to make the purchase decision or not.
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Circumstances that influence consumer behaviour are varied, with contributions from both internal and external factors. Internal factors include attitudes, needs, motives, preferences and perceptual processes, whilst external factors include marketing activities, social and economic factors, and cultural aspects. Doctor Lars Perner of the University of Southern California claims that there are also physical factors that influence consumer behavior, for example, if a consumer is hungry, then this physical feeling of hunger will influence them so that they go and purchase a sandwich to satisfy the hunger.
Consumer decision making.
Lars Perner presents a model that outlines the decision-making process involved in consumer behaviour. The process initiates with the identification of a problem, wherein the consumer acknowledges an unsatisfied need or desire. Subsequently, the consumer proceeds to seek information, whereas for low-involvement products, the search tends to rely on internal resources, retrieving alternatives from memory. Conversely, for high-involvement products, the search is typically more extensive, involving activities like reviewing reports, reading reviews, or seeking recommendations from friends.
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The consumer will then evaluate his or her alternatives, comparing price, and quality, doing trade-offs between products, and narrowing down the choice by eliminating the less appealing products until there is one left. After this has been identified, the consumer will purchase the product.
Finally, the consumer will evaluate the purchase decision, and the purchased product, bringing in factors such as value for money, quality of goods, and purchase experience. However, this logical process does not always happen this way, people are emotional and irrational creatures. People make decisions with emotion and then justify them with logic according to Robert Cialdini Ph.D. Psychology.
How the 4P's influence consumer behavior.
The Marketing mix (4 P's) are a marketing tool and stand for Price, Promotion, Product, and Placement.
Due to the significant impact of business-to-consumer marketing on consumer behavior, the four elements of the marketing mix, known as the 4 P's (product, price, place, and promotion), exert a notable influence on consumer behavior. The price of a good or service is largely determined by the market, as businesses will set their prices to be similar to that of other businesses so as to remain competitive whilst making a profit. When market prices for a product are high, it will cause consumers to purchase less and use purchased goods for longer periods of time, meaning they are purchasing the product less often. Alternatively, when market prices for a product are low, consumers are more likely to purchase more of the product, and more often.
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The way that promotion influences consumer behavior has changed over time. In the past, large promotional campaigns and heavy advertising would convert into sales for a business, but nowadays businesses can have success on products with little or no advertising. This is due to the Internet and in particular social media. They rely on word of mouth from consumers using social media, and as products trend online, so sales increase as products effectively promote themselves. Thus, promotion by businesses does not necessarily result in consumer behavior trending towards purchasing products.
The way that product influences consumer behavior is through consumer willingness to pay, and consumer preferences. This means that even if a company were to have a long history of products in the market, consumers will still pick a cheaper product over the company in question's product if it means they will pay less for something that is very similar. This is due to consumer willingness to pay, or their willingness to part with the money they have earned. The product also influences consumer behavior through customer preferences. For example, take Pepsi vs Coca-Cola, a Pepsi-drinker is less likely to purchase Coca-Cola, even if it is cheaper and more convenient. This is due to the preference of the consumer, and no matter how hard the opposing company tries they will not be able to force the customer to change their mind.
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Product placement in the modern era has little influence on consumer behavior, due to the availability of goods online. If a customer can purchase a good from the comfort of their home instead of purchasing in-store, then the placement of products is not going to influence their purchase decision.
In management.
Organizational.
In management, behaviors are associated with desired or undesired focuses. Managers generally note what the desired outcome is, but behavioral patterns can take over. These patterns are the reference to how often the desired behavior actually occurs. Before a behavior actually occurs, antecedents focus on the stimuli that influence the behavior that is about to happen. After the behavior occurs, consequences fall into place. Consequences consist of rewards or punishments.
Social behavior.
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when one gives, one will receive the same. This behavior can be affected by both the qualities of the individual and the environmental (situational) factors. Therefore, social behavior arises as a result of an interaction between the two—the organism and its environment. This means that, in regards to humans, social behavior can be determined by both the individual characteristics of the person, and the situation they are in.
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Behavior informatics.
Behavior informatics also called behavior computing, explores behavior intelligence and behavior insights from the informatics and computing perspectives.
Different from applied behavior analysis from the psychological perspective, BI builds computational theories, systems and tools to qualitatively and quantitatively model, represent, analyze, and manage behaviors of individuals, groups and/or organizations.
Health.
Health behavior refers to a person's beliefs and actions regarding their health and well-being. Health behaviors are direct factors in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Health behaviors are influenced by the social, cultural, and physical environments in which we live. They are shaped by individual choices and external constraints. Positive behaviors help promote health and prevent disease, while the opposite is true for risk behaviors. Health behaviors are early indicators of population health. Because of the time lag that often occurs between certain behaviors and the development of disease, these indicators may foreshadow the future burdens and benefits of health-risk and health-promoting behaviors.
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Correlates.
A variety of studies have examined the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes (e.g., Blaxter 1990) and have demonstrated their role in both morbidity and mortality.
These studies have identified seven features of lifestyle which were associated with lower morbidity and higher subsequent long-term survival (Belloc and Breslow 1972):
Health behaviors impact upon individuals' quality of life, by delaying the onset of chronic disease and extending active lifespan. Smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, gaps in primary care services and low screening uptake are all significant determinants of poor health, and changing such behaviors should lead to improved health.
For example, in US, Healthy People 2000, United States Department of Health and Human Services, lists increased physical activity, changes in nutrition and reductions in tobacco, alcohol and drug use as important for health promotion and disease prevention.
Treatment approach.
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Battle of Marathon
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia under King Darius I to subjugate Greece. The Greek army inflicted a crushing defeat on the more numerous Persians, marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.
The first Persian invasion was a response to Athenian involvement in the Ionian Revolt, when Athens and Eretria sent a force to support the cities of Ionia in their attempt to overthrow Persian rule. The Athenians and Eretrians had succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis, but they were then forced to retreat with heavy losses. In response to this raid, Darius swore to burn down Athens and Eretria. According to Herodotus, Darius had his bow brought to him and then shot an arrow "upwards towards heaven", saying as he did so: "Zeus, that it may be granted me to take vengeance upon the Athenians!" Herodotus further writes that Darius charged one of his servants to say "Master, remember the Athenians" three times before dinner each day.
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At the time of the battle, Sparta and Athens were the two largest city-states in Greece. Once the Ionian revolt was finally crushed by the Persian victory at the Battle of Lade in 494 BC, Darius began plans to subjugate Greece. In 490 BC, he sent a naval task force under Datis and Artaphernes across the Aegean, to subjugate the Cyclades, and then to make punitive attacks on Athens and Eretria. Reaching Euboea in mid-summer after a successful campaign in the Aegean, the Persians proceeded to besiege and capture Eretria. The Persian force then sailed for Attica, landing in the bay near the town of Marathon. The Athenians, joined by a small force from Plataea, marched to Marathon, and succeeded in blocking the two exits from the plain of Marathon. The Athenians also sent a message to the Spartans asking for support. When the messenger arrived in Sparta, the Spartans were involved in a religious festival and gave this as a reason for not coming to help the Athenians.
The Athenians and their allies chose a location for the battle, with marshes and mountainous terrain, that prevented the Persian cavalry from joining the Persian infantry. Miltiades, the Athenian general, ordered a general attack against the Persian forces, composed primarily of missile troops. He reinforced his flanks, luring the Persians' best fighters into his center. The inward wheeling flanks enveloped the Persians, routing them. The Persian army broke in panic towards their ships, and large numbers were slaughtered. The defeat at Marathon marked the end of the first Persian invasion of Greece, and the Persian force retreated to Asia. Darius then began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition. After Darius died, his son Xerxes I restarted the preparations for a second invasion of Greece, which finally began in 480 BC.
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The Battle of Marathon was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten; the eventual Greek triumph in these wars can be seen to have begun at Marathon. The battle also showed the Greeks that they were able to win battles without the Spartans, as Sparta was seen as the major military force in Greece. This victory was overwhelmingly won by the Athenians, and Marathon raised Greek esteem of them. The following two hundred years saw the rise of the Classical Greek civilization, which has been enduringly influential in Western society, and so the Battle of Marathon is often seen as a pivotal moment in Mediterranean and European history, and is often celebrated today.
Background.
The first Persian invasion of Greece had its immediate roots in the Ionian Revolt, the earliest phase of the Greco-Persian Wars. However, it was also the result of the longer-term interaction between the Greeks and Persians. In 500 BC the Persian Empire was still relatively young and highly expansionistic, but prone to revolts amongst its subject peoples. Moreover, the Persian King Darius was a usurper, and had spent considerable time extinguishing revolts against his rule. Even before the Ionian Revolt, Darius had begun to expand the empire into Europe, subjugating Thrace, and forcing Macedon to become a vassal of Persia. Attempts at further expansion into the politically fractious world of ancient Greece may have been inevitable. However, the Ionian Revolt had directly threatened the integrity of the Persian empire, and the states of mainland Greece remained a potential menace to its future stability. Darius thus resolved to subjugate and pacify Greece and the Aegean, and to punish those involved in the Ionian Revolt.
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The Ionian Revolt had begun with an unsuccessful expedition against Naxos, a joint venture between the Persian satrap Artaphernes and the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras. In the aftermath, Artaphernes decided to remove Aristagoras from power, but before he could do so, Aristagoras abdicated, and declared Miletus a democracy. The other Ionian cities followed suit, ejecting their Persian-appointed tyrants, and declaring themselves democracies. Aristagoras then appealed to the states of mainland Greece for support, but only Athens and Eretria offered to send troops.
The involvement of Athens in the Ionian Revolt arose from a complex set of circumstances, beginning with the establishment of the Athenian Democracy in the late 6th century BC.
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Cleomenes was not pleased with events, and marched on Athens with the Spartan army. Cleomenes's attempts to restore Isagoras to Athens ended in a debacle, but fearing the worst, the Athenians had by this point already sent an embassy to Artaphernes in Sardis, to request aid from the Persian empire. Artaphernes requested that the Athenians give him an 'earth and water', a traditional token of submission, to which the Athenian ambassadors acquiesced. They were, however, severely censured for this when they returned to Athens. At some later point Cleomenes instigated a plot to restore Hippias to the rule of Athens. This failed and Hippias again fled to Sardis and tried to persuade the Persians to subjugate Athens. The Athenians dispatched ambassadors to Artaphernes to dissuade him from taking action, but Artaphernes merely instructed the Athenians to take Hippias back as tyrant. The Athenians indignantly declined, and instead resolved to open war with Persia. Having thus become the enemy of Persia, Athens was already in a position to support the Ionian cities when they began their revolt. The fact that the Ionian democracies were inspired by the example the Athenians had set no doubt further persuaded the Athenians to support the Ionian Revolt, especially since the cities of Ionia were originally Athenian colonies.
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The Athenians and Eretrians sent a task force of 25 triremes to Asia Minor to aid the revolt. Whilst there, the Greek army surprised and outmaneuvered Artaphernes, marching to Sardis and burning the lower city. This was, however, as much as the Greeks achieved, and they were then repelled and pursued back to the coast by Persian horsemen, losing many men in the process. Despite the fact that their actions were ultimately fruitless, the Eretrians and in particular the Athenians had earned Darius's lasting enmity, and he vowed to punish both cities. The Persian naval victory at the Battle of Lade (494 BC) all but ended the Ionian Revolt, and by 493 BC, the last hold-outs were vanquished by the Persian fleet. The revolt was used as an opportunity by Darius to extend the empire's border to the islands of the eastern Aegean and the Propontis, which had not been part of the Persian dominions before. The pacification of Ionia allowed the Persians to begin planning their next moves; to extinguish the threat to the empire from Greece and to punish Athens and Eretria.
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In 492 BC, after the Ionian Revolt had finally been crushed, Darius dispatched an to Greece under the command of his son-in-law, Mardonius. Mardonius re-subjugated Thrace and made Macedonia fully subordinate to the Persians; it had been a vassal of the Persians since the late 6th century BC, but retained its general autonomy. Not long after, however, his fleet was wrecked by a violent storm, which brought a premature end to the campaign.
However, in 490 BC, following the successes of the previous campaign, Darius decided to send a maritime expedition led by Artaphernes (son of the satrap to whom Hippias had fled) and Datis, a Median admiral. Mardonius had been injured in the prior campaign and had fallen out of favor. The was intended to bring the Cyclades into the Persian empire, to punish Naxos (which had resisted a Persian assault in 499 BC) and then to head to Greece to force Eretria and Athens to submit to Darius or be destroyed. After island-hopping across the Aegean, including successfully attacking Naxos, the Persian force arrived off Euboea in mid summer. The Persians then proceeded to besiege, capture, and burn Eretria. They then headed south down the coast of Attica, to complete the final objective of the campaign—punish Athens.
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Prelude.
The Persians sailed down the coast of Attica, and landed at the bay of Marathon, about northeast of Athens, on the advice of the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias (who had accompanied the expedition). Under the guidance of Miltiades, the Athenian general with the greatest experience of fighting the Persians, the Athenian army marched quickly to block the two exits from the plain of Marathon, and prevent the Persians moving inland. At the same time, Athens's greatest runner, Pheidippides (or Philippides in some accounts) had been sent to Sparta to request that the Spartan army march to the aid of Athens. Pheidippides arrived during the festival of Carneia, a sacrosanct period of peace, and was informed that the Spartan army could not march to war until the full moon rose; Athens could not expect reinforcement for at least ten days. The Athenians would have to hold out at Marathon for the time being, although they were reinforced by the full muster of 1,000 hoplites from the small city of Plataea, a gesture which did much to steady the nerves of the Athenians and won unending Athenian gratitude to Plataea.
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For approximately five days the armies therefore confronted each other across the plain of Marathon in stalemate. The flanks of the Athenian camp were protected by either a grove of trees or an "abbatis" of stakes (depending on the exact reading). Since every day brought the arrival of the Spartans closer, the delay worked in favor of the Athenians. There were ten Athenian "strategoi" (generals) at Marathon, elected by each of the ten tribes that the Athenians were divided into; Miltiades was one of these. In addition, in overall charge, was the War-Archon (polemarch), Callimachus, who had been elected by the whole citizen body. Herodotus suggests that command rotated between the "strategoi", each taking in turn a day to command the army. He further suggests that each "strategos", on his day in command, instead deferred to Miltiades. In Herodotus's account, Miltiades is keen to attack the Persians (despite knowing that the Spartans are coming to aid the Athenians), but strangely, chooses to wait until his actual day of command to attack. This passage is undoubtedly problematic; the Athenians had little to gain by attacking before the Spartans arrived, and there is no real evidence of this rotating generalship. There does, however, seem to have been a delay between the Athenian arrival at Marathon and the battle; Herodotus, who evidently believed that Miltiades was eager to attack, may have made a mistake while seeking to explain this delay.
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As is discussed below, the reason for the delay was probably simply that neither the Athenians nor the Persians were willing to risk battle initially. This then raises the question of why the battle occurred when it did. Herodotus explicitly tells us that the Greeks attacked the Persians (and the other sources confirm this), but it is not clear why they did this before the arrival of the Spartans. There are two main theories to explain this.
The first theory is that the Persian cavalry left Marathon for an unspecified reason, and that the Greeks moved to take advantage of this by attacking. This theory is based on the absence of any mention of cavalry in Herodotus' account of the battle, and an entry in the "Suda" dictionary. The entry "χωρίς ἱππέων" ("without cavalry") is explained thus: The cavalry left. When Datis surrendered and was ready for retreat, the Ionians climbed the trees and gave the Athenians the signal that the cavalry had left. And when Miltiades realized that, he attacked and thus won. From there comes the above-mentioned quote, which is used when someone breaks ranks before battle. There are many variations of this theory, but perhaps the most prevalent is that the cavalry were completing the time-consuming process of re-embarking on the ships, and were to be sent by sea to attack (undefended) Athens in the rear, whilst the rest of the Persians pinned down the Athenian army at Marathon. This theory therefore utilises Herodotus' suggestion that after Marathon, the Persian army began to re-embark, intending to sail around Cape Sounion to attack Athens directly. Thus, this re-embarcation would have occurred "before" the battle (and indeed have triggered the battle).
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The second theory is simply that the battle occurred because the Persians finally moved to attack the Athenians. Although this theory has the Persians moving to the "strategic" offensive, this can be reconciled with the traditional account of the Athenians attacking the Persians by assuming that, seeing the Persians advancing, the Athenians took the "tactical" offensive, and attacked them. Obviously, it cannot be firmly established which theory (if either) is correct. However, both theories imply that there was some kind of Persian activity which occurred on or about the fifth day which ultimately triggered the battle. It is also possible that both theories are correct: when the Persians sent the cavalry by ship to attack Athens, they simultaneously sent their infantry to attack at Marathon, triggering the Greek counterattack.
Date of the battle.
Herodotus mentions for several events a date in the lunisolar calendar, of which each Greek city-state used a variant. Astronomical computation allows us to derive an absolute date in the proleptic Julian calendar which is much used by historians as the chronological frame. Philipp August Böckh in 1855 concluded that the battle took place on September 12, 490 BC in the Julian calendar, and this is the conventionally accepted date. However, this depends on when exactly the Spartans held their festival and it is possible that the Spartan calendar was one month ahead of that of Athens. In that case the battle took place on August 12, 490 BC.
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Opposing forces.
Athenians.
Herodotus does not give a figure for the size of the Athenian army. However, Cornelius Nepos, Pausanias and Plutarch all give the figure of 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans; while Justin suggests that there were 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans. These numbers are highly comparable to the number of troops Herodotus says that the Athenians and Plataeans sent to the Battle of Plataea 11 years later. Pausanias noticed on the monument to the battle the names of former slaves who were freed in exchange for military services. Modern historians generally accept these numbers as reasonable. The areas ruled by Athens (Attica) had a population of 315,000 at this time including slaves, which implies the full Athenian army at the times of both Marathon and Plataea numbered about 3% of the population.
Persians.
According to Herodotus, the fleet sent by Darius consisted of 600 triremes. Herodotus does not estimate the size of the Persian army, only saying that they were a "large infantry that was well packed". Among ancient sources, the poet Simonides, another near-contemporary, says the campaign force numbered 200,000; while a later writer, the Roman Cornelius Nepos estimates 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, of which only 100,000 fought in the battle, while the rest were loaded into the fleet that was rounding Cape Sounion; Plutarch and Pausanias both independently give 300,000, as does the Suda dictionary. Plato and Lysias give 500,000; and Justinus 600,000.
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Modern historians have proposed wide-ranging numbers for the infantry, from 20,000 to 100,000 with a consensus of perhaps 25,000; estimates for the cavalry are in the range of 1,000.
The fleet included various contingents from different parts of the Achaemenid Empire, particularly Ionians and Aeolians, although they are not mentioned as participating directly to the battle and may have remained on the ships:
Regarding the ethnicities involved in the battle, Herodotus specifically mentions the presence of the Persians and the Sakae at the center of the Achaemenid line:
Strategic and tactical considerations.
From a strategic point of view, the Athenians had some disadvantages at Marathon. In order to face the Persians in battle, the Athenians had to summon all available hoplites; even then they were still probably outnumbered at least 2 to 1. Furthermore, raising such a large army had denuded Athens of defenders, and thus any secondary attack in the Athenian rear would cut the army off from the city; and any direct attack on the city could not be defended against. Still further, defeat at Marathon would mean the complete defeat of Athens, since no other Athenian army existed. The Athenian strategy was therefore to keep the Persian army pinned down at Marathon, blocking both exits from the plain, and thus preventing themselves from being outmaneuvered. However, these disadvantages were balanced by some advantages. The Athenians initially had no need to seek battle, since they had managed to confine the Persians to the plain of Marathon. Furthermore, time worked in their favour, as every day brought the arrival of the Spartans closer. Having everything to lose by attacking, and much to gain by waiting, the Athenians remained on the defensive in the run up to the battle. Tactically, hoplites were vulnerable to attacks by cavalry, and since the Persians had substantial numbers of cavalry, this made any offensive maneuver by the Athenians even more of a risk, and thus reinforced the defensive strategy of the Athenians.
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The Persian strategy, in contrast, was probably principally determined by tactical considerations. The Persian infantry was evidently lightly armoured, and no match for hoplites in a head-on confrontation (as would be demonstrated at the later battles of Thermopylae and Plataea.) Since the Athenians seem to have taken up a strong defensive position at Marathon, the Persian hesitance was probably a reluctance to attack the Athenians head-on. The camp of the Athenians was located on a spur of mount Agrieliki next to the plain of Marathon; remains of its fortifications are still visible.
Whatever event eventually triggered the battle, it obviously altered the strategic or tactical balance sufficiently to induce the Athenians to attack the Persians. If the first theory is correct (see above), then the absence of cavalry removed the main Athenian tactical disadvantage, and the threat of being outflanked made it imperative to attack. But if the second theory is correct, then the Athenians were merely reacting to the Persians attacking them. Since the Persian force obviously contained a high proportion of missile troops, a static defensive position would have made little sense for the Athenians; the strength of the hoplite was in the melee, and the sooner that could be brought about, the better, from the Athenian point of view. If the second theory is correct, this raises the further question of why the Persians, having hesitated for several days, then attacked. There may have been several strategic reasons for this; perhaps they were aware (or suspected) that the Athenians were expecting reinforcements. Alternatively, they may have felt the need to force some kind of victory—they could hardly remain at Marathon indefinitely.
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Battle.
First phase: the two armies form their lines.
The distance between the two armies at the point of battle had narrowed to "a distance not less than 8 stadia" or about 1,500 meters. Miltiades ordered the two tribes forming the center of the Greek formation, the Leontis tribe led by Themistocles and the Antiochis tribe led by Aristides, to be arranged in the depth of four ranks while the rest of the tribes at their flanks were in ranks of eight. Some modern commentators have suggested this was a deliberate ploy to encourage a double envelopment of the Persian centre. However, this suggests a level of training that the Greeks are thought not to have possessed. There is little evidence for any such tactical thinking in Greek battles until Leuctra in 371 BC. It is therefore possible that this arrangement was made, perhaps at the last moment, so that the Athenian line was as long as the Persian line, and would not therefore be outflanked.
Second phase: the Greeks attack and the lines make contact.
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Fourth phase: the Persian wings collapse.
The Athenian wings quickly routed the inferior Persian levies on the flanks, before turning inwards to surround the Persian centre, which had been more successful against the thin Greek centre.
Fifth phase: the Persians are routed and retreat to their ships.
The battle ended when the Persian centre then broke in panic towards their ships, pursued by the Greeks. Some, unaware of the local terrain, ran towards the swamps where unknown numbers drowned. The Athenians pursued the Persians back to their ships, and managed to capture seven ships, though the majority were able to launch successfully. Herodotus recounts the story that Cynaegirus, brother of the playwright Aeschylus, who was also among the fighters, charged into the sea, grabbed one Persian trireme, and started pulling it towards shore. A member of the crew saw him, cut off his hand, and Cynaegirus died.
Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield, and it is unknown how many more perished in the swamps. He also reported that the Athenians lost 192 men and the Plataeans 11. Among the dead were the war archon Callimachus and the general Stesilaos.
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Conclusions.
There are several explanations of the Greek success. Most scholars believe that the Greeks had better equipment and used superior tactics. According to Herodotus, the Greeks were better equipped. They did not use bronze upper body armour at this time, but that of leather or linen. The phalanx formation proved successful, because the hoplites had a long tradition in hand-to-hand combat, whereas the Persian soldiers were accustomed to a very different kind of conflict. At Marathon, the Athenians thinned their centre in order to make their army equal in length to the Persian army, not as a result of a tactical planning. It seems that the Persian centre tried to return, realizing that their wings had broken, and was caught in the flanks by the victorious Greek wings. Lazenby (1993) believes that the ultimate reason for the Greek success was the courage the Greeks displayed:
Marathon was won because ordinary, amateur soldiers found the courage to break into a trot when the arrows began to fall, instead of grinding to a halt, and when surprisingly the enemy wings fled, not to take the easy way out and follow them, but to stop and somehow come to the aid of the hard pressured centre.
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According to Vic Hurley, the Persian defeat is explained by the "complete failure ... to field a representative army", calling the battle the "most convincing" example of the fact that infantry-bowmen cannot defend any position while stationed in close-quarters and unsupported (i.e. by fortifications, or failing to support them by cavalry and chariots, as was the common Persian tactic).
Aftermath.
In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Herodotus says that the Persian fleet sailed around Cape Sounion to attack Athens directly. As has been discussed above, some modern historians place this attempt just before the battle. Either way, the Athenians evidently realised that their city was still under threat, and marched as quickly as possible back to Athens.
The two tribes which had been in the centre of the Athenian line stayed to guard the battlefield under the command of Aristides. The Athenians arrived in time to prevent the Persians from securing a landing, and seeing that the opportunity was lost, the Persians turned about and returned to Asia. Connected with this episode, Herodotus recounts a rumour that this manoeuver by the Persians had been planned in conjunction with the Alcmaeonids, the prominent Athenian aristocratic family, and that a "shield-signal" had been given after the battle. Although many interpretations of this have been offered, it is impossible to tell whether this was true, and if so, what exactly the signal meant. On the next day, the Spartan army arrived at Marathon, having covered the in only three days. The Spartans toured the battlefield at Marathon, and agreed that the Athenians had won a great victory.
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The Athenian and Plataean dead of Marathon were buried on the battlefield in two tumuli. On the tomb of the Athenians this epigram composed by Simonides was written:
Meanwhile, Darius began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition. Darius then died whilst preparing to march on Egypt, and the throne of Persia passed to his son Xerxes I. Xerxes crushed the Egyptian revolt, and very quickly restarted the preparations for the invasion of Greece. The epic second Persian invasion of Greece finally began in 480 BC, and the Persians met with initial success at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium. Defeat at the Battle of Salamis happened after Xerxes burnt Athens to the ground after Athenians left the city, and the next year the expedition was ended by the decisive Greek victory at the Battle of Plataea.
Significance.
The defeat at Marathon barely touched the vast resources of the Persian empire, yet for the Greeks it was an enormously significant victory. It was the first time the Greeks had beaten the Persians, proving that the Persians were not invincible, and that resistance, rather than subjugation, was possible.
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The battle was a defining moment for the young Athenian democracy, showing what might be achieved through unity and self-belief; indeed, the battle effectively marks the start of a "golden age" for Athens. This was also applicable to Greece as a whole; "their victory endowed the Greeks with a faith in their destiny that was to endure for three centuries, during which Western culture was born". John Stuart Mill's famous opinion was that "the Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings". According to Isaac Asimov, "if the Athenians had lost in Marathon, . . . Greece might have never gone to develop the peak of its civilization, a peak whose fruits we moderns have inherited."
It seems that the Athenian playwright Aeschylus considered his participation at Marathon to be his greatest achievement in life (rather than his plays) since on his gravestone there was the following epigram:
Militarily, a major lesson for the Greeks was the potential of the hoplite phalanx. This style had developed during internecine warfare amongst the Greeks; since each city-state fought in the same way, the advantages and disadvantages of the hoplite phalanx had not been obvious. Marathon was the first time a phalanx faced more lightly armed troops, and revealed how effective the hoplites could be in battle. The phalanx formation was still vulnerable to cavalry (the cause of much caution by the Greek forces at the Battle of Plataea), but used in the right circumstances, it was now shown to be a potentially devastating weapon.
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Sources.
The main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, who has been called the "Father of History", was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor (then under Persian overlordship). He wrote his "Enquiries" (Greek – "Historiai"; English – "(The) Histories") around 440–430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been relatively recent history (the wars finally ended in 450 BC). Herodotus's approach was entirely novel, and at least in Western society, he does seem to have invented "history" as we know it. As Holland has it: "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally."
Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides. Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off (at the Siege of Sestos), and may therefore have felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting. Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay "On the malice of Herodotus", describing Herodotus as "Philobarbaros" (barbarian-lover), for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might actually have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well read. However, since the 19th century his reputation has been dramatically rehabilitated by archaeological finds which have repeatedly confirmed his version of events. The prevailing modern view is that Herodotus generally did a remarkable job in his "Historiai", but that some of his specific details (particularly troop numbers and dates) should be viewed with skepticism. Nevertheless, there are still some historians who believe Herodotus made up much of his story.
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The Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC in his "Bibliotheca Historica", also provides an account of the Greco-Persian wars, partially derived from the earlier Greek historian Ephorus. This account is fairly consistent with Herodotus's. The Greco-Persian wars are also described in less detail by a number of other ancient historians including Plutarch, Ctesias of Cnidus, and are alluded by other authors, such as the playwright Aeschylus. Archaeological evidence, such as the Serpent Column, also supports some of Herodotus's specific claims.
Legacy.
Legends associated with the battle.
The most famous legend associated with Marathon is that of the runner Pheidippides (or Philippides) bringing news to Athens of the battle, which is described below.
Pheidippides' run to Sparta to bring aid has other legends associated with it. Herodotus mentions that Pheidippides was visited by the god Pan on his way to Sparta (or perhaps on his return journey). Pan asked why the Athenians did not honor him and the awed Pheidippides promised that they would do so from then on. The god apparently felt that the promise would be kept, so he appeared in battle and at the crucial moment he instilled the Persians with his own brand of fear, the mindless, frenzied fear that bore his name: "panic". After the battle, a sacred precinct was established for Pan in a grotto on the north slope of the Acropolis, and a sacrifice was annually offered.
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Similarly, after the victory the festival of the "Agroteras Thysia" ("sacrifice to the Agrotéra") was held at Agrae near Athens, in honor of Artemis Agrotera ("Artemis the Huntress"). This was in fulfillment of a vow made by the city before the battle, to offer in sacrifice a number of goats equal to that of the Persians slain in the conflict. The number was so great, it was decided to offer 500 goats yearly until the number was filled. Xenophon notes that at his time, 90 years after the battle, goats were still offered yearly.
Plutarch mentions that the Athenians saw the phantom of King Theseus, the mythical hero of Athens, leading the army in full battle gear in the charge against the Persians, and indeed he was depicted in the mural of the Stoa Poikile fighting for the Athenians, along with the twelve Olympian gods and other heroes. Pausanias also tells us that: They say too that there chanced to be present in the battle a man of rustic appearance and dress. Having slaughtered many of the foreigners with a plough he was seen no more after the engagement. When the Athenians made enquiries at the oracle, the god merely ordered them to honor Echetlaeus ("he of the Plough-tail") as a hero.
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Another tale from the conflict is of the dog of Marathon. Aelian relates that one hoplite brought his dog to the Athenian encampment. The dog followed his master to battle and attacked the Persians at his master's side. He also informs us that this dog is depicted in the mural of the Stoa Poikile.
Marathon run.
According to Herodotus, an Athenian runner named Pheidippides was sent to run from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle. He ran a distance of over 225 kilometers (140 miles), arriving in Sparta the day after he left. Then, following the battle, the Athenian army marched the 40 kilometers (25 miles) or so back to Athens at a very high pace (considering the quantity of armour, and the fatigue after the battle), in order to head off the Persian force sailing around Cape Sounion. They arrived back in the late afternoon, in time to see the Persian ships turn away from Athens, thus completing the Athenian victory.
Later, in popular imagination, these two events were conflated, leading to a legendary but inaccurate version of events. This myth has Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens after the battle, to announce the Greek victory with the word "nenikēkamen!" (Attic: ; we've won!), whereupon he promptly died of exhaustion. This story first appears in Plutarch's "On the Glory of Athens" in the 1st century AD, who quotes from Heracleides of Pontus's lost work, giving the runner's name as either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles. Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) gives the same story but names the runner Philippides (not Pheidippides). In some medieval codices of Herodotus, the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta before the battle is given as Philippides, and this name is also preferred in a few modern editions.
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When the idea of a modern Olympics became a reality at the end of the 19th century, the initiators and organizers were looking for a great popularizing event, recalling the ancient glory of Greece. The idea of organizing a "marathon race" came from Michel Bréal, who wanted the event to feature in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. This idea was heavily supported by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, as well as the Greeks. This would echo the legendary version of events, with the competitors running from Marathon to Athens. So popular was this event that it quickly caught on, becoming a fixture at the Olympic games, with major cities staging their own annual events. The distance eventually became fixed at , though for the first years it was variable, being around —the approximate distance from Marathon to Athens. |
Balance of trade
Balance of trade is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports of goods over a certain time period. Sometimes, trade in services is also included in the balance of trade but the official IMF definition only considers goods. The balance of trade measures a flow variable of exports and imports over a given period of time. The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other.
If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive trade balance, and conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative trade balance. As of 2016, about 60 out of 200 countries have a trade surplus. The idea that a trade deficit is detrimental to a nation’s economy is often rejected by modern trade experts and economists.
Explanation.
The balance of trade forms part of the current account, which includes other transactions such as income from the net international investment position as well as international aid. If the current account is in surplus, the country's net international asset position increases correspondingly. Equally, a deficit decreases the net international asset position.
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The trade balance is identical to the difference between a country's output and its domestic demand (the difference between what goods a country produces and how many goods it buys from abroad; this does not include money re-spent on foreign stock, nor does it factor in the concept of importing goods to produce for the domestic market).
Measuring the balance of trade can be problematic because of problems with recording and collecting data. As an illustration of this problem, when official data for all the world's countries are added up, exports exceed imports by almost 1%; it appears the world is running a positive balance of trade with itself. This cannot be true, because all transactions involve an equal credit or debit in the account of each nation. The discrepancy is widely believed to be explained by transactions intended to launder money or evade taxes, smuggling and other visibility problems. While the accuracy of developing countries' statistics would be suspicious, most of the discrepancy actually occurs between developed countries of trusted statistics.
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Factors that can affect the balance of trade include:
In addition, the trade balance is likely to differ across the business cycle. In export-led growth (such as oil and early industrial goods), the balance of trade will shift towards exports during an economic expansion. However, with domestic demand-led growth (as in the United States and Australia) the trade balance will shift towards imports at the same stage in the business cycle.
The monetary balance of trade is different from the physical balance of trade (which is expressed in amount of raw materials, known also as Total Material Consumption). Developed countries usually import a substantial amount of raw materials from developing countries. Typically, these imported materials are transformed into finished products and might be exported after adding value. Financial trade balance statistics conceal material flow. Most developed countries have a large physical trade deficit because they consume more raw materials than they produce.
Examples.
Historical example.
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Many countries in early modern Europe adopted a policy of mercantilism, which theorized that a trade surplus was beneficial to a country. Mercantilist ideas also influenced how European nations regulated trade policies with their colonies, promoting the idea that natural resources and cash crops should be exported to Europe, with processed goods being exported back to the colonies in return. Ideas such as bullionism spurred the popularity of mercantilism in European governments.
An early statement concerning the balance of trade appeared in "Discourse of the Common Wealth of this Realm of England", 1549: "We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them." Similarly, a systematic and coherent explanation of balance of trade was made public through Thomas Mun's 1630 "England's treasure by foreign trade, or, The balance of our foreign trade is the rule of our treasure".
Since the mid-1980s, the United States has had a growing deficit in tradeable goods, especially with Asian nations (China and Japan) which now hold large sums of U.S. debt that has in part funded the consumption. The U.S. has a trade surplus with nations such as Australia. The issue of trade deficits can be complex. Trade deficits generated in tradeable goods such as manufactured goods or software may impact domestic employment to different degrees than do trade deficits in raw materials.
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Economies that have savings surpluses, such as Japan and Germany, typically run trade surpluses. China, a high-growth economy, has tended to run trade surpluses. A higher savings rate generally corresponds to a trade surplus. Correspondingly, the U.S. with its lower savings rate has tended to run high trade deficits, especially with Asian nations.
Some have said that China pursues a mercantilist economic policy. Russia pursues a policy based on protectionism, according to which international trade is not a "win-win" game but a zero-sum game: surplus countries get richer at the expense of deficit countries.
Views on economic impact.
The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists. According to the IMF trade deficits can cause a balance of payments problem, which can affect foreign exchange shortages and hurt countries. On the other hand, Joseph Stiglitz points out that countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and pose a threat to global prosperity, far more than those in deficit. Ben Bernanke argues that "persistent imbalances within the euro zone are... unhealthy, as they lead to financial imbalances as well as to unbalanced growth. The fact that Germany is selling so much more than it is buying redirects demand from its neighbors (as well as from other countries around the world), reducing output and employment outside Germany." According to Carla Norrlöf, there are three main benefits to trade deficits for the United States:
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A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by economists at the International Monetary Fund and University of California, Berkeley, found in a study of 151 countries over 1963-2014 that the imposition of tariffs had little effect on the trade balance.
Keynesian theory.
In the last few years of his life, John Maynard Keynes was much preoccupied with the question of balance in international trade. He was the leader of the British delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in 1944 that established the Bretton Woods system of international currency management.
He was the principal author of a proposal – the so-called Keynes Plan – for an International Clearing Union. The two governing principles of the plan were that the problem of settling outstanding balances should be solved by "creating" additional "international money", and that debtor and creditor should be treated almost alike as disturbers of equilibrium. In the event, though, the plans were rejected, in part because "American opinion was naturally reluctant to accept the principle of equality of treatment so novel in debtor-creditor relationships".
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The new system is not founded on free-trade (liberalisation of foreign trade) but rather on the regulation of international trade, in order to eliminate trade imbalances: the nations with a surplus would have a powerful incentive to get rid of it, and in doing so they would automatically clear other nations' deficits. He proposed a global bank that would issue its own currency – the bancor – which was exchangeable with national currencies at fixed rates of exchange and would become the unit of account between nations, which means it would be used to measure a country's trade deficit or trade surplus. Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account at the International Clearing Union. He pointed out that surpluses lead to weak global aggregate demand – countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and posed far more than those in deficit, a threat to global prosperity.
In ""National Self-Sufficiency" The Yale Review, Vol. 22, no. 4 (June 1933)", he already highlighted the problems created by free trade.
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His view, supported by many economists and commentators at the time, was that creditor nations may be just as responsible as debtor nations for disequilibrium in exchanges and that both should be under an obligation to bring trade back into a state of balance. Failure for them to do so could have serious consequences. In the words of Geoffrey Crowther, then editor of "The Economist", "If the economic relationships between nations are not, by one means or another, brought fairly close to balance, then there is no set of financial arrangements that can rescue the world from the impoverishing results of chaos."
These ideas were informed by events prior to the Great Depression when – in the opinion of Keynes and others – international lending, primarily by the U.S., exceeded the capacity of sound investment and so got diverted into non-productive and speculative uses, which in turn invited default and a sudden stop to the process of lending.
Influenced by Keynes, economics texts in the immediate post-war period put a significant emphasis on balance in trade. For example, the second edition of the popular introductory textbook, "An Outline of Money", devoted the last three of its ten chapters to questions of foreign exchange management and in particular the 'problem of balance'. However, in more recent years, since the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, with the increasing influence of monetarist schools of thought in the 1980s, and particularly in the face of large sustained trade imbalances, these concerns – and particularly concerns about the destabilising effects of large trade surpluses – have largely disappeared from mainstream economics discourse and Keynes' insights have slipped from view.
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Monetarist theory.
Prior to 20th-century monetarist theory, the 19th-century economist and philosopher Frédéric Bastiat expressed the idea that trade deficits actually were a manifestation of profit, rather than a loss. He proposed as an example to suppose that he, a Frenchman, exported French wine and imported British coal, turning a profit. He supposed he was in France and sent a cask of wine which was worth 50 francs to England. The customhouse would record an export of 50 francs. If in England, the wine sold for 70 francs (or the pound equivalent), which he then used to buy coal, which he imported into France (the customhouse would record an import of 70 francs), and was found to be worth 90 francs in France, he would have made a profit of 40 francs. But the customhouse would say that the value of imports exceeded that of exports and was trade deficit of 20 against the ledger of France. This is not true for the current account that would be in surplus.
By "reductio ad absurdum", Bastiat argued that the national trade deficit was an indicator of a successful economy, rather than a failing one. Bastiat predicted that a successful, growing economy would result in greater trade deficits, and an unsuccessful, shrinking economy would result in lower trade deficits. This was later, in the 20th century, echoed by economist Milton Friedman.
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In the 1980s, Friedman, a Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist and a proponent of monetarism, contended that some of the concerns of trade deficits are unfair criticisms in an attempt to push macroeconomic policies favorable to exporting industries.
Friedman argued that trade deficits are not necessarily important, as high exports raise the value of the currency, reducing aforementioned exports, and vice versa for imports, thus naturally removing trade deficits "not due to investment". Since 1971, when the Nixon administration decided to abolish fixed exchange rates, America's Current Account accumulated trade deficits have totaled $7.75 trillion as of 2010. This deficit exists as it is matched by investment coming into the United States – purely by the definition of the balance of payments, any current account deficit that exists is matched by an inflow of foreign investment.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. had experienced high inflation and Friedman's policy positions tended to defend the stronger dollar at that time. He stated his belief that these trade deficits were not necessarily harmful to the economy at the time since the currency comes back to the country (country A sells to country B, country B sells to country C who buys from country A, but the trade deficit only includes A and B). However, it may be in one form or another including the possible tradeoff of foreign control of assets. In his view, the "worst-case scenario" of the currency never returning to the country of origin was actually the best possible outcome: the country actually purchased its goods by exchanging them for pieces of cheaply made paper. As Friedman put it, this would be the same result as if the exporting country burned the dollars it earned, never returning it to market circulation.
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This position is a more refined version of the theorem first discovered by David Hume. Hume argued that England could not permanently gain from exports, because hoarding gold (i.e., currency) would make gold more plentiful in England; therefore, the prices of English goods would rise, making them less attractive exports and making foreign goods more attractive imports. In this way, countries' trade balances would balance out.
Friedman presented his analysis of the balance of trade in "Free to Choose", widely considered his most significant popular work.
Trade balance’s effects upon a nation's GDP.
Exports directly increase and imports directly reduce a nation's balance of trade (i.e. net exports). A trade surplus is a positive net balance of trade, and a trade deficit is a negative net balance of trade. Due to the balance of trade being explicitly added to the calculation of the nation's gross domestic product using the expenditure method of calculating gross domestic product (i.e. GDP), trade surpluses are contributions and trade deficits are "drags" upon their nation's GDP; however, foreign made goods sold (e.g., retail) contribute to total GDP. |
Biosphere
The biosphere (), also called the ecosphere (), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth. The biosphere (which is technically a spherical shell) is virtually a closed system with regard to matter, with minimal inputs and outputs. Regarding energy, it is an open system, with photosynthesis capturing solar energy at a rate of around 100 terawatts. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis (life created naturally from matter, such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years ago.
In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems. This includes artificial biospheres such as and , and potentially ones on other planets or moons.
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Origin and use of the term.
The term "biosphere" was coined in 1875 by geologist Eduard Suess, who defined it as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.
While the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biosphere's ecological context comes from the 1920s (see Vladimir I. Vernadsky), preceding the 1935 introduction of the term "ecosystem" by Sir Arthur Tansley (see ecology history). Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere. It is an interdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrology and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences.
Narrow definition.
Geochemists define the biosphere as being the total sum of living organisms (the "biomass" or "biota" as referred to by biologists and ecologists). In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four separate components of the geochemical model, the other three being "geosphere", "hydrosphere", and "atmosphere". When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the ecosphere. This term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of the planet.
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The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined "biospherics" as the science and technology of analogs and models of Earth's biosphere; i.e., artificial Earth-like biospheres. Others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheres—for example, human-centered biospheres or a native Martian biosphere—as part of the topic of biospherics.
Earth's biosphere.
Overview.
Currently, the total number of living cells on the Earth is estimated to be 1030; the total number since the beginning of Earth, as 1040, and the total number for the entire time of a habitable planet Earth as 1041. This is much larger than the total number of estimated stars (and Earth-like planets) in the observable universe as 1024, a number which is more than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth; but less than the total number of atoms estimated in the observable universe as 1082; and the estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved), as 10100.
Age.
The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In 2017, putative fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils) were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that were as old as 4.28 billion years, the oldest record of life on earth, suggesting "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after ocean formation 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. According to biologist Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."
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Extent.
Every part of the planet, from the polar ice caps to the equator, features life of some kind. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microbes live deep beneath the Earth's terrestrial surface and that the total mass of microbial life in so-called "uninhabitable zones" may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface. The actual thickness of the biosphere on Earth is difficult to measure. Birds typically fly at altitudes as high as and fish live as much as underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench.
There are more extreme examples for life on the planet: Rüppell's vulture has been found at altitudes of ; bar-headed geese migrate at altitudes of at least ; yaks live at elevations as high as above sea level; mountain goats live up to . Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, and herbs.
Life forms live in every part of the Earth's biosphere, including soil, hot springs, inside rocks at least deep underground, and at least high in the atmosphere. Marine life under many forms has been found in the deepest reaches of the world ocean while much of the deep sea remains to be explored.
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Under certain test conditions, microorganisms have been observed to survive the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 × 1017 g. The mass of prokaryote microorganisms—which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms—may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. In fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of . Other researchers reported related studies that microorganisms thrive inside rocks up to below the sea floor under of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as beneath the seabed off Japan. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than into the Earth's crust in Sweden, from rocks between . Temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earth's crust. The rate at which the temperature increases depends on many factors, including the type of crust (continental vs. oceanic), rock type, geographic location, etc. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is ("Methanopyrus kandleri" Strain 116). It is likely that the limit of life in the "deep biosphere" is defined by temperature rather than absolute depth. On 20 August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living below the ice of Antarctica.
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Earth's biosphere is divided into several biomes, inhabited by fairly similar flora and fauna. On land, biomes are separated primarily by latitude. Terrestrial biomes lying within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are relatively barren of plant and animal life. In contrast, most of the more populous biomes lie near the equator.
Artificial biospheres.
Experimental biospheres, also called closed ecological systems, have been created to study ecosystems and the potential for supporting life outside the Earth. These include spacecraft and the following terrestrial laboratories:
Extraterrestrial biospheres.
No biospheres have been detected beyond the Earth; therefore, the existence of extraterrestrial biospheres remains hypothetical. The rare Earth hypothesis suggests they should be very rare, save ones composed of microbial life only. On the other hand, Earth analogs may be quite numerous, at least in the Milky Way galaxy, given the large number of planets. Three of the planets discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1 could possibly contain biospheres. Given limited understanding of abiogenesis, it is currently unknown what percentage of these planets actually develop biospheres.
Based on observations by the Kepler Space Telescope team, it has been calculated that provided the probability of abiogenesis is higher than 1 to 1000, the closest alien biosphere should be within 100 light-years from the Earth.
It is also possible that artificial biospheres will be created in the future, for example with the terraforming of Mars. |
Biological membrane
A biological membrane, biomembrane or cell membrane is a selectively permeable membrane that separates the interior of a cell from the external environment or creates intracellular compartments by serving as a boundary between one part of the cell and another. Biological membranes, in the form of eukaryotic cell membranes, consist of a phospholipid bilayer with embedded, integral and peripheral proteins used in communication and transportation of chemicals and ions. The bulk of lipids in a cell membrane provides a fluid matrix for proteins to rotate and laterally diffuse for physiological functioning. Proteins are adapted to high membrane fluidity environment of the lipid bilayer with the presence of an annular lipid shell, consisting of lipid molecules bound tightly to the surface of integral membrane proteins. The cell membranes are different from the isolating tissues formed by layers of cells, such as mucous membranes, basement membranes, and serous membranes.
Composition.
Asymmetry.
The lipid bilayer consists of two layers- an outer leaflet and an inner leaflet. The components of bilayers are distributed unequally between the two surfaces to create asymmetry between the outer and inner surfaces. This asymmetric organization is important for cell functions such as cell signaling. The asymmetry of the biological membrane reflects the different functions of the two leaflets of the membrane. As seen in the fluid membrane model of the phospholipid bilayer, the outer leaflet and inner leaflet of the membrane are asymmetrical in their composition. Certain proteins and lipids rest only on one surface of the membrane and not the other.
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Using selective flippases is not the only way to produce asymmetry in lipid bilayers, however. In particular, a different mechanism operates for glycolipids—the lipids that show the most striking and consistent asymmetric distribution in animal cells.
Lipids.
The biological membrane is made up of lipids with hydrophobic tails and hydrophilic heads. The hydrophobic tails are hydrocarbon tails whose length and saturation is important in characterizing the cell. Lipid rafts occur when lipid species and proteins aggregate in domains in the membrane. These help organize membrane components into localized areas that are involved in specific processes, such as signal transduction.
Red blood cells, or erythrocytes, have a unique lipid composition. The bilayer of red blood cells is composed of cholesterol and phospholipids in equal proportions by weight. Erythrocyte membrane plays a crucial role in blood clotting. In the bilayer of red blood cells is phosphatidylserine. This is usually in the cytoplasmic side of the membrane. However, it is flipped to the outer membrane to be used during blood clotting.
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Proteins.
Phospholipid bilayers contain different proteins. These membrane proteins have various functions and characteristics and catalyze different chemical reactions. Integral proteins span the membranes with different domains on either side. Integral proteins hold strong association with the lipid bilayer and cannot easily become detached. They will dissociate only with chemical treatment that breaks the membrane. Peripheral proteins are unlike integral proteins in that they hold weak interactions with the surface of the bilayer and can easily become dissociated from the membrane. Peripheral proteins are located on only one face of a membrane and create membrane asymmetry.
Oligosaccharides.
Oligosaccharides are sugar containing polymers. In the membrane, they can be covalently bound to lipids to form glycolipids or covalently bound to proteins to form glycoproteins. Membranes contain sugar-containing lipid molecules known as glycolipids. In the bilayer, the sugar groups of glycolipids are exposed at the cell surface, where they can form hydrogen bonds. Glycolipids provide the most extreme example of asymmetry in the lipid bilayer. Glycolipids perform a vast number of functions in the biological membrane that are mainly communicative, including cell recognition and cell-cell adhesion. Glycoproteins are integral proteins. They play an important role in the immune response and protection.
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Formation.
The phospholipid bilayer is formed due to the aggregation of membrane lipids in aqueous solutions. Aggregation is caused by the hydrophobic effect, where hydrophobic ends come into contact with each other and are sequestered away from water. This arrangement maximises hydrogen bonding between hydrophilic heads and water while minimising unfavorable contact between hydrophobic tails and water. The increase in available hydrogen bonding increases the entropy of the system, creating a spontaneous process.
Function.
Biological molecules are amphiphilic or amphipathic, i.e. are simultaneously hydrophobic and hydrophilic. The phospholipid bilayer contains charged hydrophilic headgroups, which interact with polar water. The layers also contain hydrophobic tails, which meet with the hydrophobic tails of the complementary layer. The hydrophobic tails are usually fatty acids that differ in lengths. The interactions of lipids, especially the hydrophobic tails, determine the lipid bilayer physical properties such as fluidity.
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Membranes in cells typically define enclosed spaces or compartments in which cells may maintain a chemical or biochemical environment that differs from the outside. For example, the membrane around peroxisomes shields the rest of the cell from peroxides, chemicals that can be toxic to the cell, and the cell membrane separates a cell from its surrounding medium. Peroxisomes are one form of vacuole found in the cell that contain by-products of chemical reactions within the cell. Most organelles are defined by such membranes, and are called membrane-bound organelles.
Selective permeability.
Probably the most important feature of a biomembrane is that it is a selectively permeable structure. This means that the size, charge, and other chemical properties of the atoms and molecules attempting to cross it will determine whether they succeed in doing so. Selective permeability is essential for effective separation of a cell or organelle from its surroundings. Biological membranes also have certain mechanical or elastic properties that allow them to change shape and move as required.
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Generally, small hydrophobic molecules can readily cross phospholipid bilayers by simple diffusion.
Particles that are required for cellular function but are unable to diffuse freely across a membrane enter through a membrane transport protein or are taken in by means of endocytosis, where the membrane allows for a vacuole to join onto it and push its contents into the cell. Many types of specialized plasma membranes can separate cell from external environment: apical, basolateral, presynaptic and postsynaptic ones, membranes of flagella, cilia, microvillus, filopodia and lamellipodia, the sarcolemma of muscle cells, as well as specialized myelin and dendritic spine membranes of neurons. Plasma membranes can also form different types of "supramembrane" structures such as caveolae, postsynaptic density, podosome, invadopodium, desmosome, hemidesmosome, focal adhesion, and cell junctions. These types of membranes differ in lipid and protein composition.
Distinct types of membranes also create intracellular organelles: endosome; smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum; sarcoplasmic reticulum; Golgi apparatus; lysosome; mitochondrion (inner and outer membranes); nucleus (inner and outer membranes); peroxisome; vacuole; cytoplasmic granules; cell vesicles (phagosome, autophagosome, clathrin-coated vesicles, COPI-coated and COPII-coated vesicles) and secretory vesicles (including synaptosome, acrosomes, melanosomes, and chromaffin granules).
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Different types of biological membranes have diverse lipid and protein compositions. The content of membranes defines their physical and biological properties. Some components of membranes play a key role in medicine, such as the efflux pumps that pump drugs out of a cell.
Fluidity.
The hydrophobic core of the phospholipid bilayer is constantly in motion because of rotations around the bonds of lipid tails. Hydrophobic tails of a bilayer bend and lock together. However, because of hydrogen bonding with water, the hydrophilic head groups exhibit less movement as their rotation and mobility are constrained. This results in increasing viscosity of the lipid bilayer closer to the hydrophilic heads.
Below a transition temperature, a lipid bilayer loses fluidity when the highly mobile lipids exhibits less movement becoming a gel-like solid. The transition temperature depends on such components of the lipid bilayer as the hydrocarbon chain length and the saturation of its fatty acids. Temperature-dependence fluidity constitutes an important physiological attribute for bacteria and cold-blooded organisms. These organisms maintain a constant fluidity by modifying membrane lipid fatty acid composition in accordance with differing temperatures.
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In animal cells, membrane fluidity is modulated by the inclusion of the sterol cholesterol. This molecule is present in especially large amounts in the plasma membrane, where it constitutes approximately 20% of the lipids in the membrane by weight. Because cholesterol molecules are short and rigid, they fill the spaces between neighboring phospholipid molecules left by the kinks in their unsaturated hydrocarbon tails. In this way, cholesterol tends to stiffen the bilayer, making it more rigid and less permeable.
For all cells, membrane fluidity is important for many reasons. It enables membrane proteins to diffuse rapidly in the plane of the bilayer and to interact with one another, as is crucial, for example, in cell signaling. It permits membrane lipids and proteins to diffuse from sites where they are inserted into the bilayer after their synthesis to other regions of the cell. It allows membranes to fuse with one another and mix their molecules, and it ensures that membrane molecules are distributed evenly between daughter cells when a cell divides. If biological membranes were not fluid, it is hard to imagine how cells could live, grow, and reproduce.
The fluidity property is at the center of the Helfrich model which allows for calculating the energy cost of an elastic deformation to the membrane. |
Balfour Declaration of 1926
The Balfour Declaration of 1926 was issued by the 1926 Imperial Conference of British Empire leaders in London. It was named after Arthur Balfour, who was Lord President of the Council. It declared the United Kingdom and the Dominions to be:
The Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, chaired by Balfour, drew up the document preparatory to its unanimous approval by the imperial prime ministers on 15 November 1926. It was first proposed by South African Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
The declaration accepted the growing political and diplomatic independence of the Dominions in the years after World War I. It also recommended that the governors-general, the representatives of the King in each dominion, should no longer also serve automatically as the representative of the British government in diplomatic relations between the countries. In following years, high commissioners were gradually appointed, whose duties were soon recognised to be virtually identical to those of an ambassador. The first such British high commissioner was appointed to Canada in 1928.
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The conclusions of the Imperial Conference of 1926 were re-stated by the 1930 conference and incorporated in the Statute of Westminster of December 1931. In the statute, the British Parliament provided that it would not enact a law which applied to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless the law expressly stated that the Dominion government had requested and consented to the enactment of that law. |
Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2November 1917 from Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9November 1917.
Following Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, it began to consider the future of Palestine. Within two months a memorandum was circulated to the War Cabinet by a Zionist member, Herbert Samuel, proposing the support of Zionist ambitions to enlist the support of Jews in the wider war. A committee was established in April 1915 by British prime minister H. H. Asquith to determine their policy towards the Ottoman Empire including Palestine. Asquith, who had favoured post-war reform of the Ottoman Empire, resigned in December 1916; his replacement David Lloyd George favoured partition of the Empire. The first negotiations between the British and the Zionists took place at a conference on 7 February 1917 that included Sir Mark Sykes and the Zionist leadership. Subsequent discussions led to Balfour's request, on 19 June, that Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann draft a public declaration. Further drafts were discussed by the British Cabinet during September and October, with input from Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews but with no representation from the local population in Palestine.
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By late 1917, the wider war had reached a stalemate, with two of Britain's allies not fully engaged: the United States had yet to suffer a casualty, and the Russians were in the midst of a revolution. A stalemate in southern Palestine was broken by the Battle of Beersheba on 31 October 1917. The release of the final declaration was authorised on 31 October; the preceding Cabinet discussion had referenced perceived propaganda benefits amongst the worldwide Jewish community for the Allied war effort.
The opening words of the declaration represented the first public expression of support for Zionism by a major political power. The term "national home" had no precedent in international law, and was intentionally vague as to whether a Jewish state was contemplated. The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified, and the British government later confirmed that the words "in Palestine" meant that the Jewish national home was not intended to cover all of Palestine. The second half of the declaration was added to satisfy opponents of the policy, who had claimed that it would otherwise prejudice the position of the local population of Palestine and encourage antisemitism worldwide by "stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands". The declaration called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population, and also the rights and political status of the Jewish communities in countries outside of Palestine. The British government acknowledged in 1939 that the local population's wishes and interests should have been taken into account, and recognised in 2017 that the declaration should have called for the protection of the Palestinian Arabs' political rights.
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The declaration greatly increased popular support for Zionism within Jewish communities worldwide, and became a core component of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founding document of Mandatory Palestine. It indirectly led to the emergence of the State of Israel and is considered a principal cause of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflictoften described as the most intractable in the world. Controversy remains over a number of areas, such as whether the declaration contradicted earlier promises the British made to the Sharif of Mecca in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence.
Background.
Early British support.
Early British political support for an increased Jewish presence in the region of Palestine was based upon geopolitical calculations. This support began in the early 1840s and was led by Lord Palmerston, following the occupation of Syria and Palestine by separatist Ottoman governor Muhammad Ali of Egypt. French influence had grown in Palestine and the wider Middle East, and its role as protector of the Catholic communities began to grow, just as Russian influence had grown as protector of the Eastern Orthodox in the same regions. This left Britain without a sphere of influence, and thus a need to find or create their own regional "protégés". These political considerations were supported by a sympathetic evangelical Christian sentiment towards the "restoration of the Jews" to Palestine among elements of the mid-19th-century British political elite – most notably Lord Shaftesbury. The British Foreign Office actively encouraged Jewish emigration to Palestine, exemplified by Charles Henry Churchill's 1841–1842 exhortations to Moses Montefiore, the leader of the British Jewish community.
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Such efforts were premature, and did not succeed; only 24,000 Jews were living in Palestine on the eve of the emergence of Zionism within the world's Jewish communities in the last two decades of the 19th century. With the geopolitical shakeup occasioned by the outbreak of the First World War, the earlier calculations, which had lapsed for some time, led to a renewal of strategic assessments and political bargaining over the Middle and Far East.
British anti-Semitism.
Although other factors played their part, Jonathan Schneer says that stereotypical thinking by British officials about Jews also played a role in the decision to issue the Declaration. Robert Cecil, Hugh O’Bierne and Sir Mark Sykes all held an unrealistic view of "world Jewry", the former writing "I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the international power of the Jews." Zionist representatives saw advantage in encouraging such views. James Renton concurs, writing that the British foreign policy elite, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary A.J. Balfour, believed that Jews possessed real and significant power that could be of use to them in the war.
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Early Zionism.
Zionism arose in the late 19th century in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. Romantic nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe had helped to set off the Haskalah, or "Jewish Enlightenment", creating a split in the Jewish community between those who saw Judaism as their religion and those who saw it as their ethnicity or nation. The 1881–1884 anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire encouraged the growth of the latter identity, resulting in the formation of the Hovevei Zion pioneer organizations, the publication of Leon Pinsker's "Autoemancipation", and the first major wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine – retrospectively named the "First Aliyah".
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, published the foundational text of political Zionism, "Der Judenstaat" ("The Jews' State" or "The State of the Jews"), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing anti-Semitism, was the establishment of a state for the Jews. A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization, which at its first congress called for the establishment of "a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Proposed measures to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organisation of Jews in the diaspora, the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain necessary governmental grants. Herzl died in 1904, 44 years before the establishment of State of Israel, the Jewish state that he proposed, without having gained the political standing required to carry out his agenda.
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Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, later President of the World Zionist Organisation and first President of Israel, moved from Switzerland to the UK in 1904 and met Arthur Balfour – who had just launched his 1905–1906 election campaign after resigning as Prime Minister – in a session arranged by Charles Dreyfus, his Jewish constituency representative. Earlier that year, Balfour had successfully driven the Aliens Act through Parliament with impassioned speeches regarding the need to restrict the wave of immigration into Britain from Jews fleeing the Russian Empire. During this meeting, he asked what Weizmann's objections had been to the 1903 Uganda Scheme that Herzl had supported to provide a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland. The scheme, which had been proposed to Herzl by Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary in Balfour's Cabinet, following his trip to East Africa earlier in the year, had been subsequently voted down following Herzl's death by the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905 after two years of heated debate in the Zionist Organization. Weizmann responded that he believed the English are to London as the Jews are to Jerusalem.
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In January 1914 Weizmann first met Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a member of the French branch of the Rothschild family and a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, in relation to a project to build a Hebrew university in Jerusalem. The Baron was not part of the World Zionist Organization, but had funded the Jewish agricultural colonies of the First Aliyah and transferred them to the Jewish Colonization Association in 1899. This connection was to bear fruit later that year when the Baron's son, James deRothschild, requested a meeting with Weizmann on 25November 1914, to enlist him in influencing those deemed to be receptive within the British government to the Zionist agenda in Palestine. Through James's wife Dorothy, Weizmann was to meet Rózsika Rothschild, who introduced him to the English branch of the familyin particular her husband Charles and his older brother Walter, a zoologist and former Member of Parliament (MP). Their father, Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, head of the English branch of the family, had a guarded attitude towards Zionism, but he died in March 1915 and his title was inherited by Walter.
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Prior to the declaration, about 8,000 of Britain's 300,000 Jews belonged to a Zionist organisation. Globally, as of 1913 – the latest known date prior to the declaration – the equivalent figure was approximately 1%.
Ottoman Palestine.
The year 1916 marked four centuries since Palestine had become part of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire. For most of this period, the Jewish population represented a small minority, approximately 3% of the total, with Muslims representing the largest segment of the population, and Christians the second.
Ottoman government in Constantinople began to apply restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine in late 1882, in response to the start of the First Aliyah earlier that year. Although this immigration was creating a certain amount of tension with the local population, mainly among the merchant and notable classes, in 1901 the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman central government) gave Jews the same rights as Arabs to buy land in Palestine and the percentage of Jews in the population rose to 7% by 1914. At the same time, with growing distrust of the Young Turks (Turkish nationalists who had taken control of the Empire in 1908) and the Second Aliyah, Arab nationalism and Palestinian nationalism was on the rise; and in Palestine anti-Zionism was a characteristic that unified these forces. Historians do not know whether these strengthening forces would still have ultimately resulted in conflict in the absence of the Balfour Declaration.
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First World War.
1914–16: Initial Zionist–British Government discussions.
In July 1914 war broke out in Europe between the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and, later that year, the Ottoman Empire).
The British Cabinet first discussed Palestine at a meeting on 9November 1914, four days after Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire, of which the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalemoften referred to as Palestinewas a component. At the meeting David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, "referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine". The Chancellor, whose law firm Lloyd George, Roberts and Co had been engaged a decade before by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland to work on the Uganda Scheme, was to become Prime Minister by the time of the declaration, and was ultimately responsible for it.
Weizmann's political efforts picked up speed, and on 10December 1914 he met with Herbert Samuel, a British Cabinet member and a secular Jew who had studied Zionism; Samuel believed Weizmann's demands were too modest. Two days later, Weizmann met Balfour again, for the first time since their initial meeting in 1905; Balfour had been out of government ever since his electoral defeat in 1906, but remained a senior member of the Conservative Party in their role as Official Opposition.
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A month later, Samuel circulated a memorandum entitled "The Future of Palestine" to his Cabinet colleagues. The memorandum stated: "I am assured that the solution of the problem of Palestine which would be much the most welcome to the leaders and supporters of the Zionist movement throughout the world would be the annexation of the country to the British Empire". Samuel discussed a copy of his memorandum with Nathan Rothschild in February 1915, a month before the latter's death. It was the first time in an official record that enlisting the support of Jews as a war measure had been proposed.
Many further discussions followed, including the initial meetings in 1915–16 between Lloyd George, who had been appointed Minister of Munitions in May 1915, and Weizmann, who was appointed as a scientific advisor to the ministry in September 1915. Seventeen years later, in his "War Memoirs", Lloyd George described these meetings as being the "fount and origin" of the declaration; historians have rejected this claim.
1915–16: Prior British commitments over Palestine.
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In late 1915 the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Henry McMahon, exchanged ten letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, in which he promised Hussein to recognize Arab independence "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" in return for Hussein launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The pledge excluded "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". In the decades after the war, the extent of this coastal exclusion was hotly disputed since Palestine lay to the southwest of Damascus and was not explicitly mentioned.
The Arab Revolt was launched on June5th, 1916, on the basis of the "quid pro quo" agreement in the correspondence. However, less than three weeks earlier the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia secretly concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which Balfour described later as a "wholly new method" for dividing the region, after the 1915 agreement "seems to have been forgotten".
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Prior to this point, no active negotiations with Zionists had taken place, but Sykes had been aware of Zionism, was in contact with Moses Gaster – a former President of the English Zionist Federation – and may have seen Samuel's 1915 memorandum. On 3 March, while Sykes and Picot were still in Petrograd, Lucien Wolf (secretary of the Foreign Conjoint Committee, set up by Jewish organizations to further the interests of foreign Jews) submitted to the Foreign Office, the draft of an assurance (formula) that could be issued by the allies in support of Jewish aspirations:
In the event of Palestine coming within the spheres of influence of Great Britain or France at the close of the war, the governments of those powers will not fail to take account of the historic interest that country possesses for the Jewish community. The Jewish population will be secured in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, equal political rights with the rest of the population, reasonable facilities for immigration and colonisation, and such municipal privileges in the towns and colonies inhabited by them as may be shown to be necessary.
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On 11 March, telegrams were sent in Grey's name to Britain's Russian and French ambassadors for transmission to Russian and French authorities, including the formula, as well as:
The scheme might be made far more attractive to the majority of Jews if it held out to them the prospect that when in course of time the Jewish colonists in Palestine grow strong enough to cope with the Arab population they may be allowed to take the management of the internal affairs of Palestine (with the exception of Jerusalem and the holy places) into their own hands.
Sykes, having seen the telegram, had discussions with Picot and proposed (making reference to Samuel's memorandum) the creation of an Arab Sultanate under French and British protection, some means of administering the holy places along with the establishment of a company to purchase land for Jewish colonists, who would then become citizens with equal rights to Arabs.
Shortly after returning from Petrograd, Sykes briefed Samuel, who then briefed a meeting of Gaster, Weizmann and Sokolow. Gaster recorded in his diary on 16 April 1916: "We are offered French-English condominium in Palest[ine]. Arab Prince to conciliate Arab sentiment and as part of the Constitution a Charter to Zionists for which England would stand guarantee and which would stand by us in every case of friction ... It practically comes to a complete realisation of our Zionist programme. However, we insisted on: national character of Charter, freedom of immigration and internal autonomy, and at the same time full rights of citizenship to [illegible] and Jews in Palestine." In Sykes's mind, the agreement which bore his name was outdated even before it was signed – in March 1916, he wrote in a private letter: "to my mind the Zionists are now the key of the situation". In the event, neither the French nor the Russians were enthusiastic about the proposed formulation and eventually on 4 July, Wolf was informed that "the present moment is inopportune for making any announcement."
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These wartime initiatives, inclusive of the declaration, are frequently considered together by historians because of the potential, real or imagined, for incompatibility between them, particularly in regard to the disposition of Palestine. In the words of Professor Albert Hourani, founder of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford: "The argument about the interpretation of these agreements is one which is impossible to end, because they were intended to bear more than one interpretation."
1916–17: Change in British Government.
In terms of British politics, the declaration resulted from the coming into power of Lloyd George and his Cabinet, which had replaced the H. H. Asquith led-Cabinet in December 1916. Whilst both Prime Ministers were Liberals and both governments were wartime coalitions, Lloyd George and Balfour, appointed as his Foreign Secretary, favoured a post-war partition of the Ottoman Empire as a major British war aim, whereas Asquith and his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had favoured its reform.
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Two days after taking office, Lloyd George told General Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, that he wanted a major victory, preferably the capture of Jerusalem, to impress British public opinion, and immediately consulted his War Cabinet about a "further campaign into Palestine when El Arish had been secured." Subsequent pressure from Lloyd George, over the reservations of Robertson, resulted in the recapture of the Sinai for British-controlled Egypt, and, with the capture of El Arish in December 1916 and Rafah in January 1917, the arrival of British forces at the southern borders of the Ottoman Empire. Following two unsuccessful attempts to capture Gaza between 26 March and 19 April, a six-month stalemate in Southern Palestine began; the Sinai and Palestine Campaign would not make any progress into Palestine until 31October 1917.
1917: British-Zionist formal negotiations.
Following the change in government, Sykes was promoted into the War Cabinet Secretariat with responsibility for Middle Eastern affairs. In January 1917, despite having previously built a relationship with Moses Gaster, he began looking to meet other Zionist leaders; by the end of the month he had been introduced to Weizmann and his associate Nahum Sokolow, a journalist and executive of the World Zionist Organization who had moved to Britain at the beginning of the war.
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On 7February 1917, Sykes, claiming to be acting in a private capacity, entered into substantive discussions with the Zionist leadership. The previous British correspondence with "the Arabs" was discussed at the meeting; Sokolow's notes record Sykes's description that "The Arabs professed that language must be the measure [by which control of Palestine should be determined] and [by that measure] could claim all Syria and Palestine. Still the Arabs could be managed, particularly if they received Jewish support in other matters." At this point the Zionists were still unaware of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, although they had their suspicions. One of Sykes's goals was the mobilization of Zionism to the cause of British suzerainty in Palestine, so as to have arguments to put to France in support of that objective.
Late 1917: Progress of the wider war.
During the period of the British War Cabinet discussions leading up to the declaration, the war had reached a period of stalemate. On the Western Front the tide would first turn in favour of the Central Powers in spring 1918, before decisively turning in favour of the Allies from July 1918 onwards. Although the United States declared war on Germany in the spring of 1917, it did not suffer its first casualties until 2 November 1917, at which point President Woodrow Wilson still hoped to avoid dispatching large contingents of troops into the war. The Russian forces were known to be distracted by the ongoing Russian Revolution and the growing support for the Bolshevik faction, but Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government had remained in the war; Russia only withdrew after the final stage of the revolution on 7November 1917.
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Approvals.
April to June: Allied discussions.
Balfour met Weizmann at the Foreign Office on 22 March 1917; two days later, Weizmann described the meeting as being "the first time I had a real business talk with him". Weizmann explained at the meeting that the Zionists had a preference for a British protectorate over Palestine, as opposed to an American, French or international arrangement; Balfour agreed, but warned that "there may be difficulties with France and Italy".
The French position in regard to Palestine and the wider Syria region during the lead up to the Balfour Declaration was largely dictated by the terms of the Sykes–Picot Agreement and was complicated from 23 November 1915 by increasing French awareness of the British discussions with the Sherif of Mecca. Prior to 1917, the British had led the fighting on the southern border of the Ottoman Empire alone, given their neighbouring Egyptian colony and the French preoccupation with the fighting on the Western Front that was taking place on their own soil. Italy's participation in the war, which began following the April 1915 Treaty of London, did not include involvement in the Middle Eastern sphere until the April 1917 Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne; at this conference, Lloyd George had raised the question of a British protectorate of Palestine and the idea "had been very coldly received" by the French and the Italians. In May and June 1917, the French and Italians sent detachments to support the British as they built their reinforcements in preparation for a renewed attack on Palestine.
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In early April, Sykes and Picot were appointed to act as the chief negotiators once more, this time on a month-long mission to the Middle East for further discussions with the Sherif of Mecca and other Arab leaders. On 3 April 1917, Sykes met with Lloyd George, Lord Curzon and Maurice Hankey to receive his instructions in this regard, namely to keep the French onside while "not prejudicing the Zionist movement and the possibility of its development under British auspices, [and not] enter into any political pledges to the Arabs, and particularly none in regard to Palestine". Before travelling to the Middle East, Picot, via Sykes, invited Nahum Sokolow to Paris to educate the French government on Zionism. Sykes, who had prepared the way in correspondence with Picot, arrived a few days after Sokolow; in the meantime, Sokolow had met Picot and other French officials, and convinced the French Foreign Office to accept for study a statement of Zionist aims "in regard to facilities of colonization, communal autonomy, rights of language and establishment of a Jewish chartered company." Sykes went on ahead to Italy and had meetings with the British ambassador and British Vatican representative to prepare the way for Sokolow once again.
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Sokolow was granted an audience with Pope Benedict XV on 6 May 1917. Sokolow's notes of the meeting – the only meeting records known to historians – stated that the Pope expressed general sympathy and support for the Zionist project. On 21 May 1917 Angelo Sereni, president of the Committee of the Jewish Communities, presented Sokolow to Sidney Sonnino, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also received by Paolo Boselli, the Italian prime minister. Sonnino arranged for the secretary general of the ministry to send a letter to the effect that, although he could not express himself on the merits of a program which concerned all the allies, "generally speaking" he was not opposed to the legitimate claims of the Jews. On his return journey, Sokolow met with French leaders again and secured a letter dated 4 June 1917, giving assurances of sympathy towards the Zionist cause by Jules Cambon, head of the political section of the French foreign ministry. This letter was not published, but was deposited at the British Foreign Office.
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Following the United States' entry into the war on 6 April, the British Foreign Secretary led the Balfour Mission to Washington, D.C., and New York, where he spent a month between mid-April and mid-May. During the trip he spent significant time discussing Zionism with Louis Brandeis, a leading Zionist and a close ally of Wilson who had been appointed as a Supreme Court Justice a year previously.
June and July: Decision to prepare a declaration.
By 13 June 1917, it was acknowledged by Ronald Graham, head of the Foreign Office's Middle Eastern affairs department, that the three most relevant politiciansthe Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecilwere all in favour of Britain supporting the Zionist movement; on the same day Weizmann had written to Graham to advocate for a public declaration.
Six days later, at a meeting on 19June, Balfour asked Lord Rothschild and Weizmann to submit a formula for a declaration. Over the next few weeks, a 143-word draft was prepared by the Zionist negotiating committee, but it was considered too specific on sensitive areas by Sykes, Graham and Rothschild. Separately, a very different draft had been prepared by the Foreign Office, described in 1961 by Harold Nicolson – who had been involved in preparing the draft – as proposing a "sanctuary for Jewish victims of persecution". The Foreign Office draft was strongly opposed by the Zionists, and was discarded; no copy of the draft has been found in the Foreign Office archives.
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Following further discussion, a revised – and at just 46 words in length, much shorter – draft declaration was prepared and sent by Lord Rothschild to Balfour on 18 July. It was received by the Foreign Office, and the matter was brought to the Cabinet for formal consideration.
September and October: American consent and War Cabinet approval.
The decision to release the declaration was taken by the British War Cabinet on 31 October 1917. This followed discussion at four War Cabinet meetings (including the 31 October meeting) over the space of the previous two months. In order to aid the discussions, the War Cabinet Secretariat, led by Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary and supported by his Assistant Secretaries – primarily Sykes and his fellow Conservative MP and pro-Zionist Leo Amery – solicited outside perspectives to put before the Cabinet. These included the views of government ministers, war allies – notably from President Woodrow Wilson – and in October, formal submissions from six Zionist leaders and four non-Zionist Jews.
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British officials asked President Wilson for his consent on the matter on two occasions – first on 3 September, when he replied the time was not ripe, and later on 6 October, when he agreed with the release of the declaration.
Excerpts from the minutes of these four War Cabinet meetings provide a description of the primary factors that the ministers considered:
Drafting.
Declassification of British government archives has allowed scholars to piece together the choreography of the drafting of the declaration; in his widely cited 1961 book, Leonard Stein published four previous drafts of the declaration.
The drafting began with Weizmann's guidance to the Zionist drafting team on its objectives in a letter dated 20 June 1917, one day following his meeting with Rothschild and Balfour. He proposed that the declaration from the British government should state: "its conviction, its desire or its intention to support Zionist aims for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine; no reference must be made I think to the question of the Suzerain Power because that would land the British into difficulties with the French; it must be a Zionist declaration."
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A month after the receipt of the much-reduced 12 July draft from Rothschild, Balfour proposed a number of mainly technical amendments. The two subsequent drafts included much more substantial amendments: the first in a late August draft by Lord Milner – one of the original five members of Lloyd George's War Cabinet as a minister without portfolio – which reduced the geographic scope from all of Palestine to "in Palestine", and the second from Milner and Amery in early October, which added the two "safeguard clauses".
Subsequent authors have debated who the "primary author" really was. In his posthumously published 1981 book "The Anglo-American Establishment", Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley explained his view that Lord Milner was the primary author of the declaration, and more recently, William D. Rubinstein, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth University, Wales, proposed Amery instead. Huneidi wrote that Ormsby-Gore, in a report he prepared for Shuckburgh, claimed authorship, together with Amery, of the final draft form.
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Key issues.
The agreed version of the declaration, a single sentence of just 67 words, was sent on 2November 1917 in a short letter from Balfour to Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The declaration contained four clauses, of which the first two promised to support "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", followed by two "safeguard clauses" with respect to "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", and "the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
The "national home for the Jewish people" vs. Jewish state.
The term "national home" was intentionally ambiguous, having no legal value or precedent in international law, such that its meaning was unclear when compared to other terms such as "state". The term was intentionally used instead of "state" because of opposition to the Zionist program within the British Cabinet. According to historian Norman Rose, the chief architects of the declaration contemplated that a Jewish State would emerge in time while the Palestine Royal Commission concluded that the wording was "the outcome of a compromise between those Ministers who contemplated the ultimate establishment of a Jewish State and those who did not."
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Interpretation of the wording has been sought in the correspondence leading to the final version of the declaration. An official report to the War Cabinet sent by Sykes on 22 September said that the Zionists did "not" want "to set up a Jewish Republic or any other form of state in Palestine or in any part of Palestine" but rather preferred some form of protectorate as provided in the Palestine Mandate. A month later, Curzon produced a memorandum circulated on 26 October 1917 where he addressed two questions, the first concerning the meaning of the phrase "a National Home for the Jewish race in Palestine"; he noted that there were different opinions ranging from a fully fledged state to a merely spiritual centre for the Jews.
Sections of the British press assumed that a Jewish state was intended even before the Declaration was finalized. In the United States the press began using the terms "Jewish National Home", "Jewish State", "Jewish republic" and "Jewish Commonwealth" interchangeably.
Treaty expert David Hunter Miller, who was at the conference and subsequently compiled a 22 volume compendium of documents, provides a report of the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 which recommended that "there be established a separate state in Palestine," and that "it will be the policy of the League of Nations to recognize Palestine as a Jewish state, as soon as it is a Jewish state in fact." The report further advised that an independent Palestinian state under a British League of Nations mandate be created. Jewish settlement would be allowed and encouraged in this state and this state's holy sites would be under the control of the League of Nations. Indeed, the Inquiry spoke positively about the possibility of a Jewish state eventually being created in Palestine if the necessary demographics for this were to exist.
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Historian Matthew Jacobs later wrote that the US approach was hampered by the "general absence of specialist knowledge about the region" and that "like much of the Inquiry's work on the Middle East, the reports on Palestine were deeply flawed" and "presupposed a particular outcome of the conflict". He quotes Miller, writing about one report on the history and impact of Zionism, "absolutely inadequate from any standpoint and must be regarded as nothing more than material for a future report".
Lord Robert Cecil on 2 December 1917, assured an audience that the government fully intended that "Judea [was] for the Jews." Yair Auron opines that Cecil, then a deputy Foreign Secretary representing the British Government at a celebratory gathering of the English Zionist Federation, "possibly went beyond his official brief" in saying (he cites Stein) "Our wish is that Arabian countries shall be for the Arabs, Armenia for the Armenians and Judaea for the Jews".
The following October Neville Chamberlain, while chairing a Zionist meeting, discussed a "new Jewish State." At the time, Chamberlain was a Member of Parliament for Ladywood, Birmingham; recalling the event in 1939, just after Chamberlain had approved the 1939 White Paper, the Jewish Telegraph Agency noted that the Prime Minister had "experienced a pronounced change of mind in the 21 years intervening" A year later, on the Declaration's second anniversary, General Jan Smuts said that Britain "would redeem her pledge ... and a great Jewish state would ultimately rise." In similar vein, Churchill a few months later stated:
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At the 22 June 1921 meeting of the Imperial Cabinet, Churchill was asked by Arthur Meighen, the Canadian Prime Minister, about the meaning of the national home. Churchill said "If in the course of many years they become a majority in the country, they naturally would take it over ... pro rata with the Arab. We made an equal pledge that we would not turn the Arab off his land or invade his political and social rights".
Responding to Curzon in January 1919, Balfour wrote "Weizmann has never put forward a claim for the Jewish Government of Palestine. Such a claim in my opinion is clearly inadmissible and personally I do not think we should go further than the original declaration which I made to Lord Rothschild".
In February 1919, France issued a statement that it would not oppose putting Palestine under British trusteeship and the formation of a Jewish State. Friedman further notes that France's attitude went on to change; Yehuda Blum, while discussing France's "unfriendly attitude towards the Jewish national movement", notes the content of a report made by Robert Vansittart (a leading member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference) to Curzon in November 1920 which said:
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