# LocalizedText

Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_DRAMA_POETRY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Meanwhile, poetry evolved as a way of remembering – orally – history, myth, law, genealogy, moral codes, and a host of other things important to civilization. (Only with the coming of writing was this burden lifted from mankind.) Most of the ancient works later set down, from the Vedas (c. 1700 BC) to the Odyssey (c. 800 BC), were composed in poetic form to aid memorization and transmission by word of mouth. The oldest surviving “poem” is the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, written in Hieratic and ascribed to a date around 4500 BC … although some argue for the oldest being the Epic of Gilgamesh written in cuneiform.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_DRAMA_POETRY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
Since those early years, both drama and poetry have undergone many evolutions, in both Western and Eastern civilizations. But they remain essential cultural markers in all.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EARLY_EMPIRE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The natural pattern of nations is that one state, for whatever reason, becomes more powerful than its neighbors economically and/or militarily and conquers them … creating an “empire.” The more it conquers, the stronger it gets, and so it conquers more and more of its neighbors. Eventually inertia sets in and the empire stops expanding – sometimes because it meets neighbors stronger than it is but more often simply because it has become inefficient and venal, and it is inconvenient to fight wars of conquest so far from the center. Often the expanse of the early empire is determined by the state of technology, in terms of communications and transport. At some point, the empire weakens and breaks apart into smaller states … and the cycle begins anew.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EARLY_EMPIRE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
An empire is a multi-ethnic, multi-national, hierarchical political unit. From one central authority - an emperor - comes a system of domination that extends downwards. The first “empire” was the Akkadian, established by Sargon in Mesopotamia c. 24th Century BC, an achievement matched later by Hammurabi of Babylon in the 17th Century BC. In the 15th Century BC the New Kingdom of Egypt, ruled by Thutmose III, was the standard for empire. Around 1500 BC arose the Shang Empire in distant China, to be followed by the Chou Empire 400 years later – its collapse was followed 550 years later by the Qin c. 221 BC. The first empire in civilization comparable to imperial Rome was the Neo-Assyrian; there followed the Median, Babylonian again, Persian, Macedonian (briefly) and so forth.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EARLY_EMPIRE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Empires often become founded on the idea of a “civilizing mission” an ethos that incorporates outsiders in. These outsiders are "barbarians" - those that the empire deems to be without civilization. The Greek and Sanskrit word, "barbarian," initially meant a person who could not speak those languages, and Chinese records described "raw" and "cooked" barbarians, meaning those that would be under the sway of empire, and those without.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EXPLORATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Since man first settled in one place, there have always been those among them who have been driven to see what lies over the horizon. Whether motivated by profit, adventure, religion, necessity or just curiosity, explorers have widened our knowledge of the world and its wonders. In the process of exploring, they have also linked diverse and distant cultures, for good or ill. And they found along the way many new ways to die.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EXPLORATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The Phoenicians sailed all about the ancient Mediterranean seeking new trade goods; tin found in their artifacts indicates they may even have reached distant Britain. The Carthaginian Hanno “the Navigator” explored the coast of Africa beyond the Pillars of Heracles c. 500 BC. Restless Greeks wandered into northern Europe, maybe even to far Thule. During the 2nd Century BC the Han dispatched explorers into Central Asia to see what lay to the west of their borders, beyond the depredations of horse-bound nomads. Much later, the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed past Southeast Asia, Indonesia, around India, and along the east coast of Africa, lands full of barbarians and new things to trade. Around the same time, Vikings were venturing across the North Atlantic to explore and settle Iceland, Greenland, Vinland and other places.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EXPLORATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
The so-called “Age of Exploration” saw crowded and troubled Europe spew out explorers, seeking new trade routes and new theaters of conquest. Commencing in the 15th Century, they established first trading empires, and then more “forceful” ones. Later explorers such as the Portuguese Diego Cao travelled up the Congo, and the Spaniard Francisco de Orellana up the Amazon, and the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri and Columbia rivers.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_EXPLORATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
By 1900, not much was left to explore, save for the polar regions; both Cook and Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908 and 1909 respectively, while Amundsen’s team arrived at the South Pole in December 1911.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FEUDALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Although decentralization of the Carolingian Empire was the impetus, the feudal system came into focus during the 8th Century AD. (“Feudalism” is simply a term historians invented around the 17th Century to label a social structure they otherwise couldn’t define in one word.) To promote the expansion of his holdings, Charlemagne began granting his nobles certain rights over tracts of land to yield the income necessary for them to provide soldiers for his adventures. In return for this largess, each noble swore an oath of loyalty to the crown. In time, this social, economic, political and judicial control of the allocated lands became hereditary, with these lords now giving fiefs to their own favored underlings who swore oaths of fealty … hence, feudalism.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FEUDALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The classic version of feudalism was a mish-mash of reciprocal legal and military obligations among a warrior nobility, revolving around the concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. (There were, of course, peasants tied to the land, but lords and vassals didn’t concern themselves with such much.) For the next 500 years, power and wealth passed about between the favored few as if in a vast game; the rules were complex, often mysterious, in which the Catholic Pope had special privileges and powers as God’s representative on Earth. Not only did aristocrats partake of feudalism, but so too did bishops and abbots (bishops at times could be found on the battlefields, hacking away with the best of secular lords).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FEUDALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Feudalism, with the rise of nationalism and absolute monarchy, decayed and effectively disappeared in most of Europe by about 1500. It lingered on in Central and Eastern Europe as late as the 1850s; a form did survive in Japan until the kingdom was forced open to the West. And Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FOREIGN_TRADE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
According to archaeological findings, sometime around the 19th Century BC there was an Assyrian merchant colony in Kanesh in Cappadocia – the first known instance of foreign trade. As the world got divvied up into city-states, republics, kingdoms and empires, folks learned that there were some things they wanted … just over the border. Since war was fraught with uncertainty and risk, clever sorts found a more peaceful way to obtain those things, by trading what they had in abundance (be it goods, services or enslaved persons) for what the neighbors had. In time, trade routes were established, some spanning continents: the Silk Road, the Amber Road, the Via Maris. Exports and imports drove the rise of civilization.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FOREIGN_TRADE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
In time, inevitably, governments came to understand that all this foreign trade could be a boon, in that taxes (tariffs, duties or other innocuous terms) on imports and exports could fill the state’s coffers. And since scarcity of a good could increase its value … and hence, the taxes … governments began regulating production, extraction, shipping and all aspects of foreign trade as well. Regulations on foreign trade existed in ancient societies centered in the Mesopotamian and Mediterranean regions. These in turn led to standardized weights and measures so merchants wouldn’t cheat, and to the use of scarce metals as a crude form of international currency. In China, paper currency (a peculiar concept) was invented so foreign trade could be conducted in a civilized manner.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FOREIGN_TRADE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
All sorts of models and theories have been devised by economists to understand and explain foreign trade: Adam Smith’s model, the Richardian model, the Hechscher-Ohlin model, the Gravity model, the New Trade theory, the Ricardo-Sraffa trade theory, and so forth. Most, however, simply do not account for the driving impetus … greed. On that basic principle civilization was built.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_FUTURE_CIVIC_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The progress of culture is a slow and unfolding arc, and the values that define a culture evolve, ebb, and flow over time. Philosophers continue to debate great questions of antiquity today: What is a good life? How should people live moral lives? What are our rights and liberties? What is the individual’s relation to the state? The evolution of technology creates new moral quandaries which must be negotiated, as well as opportunities to create both good and evil. The future must look to its own problems, while drawing on the wisdom of past ages. While we cannot know with certainty what the culture of the future will offer, we hope that this "future civic" will be a celebration of those things that bind us in a common humanity and the differences that give humanity its texture.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GAMES_RECREATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Recreation is an essential element in the human condition; indeed, leisure is considered a necessity under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 AD. Recreational “pursuits” may be communal or solitary, active or passive, structured or freeform, healthy or harmful, private or public.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GAMES_RECREATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Each early civilization had its own forms of recreation. Recreation – in the form of games and sports – were often the vestiges of warfare, hunting, religious practices or other useless activities. Plato among others held that recreation was crucial for both the individual as well as the society, in that one could learn, explore and experience things in a “safe” environment. But in the Middle Ages, for many, recreation became a luxury; everyone worked hard … and the Church condemned most forms of leisure (not that folk didn’t engage in all these despite this). The Renaissance wasn’t much better, although the wealthy did find time to play games and read, and “artistic hobbies” were taken up by various feckless folk.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GAMES_RECREATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
It was the Industrial Revolution that really brought leisure, games and recreation into the mainstream again. The annual hours committed to “work” declined in the Industrial West from 1840 to the present from the range of 3000 to 1800 hours. Workers and their unions demanded – and got – ever shorter work weeks, paid vacations, weekends off, and all sorts of other benefits … just so they could spend their extra earnings and spare time on recreation and games.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GLOBALIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
In the 20th Century AD, the globalizing impulse can be viewed as ever-widening ripples of homogeneity … from local to national to regional to global … with the logical conclusion being a unified economy, unified culture, unified language, unified state, and perhaps a unified civilization. Rapid developments in information technology have spawned new, virtual relationships that lead to cultural entropy. International industrialization has brought the mass production of standardized goods that can be inserted into every market in every place. The reduction of tariffs and creation of free trade zones, elimination of national capital controls, and passage of new subsidies has given rise to sprawling and diversified global corporations. Supranational recognition of international property laws (copyright and patent restrictions) insures the global domination of accepted artforms, though sometimes at the expense of local diversity, traditions and individuality.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GLOBALIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The 1840s form a watershed (of sorts) in globalization with expansion of international economies, as the British forced open the interior of China (in the Opium Wars) and the United States browbeat Japan into opening its ports to Western trade. The integration of separate, highly specialized agricultural production created the first “world economy”: French wines, Australian beef, Indian teas, Japanese rice, South American peppers, African spices. The industrial technologies of the factory, railroad, telegraph, Gatling gun and steamship facilitated similar rules and regulations spreading from nation to nation. Though interrupted briefly by two world wars and a great depression between, globalization resumed its triumphant march as the engines of mass media and advertising spread its tendrils beyond the iron and bamboo curtains … the export dynamics of culture reaching into every village. Sociologists argue the world has entered a frenetic fourth phase of globalization, in which developed and developing nations are becoming equal partners in investment, and as per capita income between the two rapidly converge.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GUILDS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
At their best from the 12th through the 15th centuries, the medieval merchant and craft guilds fostered a stable and productive economy, supported charities and social reforms, helped finance roads, schools and churches. And made possible the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Yet the guilds’ conservatism, exclusivity, monopolistic practices, and political meddling eventually eroded their benefit, dooming them to irrelevance and dissolution. By the time decrees abolishing craft associations were enacted in France (1791), Spain (1840), Germany (1859), and Italy (1864), the guilds’ authority had long been on the wane.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GUILDS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Predecessors of the trade guilds were found as early as the 3rd Century BC in Rome and Han China. But by the early Middle Ages, most Roman craft organizations (the collegia), often mutated into Christian confraternities, had disappeared – with the exception of stonecutters and glassmakers, who were employed in building all those churches. The collegia did survive in the Byzantine Empire and figured heavily in the social order of the capital; the famous Book of the Prefect c. 900 AD provides insight into an elaborate guild structure whose primary purpose was imposition of rigid controls on every craft and trade in Byzantium. This concept of control of quality and quantity and price likely spread to Italy in the 10th Century, and then throughout Europe in the 11th Century.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_GUILDS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Medieval guilds were generally established by charters or letters patent issued by the governing body of a city or town, providing a monopoly on production or trade of a good or service there. The ruler was paid a tithe and the guild got to set standards and prices … so everyone was satisfied (save maybe the consumers). Records from the late 12th Century show over 100 guilds chartered by each of the cities of London and Paris. In places, so powerful were some guilds that they became the governing body of cities, indicated by the guildhalls found in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland. But corruption, coupled with new technologies, proved their undoing.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_HUMANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
According to the British Humanist Association, secular humanism is: “1) putting human beings and other living things at the centre of your moral outlook; 2) seeing the world as a natural place and looking to science and reason to make sense of it; and 3) promoting and supporting human flourishing across all frontiers, and championing human rights for everyone.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_HUMANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
These humanist concepts have been around since at least 1500 BC in various Indian and Asian philosophies. In the 6th Century BC, Gautama Buddha expressed a skeptical attitude towards the supernatural and the “soul”; Zarathustra held that humans were thinking beings dignified with choice and agency. Greek philosophers from Xenophanes to Plato sought to explain the world in terms of human reason, and Epicurus concisely summarized human-centered approaches to achieving happiness. In the Middle Ages, most Muslim scholars pursued rational and scientific interpretations of existence in their writings about individualism, secularism, skepticism and liberalism ... all humanist concepts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_HUMANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
But in Europe, humanism came late to civilization. Catholicism had a strong presence until the Renaissance, and it wasn't until a rediscovery of the “classics” by Italian poets that brought humanism back. Francessco Petrarca (better known to most as Petrarch) in the 1300s is often called the “Father of Humanism”; his discovery and translation of Cicero’s lost letters into the common vernacular is also credited with initiating the Renaissance. The growing endorsement of classical studies by scholars in the new universities – the studia humanitatis programs that consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy – spread the concept of a secular approach to understanding across borders. Aided by an outpouring of rediscovered or newly translated Greek and Roman manuscripts by the likes of Aristotle, Cicero and Livy; these works were full of fresh, radical, even avant-garde ideas.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_IDEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The course of modern civilization has been determined by, as much as anything, modern “isms”: capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, conservatism, liberalism, pluralism, racism, feminism, terrorism, scientism, and an infinite host of other ideologies that dictate how society “should work.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_IDEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
At the time of the French Revolution the philosopher Destutt de Tracy used the word idéologie for what he termed his “science of ideas.” In this he had bought into the view of Francis Bacon that the destiny of science was to improve the life of mankind; ideology was science with a mission, aiming to serve men – even saving them from themselves – by ridding their minds of prejudice and preparing them for the supremacy of reason. But when Napoleon linked the word “ideology” with what he considered the more detestable elements of Revolutionary thought, he invested it with disapprobation and fanaticism rather than rationalism (yet more “isms”). Karl Marx, along with influential German sociologists Max Weber and Karl Mannheim, used the term in the pejorative sense of false consciousness engendered by belief systems. From this perspective, a political ideology is an intellectual construct not to be judged in terms of its truth, consistency or clarity, but rather as an expression of some group’s special interests.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_IDEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Until the advent of the mass media, the ideologies remained largely theoretical, merely the subject of obscure academic debates. But the ability to promote “causes” through print, radio, newsreels and then television made all the “isms” much more immediate, and crusaders of all ilk invested their identities in one or another. All the wars, movements and genocides of 20th Century civilization can be attributed to divisive ideologies. As Joycelyn Elders states, “we all have got to come to grips with our isms.” Otherwise, the future looks grim.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MASS_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The “mass media” (as a collective) is essentially an Industrial era phenomenon, although some historians stubbornly argue that it began when Gutenberg rolled his press. The growth of the commercial printing industry in 18th Century London – centered around the publishers on Grub Street – is a more reasonable start, for it was here that cheap copies of penny-dreadfuls, erotic novels and tabloid weeklies were reproduced by the thousands on steam-presses. These were sold to a growing audience of rudimentary readers, spawned by a new public education system and crammed into an urban environment with few leisure escapes; supported by these masses, publishing no longer depended on the refined tastes of the aristocracy, wealthy and clergy for profits.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MASS_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
As the Industrial Age morphed into the Modern, a number of revolutionary technologies brought new ways of pandering to media consumers. Photography was developed in the 1820s, and methods for reproducing images in print improved throughout the century, making magazines and newspapers even more appealing to a barely-literate public. The telegraph, invented in the 1830s and in widespread use by the 1850s, revolutionized both personal communication as well as the newspaper trade, as news really was now “new.” The penny press could, through a continuous stream of telegraph cables, bring the doings (and advertising) of the region, the nation and – after the completion of the 1863 trans-Atlantic cable – the world to one’s door.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MASS_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Photography led to motion pictures, and the movie industry grew to supply escapist fare to anyone with a dime in their pocket and a couple of hours to kill. By 1927 sound had been added to the flickering images, and the world underwent an entertainment explosion. For personal communication, Bell’s little gizmo intended to replace the telegraph, his “telephone,” put everyone in touch, everywhere, all the time. Wireless telegraphy also eventually led to the radio, and “commercial” radio became the first broadcast mass medium, beaming music, news and advertising right into the home. Soon, television, which spread with incredible speed in the 1950s, evolved into the greatest time-devourer of all … until, that is, video games and the Internet joined the ranks of the mass media.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MEDIEVAL_FAIRES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
As foreign trade expanded and craftsmen flourished, in the late Middle Ages a new kind of marketplace sprang up. A facet of European feudalism, a “market town” was one that had the legal right, granted to it by a lord, to have a permanent market; for other towns and villages, and even city neighborhoods, there arose the practice of hosting a market faire. During the faire, travelling merchants and craftsmen would assemble at a designated spot and offer their wares for sale. In time, all sorts joined in the event – entertainers, lawyers, doctors, tax-collectors, and other riff-raff. The faires, lasting just a day or three (and often associated with a saint’s feast day), were usually set up in the precincts of a church or abbey. Except in England where this sort of avarice – the whole “Christ driving the money-lenders from the temple” bit – was seen as a desecration and therefore forbidden by the Statute of Winton enacted during the reign of Edward I (c. 1300 AD).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MEDIEVAL_FAIRES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The local nobles encouraged the establishment of such faires as the merchants were required to pay to set up their tents and booths. Then they usually had to also pay a tax to the king. Everyone got what they wanted: the king and nobles got money (to buy luxuries); the merchants got a profit; the peasants and villagers got new goods, new ideas, and new news.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MEDIEVAL_FAIRES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Over the decades, a large number of these market faires were established by royal charter, the earliest extant being dated 1199. There are also many references in church and government records of faires which do not appear to have a charter; these are described as “prescriptive” … that is they were held by custom. Many of the oldest faires, especially those in urban centers, were prescriptive and had been operating for a century or more … such as the market faire held on the green at Maldon (Essex), first mentioned in writing in 1287 but which may have been in place as early as 916.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCANTILISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
By the 1600s, the Spanish, British, Portuguese, French, Russians and sundry other European powers had empires to run, and empires were costly baubles. The way to keep the home economy healthy was to establish a system known as mercantilism; in effect, the colonies were the “cash cow” for the mother country. It was, for obvious reasons, extremely popular with absolutist monarchs and their subjects – at least those in the homeland – and the dominant economic practice from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Simply put, the Crown put limits on what finished goods the colonies could produce, whose ships they could use, with whom they could trade … and then taxed everything.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCANTILISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
It was inevitable that the British perfected mercantilism. It was expensive to send troops and ships to defend and dominate their colonies spread around the globe. For decades the British government’s stance was “salutary neglect,” passing laws to regulate colonial trade but not enforcing them; the colonies benefited from goods that slipped in from France, Holland, Spain and their nearby colonies in North and South America. However, strapped for cash by the Seven-Years War and other misadventures, in 1763 AD Parliament moved to enforce the many restrictions and taxes and even passed new ones – the Navigation Acts and the Sugar Act. A bad idea as it turned out, for it sparked a revolution in the Americas.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCANTILISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Other European nations embraced mercantilism to varying degrees, with varying degrees of success. The Netherlands had little interest in limiting international trade and so adopted few mercantilist policies. During the Thirty Years War, however, Sweden and Denmark both passed restrictive trade laws and taxes to fund their involvement; and the Holy Roman Empire, while desirous of such an economic policy, was simply too decentralized and diverse to implement it efficiently. France adopted mercantilism as early as 1539 when a royal decree banned the import of woolen goods from Spain and Flanders and the export of bullion (another universal aspect of mercantilist economics).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCANTILISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
But mercantilism didn’t work very well when the Industrial Revolution came, and by 1860 England had ended the last vestiges of the mercantile era.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCENARIES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Since the dawn of civilization, men have killed and died for money (more sensible than for honor, faith, love, or other nonsense). No one is quite sure the first time a tribal chieftain hired mercenaries to augment his ill-trained (and likely reluctant) militia or guard his person, but after the Qin conquest of the other warring states, the Qin and Han dynasties employed nomadic horse archers from the steppes to ensure security. Xenophon recounts that Cyrus the younger hired “Ten Thousand” Greek mercenaries in 401 BC to seize the throne of Persia, and Macedonia, Carthage and Rome employed “barbarian” mercenaries in their wars.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCENARIES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
But it was during the Medieval Age that mercenaries came to the fore in war. The Byzantine emperors followed the old Roman practice of contracting foreigners as a personal bodyguard, notably the fearsome Norsemen formed into the Varangian Guard. In England, William the Conqueror employed Flemish archers to first win and then rule the land. In Italy, condottieri companies were in service to any city-state willing to pay for their professionalism in the internecine wars that marked the 12th through 15th centuries … though they switched sides at the drop of a coin. And El Cid wasn’t the only Christian to fight for a Muslim ruler.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MERCENARIES_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
The so-called “free companies” evolved after the Peace of Brétigny in 1360 ended (for nine years) the Hundred Years War when hundreds of experienced soldiers chose to continue the life (and looting) they had known. Since most nations of the time couldn’t afford to maintain standing armies, there was no lack of work. Following colorful and ruthless commanders such as Sir John Hawkwood, Arnaud de Cervole, Rodrigo de Villandrando and Werner von Urslingen, these companies dominated warfare across Europe into the 1600s. In the British Isles and France, the bloody-minded Scottish gallóglaigh (literally “foreign young warriors”) made their mark by slaughtering all sorts of Englishmen. Then there were the famed Swiss mercenaries, some of whom formed the Papal Guard of the Vatican.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Since humans have never been able to get along long, it was destined that war would evolve. Thus, in a number of places military traditions arose to make the head-bashing more efficient. Initially, this tradition simply meant training the militia, those “volunteers” who did the ruler’s bidding when conflicts arose. India had some of the earliest such militias; after the Aryan invasions c. 2000 BC the Indus Valley city-states began maintaining trained cadres of warriors. Around the same time, the Old Kingdom of Egypt established a trained militia to combat the Libyans, Nubians, Canaanites and other annoyances. In China, the Warring States Period firmly established a military tradition in that civilization.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
It was in Greece – specifically Sparta – however that the earliest “professional” army was given birth; in Sparta, at the age of seven boys were sent to a barracks to be indoctrinated into the military traditions of their homeland. (At the age of 33 they were released from barrack life and allowed to marry and have a family, although they remained “on call” until the age of 60.) By the time Rome got done, military tradition had come to encompass a host of practices: everything from tactics and uniforms to formations and even salutes. Rome’s successors in Europe formalized the practice of mass violence even further, and in the Far East Japan’s code of bushido became ingrained in that culture. By the time gunpowder and gasoline made war a butcher’s business rather than a glorious adventure, every nation had its own military traditions, stretching back generations.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRAINING_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Military training isn’t just about getting teenagers to keep step so they don’t trip over each other, or to all point their spears in the same direction so they don’t stab each other; military training includes getting them to follow orders (even senseless ones), to get and stay fit, and to kill (preferably without being killed, but that’s of secondary importance).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRAINING_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
In militant civilizations, such as the Spartan and the Zulu, compulsory state-sponsored military training started in early childhood. In Sparta, the education system – the Agoge – emphasized obedience, endurance, courage, and self-control … and that loyalty to the state came ahead of all other concerns. By contrast, the goal of the Athenian education system was to produce thinkers trained in the arts and sciences, although prepared for war; young boys learned calisthenics and ball games, while older boys practiced ever more militaristic activities such as running, boxing, and wrestling.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRAINING_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Vegetius states that the Romans trained first for marching and fitness before even being allowed to train with weapons. Initially the new soldiers used wicker shields and wooden weapons, then graduated to the gladius, and finally were taught to use the pilum. So important was training for the imperial army that roofed halls were built for drill and sparring so these could continue even in winter. Far to the east in China, the military was – with the exception of a few professionals – made up of conscripts levied from the masses; although specifics varied from dynasty to dynasty, in general those in the Xianzu (reserves) were forcefully enrolled for a short stint of military training at the age of 20.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MILITARY_TRAINING_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
In feudal Japan those of the samurai class were born into austere lives of brutal training and conditioning. Although training regimes differed as much as the samurai themselves, some tenets remained constant throughout Japanese history: mental preparation, physical training, personal fortitude, along with unarmed and armed combat techniques. It is an ideal of military training still emulated around the world.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MOBILIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Since the first chieftain called upon all his able-bodied subjects to pick up their clubs and follow him, mobilization has been the prerogative of governments. But “mobilization” has been around only since the mass levy of forces by the Directory to defend the French Revolution. By the time of the American Civil War new technologies – notably the telegraph and the railroad – had moved nations towards a more efficient manner of conscripting and assembling troops. It is estimated that the Confederate States of America mobilized about 11% of its (free) population for the war, and that Prussia could mobilize 75% of its reservists quickly … which it did with great effect for the Second Schleswig War, Austro-Prussian War, and Franco-Prussian War.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MOBILIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Two rapidly-industrializing nations – Great Britain and the United States – led the world in planning for mobilization. The British needed a way to get lots of Redcoats to distant places to maintain their empire; and the United States needed a way to get lots of Bluecoats to distant places to build theirs. Great Britain, when faced with the Boers in Africa, was quickly able to mobilize its troops and pound them into submission; America, spurred by a Cuban independence movement, was equally successful at bringing their might to bear on the hapless Spanish in the Caribbean and Philippines. The rest of Europe took note, and when first Austria and then Russia began mobilizing in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in July 1914, all the great powers did so as well.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MOBILIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Two decades later they were all at it again, sparked when Poland instituted a partial mobilization on 24 August in the face of a German buildup along the borders. Within days the British and French had both mobilized … Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union were in a semi-permanent state of mobilization anyway. In the aftermath, most of the “Free World” powers followed America’s lead when it passed the National Security Act of 1947, an all-encompassing plan to implement rapid mobilization and deployment. Although as the Cold War progressed, such elaborate plans became moot under the shadow of the mushroom cloud.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MYSTICISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The term “mysticism” is derived from the Greek term meaning “to conceal.” In the Hellenic civilization, it referred to “secret” rituals … not necessarily religious, for it lacked any connotations of the transcendental or divine. But then the Christians got hold of the word and it came to refer to the “hidden” allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures or to “hidden” presences, such as that of Christ at the Eucharist. Then the Christians bent it again, using it to denote three “theological” intertwined aspects of the divine: the biblical, the liturgical and the spiritual (or contemplative for non-Christians). Typically, mystics – theistic or not – view their mystical experiences as a stage in human transformation.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MYSTICISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Thus, by the Renaissance – when mysticism abounded – it might be best thought of as a constellation of practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions and experiences all aimed at transcendence. Ironically, it also got condemned by the Church, and a lot of mystics – who became identified with the occult – got tortured and burned in their quest for transformation to another state of existence. Later, as human horizons expanded with the Enlightenment, so the threads of all sorts of mysticism got tangled: Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Tantric and so forth. The coming of modernity didn’t put these mystical fires out, only threw gasoline on them.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_MYSTICISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Psychologists such as Carl Jung sought to combine the “authenticity” of science with the mysticism of the spiritual in a search for “undiscovered paths to the unconscious self” that could lead a man towards “realizing his real nature and attaining his real goal.” Of course, the mystics never did quite define what that goal is supposed to be. Whether apophatic (indescribable) or kataphatic (shareable), theurgic (such as the Jewish kabbalah) or theologic, whether the mystic seeks a “union” or an “identity” with a higher intelligence, mysticism persists into the 21st Century.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATIONALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
According to political scientists, nationalism “arises and flourishes in modern societies described as being associated with having an industrial economy capable of self-sustainability of the society, a central supreme authority capable of maintaining authority and unity, and a centralized language or small group of centralized languages understood by the community of people.” Simply put, nationalism is overweening patriotism, an identification first with one’s country rather than town, region, or extended family. The roots of it can be traced back to the Hebrews, but they weren’t alone, for in the following centuries this nationalistic pride was found among the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Catholic Europe.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATIONALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The growth of the middle classes, their growing desire for political power, and the subsequent development of democratic thinking helped fuel the rise of nationalism. But it was the French Revolution that gave birth to nationalistic expression. To those revolutionary thinkers that undertook the Terror, the “nation” was inseparable from the “people,” and for the first time a people would create a government in accordance with their collective will, glorifying the nation through the principles of liberty, equality and brotherhood. Thus began the political transformation of civilization. Meanwhile, German philosophers such as Hegel and Herder argued that a sense of nationality held modern societies together, through cultural self-expressions of nationhood. Then the Napoleonic wars spurred all sorts of folk to resist foreign domination (whether by emperors or revolutionaries) based on racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious identification.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATIONALISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
As the Holy Roman Empire fell apart, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman ones stumbled, all sorts of peoples found a nationalistic voice – the Poles, Greeks, Magyars, among others. On the periphery, campaigns for independence fueled by rampant nationalism in Ireland, Norway and Bulgaria made progress. The unruly small kingdoms in Germany and Italy coalesced into new nations, each with a common sense of identity and destiny. And in Serbia all this managed to ignite a world war … driven by nationalism.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATURAL_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
A beautiful, old-fashioned term but puzzling … since everyone knows what “natural” means and what “history” is, isn’t “natural history” the study of non-human life on Earth in the past? No, it isn’t. Natural History is the study of animals, plants, fungi and such in their environment. Leaning on observational rather than experimental research, natural historians tend to wander about grubby places and occasionally publish.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATURAL_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Aristotle was the first to apply reason to what he observed of the diversity of nature, but it was Pedanius Dioscorides who first found practical applications for natural history in pharmacology. The medicinal uses of nature remained the primary emphasis of the field through the 18th Century AD. Throughout, the major principle of natural history was the scala naturae (or “Great Chain of Being”) decreed by God, an arrangement on a linear scale of all things – minerals, plants, primitive animals to more complex animals – in increasing perfection, culminating in humanity. It was a concept quite acceptable to the Catholic Church.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATURAL_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Until that is, the exploration of the wider world during the Renaissance brought all sorts of new organisms to light. The rapid increase in the number of known species prompted attempts at systematic classification of these into taxonomic groups, culminating in the revolutionary system of Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus published in 1735. Study of natural history, once freed of the heavy hand of the Church, expanded phenomenally. Commencing in 1749 and continuing through 1804, the Histoire Naturelle, générale et particuliere was an encyclopedic collection of everything known of natural history compiled by the Comte de Buffon in 36 volumes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NATURAL_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
By the Industrial era, natural history was all the rage. Amateur naturalists crawled out of every garden, and explorers kept bringing back odd creatures from distant places. Across Europe and the Americas natural history societies sprang into being, and gigantic public museums – such as those in London and Washington – were built to display bones, pelts and bugs on pins for the edification of school children for all time.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NAVAL_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Mankind has been fighting battles on water for over three millennia; the first recorded sea battle occurred supposedly about 1210 BC when Suppiluliuma of the Hittites defeated a fleet from Cyprus and then burned their merchant fleet. It was the start of the long naval tradition of carrying conflict to sea, and plundering the neighbor’s seaborne trade.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NAVAL_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Obviously, those civilizations with extensive coastlines or lots of islands tend (but not always) to develop a tradition of staining the sea red quicker than their less fortunate neighbors. Thus, the rowed ships of ancient Greece and Carthage dominated the Mediterranean, in which opposing ships tried to ram or board one another (in essence, just bludgeoning away like armies did on land). In ancient China the war junk was developed, although the first standing Chinese navy didn’t come into existence until Song dynasty of the 12th Century AD; meanwhile the Chola dynasty of medieval India was the greatest naval power of the region at the time.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NAVAL_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
By the time the Middle Ages rolled around in Europe, a number of kingdoms had renowned naval traditions: the Vikings, the English, the Dutch, the Spanish, and Portuguese. These traditions would help them “discover” the faraway lands and slaughter the indigenous people so Europeans could settle there. The cogs, caravels, and carracks not only made the oared ships obsolete but could survive crossing the vast, open oceans. Not surprisingly, these ocean-going kingdoms also managed to cobble together great maritime trading empires as the Middle Ages morphed into the Renaissance.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NAVAL_TRADITION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
Then came gunpowder, and naval warfare changed forever. Gone were the days of maneuvering so a ship could slam its prow into the side of another as infantry stormed over the railings, replaced by maneuvering so a ship could unleash its broadside into the hapless enemy. A development that favored those nations that already had a strong naval tradition.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NUCLEAR_PROGRAM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
When “Trinity” was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945 AD, it was the culmination of a centuries-long science project. Uranium had been discovered in 1789 by the German chemist Martin Klaproth. Wilhelm Rontgen received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of ionizing radiation in 1895; then in 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie isolated radium from pitchblende, the same year that Samuel Prescott showed that radiation destroyed bacteria (and other living things). Between 1898 and 1938, more discoveries followed … until Hahn and Strassmann finally proved that atomic fission had occurred in their experiments. Lise Meitner, Otto Frisch and Niels Bohr calculated that the energy released from nuclear fission as about 200 million volts, a figure Frisch confirmed experimentally in January 1939.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NUCLEAR_PROGRAM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The world war brought civilization the Manhattan Project, as the United States raced to be the first nation to build an “atomic” bomb. The horrendous result of all this science was a device known as “Little Boy” that was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, destroying 12 square kilometers and killing around 75 thousand (exact estimates are difficult to determine since 90% of the doctors and 93% of the nurses in the city died in the explosion). By December 1945, another 75 thousand survivors had died of radiation poisoning. When Japan didn’t surrender unconditionally immediately, Truman ordered a second bomb dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with similar results. Japan surrendered.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_NUCLEAR_PROGRAM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
But now everyone wanted “the bomb.” Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. and USSR competed for nuclear supremacy until a point of MAD (“mutually assured destruction”) was reached. During the same decades, Anglo-American cooperation brought the British the bomb, and China was made a nuclear power in 1964 by a subsequently regretful Russia. France developed nuclear weapons on its own. Since then these five powers have tried to put the apocalyptic genie back in the box – but all sorts have embarked on nuclear programs: India, Pakistan, Israel, Libya, Iran, and North Korea.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_OPERA_BALLET_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Once European civilization had an educated, wealthy elite with too much time on their collective hands and looking for something to set themselves apart from tasteless commoners, the world was ready for opera and ballet. Jacopo Peri, around 1597 AD, composed what is considered the first opera for a group of Florentine humanists (The Florentine Camerata). Meanwhile, during that century ballet evolved as an outgrowth of courtly dances in Renaissance Italy, and developed its iconic forms in France. During the Baroque era, both became ever more refined (i.e., divorced from the music and dance of those crude commoners) in Naples, Vienna, Paris and other cultural centers.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_OPERA_BALLET_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
At the beginning of the Baroque era, opera seria was the dominant style, with stories derived from classical mythology and the lead parts sung by famous castrati. But whereas these operas focused on the poetry of the words, by the end of the era this had given way to the primacy of the vocal virtuosity, the bel canto approach. During the so-called “golden age of opera,” composers such as Verdi and Wagner developed distinctive, national traditions. During the years following the French Revolution, a new, industrialist middle class had the money to frequent the theater, driven to be “cultured.” A wave of Romanticism swept across Europe, and opera became more accessible to those jumped-up commoners; in a couple decades even the lower classes could enjoy opera, for the phonograph and then radio brought the caterwauling right into their hovels.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_OPERA_BALLET_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
In the 16th Century, Catherine de Medici – wife of Henry II of France and patron of the arts (among other things) – sponsored displays of refined dance, the ballet de cour, for the edification of noblemen and women at her lavish court events. A century later Louis XIV, a passionate fan of dance, sought to popularize and standardize ballet; in 1661 he helped establish the Académie Royale de Danse in Paris. By 1681 performances of ballet had moved from the court to the stage, and early ballets of the Romantic era such as Giselle and La Sylphide proved popular far beyond France … especially in Tsarist Russia. Russian composers and choreographers produced soaring works such as The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, which even the layman could appreciate through wars and revolutions.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RAPID_DEPLOYMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Most First World nations now have military formations capable of quick deployment into the field at short notice; as opposed to “Quick Deployment Forces” (which are local in nature – such as the American National Guard), “Rapid Deployment Forces” (RDF) are meant for outside the borders of the home country. In general, these RDF consist of elite formations, such as the American 82nd Airborne Division, 75th U.S. Ranger Regiment, or British Royal Marines. All have the mission of having combat troops “wheels up” and battle-ready within 18 hours of notification, and all are trained in “forced entry” into enemy territory to seize and secure key places (such as airfields or beaches) for follow-up units.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RAPID_DEPLOYMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
The history of rapid deployment forces is rich and varied, as with most elite military units. Marines are perhaps the oldest such formations, and trace their antecedents back to the naval landing shore parties of Peter the Great and the U.S. Marine Corps was originally established by the Continental Congress in 1775. The latter earned its “rapid” reputation during such battles as the First Barbary War, the Mexican-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, and during dozens of missions to protect American interests around the globe. In Europe, meanwhile, light infantry units such as grenz, chasseur, and jager (depending on national preferences) formations were established that could be quickly mobilized and transported to the border. In time, airborne and air mobile units were added to the mix.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RAPID_DEPLOYMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
With the onset of the Cold War, both sides developed RDF orders-of-battle that incorporated units from several services. In Great Britain, the Joint Rapid Reaction Force consisted of a pool of specialized units from all three armed forces, capable of mounting operations under the auspices of NATO, the European Union or the United Nations. The United States created its own Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force in March 1980 with the specific mission to “help maintain regional stability and the Gulf oil-flow westward.” In Russia, the Collective Rapid Reaction Force formed in 2009 has largely supplanted the Soviet VDV (airborne) units used for such purposes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_POLITICAL_PHILOSOPHY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
At its most basic, political philosophy is focused on the concept of the creation of government; what form it should take; what is meant by the likes of liberty, justice, the law and other civilized fictions; and the rights and duties of the citizens. As might be imagined, political philosophers do not agree on much. In fact, the meaning of the term “political” is itself one of the most contentious topics.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_POLITICAL_PHILOSOPHY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Political philosophy had its beginning in ethical debates on questions as to what constitutes a “good life.” Since people are by nature sociable – there being few proper hermits about – the question follows as to how a person should behave in the company of others. Chinese political philosophy, for instance, goes back a long ways, to the writings of Confucius in the 6th Century BC. The first work of Western political philosophy is the Republic by Plato, who sought solutions for what he saw as injustice and inequity; to do so, he proposed the first of what would be many utopian (in that they are “moral”) political systems. Roman political philosophy was heavily influenced by the Stoics, and so tended to be a bit more pragmatic.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_POLITICAL_PHILOSOPHY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
After some centuries taking a more theological approach, Renaissance political philosophy returned to the pragmatic – as embodied by the works of Niccolo Machiavelli. Then a bunch of intellectuals … Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and the like … began spouting off about the “social contract,” human rights, equality and such, leading to a number of revolutions, especially the French one that turned civilization on its head. To confuse things even further, with industrialism taking hold, Marxist political philosophers (Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.) proposed yet another sort of political structure – radical socialism – as the only “correct” form of government … leading to yet another bloody revolution.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_PROFESSIONAL_SPORTS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Throughout most of human history, men have worked hard to have “fun” and enjoy their leisure time. Leisure was primarily a privilege for the affluent; everyone else faced an incessant struggle for food, shelter, clothing and safety. While folks had always enjoyed playing and watching sports, especially team sports, these had generally been amateur competitions – setting aside those bloody chariot races in Rome, ball games in Mesoamerica and polo matches in Persia. But with the leisure “industry” exploding during the Industrial Revolution and people willing to pay to watch paid athletes compete, and all those empty hours to fill for the working class, well … professional sports.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_PROFESSIONAL_SPORTS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
Public school sports and club sports in England had been the rage since the 1660s, and in the mid-1700s the first “first class” (semi-professional) teams in cricket were formed. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution was raging. As the masses moved to the cities they brought their rural sports with them; and advances in transport and communication opened opportunities for university teams to compete against each other. This all sparked efforts to impose standard rules, and in 1848 AD the Cambridge Rules codified the play of association football (known as soccer in some backward places). This in turn led to the establishment of the Football Association in 1863 in London, the first governing body of a spectator sport; the year before, the Notts County Football Club was paying some of its players, making it the oldest professional club in the world.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_PROFESSIONAL_SPORTS_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Meanwhile, across the pond, following the Civil War the sport of baseball captured the attention of the masses in northeastern America. Since money seemed a great incentive to play hard, several early baseball teams put their players on salary, the first being the Cincinnati Red Stockings beginning in 1869. In 1871 the first professional baseball league was created, and by the beginning of the 1900s most large cities in the eastern United States had one or more professional teams, divided in National and American divisions. And sports haven’t been “fun” since.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RECORDED_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Understanding the past appears to be yet another basic human need, and the recording of history emerged independently in civilizations throughout ancient history. The earliest simple chronologies date back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. But the first actual factual (more-or-less) history that wasn’t just carved into tombs and temples was the “Twenty-Four Histories” of China, the official accounts of the dynasties there from C. 3000 BC through the Ming dynasty of the 17th Century AD. Starting with the Tang, each dynasty established an official post to write the history of its predecessor using court records; eventually this amounted to 3213 volumes (of sometimes dubious worth).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RECORDED_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
In the Mediterranean, Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 450 BC) is generally acclaimed as the “Father of History” although it was his contemporary Thucydides who actually approached history as a methodical account of true events. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides regarded history as the product of choices made by human beings, a matter of cause and effect rather than divine intervention as Herodotus (and later a whole bunch of Christian scholars) did. Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, events were seen (and recorded) through the lens of religion. It was left to the German Georg Friedrich Hegel to return to a secular approach to history; Hegel himself was simply refining the approach of the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who argued that the past was a strange landscape and in need of interpretation.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_RECORDED_HISTORY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
The apex of Enlightenment history was reached with Edward Gibbon’s monumental six-volume work on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, published in 1776. With its stress on objectivity and the use of primary sources, it made Gibbons the first “modern historian.” A claim also made about Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), who focused on archival research and the analysis of historical documents with an emphasis on narrative history. By the time the French Annales School and Marxist-Leninist approaches looked to interpret history in new ways, history was no longer just a factual account but offered insights into how … and why … civilization came to be like it is.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_REFORMED_CHURCH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
It is said that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, but rarely does it spark as profound a change as the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. A German theologian named Martin Luther struck the match by protesting the Catholic Church’s plenary indulgence, the practice allowing the wealthy to literally buy their way out of Hell. These ideas took hold amongst a swiftly growing ranks of protesters throughout Europe, eventually leading to a religious schism from the Church. Soon Lutheranism spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire, Reformed churches sprang up in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and Presbyterian congregations formed in Scotland. (Meanwhile, Henry VIII of England founded the Anglican Church to divorce his wife and marry the younger Anne Boleyn.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_REFORMED_CHURCH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
A weakening was already under way in Catholicism, as humanism and the Scientific Revolution challenged accepted “holy” writ. Moreover, free thinking was abroad in the thriving urban cities and among the emerging (and determined) middle class. As often happens, this Reformation came with a lot of blood; the Thirty Years War devastated Germany and killed an estimated 25% to 40% of its population as the Holy Roman Empire sought to reassert Catholicism. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 AD finally ended the war by insuring that each sovereign had the right to determine the religion of his state, and that Christians living everywhere had the right to practice their faith in public (during specified hours, that is).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_REFORMED_CHURCH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Reform in religion is not, certainly, limited to Christianity. Reform movements within Islam and Judaism have led to new branches of the parent faith. In these, the reformers have attempted to adapt the traditional “church” to liberal, human-rights oriented values. These movements grew out of differences in interpretation of core values, emphasizing the evolving nature of their obligations and practices. Similar movements have evolved Buddhism and Hinduism, as these ancient religions seek relevance in modern civilization.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SCORCHED_EARTH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
War is never simply about defeating enemy armies. To win, one must destroy an enemy’s means and morale to carry on the war. This kind of desolation was all too familiar to civilians from ancient times through the late Renaissance, but the Industrial Revolution’s many advancements turned rapid, wholesale destruction into a legitimate military strategy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SCORCHED_EARTH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
Text:
A scorched earth policy removes or destroys an enemy’s capacity to wage war—food, supplies, infrastructure, or anything else that the enemy could find useful. Czar Alexander I of Russia stalled and starved Napoleon Boneparte’s 1812 invasion by ordering the Russian countryside burned. This defensive scorched earth strategy allowed Alexander to destroy his nation’s own farmland rather than allow the Grand Army to live off the land. In the American Civil War, General William T. Sherman brought scorched earth to his enemy’s territory. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” ravaged hundreds of miles of railroad, ransacked millions of pounds of food, and burned military targets and civilian property alike.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SCORCHED_EARTH_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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While many nations practiced some degree of scorched earth warfare, World War II saw it occur on a grand scale—tragically apparent during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. What Soviet forces didn’t destroy during the German advance, German forces did when they retreated three years later. The horrendous, large-scale effects on the civilian population, seen again during conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, led to the strategy being banned under the 1977 Geneva Convention.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SOCIAL_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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ICYMI, social media contains all one needs to know about human civilization … or at least those bits of it that the connected people know. Except perhaps whether social media is the boon or the curse of the 21st Century. BTAIM, they’re not even sure exactly how it got started. LMAO.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SOCIAL_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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B4 there was Six Degrees, weblogs or My Space, it started with the first dial-up BBS launched by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in Chicago in February 1978 AD. These primitive online meeting places were independently-produced hunks of code that allowed users to communicate through a central server where they could download files and post public messages. These text-only services quickly became popular with BFFs through WOM, and through the 1980s and early 1990s various services – such as FidoNet – arose to link these BBSs together into world-wide messaging boards. Meanwhile, commercial services such as CompuServe expanded into the public domain, offering discussion forums on all manner of subjects … and a newfangled service termed “email.” FOMO brought thousands of Gen-Xers into the fold.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SOCIAL_MEDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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In 1997 the first site that everyone can agree was a SMP was launched: SixDegrees.com. Lasting only until 2001 due to a proliferation of SPAM, it allowed subscribers to create an updateable profile of themselves, and then “friend” other users. FYI, by 2000 around 100 million people had access to the Internet; all manner of users were utilizing chat rooms for discussion, dating and sharing. The first social media surge followed shortly after with the launch of LinkedIn (2002) and MySpace (2003). But IMHO it was 2004 and the launch of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg and 2006 and the launch of Twitter by Jack Dorsey that established the “connected” world of social media. Today, on these and dozens of other services (Flickr, Tumblr, Habbo, Sina Weibo, etc.) virtually any text, video, audio or image file can be shared on all sorts of devices, even mobile ones … although TBH, it is becoming ever harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SPACE_RACE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union recruited, coerced or simply kidnapped hundreds of surviving German scientists … and none so numerous as those who had worked on the Nazi rocket programs. As the Cold War heated up, space became yet another field of competition for the two superpowers as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology (and, by extension, its political-military-economic system). At first, the intent was to be able to launch bigger versions of the German V-2 rockets, ones capable of carrying a warhead to distant cities. But soon, some slightly-mad visionaries saw a “better” use for those ballistic missiles; in 1955 AD, just four days apart, both nations separately and publically announced they would place an artificial satellite in orbit by 1957 or ’58.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SPACE_RACE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The Soviets won the first leg of the space race, launching Sputnik I into orbit on October 1957; four months after, the German von Braun (who headed the American effort) and his team put Explorer I atop a four-stage Juno I in Cape Canaveral and fired it off. Over the next few years, several hapless dogs and monkeys were shot into orbit on one-way trips, all leading up to the Soviets launching Yuri Gagarin into orbit in April 1961 … who enjoyed a round-trip. Once again the Americans had lost the race by just months, with John Glenn orbiting the Earth in Friendship 7 in February 1962. When U.S. President Kennedy made his bold claim that America would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade, things heated up again.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SPACE_RACE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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The next years were marked with some spectacular failures (exploding rockets make for great images), for both the Soviets and the Americans, but culminating with the launch of Apollo 8 in 1968, the first manned mission to orbit the moon. On 20 July 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong proclaimed “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” In July 1975, with relations between Russia and America thawing, the first joint mission – the Apollo-Soyuz docking – meant the space race was over.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_STATE_WORKFORCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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Work began with Homo sapiens; along with tool making, a complex brain structure, and a spoken language, the organization of labor was responsible for mankind’s conquest of nature and certainly differentiated human beings from other animals. The historian Karl Wittfogel suggests that the large-scale irrigation projects in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt built by laborers conscripted by the state brought civilization: work specialization, the emergence of social classes, organized government, and cultural hierarchy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_STATE_WORKFORCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Save for the militia army (of course) the ability to “draft” a state workforce for monumental public works projects was the ancient ruler’s primary display of power and “concern” for his subjects. In time, these public projects took on all sorts of forms; the Great Pyramid at Giza used some 100 thousand workers over 20 years, and the Great Wall in China employed even more conscripts over generations. In these and other projects, the workers were mostly peasants (rather than slaves, who were much too valuable to waste by the thousands building such wonders), serving the state as a form of service tax. The Romans pioneered advanced organizational techniques for their skilled state workforce to build the infrastructure that made Rome a millennial empire: roads, aqueducts, public baths, harbors, docks, lighthouses and entertainment venues such as the Colosseum and Circus Maximus.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_STATE_WORKFORCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Labor service to the state took various forms, but all entailed some sort of unpaid, unfree work. Popular in Western civilization was corvée, labor that was intermittent in nature and for limited periods; in ancient times for a single, massive project, evolving in the Far East to be a certain number of days each year at the lord’s behest. Serfdom was the standard under feudalism, with the peasants required to work for the “Lord of the Manor” in whatever capacity he (or she) might deem necessary … including helping with the monarch’s or Catholic Church’s latest construction folly. Then came the Industrial Revolution’s debt-bondage and wage-slavery … although collective bargaining, minimum wage, child labor laws, prisoners’ rights, and the 40-hour week have pretty much done away with a state workforce.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SUFFRAGE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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Suffrage – the odd notion that everyone in a democracy deserves to vote. Before the first of a series of reforms in 1832 AD in the United Kingdom, only 3% of the adult male population was “qualified” to vote. In general, both in the Americas and in Europe, the right to vote depended on how much one earned and the value of his property. Thus, the majority of people who could vote were both wealthy and male. Throughout the early 1800s idealists fought to extend the franchise to women, the un-wealthy, immigrants, and various minorities with some concessions won (such as the 1870 15th Amendment in the United States). But, largely, voting was still a white, middle-class, male privilege.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SUFFRAGE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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While the history of universal suffrage is a hodge-podge of reform movements and civil protests and editorial diatribes, the most visible (and noisy) were women’s efforts in the United States and Great Britain to get to vote. Although full female enfranchisement was still decades away in most places, there had been some brief instances of women having the vote: in Sweden-Finland 1718 to 1772, Corsica 1755 through 1769, and even in New Jersey in 1776 (it was rescinded in 1807).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_SUFFRAGE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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In the United States, the campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in 1848 when a group of abolitionists, mostly women, gathered in Seneca Falls to discuss women’s rights in a democracy. The outcome, a significant – and sometimes violent – effort to gain the vote. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, following the flawed 1832 Reform Act, suffrage became a political topic, leading to the formation of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1867 and the even more militant Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. Although the process was delayed by the distraction of the First World War, in 1920 in the United States and in 1928 in the United Kingdom women were finally given full voting rights … well after New Zealand (1893) and Finland (1906).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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Once civilization created organized religion, it was inevitable that theologians would follow. Theology is a “philosophical discipline concerned with religious speculation and apologetics” focused on the divine and sacred, humanity and “god,” salvation, and eschatology. In its efforts to be as applicable and systematic as any science, theology has spawned a host of “isms”: agnosticism, atheism, deism, dualism, monotheism, pantheism, polytheism, animism, totemism and such. Although certainly applicable to all religions, theology has been a major thread primarily in the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their offshoots.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The philosopher Plato identified the term “theology” with the mythical, which might have a temporary pedagogical significance but that would eventually be cleansed from the rational state. This identification of theology with mythology remained common throughout the Mediterranean civilizations until the Christians took umbrage and declared that theology was a means of proclaiming the divine, of confessing to it, and of preaching this confession. Thus, by the early Medieval Era theology was the attempt by adherents to make a logical and reasonable statement of faith, to explicate that statement in terms of rationalism, and to place it in the context of the “real” world as well as the spiritual. By the Renaissance, theologians were striving mightily to distance themselves from mysticism and be taken seriously by other academic disciplines.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THEOLOGY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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During the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, theology was the ultimate subject at most universities, being labelled the “Queen of the Sciences” and serving as the capstone for the Trivium and Quadrivium that learned young men were expected to master. Theology’s eminent place in the university curriculum finally began to be challenged during the Enlightenment, especially in Germany. Most of the unresolved debate since has centered on whether theology’s methods are appropriately theoretical and scientific.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THE_ENLIGHTENMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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The Enlightenment was a sprawling intellectual, philosophical, cultural, social movement marked by empiricism, scientific rationalism and reductionism displayed in the questioning of religious and political orthodoxy. It sprang from the thinking of several influential thinkers writing in different places on different subjects – politics, science, religion, aesthetics – and spread across Europe, the several currents mixing and mutating. In short, it was a tidal wave of rationalism … and swept civilization into a new channel.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THE_ENLIGHTENMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The power of reason was first explored by the philosophers of ancient Greece, thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Socrates, and Thales of Miletus. The Romans adopted and adapted Greek thinking to include their thinking on a rational natural order and natural laws, but most of this was rejected by the Church in the following centuries, until Thomas Aquinas resurrected reason as a tool of understanding … although he subordinated it to spiritual revelation of the revealed truths of the Church. Soon a rediscovery of the ancient classics, humanism, experimental science, the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation brought about a new way of thinking. Thinkers such as Bacon, Galileo and Copernicus challenged Church dogma about the ways the universe works; the likes of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Hume and Smith offered new thoughts on the human condition.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_THE_ENLIGHTENMENT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Some historians date the Enlightenment from 1715 (the year Louis XIV died) to 1789 AD (the beginning of the French Revolution), for it was during this period that great thinkers circulated their thinking through meetings at scientific academies and societies, literary salons, Masonic lodges, and especially through printed books and pamphlets. Especially virulent were the concepts of rational politics, as thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Paine espoused individual rights, the social contract and representative government. This was appalling thinking to the monarchs and the church. And such thinking led to various revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, the Industrial Revolution, and everything since.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_TOTALITARIANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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The term 'totalitarismo' was first used by the “philosopher of fascism” Giovanni Gentile in the midst of the world-wide depression to convey the comforting sense of an “all-embracing, total state” which could provide security and prosperity for its citizens if they would but surrender some of their liberties. It can be argued that totalitarianism is an ancient concept, around for millennia. Under Minister Li Si, Legalism was the prevailing philosophy of the Qin dynasty: political activities were restricted, liberal literature destroyed, and those who did not conform summarily put to death. The rigid caste-based society envisioned by Plato in the 'Republic' has many totalitarian traits, and Machiavelli’s 'The Prince' offered still more totalitarian ideals.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_TOTALITARIANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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A number of political philosophers and historians have taken up the subject of totalitarianism. Although they don’t agree on much else (such as how effective it may be, under what circumstances and with what results), they do agree that there are five key features that together distinguish a totalitarian state: an official ideology to which general adherence is mandated; a single party, hierarchically organized, interwoven with the state bureaucracy; monopolistic control of the armed forces; monopolistic control of the mass media; a system of terroristic police control; central direction of the state’s capitalist economy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_TOTALITARIANISM_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Although it may be inconceivable that any rational person would willingly give up political pluralism and individual liberty, true liberalism contains a contradiction: unrestrained pursuit of personal liberty is a threat to others, and therefore to society. And pluralism can lead to paralysis. With their stress on the social rather than the individual, and battered by the political and economic chaos following the First World War, a number of political leaders promoted totalitarianism (indeed, there were totalitarian movements in most countries) and some came to power: Benito Mussolini in Italy (1922), António Salazar in Portugal (1932), Adolf Hitler in Germany (1933) and Francisco Franco in Spain (1936). And quite a few since … in Argentina, Paraguay, Haiti, Albania, Angola, Iraq, Uganda, etc., etc., etc.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_URBANIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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It is estimated that by 2050 AD some 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, sucking up scarce resources and creating waste on an unprecedented scale in human civilization. It is a trend that has been advancing since the first towns arose in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China when mankind finally moved beyond subsistence farming and primitive societies could afford to feed “useless” mouths – priests, philosophers, bureaucrats and the like. But cities were limited to the population that the local agriculture could support, “local” expanding as transportation expanded. Too, agricultural production was labor intensive, and there were only so many jobs available in towns for craftsmen and other trades. But the onset of the agricultural and industrial revolutions in the 18th Century shattered that millennia-old balance.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_URBANIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Only three percent of mankind lived in cities in 1800; by 1900 that figure had risen to 14 percent, and 12 cities had populations over a million each. Just a half-century later that percentage had doubled and there were 83 cities in the world numbering over a million humans. Cities just kept getting more crowded; the number of “mega-cities” – those with populations of ten million or more – rose from three in 1975 to 16 in 2000, and is projected to be 27 in 2025. All thanks to technology.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVICS_PAGE_CIVIC_URBANIZATION_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Sociologists have proposed that the Industrial Revolution threw off the four natural limits on the growth of urban centers: the distance to food and water supplies, the geographic extent of walls and fortifications, the speed of traffic (all those slow-moving oxcarts and pedestrians), and the availability of power. Steam engines and motor cars, natural gas and electricity, iceboxes and indoor plumbing, artillery and aeroplanes. The telephone and automobile brought yet another stage of urbanization in the early 20th Century, the phenomenon of suburbs. No longer did folk need to live near the factories and offices they labored in in the cities; now they could live in the “countryside” again.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_INTRO_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
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Every civilization is unique, each having their own "trait," fighting units, and infrastructure. A civilization’s leader also has their own special trait - some traits appear early-on in a match, while others might only show up later. All of a civilization's and leader's traits, unique units, and infrastructure are displayed during game setup when choosing a civilization.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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In terms of civilization, the progress of America from a collection of squabbling colonies to a globe-spanning superpower has been meteoric. Product of waves of immigration, it is currently the world’s fourth largest country and third most populous, spanning the width of the North American continent from Atlantic to Pacific and site of some of humanity’s greatest cities. With the world’s largest GDP (gross domestic product), service sector, media industry, and military GFP (global firepower factor, not including nuclear weaponry), America could be considered the world’s first "hyperpower."


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The United States of America can be dated to the founding of thirteen English colonies along the eastern seaboard on the North America continent, colonies composed of landless second sons of British gentry, get-rich-quick adventurers, convicts, debtors, religious zealots, political radicals, and some folks just looking for a better life. Other immigrants – African slaves, European indentured servants and the like – arrived not by choice but due to misfortune. Whatever the circumstance, this rowdy rabble laid the foundation for the “melting pot.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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These newcomers quickly put their superior firepower and technology to use against the indigenous population, launching two centuries of conflict and atrocity. By 1776, the native tribes east of the Mississippi were either obliterated, displaced or subjugated. And, due to the expanding western frontier and their role in the British victory in the French and Indian War in 1763, the “Americans” soon developed an unseemly sense of self-sufficiency and independence. In a few short generations from those initial settlements at Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth and other inhospitable places, these Americans dared to agitate against The Crown for treatment equal to that accorded citizens in the homeland.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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Led by Virginia gentry and New England intellectuals, the colonists went from celebrating a victory with Britain over the French to engaging in armed conflict against Britain in just 12 years. If the British Parliament had only followed Ben Franklin’s satirical “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One” (1773), a succinct summation of colonial grievances, England may have given up the Americas as a troublesome investment a lot sooner. Like most family squabbles, the most important factor was money; the colonials chafed under what they considered to be unfair economic restrictions and taxes from Great Britain. Meanwhile, the British (along with a few die-hard loyalists) generally thought that the Americans were an ungrateful rabble who had no idea how much money the Crown was spending on their protection and progress.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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By the late 1770s the American colonies were in open revolt, and on July 4, 1776, after intense debate and hand-wringing, their collective representatives declared independence – setting off the Revolutionary War. The fight raged from April 1775 through October 1781. It was the usual confused civil conflict, guerrilla warfare in the South and much marching to-and-fro in the North. The Continentals (as the rebellious colonists were known) were outgunned and outmanned by the highly-trained and battle-tested British Army, particularly since the vaunted British Navy had absolute control of the seas ... until the French and Spanish joined toward the end of the 1770s.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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In late 1781 the Continental Army besieged General Cornwallis’s British force at Yorktown. With the French Navy off-shore the British were unable to escape, and Cornwallis surrendered to the American George Washington, hero of the Revolution. Two years later, a peace treaty was finally signed, giving the new republic all lands east of the Mississippi (save Florida which went to Spain), allowing American merchants the right to pursue their avarice across the globe through “free trade,” and formally recognizing the new nation.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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With the unpleasantness over, the American “patriots” set about cobbling together a federal republic. The initial attempt, the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” ratified in 1781 proved stunningly ineffectual, for it granted the government no authority to tax its citizens, no ability to maintain a military force, and had no executive officer to oversee things. The leaders of the new United States Congress quickly noted these and other flaws; they soon convened a secret convention meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles. Instead, after much pontificating and argument, the conventioneers drafted a new Constitution entire, one adopted by the states in 1789, giving the United States’ government its present shape – more or less. That same year Washington was elected the first president. In 1791 a Bill of Rights was added; since then 17 more amendments have been added and another six proposed to get it right.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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With “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” now guaranteed for its citizens, the new nation set about its own happiness – rapid expansion. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte, no longer interested in some barbaric outpost on a distant continent, sold the French territory of Louisiana and beyond to the United States in the greatest property transfer in history. Having little knowledge of what he had paid the exorbitant sum of $11.25 million for, President Jefferson dispatched a couple of military officers to explore and report back on the new territory. As it turned out, the upstart country had nearly doubled in size. But it was by no means the end of American land grabs, and only by the end of 1853 had the United States assumed its current continental expanse.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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With expansion came conflict, and 1861 saw the ultimate family feud: the Civil War. What followed was four-years of the bitterest type of conflict, leaving some 600,000 Americans dead and 400,000 wounded. The war resulted in the emancipation of enlsaved peoples, and, as a result, the virtual annihilation of the Southern economy (which was founded on that enslaved labor). Echoes of this division are still seen in American politics today.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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No longer distracted, and driven by a sense of manifest destiny, hopes for a better life, and the usual hunt for adventure and wealth, homesteaders, prospectors, merchants, preachers and outlaws flooded the lands to the west. In a couple of generations, even remote reaches of America had a semblance of sophistication (after slaughtering the indigenous inhabitants), given the fortunes being made in minerals and livestock and timber, and sensibility, thanks to the God-fearing families settling this “Wild West.” All along the eastern and gulf seaboards, European immigrants – drawn by the “American Dream” – poured into the country. These were the people who died by the thousands to break the sod, build the railroads, mine the mountains, and end the lawlessness.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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Despite distractions in distant lands, Americans at the beginning of the 20th Century were optimistic and gripped by a complacent belief in liberalism and progressivism – marked by political reform, scientific progress, urbanization, and imperialism. Meanwhile, authors and composers were crafting a new kind of American literature and music. But while American industrial, cultural, and economic power continued to grow, American military strength did not keep pace.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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All this optimism and idealism came to a sudden halt in the first decades of the new century: America’s involvement in the First World War, the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic, the Stock Market crash and resulting “Great Depression,” the “moral decay” of the Roaring Twenties and the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl. The good times were over. With the initiation of Prohibition (remember what they say about the best of intentions), the unholy union of Big Business and Big Politics was joined by “Big Crime” (and later, “Big Media”); not-so-organized crime became organized and the “families” that had only nibbled at the edges of the American economy now took large bites while gangsters such as Dillinger and Capone became media and folk heroes not seen since the days of the dime westerns.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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The United States was only saved from all this by the outbreak of the “Good War.” On December 7, 1941 – after the conflict in Europe had raged for two years while the United States stayed ostensibly aloof – America was attacked by the Empire of Japan. Within days, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States and the Second World War was on. After learning from its mistakes, by late 1942 the country was on the offensive in all theaters and supplying the Allies with the tons of materials they needed to win the war. The war ended in 1945 when America dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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However, the newly-minted superpower quickly found itself embroiled in a different kind of war. Initiated by the Soviets drawing an Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe, the Chinese Communist Revolution and the first successful Russian atomic bomb test, the “Free World” squared off against the “Evil Empire” (as the Soviet Union was labelled by U.S. President Reagan in 1983). The West and the East contended for the “hearts and minds” of Earth’s inhabitants. In every realm (including the space race and scientific progress) and place, the contestants spent vast sums and great efforts building ever more lethal weapons, subverting governments, creating armed alliances, conducting convoluted espionage, suppressing or assassinating political dissidents, engaging in proxy wars, and flooding each other’s airwaves with propaganda. Meanwhile the citizens of all nations watched the skies for mushroom clouds to blossom. In 1989, the Curtain finally came down as the East European nations threw out the Soviets. By any reasonable calculation, the Cold War was a colossal, expensive blunder for everyone concerned.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
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The United States enjoyed a new era of peace and self-satisfaction ... for about a decade. On September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists traced to an organization named “al-Qaeda” flew commercial jetliners into the World Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The September assault took almost 3000 lives, mostly civilian, and caused an estimated $10 billion in damage. The ongoing “War on Terror” had begun.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_AMERICA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_16
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In the midst of all this, America moved towards putting into practice the lofty ideals of freedom and equality it had espoused - if not always carried out - since its inception. Since the Second World War several social movements including movements for gender, sexual, and racial equality among others have altered the patterns of American life. Along with that came a vast projection of American soft (and often hard) power abroad. The United States charmed others with its media and culture where it could, and engineered revolutions and coups where it could not.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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A few months after his farewell pilgrimage – thereby laying the foundation for the Hajj – the Prophet Muhammed at the age of 62 fell ill and died in Medina in June 632 AD. According to Sunni writ, his followers chose Abu Bakr Siddique as Amir al-Mu’minin (“Commander of the Faithful”), Muhammed’s successor and first of the Rashidun caliphs. Shi’a Muslims hold, instead, that Ali, son-in-law and cousin to the Prophet, was Muhammed’s own selection as his spiritual and temporal successor, thus setting off a schism that continues today.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Under Abu Bakr and three able successors, ruling from Medina, the warriors of Islam – fired by the Prophet’s vision – swept across the deserts and plains in all directions, overrunning Persia, Syria, Egypt and much of Anatolia and the North African coast. In the period 650 to 655, they added the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes and a large portion of Sicily, and were knocking at the door of the Byzantine Empire. In 655, the Byzantine emperor Constans II personally led a fleet against the Arabic onslaught, only to lose some 500 ships and barely escape himself. At its peak, the Rashidun caliphate was the largest empire to date.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Under this first Arabic caliphate, the conquered were treated benevolently, more or less, according to the teachings of Muhammed. Monotheists (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and the like) among the defeated were given the choice to convert, and accorded all the rights and protections (and duties, of course), should they do so, of Islamic citizens. Non-Muslims were allowed to continue to practice their faiths, and given legal rights according to their scripture save where these conflicted with the Qur'an. It was a relatively tolerant doctrine, and it would serve the Arabic caliphates well over the following centuries.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The administration of the Dar al-Islamiyyah (“House of Islam”) was also the Will of Allah, as laid down by Muhammed. Under Caliph Umar, the second to take on the duties of amir of all Arabia, the expanding empire was divided into twelve provinces, each with its own Wali to handle the daily grind of ruling; each province also had appointed six other officials, ranging from the Sahib-ul-Kharaj (Revenue Collector) to the Qadi (Chief Judge). Umar set up strict codes of conduct, with horrendous punishments for violation, and each official was to make the Hajj to Mecca each year, there to answer any complaints brought against them by anyone. To lessen corruption and abuse of power, the caliph made it a point of law to pay officials high salaries. Umar got himself assassinated by Persian fanatics, but his policies for administering the sprawling empire would remain in place for centuries.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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Following the assassination of the third caliph Uthman in 656 AD, Ali – that one the Shi’a supported – was chosen as the next. But Mu’awiya, a kinsman of Uthman and governor of Syria, backed by the Sunnis, cried for revenge against the assassins based in the city of Basra, a vengeance Ali denied, as Muslim was not to make war on Muslim. In the first Islamic civil war – a three-sided affair between Ali, Mu’awiya and the Kharijites – the caliph slowly lost most of his territory to Mu’awiya. Then Ali was himself assassinated in 661 by the Kharijites in an elaborate plot to kill off all the Islamic leaders. Unfortunately for the Kharijites, they failed to knock off Mu’awiya. After an agreement with Ali’s surviving son, Mu’awiya gained the caliphate, founded the Umayyad dynasty, and proceeded to squash the Kharijites.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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The Umayyads didn’t last long, less than a hundred years. But they managed to overrun everything in sight save the Byzantines. From their capital in Damascus, able Umayyad caliphs such as ibn Marwan (685-705) and Sulayman (715-717) spread the banner of Islam over the Caucasus, the Maghreb, Sind on the Indian subcontinent, Al-Andalus (Iberia), Samarkand, Transoxiana, Khwarezm, etc. In the process, they built the fifth largest empire ever to exist in the history of civilization.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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And they left an indelible mark on civilization itself, being both warriors and builders. Abd ibn Marwan, for instance, made Arabic the official language of the empire, standardized Islamic currency, organized a postal system, repaired the Kaaba in Mecca, and – just to top things off – built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The architecture continued under his successors; his son built the Al-Aqsa Mosque opposite the Dome of the Rock, the Great Mosque of Damascus, and constructed a whole bunch of roads, dug wells, and cut passes through the mountains – primarily to help his armies but of benefit to the average people as well. Under all the Umayyads, religious tolerance was the order of the day; Christians and Jews held important posts, and the Umayyads fought the Byzantines without concern for the still largely Christian province of Syria to their rear.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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But there was no end to trouble in paradise. Two civil wars and the Berber Revolt of 740-743 weakened the Umayyads; likely the near constant state of war on all its borders the caliphate engaged in didn’t help. The treasury was drained, both by war and by all the welfare programs instituted by the caliphs to follow Muhammed’s pronouncements about generosity towards the poor. Eventually, the Hashimiyya, an offshoot of the Shi’a movement, led by the Abbasid tribe moved against the caliph in 747. In January 750, at the Battle of the Zab, the two families and their assembled allies met. The Umayyads were decisively defeated; Damascus fell to the Abbasids in April and the last Umayyad caliph was killed in Egypt in August. The surviving (not many) Umayyads fled across North Africa to Iberia, where they established the Caliphate of Cordoba (which lasted until 1031).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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Now it was the Abbasids’ turn to rule the sprawling Arabian lands, and they did so well. So much so that the al-Khilafah al-‘Abbasiyah encompasses the Golden Age of Islam, a period when the Muslim caliphate became the intellectual and artistic  center of the world for science, technology, medicine, philosophy, literature and everything else that matters. But first the Abbasids under their black flag had to stabilize the empire, through reform and through political expediency.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Under the first five caliphs of the line, the army was restructured, and now included both non-Arabs and non-Muslims. Education was encouraged for all, and the first paper mills in the West, built by Chinese prisoners taken at the Battle of Talas, went up. The currency was standardized and given stability by royal backing, and trade was encouraged through favorable laws and tariffs. Islamic law was again made the standard for the legal system by the Abbasids, who tended to be more religious than the Umayyads. But perhaps, most significant was their willingness to cede local authority to noble families – Al-Andalus and the Maghreb to the Umayyad, Morocco to the Idrisid, Ifriqiya to the Aghlabid, and Egypt to the Fatimid – to maintain the ummah (loosely, the “Muslim community”) as espoused by the Qur'an.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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By the time Harun al-Rashid came to power in 786 as the fifth Abbasid caliph, despite the occasional revolt by disgruntled tribesmen, the empire was peaceful, progressive, and monumentally, spectacularly wealthy. Baghdad had a million healthy and happy citizens at the time that Charlemagne’s “great” capital at Aachen held barely ten thousand. Harun’s son, Caliph Abdullah al-Mamun made institutional the House of Wisdom his father had founded in Baghdad, assembling the greatest scholars from three continents to share ideas and cultures with others, both students and teachers. The House was the unrivaled center for the humanities and sciences, with the greatest collection of texts – in Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Latin, several European tongues as well as Arabic – in civilization. It would remain so until the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan in 1258.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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Inevitably, after three-and-a-half centuries, it proved impossible to hold an empire larger than Rome’s together against the tides of history – or, rather, against the Christians. In the far west, the Reconquista was in full swing; the Umayyads were in slow retreat from Iberia. More significant, the Vatican – or at least, Pope Urban II – decided the time had come for unified Christendom to “reclaim” the Holy Land from unified Islam. Hence, a series of Crusades, starting with the ill-fated People’s Crusade in 1096 and the far more successful First Crusade (taking Jerusalem, which was what all the hubbub was about) brought wholesale slaughter back to the Levant, where it would continue for generations. The struggle between the Christians and the Muslims defined the remainder of the Abbasids’ time.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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It was left to Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (or simply, Saladin) to drive the infidels out. Although a commander for Nur ad-Din, governor of Seljuk Syria, Saladin was appointed vizier of Egypt by the Fatimid sultan there. When Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin proclaimed the establishment of the Ayyubid dynasty as sultans of Egypt, and soon added Syria. Weathering assassination attempts, minor uprisings and the like, ruling from Cairo (although he was seldom there) Saladin united Islam again under a new Arabian caliphate, and turned his attention to the Crusaders. A truly great military commander, in time he would recapture Jerusalem, smash most of the Crusader states in the Levant, and arrange the Treaty of Ramla with Richard the Lionheart in June 1192, whereby Islam would retain Jerusalem unchallenged and Christian pilgrims to the city would be granted access.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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Seven Ayyubid sultans would follow Saladin. They faced insurmountable challenges. Saladin had established a system of “collective sovereignty” for the empire, whereby Ayyubid family members ruled areas as “petty sultans” while one was declared supreme, the 'as-Sultan al-Mu’azzam.' It was a political structure made for contention. Within two generations, the Ayyubid sultanate was in disarray. As provinces rebelled, and the infidels – enflamed by zealous popes – launched yet more crusades to “save Christendom,” the Mamluks managed to topple Ayyubid dominance of Egypt. And then the Mongols descended. After several years of border warfare, the Great Khan ordered his brother Hulagu to extend the Mongol Empire to the banks of the Nile. In 1258 Hulagu Khan took Baghdad and slaughtered its inhabitants, including the caliph and most of his family.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ARABIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
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Although successor dynasties would survive, and there would be other Islamic empires, the “Arabian Caliphate” was no more. It was an inglorious end to over 600 years of glory, an era the Faithful should never forget.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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Paulo Coelho, Brazil’s greatest novelist, wrote of his people, “They were seeking out the treasure of their destiny, without actually wanting to live out their destiny.” Although the Brazilians enjoy the world’s seventh largest (and still growing) economy, a diverse cultural stew, the continent’s best standard of living, and one of the planet’s greatest eco-systems, they are known by most as the “ultimate party animals.” However justified that preconception might be today, Brazil’s past has been anything but a Carnival. In fact, most of it has been downright grim.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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When the Pope decided to divvy up the New World in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 AD, as it happened a bulge in South America fell on the eastern (Portuguese) side. It was the only thing that Portugal got out of the treaty, but it was a whopper. The land was claimed by Pedro Cabral in April 1500 when the fleet he was leading down the African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope was borne so far westward that he made landfall in South America by mistake. When he arrived, some 2000 native (termed “indios”) tribes inhabited the coast and Amazon basin; semi-nomadic, these folk subsisted on hunting, fishing, migrant agricultural, tribal warfare and cannibalism. Since it was obvious the natives weren’t going to do anything with the rich land and were certainly not "good Christians,"  the first Portugal immigrants began to stake claims in 1532.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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The discovery of brazilwood – a dense, orange-red hardwood prized in dye-making and in the making of effete musical instruments and furniture – incited the Crown’s interest; in 1534 King Dom Joao III encouraged more private colonial ventures. In 1549 the king appointed a governor-general and Brazil officially became a Portuguese colony. In wars with the French, the Portuguese slowly expanded their holdings to the north and south, taking Rio de Janeiro in 1567 and Sao Luis in 1615. In 1680 AD they claimed the lands around the Rio de la Plata, which became their southernmost territory. In the meantime, British and Dutch strongholds in the Amazon interior were overrun; as was the case throughout the Americas, the indios were either assimilated, enslaved, or exterminated.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The settling of Brazil was certainly a perilous affair. Tens of thousands of indios died from European diseases; thousands of Europeans died of native fevers. The interior was hot and humid, mostly jungle and swamp, broken by turgid rivers, where the slightest scratch could mean a lingering death. If one wasn’t shot by contending colonists or eaten by the angry natives, much of the flora and fauna were poisonous or hungry, from mosquitos to caiman. Then there were the tales of giant snakes that could crush or fish that could strip the flesh from the bones to keep the pioneers on their toes – provided one had any after the foot rot. Nevertheless, the stubborn Portuguese kept pushing inland, establishing outposts and plantations along the riverbanks.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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By the end of the 17th Century, Brazil was the largest and most important of Portugal’s scattered colonies. Besides brazilwood, other major exports included sugarcane, dyes and spices. The Portuguese began their import of slaves from Africa to meet the growing international demand for these commodities; eventually Portugal would become one of the major slave-trading nations and slaves in Brazil would number in the hundreds of thousands. Why die in any number of unpleasant ways hacking a profit out of the jungle when someone else could do the work for mere centavos? Concurrently, prospectors sought in vain for gold in the jungles and hills of Brazil until extensive deposits were discovered in Minas Gerais. The subsequent gold rush brought such vast sums that the colonial capital was transferred from Salvador south to Rio de Janeiro in 1763 AD in order to help the government better get its cut.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Along the coast, port cities grew – Rio, Recife, Maceio, Fortaleza and others – to ship all this wealth out. They became the cultural centers of the colony, with churches, schools, concert halls, tabernas (taverns), houses of ill-repute, ladies-aid societies, and all the other trappings of civilization. Into these poured the hopeful from the old country. And then, in 1808 AD, the Portuguese royal family (led by Mad Maria) and its government ministers showed up in Rio de Janeiro since they had managed to lose their homeland to Napoleon Bonaparte. The prince regent Joao, ruling in the stead of his mother Maria I, who was incapacitated due to “mental illness,” re-established the Portuguese capital in Rio and ruled the “empire” from there.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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While in residence, he put in place all the ministries of a sovereign capital, as well as founding a royal library, a military academy, a royal mint, a printing office, and medical and law schools. In 1815, Joao declared Brazil a kingdom, co-equal with Portugal in the empire. Following the defeat of France, he wanted to remain in Brazil until called back to Portugal to deal with radical revolts. In April 1821, Joao appointed his son Pedro to the regency. Pedro’s ministers, mostly Brazilian born, urged independence once the Portuguese army was gone; the young regent issued a declaration of independence for Brazil in September 1822 and was crowned Emperor Pedro I with unseemly haste. In 1825 the Portuguese government reluctantly (although there wasn’t much they could do about the situation anyway) recognized Brazil’s sovereignty, and within the year even the most stubborn European monarchs followed suit.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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Pedro I sought to insure that Brazil did not suffer the discord and revolutions that were plaguing Brazil’s unruly neighbors. To that end, he was the primary architect of a new constitution, one quite liberal and advanced … well, for its time. But Pedro was increasingly embroiled in affairs in Portugal, and in 1831 AD abdicated in favor of his five-year-old son so he could return there to reclaim the family throne. To fill the vacuum his abrupt departure left, Pedro’s son was officially declared of age at 14 and crowned Emperor Pedro II within the year. The new emperor’s five-decade reign was enlightened and progressive, and Brazil enjoyed a “golden age” in every realm – politically, economically, industrially, socially, culturally – becoming almost continental in its refinement and attitude. Under Pedro II, Brazil won three wars, expanded its international reputation, modernized, reformed its legal and monetary systems, boosted its agricultural diversity, and abolished slavery. But the latter had eroded support among the landed gentry; moreover, as he aged Pedro II increasingly lost touch with the new urban middle class and liberal student movements his ideals and policies had fostered. Although still beloved by his people, in November 1889 a bloodless military coup deposed Pedro in favor of a republic (which didn’t last long). Ever a patriot, when he departed into exile, Pedro II expressed his “ardent wishes for the greatness and prosperity of Brazil.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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For the next century, Brazil was governed by a series of dictators or military juntas, with an occasional fling at democracy that was soon ended by another ambitious general. In 1894 AD, amid general peace, General Peixoto reluctantly surrendered the presidency to the first civilian to hold the post, Prudente de Morais. He had been governor of the coffee-rich state of Sao Paulo, and has been deemed the first of the “coffee presidents.” These presidents, primarily wealthy landowners from Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, reformed the economy, modernized the nation’s infrastructure, kept the peace, and guided the nation through troubled international times through a policy of near isolationism. In doing so though they offered little real democracy because only the landowning minority was allowed to vote, fraudulent elections were common, and regional political bosses operated with virtual impunity so long as they supported the president in power.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Two developments finally ended the period of the coffee presidents. First, coffee prices fell precipitously during the world-wide depression of the 1930s, and without a lot of money it was tough to get elected to siphon off more. Second, a movement composed of junior officers (the tenentes) grew in influence. Espousing populism, the tenentes championed not democracy but reform and progress; they fervently believed that only the military could propel the nation into the modern age. To do so, the young officers planned to oust civilian politicians, expand the reach of the federal government, modernize the military, and eradicate regionalism through a strong, centralized government. The depression and general unrest led Getulio Vargas, a defeated presidential candidate, to seize control of Brazil with support of the tenentes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_BRAZIL_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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Vargas was supposed to assume power temporarily for the duration of the economic crisis; instead he closed the Congress, dismissed the constitution, and replaced the Brazilian states’ governors with his supporters, mostly military officers. Following a failed Communist coup in 1935 and a failed Fascist one in 1938, Vargas’ regime evolved into a full dictatorship, noted for its brutality and censorship of the press. In 1964, yet another military coup toppled the government. Although its methods were harsh, the new junta was at least less brutal than those in other parts of the continent. Moreover, it promoted capitalism, modernization, and international accords, making it popular with the lower and middle classes even during the years of arrests, torture and executions without trial. General Ernesto Geisel assumed the presidency in 1974, and surprisingly launched a “slow, gradual and safe” policy of returning rule to a democratic government. Over several years he ended the torture of political prisoners, censorship of the press, and finally the junta itself. His successor continued the process, and in 1985 the first free elections made José Sarney president after health issues (and later death) prevented Tancredo Neves from taking office.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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China has contributed much to civilization: paper, the bell, the fishing reel, gunpowder, the compass, the bulkhead, playing cards, the oil well, woodblock printing, silk, the list of Chinese inventions goes on endlessly. China has also given civilization great religions (Confucianism, Taoism, Faism, Yi Bimoism, and others) and great philosophies (mohism, legalism, naturalism, neo-taoism and so forth). Chinese authors such as Shi Nai’an and Wu Cheng’an, artists such as Han Gan and Ma Yuan, composers such as Wei Liangfu and Cai Yan enriched civilization beyond measure. Moreover, China introduced the concepts of slavery, monogamy, espionage, subversion, propaganda, urbanization, lingchi (“death by a thousand cuts”), and more.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The so-called Warring States period (c. 475 BC to 221 BC) saw ancient China composed of seven kingdoms – Qi, Qin, Zhao, Yan, Han, Chu and Wei – at odds with each other … seriously at odds as they fought incessantly. Eventually, the king of the Qin, Ying Zheng, managed the task of unifying China, conquering the last enemy (Qi) and thus proclaiming himself Qin Shi Huang (loosely, “first emperor of Qin”). During his glorious reign, besides burning books and burying alive scholars who disagreed with him – for the Warring States period had given rise to the Hundred Schools of Thought, a distressing collection of liberal philosophies and free thinking – the Qin undertook an extensive road- and canal-building program and even began construction of the Great Wall of China to keep the barbarians out (as it turned out, a futile effort). Although he sought mightily for the fabled elixir of immortality, Ying Zheng didn’t find it – obviously – and he died in 210 BC. He was interred in a massive mausoleum near Chang’an, built by 700 thousand “unpaid laborers” and guarded by the famed Terracotta Army. The Qin Empire lasted only a few years longer.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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In 207 BC Liu Bang, a peasant rebel and born troublemaker, aided by the ambitious Chu warlord Xiang Yu, toppled Qin Shi Huang’s inept successor from the throne and established – after doing away with his ally – the Han dynasty. Interrupted only briefly by the Xin dynasty, the Han ruled over an age of linguistic consolidation, cultural experimentation, political expression, economic prosperity, exploration and expansion, and technological innovation. It was a good time, made even better when Emperor Wu shattered the Xiongnu Federation in the steppes and redefined China’s traditional borders. Han traders ventured as far afield as the Parthian Empire and India; Roman manufactured glassware has been found in Han ruins. The Han emperors also scattered agricultural communes of ex-soldiers across the western expanses, so anchoring their end of the Silk Road.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The rise of the commander Cao Cao meant the decline of the Han emperor. In 208 AD Cao Cao abolished the Three Excellencies, the emperor’s top advisors, and took for himself the post of Chancellor. In 215, Cao Cao forced the emperor Xian to divorce his empress and take Cao’s daughter as wife. With prognostications and heavenly signs indicating that the Han had lost the tianming (“Mandate of Heaven”), Xian abdicated his throne in December 220 in favor of Cao Cao’s son, Cao Pi. Pi proclaimed the Wei dynasty … and unified China promptly fell apart.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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For 60 years following the Yellow Turban Rebellion – imaginatively labelled the “Three Kingdoms Period” by sinologists – three kingdoms were contenders to rebuild the centralized empire of the Qin and the Han. The three – the states of Wei, Shu and Wu – never quite managed the task; it was left to the Jin to accomplish. Sima Yan forced Cao Huan to cede him the throne of Wei. Following brilliant campaigns, the Wei overran Shu (263 AD) and Wu (279 AD). But the Jin dynasty was seriously weakened by the family squabbles of the imperial princes, and soon enough lost control of the northern and western provinces (henceforth the empire was known simply known as the Eastern Jin), leading to the period labelled the Sixteen Kingdoms (again named by those clever sinologists), which lasted until 439.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Despite some consolidation – brought about by rivers of blood – it was not until 589 that the whole of China was together again under one ruler, the short-lived Sui dynasty. It was followed by the Tang dynasty, which managed to stay on the throne of a unified (more-or-less) China until 907 AD. The Tang was much like the Han administration, emphasizing trade and diplomacy, bringing stability and prosperity. Thus it was that religion and culture flourished. The Grand Canal project begun by the Sui was completed, the Silk Road reopened, and the legal code revised; among other steps, the latter effort expanded the property rights of women and instituted competitive imperial examinations for bureaucrats, along several other innovations. Taxes were standardized based on rank, and the first Chinese census undertaken so everyone paid. Brilliant poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu celebrated the age, setting high standards for Chinese literature for centuries.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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But the Tang Empire was struck by a century of natural disasters; floods on the Yellow River and along the Grand Canal followed by widespread droughts brought devastating famine and economic collapse. Agricultural production fell by half, and as usual desperate people turned elsewhere for leadership. Beset by endless rebellions, in 907 the former salt smuggler risen to military governor, Zhu Wen, deposed the last huangdi (emperor) of the Tang. Thus was ushered in the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (the label pretty much says it all) which ended around 960 AD. In the next four centuries, five dynasties would rule reunified (again) China: the Song, Liao, Jin (again), Western Xia and Yuan (established by Kublai Khan after the Mongols slipped past that Great Wall). Each contributed its own technological discoveries, philosophical insights and social advances to the tapestry of civilization. But it is the Ming dynasty that captures the imagination.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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Throughout the core of China, there was significant resentment to Mongol rule, exacerbated during the 1340s by famine and plague and marked by numerous peasant rebellions. Obviously, the tianming had been withdrawn from Kublai’s descendants. The poor-peasant-turned-rebel-leader Zhu Yuanzhang (known today as the Emperor Hongwu) proclaimed himself emperor of the Ming in 1368 after capturing the capital known today as Beijing. He’d come a long way; according to legend Zhu was the youngest of seven or eight brothers, several of whom were sold to raise money for the starving family. After the Yellow River flooded out his village and plague killed all his remaining family, he took shelter in a Buddhist monastery, which was destroyed by a Mongol army retaliating against Zoroastrian rebels. Thus, Zhu came to join the rebel movement himself, rising to its leadership by the age of 30. Vengeance begat vengeance.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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The Ming dynasty ushered in a glittering age for China. Once secure on the throne Tatzu (an alliterative name for a complex person) instituted a number of policy initiatives. Among the first, a move to limit the advancement and influence of eunuchs in the imperial court, where several had enjoyed great power under previous dynasties (perhaps some of the empire’s later woes could be blamed on their return to influence – establishing a virtual parallel administration). In the social order, four classes were recognized, each with its own rights and obligations: gentry, farmers, artisans and merchants. Later Ming emperors granted ever more benefits to the merchant class, viewing their efforts as generating wealth and taxes for the empire. Besides fighting off the Mongol threat again, wars with Korea and Japan used up a lot of that wealth. And then a cycle of natural disasters struck yet again. By 1640, masses of peasants – starving, unable to pay their taxes, and unafraid of the oft-defeated imperial army – were in rebellion. When it was all sorted out, the Qing (or Manchu) dynasty ruled.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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And it did so fairly effectively until the Europeans started making waves. Although the Polos and other occasional visiting traders and adventurers had made their way through China’s back door, the Portuguese arrived by sea in the guise of Jorge Alvares in 1513. Soon enough they had conned the Ming emperor into granting them a trading “enclave” in Macau, with the first governor there taking up his duties in 1557. Meanwhile, under the Qing the economy and government – which wisely tended to avoid foreign adventures – were stable. A high level of literacy, a publishing industry supported by the government, growing cities, and a pervasive Confucian emphasis on peaceful exploration of the inner self, all contributed to an explosion of creativity in the arts and philosophies. Traditional arts and crafts such as calligraphy, painting, poetry, drama and culinary styles underwent a resurgence.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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But those annoying outsiders continued to meddle. By the early 19th Century, Imperial China found itself vulnerable to European, Meiji Japanese and Russian imperialism. With vastly superior naval forces, better armaments, superior communications and tactics honed in fighting each other, the colonial powers sought to dictate to the Qing government, dominate China’s trade, and generally do whatever they liked. In 1842 China was defeated in the First Opium War by Great Britain and forced to sign the infamous Nanking Treaty, the first of many “unequal treaties.” A series of such trade treaties ruined the Chinese economy by 1900. Japan, which had quickly modernized and joined the colonial fray, forced China to recognize its rule in Korea and Taiwan. While the Qing remained nominal rulers, the European powers, including Russia, divvied the entire country up into exclusive “spheres of influence.” The United States, meanwhile, unilaterally declared an “Open Door” policy in China.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_CHINA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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It was all too much. In 1899 the populist Yihetuan (“Militia United in Righteousness”) launched the Boxer Rebellion in an effort to return China to its own devices. Unfortunately, they lost. In the crushing peace treaty of 1901, the “Eight Nations” (those who had been attacked by the Boxers) forced the execution of all in the Qing government who had supported the Boxers, provided for the stationing of foreign troops in the capital, and imposed an indemnity greater than the annual national tax revenue. The nation plunged into growing civil disorder; in response the Dowager Empress Cixi called for reform proposals from the provincial governors. Although wide-sweeping and innovative, even if successfully adopted, it was too late. In November 1908 the emperor died suddenly (likely from arsenic poisoning), followed the next day by Cixi. In the wake of insurrections and rebellions, in 1912 the new Dowager Empress Longyu convinced the child-emperor Puyi to abdicate, bringing over two millennia of imperial rule in China to an end. And China descended into another period of contending, bloody-minded warlords.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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Until the Normans put an end to all the foolishness, the “Sceptered Isle” had been invaded by anyone who could row a boat: Celts, Bretons, Angles, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and sundry. The kingdom of Britain can be reliably dated from their arrival during the “Norman Invasion.” Others had tried to unite the squabbling nobility of England before; legendary Arthur had supposedly done so; William the Conqueror (also known to history as “William the Bastard” for assorted reasons) actually accomplished the task. Today, “Great” Britain (having overrun the kingdoms of Scotland and Wales) is one of the leaders of the European Union, world’s economy (ranking sixth), and humanity’s culture, home to about 64 million inhabitants.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Having out-survived the rival claimants to the English throne – the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwinson and Norwegian Harald Hardrada among them – William of Normandy quickly captured Dover, Canterbury, Kent, Southwark, and the royal treasury at Winchester. The stubborn English earls and clergy caved, and in December 1066 AD William was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey. He spent the rest of his life consolidating his rule, putting down revolts and beating off Viking raids, as well as trying to hang on to his lands back in Normandy. But by 1135 his royal line petered out, and after a brief spell known as “The Anarchy,” the House of Anjou sat upon the English throne.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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With the latest (but certainly not the last) of English civil wars settled by the Treaty of Wallingford of 1153, the four Anjevin kings – including the famous Richard the Lionheart and his brother the infamous John Lackland – were undisputed lords of the land. These men formulated the royal coat of arms, bearing a rampant golden lion, a beast not native to Britain’s cold shores … then added two more just to be sure everyone got the message. So bad was John’s rule in England (he also managed to lose Normandy to France) that he was forced to agree to the Magna Carta Libertatum, essentially a peace treaty between the crown and rebellious barons signed in 1215, and then modified over following years. Heretofore, the kings had ruled by “force and will,” making unilateral and arbitrary decisions; now the basis had been laid for a “government by law” guaranteeing the rights of the people – at least, of the landed gentry; the unfortunate peasants would remain chattel for some centuries yet.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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English history isn’t just about the affairs of a few dozen royals and nobles, of course; it’s also about the thousands of little people: the serfs, servants, soldiers, tradesmen, priests, merchants, scribes, barkeeps, goodwives, artists and authors and rest of the common folk. The country became self-sufficient as agri- and aquaculture flourished. Trade thrived, and English goods – especially woolen fabrics and hardwood crafts – were in demand throughout Europe. During the Middle Ages, Britain developed a vibrant culture; the Bayeux Tapestry was woven, Chaucer and Mallory penned great works, soaring Gothic cathedrals and castles were built, and folk tales (such as that about the bandit Robin Hood) took root. These upstart commoners were beginning to feel... entitled.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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The Anjevins were followed onto the throne of Britain by the even more self-serving Plantagenets, whose main claim to fame was launching the Hundred Years War (actually, 116 years, 1337-1453, but who’s counting), a blatant attempt to grab the crown of France to add to their collection. Their term came to an end when the thoroughly unpleasant Richard II was deposed in September 1399 and died (rumored by starvation) a few months later while in captivity. The House of Lancaster took the throne, but in short order their right to rule was challenged by the House of York, also a cadet branch of the Plantagenets. Commencing in 1455, a sporadic conflict – the bloody if colorful Wars of the Roses – raged between the two, marked by much intrigue and changing of sides by the opportunistic barons. In the end, with York and Lancaster having pretty much annihilated each other, Henry Tudor, a relatively undistinguished scion of the Beauforts, having defeated the last Lancastrian Richard III (who was slain in the battle) at Bosworth Field, became the new King of England.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Henry Tudor, dubbed the VII, promptly married Elizabeth of York to end any rival claims. And set about restoring political and financial stability to the government, mainly through ruthless mechanisms of taxation that stretched the bounds of the law, and then created the King’s Council to keep the nobles in check. But it was his long-reigning son Henry VIII (1509-1547) and granddaughter Elizabeth I (1558-1603) who really shook things up. Betwixt beheading various wives and rival claimants, Henry in his hubris created the Church of England to challenge the Pope’s word – making the English sovereign head of the church, naturally – and Elizabeth defended it by challenging the greatest Catholic powers. It was a busy hundred years in England.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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Meanwhile, those commoners kept becoming less common. In 1295 the House of Commons was created, where elected representatives who were not “Lords Temporal or Spiritual” could voice the concerns of the people and offer advice to the monarch; while Henry generally ignored them (except when he was executing them), Elizabeth maintained close relations with them, recognizing both their financial as well as patriotic worth. Under Henry and especially Elizabeth, the arts flourished and bards wrote some of the world’s greatest works for theater, giving all those commoners something to do with their hard-earned pence. Having absorbed the Catholic holdings in England, the monarchy could afford to patronize English composers and foreign-born painters and architects. Renaissance fairs and festivals became embedded in daily life.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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The “virgin Queen,” alas, died childless. A couple of Stuarts – who ruled both Scotland and England – were followed by the Puritan Revolution, an interlude of a Commonwealth (kicked off by the execution of the luckless Charles Stuart I), the House of Stuart restored, the Glorious Revolution and the Acts of Union in 1707 AD, whereby the United Kingdom of Great Britain was formalized. Meanwhile, under a policy begun by Elizabeth, the kingdom was financing or chartering exploratory missions and colonial settlements all over the world, initially in the New World and later further afield. Also under a policy begun by Elizabeth, under the duress of the Spanish Armada, the British Navy was establishing itself as “monarch of the seas.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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The lovely Queen Anne, having had 17 pregnancies but no surviving children when she died in 1714 at the age of 49, was succeeded by her second cousin George of Hanover, who couldn’t speak English. Not surprisingly, given the long-lived Georges’ (there were four of them in the span from 1714 to 1830) tendency to inattention and madness, the period was marked by a transition to the current system of a cabinet government led by a prime minister under a “constitutional” monarch. George the Third managed to lose the American colonies, but was around (though largely unaware) when the British finally put paid to Napoleon at Waterloo. So perhaps it was best that a prime minister was now in charge, as the monarch became more figurehead and symbol than ruler. The House of Hanover was followed by the unremarkable single monarch of the House of Saxe-Colberg, which was changed to the House of Windsor in 1917 to avoid anti-German sentiment during the First World War.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Britain, that land of revolutions, had yet another commencing in the mid-1800s. The glittering “Second” Industrial Revolution was marked by the pall of coal smoke, din of factories and shipyards, and web of railroads across the island. As the new slums in the new manufacturing centers filled up with new wage-slaves, Englishmen enjoyed a standard of living never seen before in civilization. Virtually every aspect of life was affected by the prosperity, products and power now available to anyone who could pay to enjoy the Victorian Age (named after the dour but long-lived queen). In 1901 the first three-phase high-voltage electricity power plant near Newcastle-upon-Tyne opened; by 1912, Britain had the world’s largest integrated power system. British factories ran 24-7 producing every commodity imaginable, enough of everything – save food – to remain free of unsavory international entanglements.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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Whether this industrial revolution contributed to empire or vice-versa, Victoria’s reign also witnessed the creation of an empire “on which the sun never set,” as Britain took up the “White Man’s Burden.” Although it had been claiming bits of the globe since the late 1600s, the advent of steamships, trains and undersea telegraphic cables – not to mention lots of repeating rifles and dreadnaughts – gave the British government the ability to administer a far-flung empire more-or-less efficiently. The agricultural and raw materials of Canada, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, New Zealand and numerous scattered outposts poured into the sprawling English ports, carried by the mighty English merchant marine. Word of troubles in distant lands flashed to Whitehall along telegraph lines, and the sturdy British army and vaunted British Navy arrived rapidly to quell any unpleasantness.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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In the midst of all this, the costly First World War came as something of a shock to the complacent British. Worse still was the Second World War a couple decades later. With its continental allies all overrun by the able German Wehrmacht, desperately defending the lifeline to its holdings in the Far East that ran through Malta and the Suez Canal, the doughty and stubborn English managed to hang on until Soviet Russia and the United States (which had surreptitiously kept the UK afloat with favorable trade deals) entered the fray on their side, thanks to the arrogance of the dictators of Germany and Japan. By the end, the British economy was exhausted, nearly 450 thousand of its citizens were dead, it was saddled with crushing debt and runaway inflation, its empire fell apart (the remaining holdings ostensibly becoming a commonwealth of nations), and it was embroiled in a Cold War not of its making... but it had won.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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A progressive, democratic state, enamored of its sports and symbols and traditions, with a gross national product of 1.6 trillion pounds sterling (roughly 2.5 trillion dollars), Great Britain remains relevant in most realms, from art to science, politics to finance.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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When the Greeks were still bashing each other in the head with rocks and Rome wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye, Pharaonic Egypt had already established a civilization along the banks of the River Nile to stand the test of time … well, at least a few millennia. Until absorbed by mighty Rome, around 170 successive pharaohs had ruled the fertile lands. At its inception, those settling Egypt discovered that the floodplains of the Nile were exceptionally fertile for cultivating grain - which in turn lead to the rise of major cities such as  Hierakonpolis and later Abydos. Coincidentally, these Naqada also founded the first Egyptian dynasty.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Besides establishing trade routes with Nubia to the south and city-states in the Levant and Near East, these early Egyptians began manufacturing combs, small statuary, pottery, cosmetics, jewelry, furniture and all those other knickknacks needed for a consumer society. Somewhere around 3150 BC they also developed elaborate mortuary cults and building complex mastaba tombs. The first pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (roughly 2686-2181 BC) decided that, what with all this wealth being generated, it made sense to create a system of taxes which they used to build irrigation projects, a justice system, and a standing army. And, coincidentally, massive tombs and monuments (the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx among others) to celebrate their own godhood.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Indeed, Egypt would be, not for the first time, a polytheistic theocracy of the iconic sort. Although human, the pharaohs were believed descended from the gods – Osiris, Anubis, Horus, Isis and others. Although supposedly equal, at various times specific gods were elevated in worship: the ubiquitous sun-god Ra during the Middle Kingdom, Amun during the New Kingdom, and such. Periodically, during revisionism among the priesthood – a power unto themselves as so often in history – Egyptian deities were merged, although retaining mystical aspects of their former selves (e.g. Amun-Ra, a synthesis of hidden power with the sun). Only the Egyptians seemed to keep them all straight. To this was added an elaborate system of burial customs, for the Egyptians were among the first to codify the afterlife and planned on enjoying it, provided they were wealthy enough. To insure the health and happiness of the ka (life-force) and ba (spirit or soul), burial rituals and protocols came to include mummification, magic spells, sarcophagi and grave goods. This Egyptian mysticism has since declined to the stuff of legend, and Hollywood horror films.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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All this peace and prosperity had its price: apathy, corruption, infrastructure decay, in-breeding and in-fighting in the royal family. Regional nomarchs (governors) soon challenged the central government for local authority; taxes began being collected by the nomarchs, and in short order the pharaohs could no longer afford to support a large centralized administration, accelerating the political decay. Add a period of severe drought for fifty years beginning in 2200 BC, and the Old Kingdom collapsed, with rival pharaohs in Herakleopolis and Thebes duking it out to control the Nile. In time – well, a couple centuries – the Intef clan, the nomarchs in Thebes, managed to outlast all other claimants to control the Upper and Lower Kingdoms and reunite Egypt into one. The Middle Kingdom (2134-1690 BC) had begun, with a resurgence in art, trade, wealth, military adventures and those curious monuments scattered about the landscape for later generations of tourists to gawk at.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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But, of course, Pharaonic Egypt just couldn’t seem to stay stable for more than a few centuries at a time. By the age of the Fourteenth Dynasty (which ended c. 1650 BC), things were falling apart yet again. The government collapsed in spectacular fashion, as it had before and would after. The Middle Kingdom was followed by the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom Period, the Third Intermediate Period, and the Late Kingdom Period. During this (lasting from 2100 BC to perhaps 600 BC) the Egyptian government would rise and fall several times, and periods of strife and internal conflict would be followed by periods of relative peace and prosperity, if not more sense. External foes would invade when Egypt was weak, and the pharaohs would extend their empire when Egypt was strong. With all this rebirth and decay, it was inevitable that outsiders would eventually decide to get into the act. In 525 BC Egypt was captured by Persia, who would control the country until it was taken by Alexander the Great in 332 BC as he systematically dismantled the Persian Empire. After Alexander's death a Macedonian general established the Ptolemaic Dynasty, Egypt’s last.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Founded by Ptolemy Soter, one of Alexander’s favorites appointed satrap of Egypt after his death, the new dynasty was quickly accepted by the phlegmatic locals and Egypt flourished for 275 years. In general, the first Ptolemies (all these pharaohs took the name “Ptolemy,” while the queens – most sisters to their husbands – were named Cleopatra or Berenice just to add to the confusion) were surprisingly able rulers. At least, that’s what the texts of the time proclaim, and of all ancient Egyptian dynasties the Ptolemaic is the best documented in writing. These upstart Macedonian pharaohs adopted Egyptian ways, built new monuments to the old gods, expanded into new regions through land grants to Macedonian veterans (not coincidently establishing a well-trained militia), fixed the levees, lowered taxes, and so won the hearts and minds of the populace.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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The first through the third Ptolemies made Egypt an economic powerhouse, exporting everything from trinkets to treasures. But it was grain that made Egypt filthy rich, as the Nile became the breadbasket of the Mediterranean Basin. Emmer wheat, barley and fava beans where bought and transshipped by every upstart empire and ancient city state, along with cotton, flax and henna for clothing. Too, Egypt was the crossroads for trade routes from the south and east into the Mediterranean, bringing ever more wealth. It is not surprising that others soon cast covetous eyes on the kingdom, slowly sinking into decadence again.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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In 170 BC, the Hellenic Seleucid Antiochus IV invaded and deposed the ten-year-old Ptolemy VI, installing his younger brother Euergetes as Ptolemy VIII and joint ruler. That didn’t last long. The sordid dynastic quarrels left Egypt so weakened as to become a de facto protectorate of Rome, its primary client for the agricultural bounty. Furthermore, ongoing inner familial relations led to diminished physical and mental acumen in later generations. Historians believe the genetic line suffered from morbid obesity, exophthalmos, a multi-organ fibrotic condition, and fibrosclerosis. By the time Cleopatra VII was wed to her younger brother Ptolemy XIII in 51 BC, the writing was on the wall (or hieroglyphs on the plinth, as the case may be).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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After watching as the Macedons and Seleucids nibbled at the edges of their decaying kingdom, the Egyptian rulers had allied themselves to the expanding but distant Roman Empire, a pact that would last nearly 150 years. However, the avaricious Romans kept demanding ever more tribute and influence over internal affairs, such as settling that sibling spat between the last Cleopatra and last Ptolemy. That sordid affair began with the wedding and a power struggle between the queen and the pharaoh for dominance in the kingdom, into which stepped the Roman counsel Julius Caesar, who stayed in the palace in Alexandria and soon took up with the 22-year-old Cleopatra.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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With Julius’s troops at her back, Cleopatra VII – after a few skirmishes in Alexandria (during one of which the Great Library there may have burned) – defeated Ptolemy XIII at the Battle of the Nile, in which he “shockingly” drowned shortly thereafter. Cleopatra soon married the even younger Ptolemy XIV, bore Julius a son, moved to Rome, and allied with Marc Anthony upon Caesar’s murder and the resulting power vacuum. Octavian Caesar, exasperated with this sorcerous “Foreign Queen,” declared war on her and Anthony. The new emperor entered Alexandria in August 30 BC in triumph, and Cleopatra followed her latest lover by committing suicide.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_EGYPT_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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With the death of Cleopatra, Egypt formally became a Roman province. The Romans, taking a clue from the success of the early Ptolemies, pretty much left Egypt alone in its religion, culture and trade. It was business as usual, with Rome now reaping the financial benefits. Pharonic Egypt was no more, and the land itself would be subject to many rulers – Byzantine, Sassanid, Arab, Fatimid, Ayyubid, the list goes on – over the next two millennia, in stark contrast to its first four when the kingdom stood astride the ancient world.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The French brought civilization haute cuisine, haute couture, haute-contre, and a whole lot of other “hautes.” But the French are not just about culture; they also brought history the Hundred Years’ War, the Reign of Terror, Napoleon’s efforts to conquer Europe, etc.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Once the Romans gave up trying to govern the unruly Gauls, a number of Frankish kingdoms rose during the early Dark Ages, most of these lasting but a couple generations. Finally, the medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western portion of Charlemagne’s empire, that chunk known as West Francia. With the death of the last Carolingian king, to avoid the bloodshed of a dynastic civil war, the Archbishop of Reims convened the great lords of Francia to elect a new ruler. Duke Hugh Capet of the demesne Ile-de-France was eventually chosen as king, and crowned Rex Francorum by the prelate of Reims in July 987 AD. At one stroke, modern France was created and its longest reigning dynasty (from this date to 1848, with a few unfortunate interruptions) installed.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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The long rule of the Capetians has several foundations. The Capetian kings were inevitably Catholic, although with widely varying piety, and hence closely allied with the Church, which favored a strong central government in France. The line came to be recognized by other monarchs (except those stubborn English) as illustrious and ancient, and therefore inherently superior to anyone else available. The Capetians also tended to enjoy fairly harmonious familial relations, exceptional when it came time for a succession. By tradition, the king’s younger brothers were given appanages (duchies, counties, towns and the like) to mitigate any lingering bitterness over the rule of primogeniture (of course, sisters didn’t get any such, and were usually married off as quickly as possible after a succession). Save for the religious in-fighting between the Catholics and the Huguenots, France managed to avoid the civil wars that plagued most of their neighbors. Trade, the arts and the crafts would flourish under them, as well as religion (well, Catholicism anyway) and education – the University of Paris, or Sorbonne, was founded c. 1150 – so they generally had the support of the common folk.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The next couple centuries would see the power and influence of the Capetians grow, although there were some missteps – such as getting involved in a half dozen Crusades to liberate the Holy Land, meddling in the squabbles of the Italian city-states, suppressing heretical movements in France (usually with a great deal of blood), slaughtering the Knights Templar in 1312 to seize their wealth, and, of course, the Hundred Years’ War (which actually ran 116 years, but who’s counting).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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As the fourteenth century (by European reckoning) dawned, France was the most powerful country on the continent. In 1328, Philip VI assumed the throne. The Plantagenets, kings of England, owned Aquitaine and had a slender claim to the French throne, which they hadn’t pressed at the time of Philip VI’s succession. However, in 1337 Philip VI confiscated Aquitaine, and the now thoroughly annoyed King Edward III of England reinstated his claim, bringing the two dynasties to war. In July 1346 Edward invaded and, after much marching about, won the famous “battle” (more a slaughter of the arrogant French knights) at Crecy and captured the port of Calais. Then the Black Death cropped up, and lots of folk died, delaying further campaigning – thoroughly vexing a new generation of nobles.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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By 1356 the plague had passed so the bloodshed resumed. In September of that year, the French king managed to get himself captured and most of his nobles killed off at Poitiers against Edward, the Black Prince. (The French refused to pay their king’s ransom, and so John II died in captivity.) The war dragged on until Agincourt (yet another glorious slaughter), after which the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 declared the unification of the French and English crowns on the infant head of Henry VI, king of England and now France. This did not sit well with everyone. The dauphin Charles VII was declared illegitimate and bypassed, though many French patriots preferred any Frenchman to any English ruler. This included a strange (to put it mildly … she heard voices and experienced visions from God) peasant woman named Joan. Within a few years Joan of Arc had inspired the French to victory, driving the English back on all fronts. Charles was anointed king in 1429, and saintly Joan got burned at the stake.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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The upshot of all this was that the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetians, now sat on the throne of France. These later Capetians held more power and were considerably more influential than the previous ones. Whereas Philip I (the Amorous, 1060-1108) could barely control his unruly Parisian barons, the Bourbon (another cadet branch) Henry IV (1589-1610) could challenge both the Pope and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor. These kings, although they usually ruled for shorter periods, had far more impact on the course of civilization than their predecessors.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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During the reigns of the glorious Louis’s – XIII the Just, XIV the Sun King, XV the Beloved, the unfortunate XVI (the guillotined) – France became a power second to none on the continent, as well as the center of European culture and refinement. The XIIIth saw explorers and colonists spread or impose French tastes across the globe, in North Africa, the Americas and Asia as France joined the race for colonies. Under the long-reigning le Roi-Soleil, the last vestiges of feudalism disappeared (although the former serfs might not know it) and Versailles was completed (mostly). Great generals, such as Turenne and Vauban, and great writers, such as Moliere and Racine, as well as those gifted in other artistic pursuits, flourished. Madam de Pompadour, one of the most famous mistresses of all time, had an enormous influence on the arts – notably architecture and interior design (those pricy Louis Quinze pieces) – under the doting patronage of Louis XV. France went from grim gothic to gilded rococo in two generations. But the Ancien Régime came crashing down in 1789.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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Being somewhat distressed by the gap between the haves and have-nots, in that year the citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille in July and threw off the shackles of monarchy. Republicanism was afoot and revolution spread through the land. Enflamed by the concepts of liberté, égalité, fraternité and those nice young men Robespierre, Danton and Marat, they instituted the Reign of Terror, using the “humane” guillotine to execute thousands of the privileged and anyone else who ran afoul of the Committee for Public Safety. The Constitution of June 1793 established the French First Republic; most of its authors were later imprisoned or guillotined. The rest of the crown heads of Europe couldn’t have all these liberal ideas floating about, and in short order the First Coalition (Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and Spain among others) attacked France.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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In 1795 the elective five-member Directory was established to govern, but they didn’t fare so well. Building on his battlefield successes for the Republic, in a coup d’état in November 1799 that Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte removed the Directors and so launched the French First Empire. For the next decade-and-a-half, the French would battle successive coalitions (six in all), generally beating them soundly. But the sheer weight of forces arrayed against Napoleon was telling. On the fringes, in Iberia and Russia, France lost thousands of men. The ever stubborn British controlled the seas. Napoleon even had to sell Louisiana to the infant United States just to make ends meet. Finally, the Sixth Coalition, following the historic retreat from Russia, defeated the Grande Armée at Leipzig, entered Paris in March 1814, exiled Napoleon to Elba, and reinstalled the Bourbon Monarchy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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But all that didn’t last long. Bonaparte returned to France and raised yet another army. Louis XVIII, suffering from gout and having some sense, fled Paris to go into hiding in the Netherlands. The monarchs of Europe had to create yet another coalition, and after 100 days of excitement, routed the French at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was again shipped off to an island prison (where he eventually died in 1821 at the age of 51). France was a kingdom again … well at least until 1848. Yet another revolution, not much better organized than the first, overthrew the Capetians once and for all and established the Second Republic. Which lasted only three years until Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, following his uncle’s footsteps, overthrew those libertarians and so founded the Second French Empire.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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And that in turn lasted only until 1870, when Napoleon III got himself captured by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War. The National Assembly was invaded by a Parisian mob, who demanded a change. The delegates, no fools, promptly created the Third Republic. The Empress fled for England and republicanism once again ran amok in France. They just couldn’t quite seem to get it right. (The Prussians, in the process, got Alsace-Lorraine and unified Germany … but that’s another story.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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The Third Republic did fairly well, all things considered. It made friends with England and Russia and the United States. It managed to solidify its grasp on the tattered remnants of its overseas colonial holdings. Decadent Paris became the world’s guilty pleasure; like moths to a flame, tourists flocked to the Moulin Rouge, the Left Bank, Le Crazy Horse Saloon and the Bal Bullier. The roots of avant-garde art flourished; the belle époque was in full swing. The French set the standards for fashions, foods and fads. France even managed to survive the First World War without another change in government, although the Pyrrhic victory left it devastated and impoverished.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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Indeed, the Third Republic managed to survive until 1940, when replaced by the Vichy government, which filled up the part of France the Third Reich didn’t bother to occupy. After four brutal years, metropolitan France was liberated by the English and Americans – despite De Gaulle’s claims for the “Free French” forces – in summer and autumn 1944. By 1945 Nazi Germany was defeated; the Second World War was over. It was time for yet another government, this time the Fourth Republic, when a new constitution was adopted in October 1946.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_FRANCE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
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The trigger for the collapse of the Fourth Republic (yes, another one) was the Algerian Crisis of 1958. Having been truly devastated by world war, the French leaders had spent even more blood trying to hang on to a decaying colonial empire, notably in Indo-China and in Algeria. The Suez Crisis in 1956 was yet another disaster for France. In May 1958, the National assembly brought de Gaulle back to power; he quickly dissolved the Fourth and created a Fifth, based on his “Politics of Grandeur,” declaring that grandeur was essential to the nature of France. And it’s been that way ever since.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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There was no “Germany” – not until 1870 AD when Bismarck convinced the various bits that the good of the one outweighed the good of the many. Julius Caesar is the first known to have used the term Germania to refer to those barbaric lands across the Rhine from “peaceful” Gaul. Geographically, Germany stretched from the Rhine to the Vistula, from the Baltic to the Danube. As Caesar noted, the Gauls were warlike but could be civilized; the Teutoni, on the other hand, were just too savage and uncouth for anything but conquest. Perhaps he was right; with the collapse of the Roman Empire, all those uncouth tribes became “separate and independent gentes [peoples] and regna [kingdoms].” Nothing unified these save a common language (even though, given the dialects, some were virtually unintelligible to other Germans), common customs, and a common heritage of killing each other.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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It was left to Charlemagne, who had been crowned Emperor in the West by Pope Leo III in December 800, to (briefly) unite them. But it was the coronation of Duke Otto I in 936 as Rex Teutonicorum (“King of the Germans”) and later, under the principle of translatio imperii, proclaimed by Pope John XII as Holy Roman Emperor that sealed the deal. This after the two, following much haggling, signed the Diploma Ottonianum, whereby the pope was acknowledged as the spiritual head of the Catholic Church – so prelates couldn’t just interpret the Scriptures as they pleased – with the German King-Emperor as its secular protector. Otto spent the rest of his life trying to placate the “stamm duchies” (the five powerful, autonomous, constituent duchies of Germany: Franconia, Bavaria, Lotharingia, Saxony and Swabia), fighting the French and the Magyars and the Italians and the Slavs, putting down various rebellions, and generally not enjoying life much.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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The succession of emperors after Otto was a royal mess, a complicated stew of ever-changing factors. The kings of Germany were elected by “seven princely electors” (three archbishops and four secular German princes) as established by the Golden Bull of 1356; indeed, it took 400 years just to get the Germans to agree to this. Before that, the elections for Rex Teutonicorum resembled polite anarchy. Thanks to the Thirty Years War, another elector was added to maintain a balance between Protestants and Catholics; in 1692 another was added so those unfortunate deadlocks wouldn’t occur. Then, just before Napoleon put paid to the whole thing, the constitutional structure of the electorate was revised in 1803. Once elected Rex, coronation as Holy Roman Emperor was just a formality conducted by whoever happened to be sitting on the Chair of Peter at the time.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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A long line of king-emperors followed Otto the Great: Saxon, Salian, Hohenstaufen, Welf, Luxembourg, Wittelsbach and many Hapsburgs, who just didn’t want to give it up. Some were great and glorious, such as Henry IV and Frederick Barbarossa; some were venal and vainglorious, such as Otto IV and Louis IV. Whatever their abilities and policies, each had to deal with all those hundreds of little kingdoms, each jealous of its own “power” and privilege.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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And it wasn’t as if the mix was stable. Around 1040, Franconia fragmented into smaller entities: the city-state of Frankfurt, the prince-bishoprics of Mainz, Speyer and Worms, and the landgraviate of Hesse as well as other bits. In the 1200s, the Teutonic Knights carved out Prussia in the east to add to the lot; Bohemia, Silesia and Pomerania were grabbed from the Slavs by ambitious German nobles. And so forth.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Nevertheless, Germany was relatively peaceful and, more importantly, prosperous. This due, in part, to the rise of the Hanseatic League, a “business alliance” of ports and banking guilds that dominated trade in the Baltic and along the North Sea coast. Timber, fur, grain, ore and fish flowed west and finished goods flowed east. Centered in the “Imperial Free City” (as decreed by Emperor Frederick II in 1226) of Lubeck, the League, firmly established in cities such as Cologne, Bremen and Hamburg, had warehouses and offices in ports as far apart as London and Novgorod. It flourished from the 1200s into the 1500s. Throughout the Germanys, common folk had the highest standard of living in Europe during this period. And there were a growing number of them; despite wars and plagues, by 1500 some five to six million lived there, many of them become craftsmen and tradesmen, now organized into guilds (a few of these allowed women to join).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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Meanwhile, with the growth of the cities and ready money at hand, the arts flourished. In the 12th Century, the abbess Hildegard von Bingen penned influential theological and medical texts, as well as liturgical poems, songs and the oldest European morality play. A century later, von der Vogelweide set the gold standard for European lyric poetry of the age. Then a tinkerer named Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz developed moveable metal type, and thus the printing press. Once those common folk could read, and ponder what their betters were declaring, everything changed. (It did take a couple centuries for universal literacy to catch on in Germany, but it led to such things as the Reformation, the Northern Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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Everything was progressing nicely in Germany, until Martin Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular (now anyone could buy one thanks to the printing press) and then nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg in October 1517. His “Protestant” theology soon enough set off the Peasant’s War (Europe’s largest popular uprising until the French Revolution) and then the even bloodier Thirty Years War after the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 – whereby the Lutheran faith was recognized as legitimate, and that the faith of a region would be that of its ruler – collapsed. From 1618 to 1648, the armies and mercenaries of the Catholic League and the Protestant Union slaughtered “non-believers” with wild abandon. It has been estimated that the population of Germany dropped between 20% and 38% before the religious fever burned itself out.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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The towering figure of Martin Luther is, ironically, numbered in the annals of the German Renaissance, along with artists such as Albrecht Durer and scholars such as Johann Reuchlin and musicians such as Pachelbel. This includes lots of famous architects, like Elias Holl and Hans Krumpper. But even more influential on civilization were the German scientists of the 1600s and 1700s, who laid a foundation of discovery, understanding and misuse of the sciences unmatched elsewhere (there’s a reason one of the most famous, albeit fictional, scientists known is Dr. Frankenstein who studies at the University of Ingolstadt). Johannes Kepler of Stuttgart revolutionized cosmology; the polymath von Liebniz developed calculus and founded the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1700; the philosopher Immanuel Kant sought a scientific basis for ethics. The work of astronomer Maria Winkelmann of Saxony and naturalist Maria Merian of Frankfurt opened the door for other German women to also make a name for themselves as mad scientists. And with the growth of printing, there were plenty of opportunities to confuse impressionable minds.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Even as German artists and scientists enlightened civilization, the Holy Roman Empire stumbled on. By this point in history, European feudalism was being legislated out of existence and a rising bourgeoisie was finding its voice. New, more energetic dynasties were emerging in a number of the German kingdoms: the House of Hohenzollern in Brandenburg-Prussia, the House of Wittelsbach in Bavaria, the House of Welf in Saxony, the House of Hesse-Kassel in (where else) Hesse, and so forth. All these began to chafe under the rule of the Hapsburgs, who since around 1500 had been the kings of Germany and hence Holy Roman Emperors, despite being Austrian. Even when the main line died out and Charles VII of Bavaria was briefly Emperor (1742-1745), soon enough the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine fastened on the throne. The notion of reform was in the air, however, and the Emperor responded, if tardily.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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When Frederick III needed the support of the German dukes to finance his wars and to elect his son, Maximilian I, as King of Germany, he was faced with a united front demanding to participate in decision-making. They “requested” an assembly of the electors and other dukes to advise and oversee the king in an imperial diet (the Reichstag) be established. Although Frederick avoided convening the first Reichstag, his son – more conciliatory or less intelligent – finally convened the Diet of Worms. There the king and the dukes agreed upon the first four bills, together referred to as the Reichsreform, a set of acts that gave the disintegrating empire some much needed structure, including the “Eternal Peace” (a ban on feuding among the German nobility) and the “Common Penny” (an imperial tax to support the new infrastructure). Later diets added more laws and reforms … and taxes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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But by the mid-1700s, events had outpaced any belated effort to hold the Kingdom of Germany or the Holy Roman Empire together. The various rulers maintained their own armies and diplomatic corps as always, and now they used these independent of whatever the “king” wished or did. In the Silesian Wars and the Seven-Years War, Prussia won recognition across Europe as a “great power” under the guidance of “enlightened absolutism.” In Bavaria and Wurttemberg, the rulers lavished funds on palaces, mistresses, and the arts. The landgraves of Hesse-Kassel and Hanover made money by renting their elite soldiers out as mercenaries. And, eventually the dukes of Hanover became kings of England, and lost interest in doings back home (George III, born in London and king of England during the American Revolution, never once visited Hanover.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GERMANY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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The end of any pretense of unity and a German kingdom finally came with the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars. German mediatization and secularization was accelerated by the specter of the bloody French Revolution. Mediatization was the process of annexing the lands of one monarchy to those of an adjacent neighbor, leaving the annexed with negotiated rights. Secularization was the process of absorbing all those remaining tidbits of ecclesiastical land lying about by the nearby nobles. And from 1792 onward, revolutionary France was at war with most of the German states, but never all together. The Kingdom of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved by Napoleon when Francis II (of Austria) abdicated in early 1806 following the French victory at Austerlitz. Napoleon reorganized much of what had been the Kingdom of Germany into the Confederation of the Rhine, eventually replaced by the German Confederation in 1815.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The Classical (often termed the Hellenic) Age of Greece begins with the death of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC and ends with the assassination of Phillip II of Macedonia in 336 BC. It is fitting that the period is defined by the deaths of great men, for it was a bloody time – marked by two extended wars, the decline of influential city-states, the rise of Macedonian hegemony. But those 174 years also saw Greece lay the foundations for Western civilization: the beginnings of empiricism, artistic aesthetics, political structures, literary forms and most of what constitutes culture. So it was an age of contrasts, and an iconic period and place in world history.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The Greeks coined the term polis (which has been misused ever since) to denote their city-states; traditionally the term was used for the classic Athenian-style political unit – a central city dominating much smaller nearby towns and villages. But the term can also describe a grouping of allied smaller towns with no all-powerful central city, closer to the organization of Sparta. And that difference explains a lot about the history of classical Greece. There were four city-states more influential than the many others – Corinth, Thebes, Athens and Sparta. Each polis was a sovereign political entity, answerable only to its own citizens. Although the citizens of the city-states shared a common language, history and culture (Greek, of course), that did not stop them from bickering among themselves constantly and going to war with one-another as the mood took them. The Greeks might band together to face a common enemy, but such alliances were quickly abandoned when the immediate crisis was over and they could get back to slaughtering each other.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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It all starts with the death of Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, in 512 BC. Having had enough of tyrants (note, the term did not have the modern pejorative sense), the Athenian nobles requested help from Sparta in overthrowing his son Hippias. The Spartan king Cleomenes tried to install a Spartan-style oligarchy to rule, but was trumped by the Athenian Cleisthenes who instituted a series of reforms that established an isonomic democracy where all citizens (save women and slaves, of course) have the same rights under law. Thus democracy came into civilization, and things just haven’t been the same since. The Spartans attacked Athens, seeking to restore their puppets, but the newly liberated citizens defended their city with great tenacity, and the frustrated Spartans were forced to withdraw. Thus began a rivalry between the two that would last for centuries.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The rivalry was quickly put on hold when a greater threat manifested itself … the Persians. From the 8th Century BC on, Greek colonists had been building cities in Ionia (the coast of Asia Minor). But by the mid-6th Century BC, these had all come under the dominion of the Persian Empire. In 499, these rose against their “oppressors” in the so-called Ionian Revolt; Athens and a few other Aegean city-states were intemperate enough to send military support to their fellow Greeks. Didn’t work. The allies were soundly defeated at the Battle of Lade in 494; then, in retaliation, the Persians marched through Macedonia and Thrace, pillaging everything, and sent a fleet through the Aegean, sinking everything. In 490 Darius the Great landed a Persian host (somewhere between 20,000 to 100,000 soldiers) in Attica intending to take Athens. They were met by a pitiful force of 9000 Athenians and 1000 Plataeans, who nevertheless stunned the Persians at Marathon. The victory bought the Greeks a decade to get ready for the next stage.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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Not that they did much with the time except squabble among themselves. In 480 BC, the Persian Xerxes I launched another attack on Greece, this time personally leading some 300,000 troops onto the peninsula. The huge force rapidly overwhelmed the Greek cities in their path and marched inexorably towards Athens, supplied by sea from the equally large Persian fleet. After being briefly delayed by a small force of stubborn Spartans (only 300, so they say) along with 1100 Thespians and Thebans (whom nobody remembers) at the narrow pass of Thermopylae in September, Xerxes marched into Attica, taking and burning Athens, which had been evacuated.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Meanwhile, the Athenian-led coalition fleet of 271 galleys and triremes sallied to meet the Persians’ 800-some ships at the Straits of Artemisium. The day-long battle was a draw, but the Greeks could ill-afford the losses and, after hearing of the action at Thermopylae, valorously withdrew to the anchorage at Salamis. Xerxes, looking for a knock-out blow to force these stiff-necked Greeks to give up, rashly sent his fleet into the straits there. In the confined waters, the sheer number of Persian ships was a hindrance rather than a boon, and the superior Greek seamanship carried the day. (According to Herodotus, the lopsided casualty figures were the result of the fact that most of the Persians couldn’t swim, whereas the Greeks could make it to shore.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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Fearing being cut off in such a horrid place, and already short of food and supplies that couldn’t arrive by sea, Xerxes began a staged withdrawal towards the Hellespont. In 479 an allied force under the Spartan Pausanias defeated a sizeable Persian force left behind to “finish the Greeks.” The Athenian-led navy finished off the Persian fleet at Mycale, and then captured the Ionian Greek city of Byzantium the next year. Enrolling the island city-states into the Delian League (so named because its treasury was located on the sacred isle of Delos … though not for long), the Athenians swept the Persians from the Aegean. Sparta’s hoplites, having concluded that the war was over – as it was – went home.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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With peace (or at least a facsimile), the Greeks settled down to create culture and civilization. Greek playwrights defined drama and comedy. Pericles plundered the Delian League treasury to build the Parthenon and other wonders. Sculptors Phidias and Myron and Polycletus brought marble, stone and bronze to life. Philosophers and sophists such as Socrates and Aristotle pondered the meaning of life and everything else in the Lyceum and libraries (and sometimes in the streets). Herodotus and Thucydides began recording “history.” Pythagoras and Eudoxus laid the foundations for Western mathematics. Religion was formalized, and the law codified. Hippocrates practiced medicine in Athens. And everything got written down, even those childhood fairy tales of Aesop’s. Who knows what else the Greeks may have accomplished … if they hadn’t started killing each other again.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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Thucydides wrote the whole sordid affair down, so the world has a pretty good idea of what happened during the Peloponnesian Wars, a protracted struggle between the Athenian-led (putting it in the best light) Delian League and the Sparta-dominated Peloponnesian League. Even those city-states that tried to stay out of it – like Milos, which declined Athens’ offer to join the Delian League and was given the choice to either pay Athens taxes to be spared or be destroyed – ended up on the battlefield. The inconclusive First Peloponnesian War, begun in 460 BC ended in 445 with the Thirty-Years Peace, a treaty between Sparta and Athens that delineated their spheres of “influence.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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But each League tended to intrude on the affairs of the other, and soon enough, in 431 BC, they were at it once more. After a lot of marching about and bloodshed for a decade, the two sides agreed to the Peace of Nicias, the so-called “Fifty-Years Peace.” Didn’t last. More marching about, more bloodshed, lots of pillaging. Finally, in 415 Athens committed everything to a massive invasion of Syracuse in Sicily, a Greek colony of Corinth. It was a disaster, with the entire force utterly destroyed by 413. Meanwhile the Persians were supporting rebellions against Athens’ high-handed ways on the Aegean islands. The final blow came in 405 when the Spartan admiral and 180 Peloponnesian League ships destroyed the new Athenian fleet at Aegospotami. Athens surrendered the following year, and Sparta reigned supreme in Greece.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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The Spartan hegemony did not work out quite the way Sparta’s kings envisioned the new world order should be. In fact, for the next half-century, various clashes between Sparta and Thebes, Sparta and Athens again, Sparta and Thebes again, Sparta and a resurrected Boeotian confederacy settled nothing. No one proved able to unite or dominate Greece. The details of deceit, betrayal, battle and massacre are all too tedious to relate; suffice to say that with the city-states of southern Greece weakened by decades of brutal warfare, the balance of power moved north, to Macedonia.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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Around 359 BC, Phillip II assumed the leadership of Macedonia, before this an uncouth and barbaric fringe of the Greek world. Being an ambitious sort, Phillip’s Macedonian hoplites soon overran the nearby territories of Paeonia, Illyria, and Thrace, taking the latter’s largest port Amphipolis in 357. A year later, Phillip conquered the Athenian-protected port of Pydna. The great (and prophetic, as it turned out) orator Demosthenes began loudly encouraging the Athenians and others to vigorously fight against Macedonian expansion, to little avail until too late. In 338 BC Philip II led an army south, accompanied by his 16-year-old son, Alexander, who had already proven himself in battle, having led a small Macedonian army to crush a previous Thracian uprising. After dispatching several smaller forces, Philip thoroughly defeated the combined army of Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Megara, Chalcis, Achaea, Epidaurus and Troezen at the Battle of Chaeronea. It has been argued that Phillip’s victory here makes it the most decisive battle of the ancient world.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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Be that as it may, Phillip now turned his attention on Sparta and its few allies, whom had stayed out of the campaign. He spent the next year ravaging Spartan lands, making peace with the Spartan allies that opposed him, and trying to reason with the Spartans. His efforts bore some fruit, for in the latter half of 337 BC he managed to forge the League of Corinth (named thus because his army was camped there), which guaranteed peace across the lands of the League and military assistance for Phillip against the hated Persians. Everyone signed … save Sparta. The League proceeded to elect Phillip II strategos (commander) for the invasion.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_GREECE_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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With Greece now, in effect, securely under the thumb of Macedonia, an advanced force was sent from the north into Asia Minor in 336 to open the war. Phillip was to follow with the allied Greeks, a much larger force capable of reaching the heart of Persia. But, instead of conquering the known world – he left that to his son to accomplish – Phillip was assassinated by one of his bodyguards during his daughter’s marriage festival. Alexander became king of Macedon, and de facto ruler of all Greece, at the age of 20. And the rest, as they say, is history.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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India can be viewed as either one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, or among its most recent. Situated at the crossroads of the world, India has had its share of empires and conquerors, including the Maurya and Gupta in the north (incidentally running afoul of Alexander at one point), and in the south the Chola, with its deep connections to Southeast Asia. But for much of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, India was under the sway of other invaders: the Mughal Empire was founded by descendants of the Mongols, and became one of the shining highlights of Indian arts, architecture, and achievements. Under this Islamic rule, such structures as the Taj Mahal, and the Red Fort rose... until, that is, the British East India Company made their appearance.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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In 1498 AD Vasco de Gama’s fleet managed to find its way around Africa and “discovered” India, even though some of its kingdoms and empires had been trading with the West since the days of the Roman Empire. The Portuguese stuck trading posts along the coast of the subcontinent; they were followed by the Dutch, the British, and eventually the French – all in the guise of chartered trading companies. The Honorable East India Company, a joint-stock corporation, had been granted its charter by Elizabeth I in December 1600 to trade in basic commodities with the Far East; at its height, it would account for half the world’s trade. In time, it was the only European company with holdings in India.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Besides the complexities of the local politics, what with all those princelings about, the Company also had to deal with the sheer diversity of local faiths. The subcontinent was the founding place of four major religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism – with their many sects and offshoots. In addition, several other religions had their toehold, brought by merchants or conquerors, such as Islam, Zoroastrianism and even Judaism. However, the British may have been responsible for some of these "isms," formalizing practices such as caste (that had previously been heterogenous) and creating a category of "Hinduism" out of the vastly diverse practices that existed before their arrival.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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It was a crisis of faith that led the British government to end the charade of Company autonomy. By 1857, the Company was the dominant power on the subcontinent, with its own administration, army and social infrastructure, corrupt and inefficient as they may have been. Although there were several reasons – as is always the case – for the Sepoy Mutiny, the spark was the introduction of new, greased, cartridges for the muskets used by the native troops. Whether unfounded or not, they came to believe that the cartridges, which had to be bitten to open the powder, were greased with beef tallow (offensive to Hindus) and pork fat (anathema to Muslims). Since the British, displaying their usual insular empathy, insisted their troops use these cartridges, in short order the native soldiers revolted.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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After much bloodshed, the British Army had to be called in to quell this “First Indian War of Independence”; public outrage in England caused the Crown to dissolve the Company the next year and absorb all its holdings. The British, nothing if not efficient, over the next few years reorganized the Indian army, financial system and colonial administration. India became part of the British Empire, and Queen Victoria had “Empress of India” added to her impressive list of titles. For the next 90 years, the British Raj was the centerpiece of an empire “on which the sun never set.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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While the British busied themselves with completing the unification, skirmishes along the frontiers, and squeezing out as much wealth as they could, they shaped the Indian landscape and infrastructure. The British built schools and hospitals and libraries and bandstands and all the other things that they considered the marks of civilization, to which many Indians had access. They codified notions of ethnicity and religion into easily-digestible census blocks. They instituted uniform standards of law, coinage, penal incarceration, methods of execution, and postage. The British brought along the technology of the Victorian Age, building a network of telegraph lines, newspapers, irrigation systems, roads and railroads across the land. And they fostered a sense of Indian identity; if nothing else giving all the disparate native peoples an equally-detested common enemy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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Under the Raj, from 1880 to 1920 the Indian economy grew one-percent each year, as did the population. But the British penchant for meddling in the social and moral forms of the locals repeatedly caused upset. For instance, in the last decade of the 1800s various reformers (British and Indian) took up the cause of widow remarriage. In an effort to soothe religious dissention (and improve administrative efficiency), Lord Curzon divided Bengal into a Muslim east and a Hindu west in 1905; that lasted until he was recalled in 1906. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 gave Indians a limited role in the colonial and provincial governments, spurring the growth of the All-Indian Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. With all their reforms, the British had laid a firm ideological and organizational foundation for a nationalist movement to independence, especially among the relatively new Indian middle-class. Oops.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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Adding to this impetus for self-rule was the reoccurrence of severe famine, due to colonial mismanagement and the shipment of food stuffs back to England for profit. The Great Famine of 1876-78 AD took 5.5 million lives in British-controlled territory alone, and millions more in the yet unincorporated princely states. The famine twenty years later cost another five million dead, and two years after that the 1899 famine another million. Ironically, these had to do with improved infrastructure: as rail lines could move grain to ports for export, they left none for the locals who had grown it. And this doesn’t count the rounds of pandemics that decimated the population on a regular basis.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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The First World War proved a watershed in the progression towards independence, and self-reliance. It was greeted – at first – with an outpouring of patriotic fervor by the Indian nationalists, and most others in the country. The already revered Mahatma Gandhi agreed to actively recruit his young countrymen for the war … and in contrast to his recruitment efforts during the Boer and Zulu wars, this time for combat roles rather than the medical corps. (Some apologists have argued he did so in order for India to have a trained and experienced military when it did gain its independence later.) The various native political parties as well as the general nationalist movement waved the flag with gusto, save for a few hotspots such a Bengal where the unrest was such as to paralyze the local administration. But the high casualty rates, soaring inflation compounded by high taxation, and disruption of trade united the usually bickering nationalist organizations, who argued the sacrifice of the Indian peoples deserved a reward... like self-rule. In 1916, the Hindu National Congress and the Muslim League forged the Lucknow Pact, an agreement to work together to pressure the British to get out.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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In 1921 AD, in the wake of the bloody 1919 Amritsar Massacre, Gandhi assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress, not without controversy. With the influence of Gopal Gokhale and other moderates, he was elected president and promptly implemented a policy of resistance through non-violent civil disobedience. This led other leaders of the movement to resign from the Congress, among them such militant stalwarts as Chitta Das, Annie Besant and Motilal Nehru. The Congress was split.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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For the next 20 years Gandhi, as the “image” of resistance to British rule, organized rallies, boycotts of British imports, protests and marches, including the famous “Salt March” in 1930, in which he and thousands of followers marched to the sea to make salt in protest of the British tax on it. He was imprisoned on a number of occasions, including a two-year stint in 1942 for his role in the Quit India movement, during which his wife died and he contracted malaria. He was soon released because the British authorities feared he would die in prison, making him a martyr to the cause. (He became one eventually, being assassinated by a Hindu nationalist just months after independence was granted.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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Weakened by two world wars and frustrated in finding no answer to Gandhi’s irritating tactics, in 1947 the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act. The act set a date for withdrawal of all British administrative and military presence and a partition of the British colony into two countries along the much-disputed Radcliffe Line: Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. On August 14 at 11:57 p.m. Pakistan was declared independent and free; just after midnight, at 12:02 am, the same for India. The remaining 560 princely states were given the right to join one or the other or be independent – a commendable intent which didn’t last long once the Indian and Pakistani military got rolling.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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The partition and creation of two nations with radically different beliefs in this faith-ridden land set off one of the greatest mass migrations in history as some 15 million believers scrambled to get on their side of the Radcliffe Line. The refugees, abandoning everything, displayed sound good sense, for it also saw unimaginable acts of mass violence, as the two new nations were simply unable to stem a tide of bloodshed that belied the non-violent nature of the successful resistance that had brought freedom. It is estimated that over a million Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs were killed, leaving a legacy of distrust between Pakistan and India.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_INDIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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In January 1950, India was declared a socialist, democratic republic. Since then, India has become a progressive and peaceful – save for the occasional war with Pakistan and border dispute with China – member of the brotherhood of nations.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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After centuries of forced isolation, in the past hundred and fifty years Japan has become one of the most industrious and influential civilizations in terms of economics and culture. Whereas samurai in Edo were concerned with kabuki, the woodcuts of the "floating world", and their own internal politics, one hundred years later Japanese artists, architects, fashion designers and businesspeople were at the world's center stage. The age-old traditions of Wa (usually translated as “harmony”) have been replaced, for better or worse, by those of progress and profit.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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According to the Kojiki, the first book written in Japan (c.712 AD), the brother and sister deities Izanagi and Izanami, born after the first five primordial gods, created the 434 islands of Japan – churning the seas with a great spear, and drops from that spear formed land where the two settled and begat a host of other kami (gods or “spiritual essences”). The truth is likely far more prosaic; humans crossed land-bridges around 40 thousand years before the islands became detached from Asia some 29 thousand years later. By 660 BC there was a civilization with an emperor supposedly descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Japanese “recorded history” begins about the third century, although there are innocuous references earlier such as that in the Chinese Book of the Later Han dated to 57 AD. This Kofun-jidai (“Kofun period”) saw the rise of several military clans, most notably the Yamato who became dominant – no doubt with much bloodshed – in the south-central part of the main island Honshu. Eventually, having beaten everyone else into submission, the Yamato declared themselves emperors of the united islands of Japan. But as their power waned over the next couple of centuries, the authority of the imperial court was steadily eroded by ambitious daimyo (loosely: “lords”).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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During the first centuries under the Yamato emperors, Japanese farmers began using iron tools for agriculture, and the land saw more advanced cultivation and flooding of the fields used to grow rice, a tasty and highly-nutritious grain that would quickly become the cornerstone of Japanese cuisine. This agrarian largess meant that fewer farmers could grow greater amounts of food, allowing the daimyo to dedicate that surplus manpower to military affairs. A new class arose to wedge themselves into Japanese society: the samurai or “those who serve in close attendance.” Soon, all sorts of lords had their own private armies. It was at this time the Japanese imported a number of technological advances from their neighbors, the most important of which may be writing from China; along with Chinese script came religion, in the form of Confucianism. In the sixth century, Buddhism appeared as well.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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The first shoguns were appointed by the Emperor as Sei-i Taishogun (“Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force against the Barbarians”) to remove the Emishi, Ainu, and others on the islands that would not accept imperial rule. In time the title became hereditary, and the shogun became the acknowledged military leader of the land and true ruler behind the imperial throne. Needless-to-say, this meant a lot of in-fighting for the post. In 1185 AD, the Minamoto would kill off most of the current shogun Taira clan in the Genpei War. The Minamoto promptly established a feudal system by law, with the cloistered emperor pretty-much limited to being a revered figurehead.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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When Minamoto Yoritomo died, his wife’s family – the Hojo clan – took control of the shogunate. Among other things, the Hojo in the guise of Tokimune defeated two Mongol invasions, spread Zen Buddhism and helped formulate the final form of the code of bushido. The Mongol invasions were pivotal for two things in Japanese history. The Japanese were horrified when their swords tended to break on the thick, boiled leather armor of the Mongols, leading to the development of the famed Katana by master swordsmiths. And the fierce samurai had faced a non-Japanese foe for the first of only three times (the invasions of Korea in 1592 and Ryukyu in 1609 being the others); mostly they just chopped each other to bits.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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The Hojo clan remained in power until 1333 AD, when Emperor Go-Daigo launched a coup to return actual rule to the imperial family. He was assisted in the struggle by a group of aristocrats, plus several samurai clans and some militant Buddhist monks. But a number of important allies of Go-Daigo were unhappy with their cut of the spoils, and in 1336 they then revolted, driving the emperor north into the Yoshino Mountains. For the next 60 years there were two imperial courts, the Northern and Southern, with control of Japan split between them. The southern emperor remained a figurehead, with real power in the hands of the Ashikaga shogunate. In 1391 the imperial courts were reunited, with power held by the shogun Ashikaga Takauji.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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This set off the period in Japanese development known as the “Warring States” (or Sengoku if wanting to be formal about terminology) period, 150 years marked by social upheaval, political intrigue (mixed with some assassination) and near-constant military conflict between those private armies of samurai. It did have its high points. Engineering of magnificent castles – some still standing – became an art form; Japanese warriors became adept with many weapons, including the musket after European traders introduced firearms; and the ninja first appeared. Eventually, the country was nearly unified under the brilliant Oda Nobunaga, who had the misfortune of being betrayed and killed in 1582 AD by one of his most trusted officers. In the bloody aftermath, Nobunaga’s neighboring daimyo and ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu – one of the most famous samurai of all – assumed the title of shogun in 1603.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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In the midst of all this, the Europeans arrived. In 1543 a Portuguese ship on its way to China ended up making landfall on Tanegashima Island. In the following few years, traders from Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and England all decided to stop by, and Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries chose to stay and spread their gospel. The new shogun had his suspicions that the trading enclaves and churches that were being established were merely the forerunners of a European invasion. Moreover, Christianity was spreading rapidly, especially among the sullen peasants. In 1637 the Shimabara Rebellion – composed of some 30 thousand Christians (mostly peasants) and rōnin (lordless samurai) – was put down only by a massive army led by the shogun.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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The shoguns had had enough. The Shimabara uprising was followed by the first of the so-called Sakoku (seclusion laws) under Tokagawa Iemitsu, and added to by his successors for the next quarter-millennia. Missionaries, traders and foreigners of all sorts – save for some Dutch and Chinese confined to the island of Dejima at Nagasaki – were expelled. Trade with Korea was limited to Tsushima. No foreigner could enter nor Japanese leave on penalty of immediate death. The Catholics were expelled, their schools and churches torn down, and the daimyo were forbidden to become Christians on penalty of - not surprisingly - death (the standard Japanese punishment for almost any transgression).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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Whether the Sakoku policy was responsible or not, during these 250-plus years of the Tokagawa shogunate Japan experienced a social and cultural flowering, as well as relative stability and peace (enforced on the points of katana). Ukiyo-e wood-block printing produced masterful works of art, as did kabuki and bunraku theater; some of the most famous compositions for koto and shakuhachi date from this period. The geisha evolved from simple entertainers - of all sorts - into the pinnacle of refined femininity. Patronage of the arts by the samurai spread elegant landscaping and architecture across the islands. The social structure became rigid, a system in which each know their place and responsibilities, from the lowest peasants (some 85% of the population) to the 250 daimyos. The punishment for stepping out of one’s station tended to be severe … and immediate. Everything became rigidly ritualized, from having tea to killing oneself.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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Japan was doing pretty well until American admiral Matthew Perry came calling in 1853 AD. Sailing around the Bay of Edo with the guns of his four modern warships at the ready, he demanded that Japan open trade with the West without restrictions. The next year, Perry appeared again, this time with seven ships and forced the shogun to sign the “Treaty of Peace and Amity” under the threat of the Americans’ big guns. Within five years, Japan “enjoyed” similar treaties with most of the Western powers. The shame of being outgunned by a foreign military force right on its inviolate doorstep toppled the shogunate, with de facto power shifting back to the emperor.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
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The vigorous young Emperor Meiji, taking the throne in 1867, initiated a period of radical reform from top to bottom in his country, seeking to make Japan militarily and economically equal to the West whose warships were sailing about its islands. By 1912 the government had abolished feudalism, placed the lands of most of the daimyos under “imperial control,” returned much of that to the peasant farmers, established freedom of worship, promoted trade, and virtually annihilated the samurai class. On a more pragmatic note, the throne encouraged industrialization, and established a constitutional monarch based upon the European model. And in 1873, Japan initiated nationwide conscription, creating an Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
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So efficient it was, Japan quickly emerged as the major power in the region, and soon emulated another Western proclivity – building a colonial empire. In 1894 AD Japan became embroiled with moribund China over who would dominate Korea; Japan won handily, gaining “independence” for Korea and Formosa, the Pescadores and the Liaotung Peninsula for itself. But the Western powers made Japan return the latter to China, who promptly leased it to Russia. Japan was infuriated, and the resultant 1904 Russo-Japanese War gave Japan the opportunity to show it could stomp a “Western” power. World War I presented Japan the chance to grab defeated Germany’s possessions in the Pacific and Asia. Japan next began nibbling at China, and moved into Manchuria – alarming just about everyone. Spurred by the depression and Western tariffs, totalitarian militarists took control of the government. By the late 1930s, the Western democracies and Imperial Japan were on a collision course.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_JAPAN_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
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With public outcry in the United States mounting with reports of Japanese atrocities in China, the occupation of Indo China upon France’s utter defeat by Nazi Germany, and clashes with Russia in Manchuria, it was not long before Japan joined the fray that was World War 2 with an attack on the United States and the British Empire in 1941 AD. In the debacle that followed, after initial stunning success, Japan found itself on the losing end of the Pacific War, concluded in August 1945 after atomic devastation. From those ashes though, under an American occupation, the nation rose again like a hou-ou (Japanese phoenix), becoming one of the world’s leading economic, technological and cultural leaders.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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According to legend, the foundations of the kingdom called Kongo lies in the troubles of the very large but not very rich tribal kingdom of Mpemba Kasi around the Kwilu Valley. These stories state that at some point weak Mpemba Kasi forged an alliance with its militaristic neighbor Mbata, eventually conquering the kingdom of Mwene Kabunga which lay upon a mountain plateau to the south. When the warrior Nimi a Lukeni merged all this territory he made M’banza Kongo, the village on the mountain, his capital. And so the Kingdom of Kongo was birthed c. 1390 AD – a kingdom that would at its peak control a territory that reached from Africa’s mid-Atlantic coast to the Kwango River, and from Pointe Noire in the north to the Loje River in the south.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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The first Manikongo (“king”) was, not surprisingly, Nimi. When Nimi died, his brother Mbokani M’vinga took over; having two wives and nine children, his fertile kanda would rule in an unbroken line for the rest of independent Kongo’s existence. His rule saw the conquest of the neighboring kingdom of Loango and other odd bits lying about. Manikongo Mbokani also began the policy of giving the governorship of Kongo provinces to kin; over time, under this centralization, the provinces lost influence until their power was more symbolic than real. (Hence, by 1620, the once proud and independent kingdom of Mbata was known only as “Grandfather of the King of Kongo.”)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Through all this, the throne supported itself through taxes, forced labor, and royal levies; at times, to finance his military, the Manikongo traded slaves, copper and ivory with the Europeans starting to arrive on the coast. It was also supported by exhorting tribute from neighboring cities and kingdoms, making M’banza Kongo one of the wealthiest African cities in the late 1500s. The kingdom continued to grow steadily, thanks to the spears of the Bantu warriors. When the Europeans arrived, the Manikongo ruled six provinces – Mpemba, Mbata, Nsundi, Mpanga, Mbemba and Soyo – as well as four vassal kingdoms (Loango, Cacongo, Ngoye and Ndongo). According to the records, the king could put 300 thousand well-trained and well-disciplined warriors (male and female) into the field in a week.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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The population of Kongo was concentrated around the capital of M’banza, with some 100 thousand people living there – or one out of every five Kongolese. While it may have been urban sprawl, this concentration did allow for the stockpiling of food, resources and manpower, ready when the Manikongo required. It also made the city the center of an extensive trading network (doesn’t it always come down to money in the end); besides exporting resources such as ivory and metal ore, the kingdom’s industrious families headed businesses that manufactured copperware, other metal goods, raffia cloth, and pottery.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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In 1483 the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao sailed up the “undiscovered” Congo River, in the process bumping into the Kingdom of Kongo. He left some of his men behind as “guests,” and took some Kongo officials back to Portugal, where the King of Portugal dubbed him cavaleiro (knight) for his troubles. True to his word – unique for Europeans dealing with natives – Cao returned with the nobles in 1485. It was around this time that Manikongo Nzinga a Nkuwu converted to Christianity. In 1491, Cao returned yet again, this time with a Catholic priest in tow, who formally baptized Nzinga and some of his nobles. The Manikongo took the Christian name “Joao” to honor the then-king of Portugal. Along with the priest and some others, Cao brought a Kongolese home, who opened a Portuguese-style school in M’banza. With all this, like a door-to-door salesman, once the Portuguese got their foot in the door...


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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Joao I, née Nzinga, was succeeded by his son Afonso I, née Mvemba a Nzinga. Whereas his father had lapsed in his conversion, by all accounts – including his own – Afonso was a devout Catholic, and dedicated to bringing his people to the light. Accepting advisors from both Portugal and the Church into his inner circle, he sought to create a synthesis between Christianity and the native faith. While he didn’t succeed with this, he did establish a viable Catholic infrastructure, using the royal treasury to fund the schools and churches – whether his subjects wanted them or not. Being short of ordained clergy, especially native speakers, a number of young nobles were sent to Europe to study religion; one of Afonso’s sons was named a bishop (of Utica, far to the north) and vicar-apostolic of the Kongo after seven years of learning the holy writ.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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All this Christian charity and feel-goodness was, however, soon enough disrupted by the burgeoning slave trade in Kongo coupled with Portuguese avarice. In the decades following Cao’s arrival, the outer holdings of the Kingdom of Kongo became the major source for the Portuguese trade in human flesh. While slavery had certainly existed in Kongo long before the Europeans and Kongolese slave markets were already doing a booming business, the Portuguese engaged in a “slave rush,” with most of these bound for the Caribbean or for Brazil. Although immensely profitable, and a good way to dump prisoners taken in the kingdom’s endemic conflicts along the southern and eastern borders, successive rulers suspected that many of their own subjects were being “illegally” enslaved (when there weren’t a fresh batch of prisoners-of-war) The realm was, as a result, being destabilized. Thus, administration of the trade was organized, with royal committees established to insure that people were not illegally exported. And the legal slaves were baptized by Portuguese priests before being shipped out, so at least their souls were saved.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
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But it wasn’t Christianity or slavery that brought the kingdom to its demise; it was the bloody struggles over succession to the throne. Since cousins, uncles, brothers and sons of the Manikongo ruled the provinces and vassals as Mbokani had decreed, every time the king died there was the inevitable civil war as each claimant had his own little army. As a result, in 1568 the capital was taken by the Jagas, either invaders from the east or perhaps disgruntled subjects (the accounts vary); Nimi a Lukeni, or Álvaro I as the Catholics would have it, retook the town and was anointed king. But to do so he had to gain Portuguese weaponry and support, granting the Portuguese crown the site of Luanda as a colony (which eventually became Angola). A bad decision, for the Portuguese were soon meddling in internal Kongo affairs.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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Álvaro, founder of the Kwilu dynasty, and his son Álvaro II – seeing the tidal wave of progress bearing down – sought to “Westernize” the kingdom. Perhaps they thought to make themselves more palatable to Europeans or merely to avoid the inevitable. In any case, most of this was superficial. Álvaro introduced European-style titles (so that Mwene Nsundi became the “Duke of Nsundi”) and his son renamed the capital Sao Salvador. In 1596, Kongolese emissaries persuaded the Pope to recognize the city as the center of a new diocese which included both Kongo and Angola; but the king of Portugal outmaneuvered Álvaro II by convincing the papacy (no doubt with appropriate “donations”) to give him the right to appoint the bishops to this new see.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Relations between Angola and Kongo soured, and then worsened (if that was possible) when the colonial governor of Angola invaded – albeit briefly – southern Kongo in 1622. Things declined ever more as factionalism set in in the kingdom, and some provincial ”dukes” made their own arrangements with the Portuguese, both military and trade (i.e., slavery). A couple decades later, Manikongo Nkanga a Lukeni (Garcia II) sided with the Dutch against the Portuguese when the former seized part of Angola in 1641. But the Dutch made a “strategic withdrawal” in 1648, leaving the Manikongo in the lurch. Border skirmishes between Kongo and Portugal over claims to the district of Mbwila (not a very large territory but neither side needed an excuse for a fight) led to the Battle of Mbwila (or Ambuila or Ulanga, depending on the historian writing the account) in October 1665.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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There, a force of Portuguese musketeers and light cannon decisively defeated the Manikongo’s army; casualties among the native warriors were in excess of 5000, including the king. After the battle, the Kimpanza and the Kinlaza factions, two branches of the royal family, vied for the crown. Unresolved, the civil war dragged on into the next century, devastating the countryside while thousands of Kongolese captives were sold to slavers by both sides. The capital itself was sacked several times, and it was largely abandoned by 1696. Finally, Pedro IV of Kibangu engineered an agreement among the surviving nobles (not that many were left) rotating the kingship among them. Peace returned … sort of.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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The abandoned capital of M’banza was re-occupied by the Portuguese-supported native Christian prophet Beatriz Kimpa Vita and her followers, the Antonians, in 1705 AD. The Antonian (named after St. Anthony) goal was the creation of a new, holy Christian Kingdom of Kongo directly under God’s protection. But that didn’t seem to be the case, as King Pedro IV (reigning 1696 through 1718) subsequently captured, tried and executed Beatriz as a heretic and then reoccupied the capital and restored Kongo to its rightful place as an “independent” kingdom in 1709.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
Text:
Although the rotational system of kingship kept things relatively peaceful, there were still the occasional dynastic squabbles. Otherwise, things were looking up during the 18th and 19th centuries. Kongo artists began producing crucifixes depicting Christ as black, a notion that brought the last few skeptics over; so religion-ridden did the nation become that a popular story that the ruined cathedral in Sao Salvador was rebuilt by angels overnight went unquestioned. In 1836, the Portuguese – under intense British pressure – abolished the slave trade.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_KONGO_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
Text:
In the end, it was yet another dynastic squabble that spelled the end of the Kingdom of Kongo. In 1856 AD, two factions contested the kingship upon the death of Henrique II, both from the Kinlaza clan. Pedro Lelo proved victorious, although he had to resort to Portuguese troops to do so. But any deal with the devil has a price, and in 1857 Pedro V signed a treaty of vassalage to Portugal, swearing fealty to that throne. The next year, Portugal constructed a fort in Sao Salvador to house a garrison just to make sure there was no question as to who was running things. An independent state would not be seen again until 1960, in the guise of the Republic of Congo.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
The Norwegian Vikings had a tendency to leave Norway. By 800 AD, they had colonized the Shetlands, Orkneys, Faroes, Hebrides and other places no one else much wanted. Around 820, they planted settlements on the west coast of Ireland, founding some of that island’s great cities (including Dublin). In or about 870 they discovered Iceland and promptly divvied it up between 400 chieftains. A hundred years later they showed up in Greenland, and Leif Erikson landed in North America c. 1000 AD (but didn’t stay long). During all this time, Norway itself wasn’t even unified, but rather made up of several petty kingdoms arguing about who should lead.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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Harald Fairhair began the process of creating Norway by stomping on all his rival chieftains at the Battle of Hafrsfjord around 872 (historians are not sure of the date, Viking records being what they are). But it was left to Olaf Haraldsson to truly sit as king of a united Norway, taking the throne in 1015 … not that various lords tried to break away periodically for centuries. “Saint” Olaf was determined to make his nation Christian and get rid of Odin, Thor, and Valhalla. He forced the 'things' (local governing bodies) to pass laws mandating Christianity, the building of churches and tearing down the pagan hofs, and the declaration of Trondheim as the Christian center of Norway. For this, Olaf was killed at The Battle of Stiklestad; nevertheless, Christianity was in Norway to stay.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Although Harald Hardrada fell at Stamford Bridge trying to take the English kingship in 1066, his family would rule Norway until Sigurd Magnusson, known as “the Crusader,” died in 1130. His death unleashed a century of civil wars, until at long last in 1217 Haakon IV sorted it out and established the Sverre dynasty. Under Haakon and his descendants Norway experienced a golden age, both politically and culturally. Norway annexed both Iceland and Greenland. In 1266 Magnus VI “the Lawmender” (he fixed a lot of things that were broken), realizing that he could not defend the Hebrides settlements against the fierce Scots, sold the islands along with Isle of Man to the Scottish crown. (The Shetlands and Orkneys would go the same way in 1468.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
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It was time of peace and prosperity in Scandinavia, and the Norwegians made the most of it. Viking traders travelled south to the Middle East, east into the wilds of Russia, and especially to the west to the British Isles, bringing wealth back in exchange for raw materials: fur, fir, fish and ore. Agriculture flourished along the coastlines. Meanwhile, the arts reached heights never before attained. Working with wood and metal, Norwegian craftsmen created high art in a half-dozen distinct styles ranging from the Oseberg to the Urnes. Norse shipbuilders crafted vessels that could sail across the oceans. Norse smiths forged the best weapons and mail to be had in all Europe. Which was just as well, since although there was peace among the Viking kingdoms, the Norse were, as usual, attacking someone else nearby from week to week. But the fun times had to end eventually.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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In 1349 or so, the Black Death reached Scandinavia, killing as much as 50% of the population over the next few years. The losses brought a reduction in taxes, naturally, and the central authority of the crown slipped. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church increased its tithes, making it increasingly powerful, to the point where the archbishop of Trondheim demanded – and got – a seat on the Council of State. During the late 14th Century, the Hanseatic League steadily took over the Norwegian trade routes; in 1343 the League had established a kontor (“foreign trading post”) in Bergen, and by 1400 had created its own quarter in the city and established exclusive rights to trade with the fishing fleet. (Bergen would remain under the Hanseatic thumb until the mid-1600s.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
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All this led to thoughts of unifying the old Viking kingdoms to face the challenges. Olaf II had inherited the throne of Denmark when he was five years old in May 1376 upon his grandfather’s death; when his father died, he succeeded him as King of Norway. For the next 400 years, Norway would be ruled from Copenhagen, part of a dual kingdom. Soon these were joined to the Swedish throne as well, when Margrete I, queen regent of Denmark forged the Kalmar Union – which included not only the three kingdoms but the overseas Norwegian dependencies as well as Finland (via the Swedish crown). Crafted to counter the growing influence of the Hanseatic League and of the German princes in the Baltic, the Union survived until 1523 when the “Stockholm Bloodbath” triggered Swedish revolution, resulting in the crowning of Gustav Vaasa as the king of “free Sweden.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
Text:
The Kalmar Union served Norway fairly well. Except for that mess with the Reformation. Frederick I, king of Denmark-Norway, favored Luther’s heresies. But in Norway, the people did not. And therein lay a serious problem, for in 1529 the king sought to impose Protestantism on the Norwegians. Not surprisingly, resistance was led by the latest archbishop of Trondheim, who invited the aged Catholic king Christian II back from exile. But Christian got captured and imprisoned for the rest of his life. In the civil war that followed Frederick’s death, the Catholic Norwegians tried again, with even worse results. The Danish victor Christian III exiled the archbishop, demoted Norway from a co-kingdom to a mere Danish province in 1536 and imposed Lutheranism on Norway the following year.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
Text:
After this, things quieted down for a while as the Norwegians settled into the new order of things. There were the occasional wars the hot-tempered Danes dragged them into – the Kalmar War (1611-1613), the Thirty-Years War (1618-1648) and the Second Northern War (1657-1660) – that resulted in changing borders. But in general things went well. The population grew some 750 thousand over 300 years (1500 to 1800). The Danish administrative system was reformed, with Norway divided into counties. Government corruption diminished under a series of able kings, despite there being 1600 government-appointed officials spread across Norway. Unfortunately, at least for the Danes, the country was soon embroiled in the Napoleonic conflagration … on the losing side.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
Text:
By the time it was all over, Norway was part of Sweden, despite the fact that a national assembly had, well, assembled and drawn up a constitution for a parliamentary monarchy in May 1814. In July 1814, Sweden invaded and with the Treaty of Moss in August agreed to recognize the constitution provided Norway surrendered and behaved. Thus began the constitutional union between Sweden and Norway, with the Swedish monarch Karl Johan elected to wear the two crowns. Norwegian nationalism and liberalism took hold, for the easy-going Swedes gave them a lot of latitude. The Bank of Norway was established in 1816, and with it a national currency (the speciedaler). The old Norwegian aristocracy was abolished by Parliament in 1821. In 1832 the farmers realized there were more of them than any other group, and in elections that year ended up with the majority of seats in the Diet. Thus, rural tax cuts and higher import duties, and the Local Committees Act which established elected municipal councils to run things locally.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
Text:
When Sweden abolished the free trade agreement with Norway and drew a border between the two and then refused to appoint a Norwegian foreign minister, agitation for independence spread across Norway. When in June 1905 the king again refused to grant Norway its own foreign minister (despite Parliament voting for such a post), Parliament voted to dissolve the union. In the ensuing referendum vote, only 184 people in Norway wanted to maintain it. The new Norwegian government offered the constitutional crown to a Danish prince; he accepted and became Haakon VII (his actual name was Karl). After a half-millennium, Norway was again its own nation.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
Text:
Over the next decade, it proved itself one of the most progressive nations. In 1913, Norway the second country in the world to adopt women’s suffrage. Parliament passed laws establishing sick pay, factory inspections, worker safety laws, and a ten-hour work day – thus spoiling things for capitalist barons ever since. Railroads were laid along the coast; the Bergen Line was completed in 1909. Industrial plants, especially hydroelectric power plants, were being built faster than anyone could keep track of. Norwegian explorers such as Amundsen (first to reach the South Pole), Sverdrup and Nansen became world famous. Truly, it was Norway’s second golden age.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
Text:
Like its Scandinavian neighbors, Norway tried to stay out of Europe’s crises and wars. They managed to do so throughout the First World War. But not so the Second. Norway found itself caught between the British, whose navy could interdict the coastal sea-lanes and had no qualms about violating Norway’s waters, and the Germans, who desperately needed iron ore from northern Norway for its industrial war plants; in April 1940 Nazi Germany invaded and quickly overran Norway to insure a land route for the ore shipments. The Norwegian government went into exile and the infamous Vidkun Quisling (whose name has become synonymous with “traitor”) set up a collaboration government. With the exception of some commando raids and partisan actions, however, Norway was generally on the fringe of the war, although some 80% of the nation’s prewar merchant fleet (fourth largest in the world at the time) escaped to serve the Allies.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_NORWAY_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
Text:
With the end of the war, Norway returned to its tradition of neutrality, focusing its foreign policy efforts on the United Nations, with native son Trygve Lie becoming the first secretary-general of that august body. But the onset of the Cold War left no one neutral, and in 1949 Norway was one of the founding members of NATO (although it never allowed the stationing of foreign troops nor nuclear weapons on its soil). In 1969 oil was discovered in the North Sea (the Ekofisk field), and billions of dollars poured into the nation’s economy, making the standard of living – given the relatively small population – one of the highest in the world. Overall, the Norwegians have devoted themselves postwar to having a good life, enjoying winter sports, hosting a couple of Olympics, and being overrun by tourists.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Whether one believes Rome was founded around 750 BC by Romulus and Remus, by refugees from Troy, or by a motely crew of outcasts who happened to find a nice hilltop with a source of clean water nearby, for a few centuries all roads – as the saying goes – led to it. In time the patricians found that the plebeians could be kept inattentive to serious matters with bread and circuses – a truism still – and the Republic became a dictatorship, and later an Empire. Rome laid the foundation of Western civilization, and its traditions (good and bad) live on today.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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According to Roman belief, the city was founded by twin brothers named Romulus and Remus, the sons of the god Mars and a human king’s daughter. The children were abandoned at birth, but they were rescued by a she-wolf who suckled them. Upon reaching maturity the boys founded a new city, then quarreled over who would rule (or, as some would have it, the height of a wall). Romulus won; he killed his brother and became the first king of Rome. This story of abandonment and she-wolf and murder may explain quite a bit about Rome’s subsequent history.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
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Rome’s strategic location made it greatly prized by its neighbors; for two centuries the Latins fought off attacks by the Etruscans and the Sabines, eventually subjugating both and claiming their culture, religion, technology, wealth and of course land for Rome, establishing a serviceable template for building their empire.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
Roman lore states that the last Roman king was a brutal tyrant. This villainous king, Tarquinius Superbus, was overthrown by the citizens after his son raped a virtuous noblewoman. Modern historians believe that the truth is far more prosaic. According to these stuffy academics Rome was captured by the Etruscans, who ejected the Roman king, but external events forced them to vacate the city before they could install their own monarch. Finding that they preferred being kingless, the Romans did not recall Tarquinius to power but instead implemented a republic loosely (emphasis on “loose”) based upon the Greek model of democracy (not that the Greeks were particularly democratic themselves).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
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The political structure was convoluted, but went something like this: Rome was ruled by two consuls. The consuls acted as the city’s chief administrators as well as the military commanders. The consuls were elected annually by the “centuriate assembly” – the Roman army. To ensure unity of command in times of great danger a “dictator" could be appointed from the consuls who had complete power. The second power bloc in the Roman government was the Senate. The Senate was composed of approximately 300 “virtuous” men drawn from the leading families. According to theory the Senate was strictly an advisory body, but in fact it held enormous political clout (given that members were all filthy rich), and its “advice” was almost always followed. The Roman Republic became the model, for better and worse, for most republics that followed.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
Text:
During much of its history, the Roman Republic was at war with one or more of its neighbors since it was constantly expanding its territory at the expense of other, less efficient kingdoms. Most of these gains were swept away in 390 BC, when a Gallic tribe defeated the vaunted Roman legions and sacked the city … not the last time a bunch of illiterate barbarians would wander the streets of the Eternal City. It took almost half a century for Rome to recover from this debacle. By the middle of the 200s BC, however, Rome was master of central Italy, with Latin colonies extending far to the north and south. Further, work was progressing on the incomparable Roman road network tying the growing republic together, and Rome was in the process of constructing its first navy ... just in time for most of it to be sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
Text:
As Rome’s expanse and reputation grew, it inevitably came into conflict with other regional kingdoms also looking to be the biggest bully on the block. One such was Carthage, a one-time Phoenician colony based on the North African coast in Tunisia. At the time Carthage had a mighty maritime empire which covered most of North Africa west of Egypt, coastal Spain and France, and much of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Rome and Carthage fought three “Punic Wars” (264-146 BC) to decide who would control the western Mediterranean. When the dust settled, despite the brilliance of Hannibal, courage of the Carthaginian seamen and acumen of their politicians, Carthage and all its holdings disappeared into the maw of the soon-to-be Roman Empire.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
Text:
Although Rome continued fighting wars across the Mediterranean, the first century BC saw tens of thousands of soldiers return as civilians from foreign lands. There was not enough work for the ex-soldiers, especially since Rome was being flooded with slaves from overseas possessions. To be elected consul, Roman politicians had to appease these ex-soldiers, and Roman politics turned increasingly populist, with political infighting becoming increasingly bitter. It was clear that control of Rome would fall to whomever could buy the loyalty of the disaffected army. In 62 BC three men agreed to share power between them; this “First Triumvirate” consisted of the great Gnaeus Pompey, the senator Marcus Crassus, and an obscure general from a wealthy family named Julius Caesar.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
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These men had the same ability to cooperate and desire to share power as one might expect to find in the average killer shark, and following Crassus's death in battle, Caesar and Pompey were at each other's throats. When Caesar eventually marched on Roma with his loyal legions, Pompey and the Senate fled the city; in 49 BC Caesar entered into Rome unopposed. While maintaining the façade that Rome was a republic, Julius became a de facto dictator. He gave himself the power to appoint all senators, and he altered the constitution so that the assemblies would vote only on candidates and bills he submitted. In 44 BC he was assassinated by members of the senate who had had enough of these shenanigans (the fact that the good citizens were scandalized by Caesar’s adulterous affair with that foreign witch Cleopatra didn’t help Julius).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
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Following Caesar's death, his lieutenant Mark Antony allied with Marcus Lepidus and Caesar's nephew Gaius Octavian to defeat Caesar's republican assassins. But in the process Anthony took up with Cleopatra and her son by Julius, who got busy resurrecting the Egyptian empire with his help. Thereafter the members of this “Second Triumvirate” quarreled. That tiff ended with Cleopatra, Caesar’s son, Anthony and a lot of others dead and Octavian – now termed “Augustus” – as undisputed permanent dictator, even though the danger to Rome was long over. While the Roman Republic was dead, the Roman Empire had just begun and the whole world would “tremble at its power and glory.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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For the next four centuries Rome would be ruled by the dictators, who took the title “Caesar” to remember from whence their power came. The long list of emperors includes the able (Tiberius, Vespasian, Hadrian), the brilliant (Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine), some neither (Otho, Pertinax, Balbinus, and others too numerous to mention), and many downright villainous (Caligula, Nero, Commodus, the list goes on). Some had long reigns – the 48 years of Theodosius II is the record – while other lasted just months (some only days), many dying of lead poisoning on the blades of the Praetorian Guard. The whole mad stew was leavened with revolts, rebellions, uprisings, wars and the ever-present struggle to hold the borders against the barbarian hordes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
Text:
Through all this turmoil, the Romans did manage to produce some of civilization’s most enduring works. Latin art and literature had finally divested themselves of slavishly copying the Greeks; satire (something the Greeks had no appreciation for) is a Roman innovation, and Latin sculpture, frescos and landscape painting (the Romans invented the genre) surpassed anything previously seen. Roman contributions to architecture include the arch, vault and dome; some of their aqueducts, bridges and buildings still stand. Meanwhile wealthy Romans became the world’s first tourists, wandering about Egypt, Greece and Persia, marveling at the monuments and ruins but drawing no parallels to their own times. Those who stayed at home were entertained by blood sports in the Great Coliseum and chariot races in the Circus Maximus; and there were periodically those crucifixions along the Appian Way to relieve the ennui.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
Text:
At the height of its holdings under Trajan, the Empire reached from the lowlands of Scotland to the Moorish mountains to the Euphrates and Rhine. Rome was itself the world’s largest metropolis, numbered an estimated two million inhabitants, citizens and otherwise. Trade flowed into Roman lands from Africa, Gaul, Scandinavia and far India, all of it kept track of with standardized weights and measures and counted up on the Roman abacus, perfectly suited for the Roman numeral system. In fact, as the Empire progressed, given the Roman proclivity for organization, just about everything became standardized.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
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But by the third century AD, things were started to decline. The administration, given the state of communications in that age, grew so unwieldy it could not react to crises. In 285 AD Emperor Diocletian partitioned the sprawling realm into a western half and eastern half, with the east administered from Byzantium, where a “second” emperor was installed to act in the name of the first emperor back in Rome. The no-nonsense religion of Christianity took hold of Rome, which had always been accepting of different faiths; Emperor Theodosius I made it the state religion, and intolerance wedged cracks in the social structure wider. Barbarians became more technologically advanced, and nibbled at the edges of Roman lands. Then, there was always the possibility that the Romans were suffering from lead-poisoning thanks to those wonderful aqueducts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_ROME_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_16
Text:
Whatever the contributing causes, the last years of the Western Empire were marked by inept rulers, usurpations and barbarian incursions into the heart of Roman lands. In 410 AD Rome itself was sacked by the forces of Alaric, a Visigoth king. The Vandals overran Africa, and various provincial Roman governors broke away to pursue their own dynastic dreams. Finally, the German Odoacer, who had been a general in Roman employ, invaded, deposed Romulus Augustus, sent the imperial insignia to Byzantium, and installed himself as the new King of Italy. The “light of Rome” had been extinguished, although its shadow still looms across Europe and beyond.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
Text:
Boyars, Cossacks, onion domes, snow-covered landscapes, the “wasteland” of Siberia, carefree serfs, stirring compositions, endless winter, and ice-chilled vodka. The romance of Russia may be appealing, but its true history is somewhat less so … especially if one listens to those serfs. With one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, Russia has influenced the course of world civilization like few other nation-states. The roots of Russia lay in the initial settlement of Novgorod by the Norse and the establishment of the Kievan Rus kingdom around 882 AD by Oleg, who managed to conquer the Ilmen Slavs, Finno-Ugrics, Veps and Votes who inhabited the region – but these are stories mixed with myth and legend. So, let’s begin with the rise of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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It all got started with Prince Daniil Aleksandrovich, fourth and youngest son of the famed Alexandre Nevsky; when the old man died in 1263 AD, the two-year-old Daniil received the least valuable of his holdings, a small and backward principality named Moscow. He spent the next decades fending off his greedy brothers and the westward galloping Mongols. Despite all this internecine sibling squabbling and Mongol incursions, Daniil managed to largely keep his duchy out of the general bloodshed (in fact, he was canonized in 1652 by the Orthodox Church for his “meekness, humility and peacefulness”). Among other things, he did this by paying tribute to the Golden Horde, a smart move as it turned out. The prince “peacefully” added various bits to his lands as his relatives, direct and distant, died off – to the point that when St. Daniil died in 1303 Moscow became a “Grand Duchy.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
Daniil was followed by a series of able – if not quite so pacific – grand dukes. But it was Grand Duke Ivan III (also known as “the Great”) who really put Muscovy on the map. During his 40-year reign (1462 to 1505), he tripled the size of Muscovy by annexing the Novgorod Republic and the Grand Duchy of Tver among others, ended tribute to the Horde, created a bare-bones central administration, limited the independence of the boyars, renovated the Kremlin (the citadel that served as the seat of the Rurik dynasty). Having consolidated the core of Russia, Ivan took for himself the titles of Tsar and “Ruler of all the Rus.” Although Ivan IV (lovingly known as “the Terrible”) was the first to be officially crowned as “Tsar,” the “gathering” of Russia was begun by Ivan III.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
Being a megalomaniac and a sociopath, Ivan IV had a tough time as a child. As he was three and sickly at the time of his father's death, a prolonged regency was subject to a great deal of political intrigue, and Ivan suffered accordingly. Once Ivan achieved maturity, things went from bad to exceptionally bad – one might even say “terrible.” Very little is actually known of Ivan the man, except that he was unwell and he married six times. At last crowned in his own right, Ivan began a program to dramatically increase his power at the expense of virtually everybody else. The Imperial Court was swept of independent-minded nobility and stocked with sycophantic bullies. The upper echelons of the military were similarly purged. Ivan declared millions of acres of the best land to be oprichnina – or crown land – subject to his direct control only. Ivan was about as good a military leader as he was a humanitarian: he virtually destroyed the army and bankrupted the country in the disastrous Livonian War, which dragged on for some twenty-five years. He died in 1584 … and not a moment too soon.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
Text:
A generation later, the Rurik dynasty would be replaced by the Romanov. Following the death of Feodor I (the son of Ivan IV), Russian toppled into the “Time of Troubles,” a crisis in the succession as Feodor had no male heirs. The Russian parliament eventually elected Boris Godunov to be the new tsar; he reigned for seven years, troubled by a series of imposters known as the “False Dmitriys (each claiming to be Feodor’s long-dead younger brother). All this, including claims by foreign pretenders, was finally put to rest when the boyars elected Michael Romanov to take the throne in 1613 AD. The Romanovs would rule in an unbroken line until the last of them were shot by Bolsheviks in a basement in Yekaterinburg.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
Text:
As tyrannical despots go, the Romanov tsars weren’t too bad. In fact, several of them earned the sobriquet “the Great” and several others probably deserve that acclaim, save that another of the same name already had it. The first Romanovs managed to conclude treaties with Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ukrainian Cossacks, who agreed to serve under the tsar’s direction. Unfortunately, thanks to new, harsher restrictions on the serfs, there were also a lot of peasant uprisings, such as the Salt Riot, Copper Riot and Moscow Uprising. These were put down with the usual reserve of the time and place. And Russia continued to grow in size, notably through the conquest and colonization eastward to Siberia.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
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Then came the Greats. Peter the Great, through a series of successful wars against the Ottomans and the Swedes, gained warm-water ports for the tsardom, and so ready access to Europe. And thus he dragged Russia – kicking and screaming, as the saying goes – into the Renaissance. Forty years after Peter’s death, Catherine the Great – who wasn’t even Russian-born – initiated the empire’s acknowledged “golden age,” made Russia a major European power … and, for some unfathomable reason, began the colonization of distant Alaska. Known as “the Blessed,” Tsar Alexander I guided Russia through the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, defeated Napoleon during the invasion (mainly by avoiding battle and torching everything in front of the French), and firmly embedded his nation in the quagmire of the Balkans after the “Revolt of the Greeks” in 1821 AD. Next up, Alexander “the Liberator,” who, despite his many accomplishments (notably the “liberation” of the serfs) managed to get himself assassinated.


Language: en_US
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During these long years, Russia developed a culture unique, a tradition of excellence in literature, music, dance and architecture. For centuries before Peter the Great threw the doors wide to European influence, Russian folklore and folk-crafts were distinctly Slavic, heavily tinted (or tainted) with Orthodox Christianity. Constantinople’s first and greatest outreach program of proselytizing was the dispatch of missionaries into Kievan Rus; by the middle of the 10th Century the Greek Orthodox Church had its hooks into a large number of the Russian common folk, and it hasn’t turned loose yet. Other influences, especially Scandinavian and Asiatic, were added to the cultural pot under the Rurik and early Romanov dynasties. Expatriates have since carried Russian culture across the globe, and few peoples have been as pivotal in the world’s appreciation of the finer things.


Language: en_US
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In literature, Slavic bylinas gave way to the epically massive works of Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy … although the great Chekov managed to keep his word-count down. The simple harmonies of ethnic folk music played on the likes of the balalaika, garmon and zhaleika evolved into the complex and sweeping compositions of Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, perhaps the greatest composer of the Romantic Era. The peasant khorovod and barynya, folk dances still enjoyed throughout Russia, made room for the ballet – first brought to St. Petersburg by, who else, Peter the Great – so beloved by the cultural elite.


Language: en_US
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Perhaps one of the most recognizable aspects of Russian culture (at least for the average sap) is its architecture. With Orthodoxy came Byzantine architectural forms, displayed in the only stone buildings: fortifications and churches. When Peter the Great opened the country to the West and supported a renaissance in the arts, a taste for the rococo fastened on Russian architects. Under Catherine and the Alexanders, the capital at St. Petersburg was transformed into a museum for Neo-Classical buildings (before the slab-and-drab Soviet style was mandated).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
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Russia has produced few great or even recognizable artists in paint or sculpture. But nearly anyone can spot its folk art. The Matryoshka Doll, a series of brightly-painted nesting figures, is beloved everywhere and now manufactured wholesale for holiday sales worldwide. Russian icons, the painting of religious images on wood, slipped into the Slavic mindset with Orthodox Christianity; elaborate and often gilded, these became an art in themselves, and the great masters of early Russia turned their skills to these venerated icons. While few may recognize the term “gzhel,” most people would recognize the distinctive style of ceramics to which it refers.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_RUSSIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
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Following the Liberator’s son, termed Alexander “the Peacemaker,” came the last recognized Romanov to rule Russia, the familial but inept Nicholas II (not given a moniker for obvious reasons). Nicholas inherited a Russia beset with all sorts of problems, both internal and external. He was a firm believer in “benevolent” autocratic rule, seeing the Tsar as “Little Father” to his people. He retained the conservative policies and politics of his father, a mistake not helped by his marriage to an unpopular German princess.


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By 1900, Russia was in desperate need of reform and modernization; what it got was oppression and bloodshed. Insulated from reality by sycophants (the thoroughly unlikeable Gregori Rasputin among them), Nicholas failed to advance agricultural or industrial production, leaving Russia the most backward of European nations. Worse still, he lacked the vision to bring political reform – despite being highly impressed by the British version of democracy – in an age of growing discontent. He alienated the Duma, an advisory council he himself had created.


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Nicholas II, when he did try to right the floundering ship of state, only made matters worse. He would be condemned by most of his subjects due to such incidents as the Khodynka Tragedy, Bloody Sunday, anti-Semitic pogroms, the repression of the abortive 1905 Revolution, and his proclivity for executing vocal opponents. Moreover, he managed to embroil Russia in disastrous military campaigns, especially the humiliating defeat at the hands of Imperial Japan in 1905. Although this indicated how desperate the Russian military was in need of reform and modernization (in terms of tactics, training, equipment and everything else), none came – leading to such incidents as the Potemkin mutiny. Coupled with all this, the Russian entry into the cauldron of World War I completed his miscalculations.


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In February 1917, when police in St. Petersburg began to fire on starving (due to acute food shortages in the cities) and freezing (a severe winter coupled with a lack of coal and wood) citizens, riots broke out with an outcry for an end to the war and abdication of the tsar. Despite initial efforts to maintain control, when the army’s Volinsky Regiment mutinied and refused to follow orders – soon joined by other units – order in the capital broke down completely. The Duma formed a provisional democratic government, and Nicholas abdicated (his brother Michael wisely declined the throne when the Duma offered it). The democracy that replaced the empire was soon enough itself replaced by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SCYTHIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_1
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The Scythians were a loose (very loose) confederation of illiterate nomad-pastoralists who wandered about the steppes of Central Asia for about a thousand years. Most of what is known of them comes from a handful of ancient “historians” – the likes of the Greek Herodotus and the Roman-Greek Strabo and a few Hindu texts – and that’s not much. At their peak, the Scythians ranged across the whole of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and beyond, from what is today the Ukraine to the borders of Manchuria. They sat astride the Silk Road, grew wealthy from the slave trade, developed a distinctive artistic style, and left civilization legends of centaurs and Amazons … but not much else.


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Modern scholars note that the term “Scythian” was used by ancient writers to refer to a wide range of horse-warriors from the steppes, otherwise unrelated but sharing a few similarities in life-style and language. Herodotus states that the Scythians originated in the eastern steppes where they warred with the closely-related Massagetae, but “with ill success.” Therefore the Scythian tribes migrated west, crossed the river Araxes, and within 30 years displaced the Cimmerians (who themselves migrated into Assyria and raised hell there). Being masterful horsemen and skilled archers, the Scythian tribes spread out across the region and spent their quality time raiding Macedonian and Persian settlements.


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After a few decades of this, the Persian king Cyrus the Great sent an offer of marriage to the female ruler of the Massagetae-Scythian horde, one Tomyris, in 530 BC. When she rejected his proposal, Cyrus gathered an armed host at the river Syr Darya and began building boats. Tomyris demanded he desist and offered to meet him “in honorable battle” a day’s march from the river in open terrain (no doubt perfect for mounted combat). Cyrus accepted, and marched away from his camp with his best troops. But, having heard that the enemy were unfamiliar with the intoxicating effects of wine, left behind a small force guarding a vast amount of alcohol. The main body of Scythians, led by Tomyris’ son Spargapises, fell upon the camp, got roaring drunk, were defeated by the waiting Cyrus, and Spargapises committed suicide. Hearing of the debacle, Tomyris declared the tactic not “honorable” and led a second wave of horse-warriors against the Persians. In the ensuing melee, Cyrus was killed and his army routed. Tomyris ordered the body of the Persian king brought to her, decapitated it, and dipped the head into a bowl of blood as symbolic vengeance. So goes the account by Herodotus, so the actual details may be somewhat less colorful.


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In 513 BC, the thoroughly-irritated Persians, under the personal command of Darius the Great, again invaded Scythian lands, this time with a supposed 700 thousand men. Taking advantage of the wide spaces and their mobility, since there were no fields or towns to defend, the Scythians wisely avoided a pitched battle. The horse-archers simply harassed the slow-moving column, picking off stragglers and the odd baggage cart. Herodotus reports that at one point a large Scythian host had finally drawn up for battle, but suddenly a loud whoop echoed and a number of their ranks galloped off after some hares that had broken cover. Darius supposedly commented that “these fellows have a hearty contempt for us.” Darius’ plodding force, somewhat reduced, finally reached the Volga. Running short of food and supplies, the frustrated Darius turned back and returned to his empire without settling anything. The Scythians continued to entertain themselves by raiding the frontiers.


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From archaeological evidence found in the great burial mounds, known as kurgans (about the only permanent structures the Scythians built), around 470 BC it appears that the chieftain Ariapeithes (a Greek moniker; who knows what his actual name was) managed to unite a number of the Scythian tribes and proclaimed himself “king.” His successors would rule the confederation until circa 340 BC, when the dynasty was overthrown by the great Ateas (another Greek name). According to Strabo, having united all the Scythian tribes between the Danube and the Maeotian Marshes, Ateas soon came into conflict with Phillip II of Macedonia; in the ensuring war the 90-year-old Ateas was killed in battle c. 339 BC and his “empire” fell apart. A decade later, however, Phillip’s son Alexander was fighting the Scythians again, winning a “decisive” battle at the river Syr Darya to end their depredations along the frontiers so the Greeks could march south and into glory. In the aftermath, the encroaching Celts displaced the Scythians from the Balkans. Guess horse-warriors didn’t do as well in the mountains as on the steppes.


Language: en_US
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In the meantime, a collection of Scythian tribes (now known as the Indo-Scythians) under the chieftain Maues migrated southeastwards into Bactria, Sogdiana and Arachosia. There they had largely supplanted the Indo-Greeks in the Punjabi and Kashmiri regions by the time of Azes II, c. 35 BC. But, so far as can be determined, he was the last Indo-Scythian king, for soon after his death the Indo-Scythians were overrun by the Kushans; and soon after that, the Parthians invaded from the west and the Scythians disappear from Indian records.


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Westward, across the steppes of the Crimea and Ukraine, the remaining Scythian tribes survived relatively unchanged for another three centuries, riding and raiding. And even settling down in places; the city known as Scythian Neapolis (near present-day Simferopol) served as the trading center of the Crimean Scythian tribes. But the expanding Roman Empire would ultimately doom the carefree Scythians. The Goths displaced the Sarmatians from most of the Roman frontier, and in turn the Sarmatians overran the Scythians, although it was more a process of assimilation than conquest. But, in the middle of the third century AD the Goths sacked Scythian Neapolis, officially ending the Scythian civilization. (Although, the Romans and Greeks had the distressing habit of referring to any nomadic steppe people as Scythians, as when Priscus, a Byzantine emissary, continually called Attila’s followers “Scythians.”)


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Thus the Scythians disappear from history, leaving behind only mounds of sod scattered all over the steppes to mark their passage. Ranging from small hillocks for the common warriors to the “royal” kurgans that housed the remains of chieftains and great warriors, these tumuli weren’t just piles of dirt and refuse heaped over bodies, but layers of sod built over a central chamber – the sod meant to provide grazing in the afterlife for all the horses buried with the deceased. In one such, archaeologists found over 400 horse skeletons arrayed in a geometric pattern around the deceased chieftain. Nor were only horses slaughtered upon the death of a notable Scythian, but consorts and retainers also had the dubious honor of accompanying the deceased into the afterlife. The largest of these kurgans is the height of a six-story building and over 90 meters across at the base. Quite a feat of engineering for a bunch of unlettered barbarian horsemen.


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Herodotus reports that the internment was a spectacle to behold. Mourners would piece their left hand (they certainly weren’t foolish enough to maim their bow-hand) with an arrow, slash their arms and chest, and sometimes even cut off portions of their ears. On the anniversary of the burial a year later, for some chieftains 50 horses and 50 slaves would be killed and gutted, then impaled on upright posts around the kurgan, with the dead slaves mounted on the dead horses. Such ostentatious displays may also have been the basis for – or at least contributed to – the Greek legends of the Amazons. Many of these mounds, as much as 20%, along the lower Don and Volga rivers contain females dressed in battle armor and armed with bows and swords “as though they were men.” While they may not have been real Amazons, it has been speculated that Scythian culture had a place for female warriors, as evidenced by the tales of Tomyris.


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If so, they had to be fairly stout-hearted, for the ways of Scythian warriors were horrifying to their more “civilized” neighbors. Unshaven and tattooed, the Scythian mounted archers were usually armed with a short composite bow, firing barbed arrows meant to tear a wound open so it wouldn’t heal. They tipped their arrowheads with a mixture of snake venom, putrefied blood, and horse dung to insure those wounded would die soon enough. According to accounts, after battle the Scythians would drink the blood of their slain enemies, then decapitate these to claim their share of the booty; only those who presented such a grim voucher got a share. While the former practice (drinking blood) wasn’t uncommon among the uncivilized, the latter was certainly a unique way of proving one’s deeds in combat. Scalps from dead enemies adorned bridles and shields and quivers; the skulls of particularly valiant (as Scythians judged valor) enemies were gilded and used as honored drinking goblets.


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The Scythians evoked such terror among the Greeks that they are credited with inspiring the myth of the centaurs, four-legged beasts that were deadly archers. So notorious were the Scythian horse-warriors that scholars believe the Biblical prophet Jeremiah was speaking of them when he warned the Israelites that warriors would descend upon them who “are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth like the sea and they ride upon horses, every one put in array.” Speaking of which, the Scythians did have a pantheon of gods, but they don’t seem to have been overly faith-ridden. The pronouncement of their gods seem to have been more flexible guidelines than laws scribed in stone.


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Of course, it wasn’t all scalps and skulls after a battle; there was the loot. The Scythians acquired gold and silver from their frequent raids on the Persians and Macedonians, as well as in exchange for slaves. Scythian artisans had an eye for design, particularly animals – wolves, stags, griffins, leopards, eagles, and of course horses – locked in deathly combat. Animals of all sorts appear on most of their artwork, pottery, bronzewear, graven idols and the like, often in repose (when they aren’t locked in deadly combat). Both depictions frequently appear on the plethora of broaches, belts, helmets, earrings, necklaces, torques and other trinkets found in the kurgans.


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There are many theories (the main product of scholars) concerning the reasons for the decline and disappearance of the Scythians. Some academics suggest that they increasingly began to settle down, marry those from nearby areas, and abandon herding and raiding. A few kurgans dating to the late 3rd Century contain stoves, symbolic of home and hearth; it’s enough to make a true Scythian roll over in their grave. Other theories propose a prolonged drought or equine plague that drove them to settle down. Others posit that the Scythian fondness for alcohol (remember Spargapises?) contributed to their demise, as grazing land was turned to growing grain.


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Whatever the truth, the Scythians certainly kept things lively on the steppes, setting a standard for sheer barbarity and bloody-mindedness that late-comers such as the Sarmatians, Huns, Mongols, Timurids and Cossacks could only aspire to match.


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Federico Lorca wrote, “In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.” Certainly there were many of them in Spain’s bloody history. Born at the end of the Reconquista with the union of Castile and Aragon, Spain would survive devastating wars and centuries of political unrest, as well as golden ages and religious movements. From its (re)discovery and colonization of the New World, to its world-spanning empire, to its contributions to culture and the romance of life, to its involvement in countless wars, Spain is one of the few nations which can claim an encompassing influence on global civilization.


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In 711 AD, the Islamic Umayyad dynasty crossed the Straits from North Africa and swept across Iberia in seven short years, converting or killing the Visigoths there. Despite a shared religion and purpose (profit), the invading Moors were hardly unified; several Moorish kingdoms arose by the onset of the 11th Century, notably the powerful ones centered on Valencia and Granada. The Islamic rulers were fairly tolerant of other faiths, allowing the Jews and Christians in their lands to continue their heathen ways, provided they pay special taxes to do so and submit to a few discriminatory practices. Despite these minor – for the times – discomforts, many locals began to convert to Islam.


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But the Moors were a contentious lot, and warfare among them was not unusual. Unfortunately (for them), this in-fighting allowed some of the remaining Christian kingdoms in the north to expand their borders … and ponder “freeing” Iberia from the Muslim yoke. And thus began the Reconquista, a few hundred years of bloodshed as the Christian kingdoms – Leon, Navarre, Aragon, Castile and eventually Portugal – led the crusade to expel the Muslims, encouraged by the Papacy and good Catholics everywhere. Of course, these Christian kingdoms fought among themselves without cessation as well, so Iberia was a muddled mess … until the fateful union of the kingdoms of Castile-Leon and Aragon, joined by the marriage of Isabella I and Ferdinand II in 1469. The two monarchs led a concentrated attack against the last Islamic stronghold of Granada, and in 1492 finally ended the 781-year presence of the Muslims in Iberia.


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And to insure that the new realm of Spain stayed Christian, at the urging of the pope Ferdinand and Isabella (mostly the latter) established the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The office was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy, with the Church advising. A succession of Grand Inquisitors commencing with de Torquemada diligently sought out unrepentant Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Moriscos and anyone else who denied – or might challenge – the rule of Rome. And crimes such as witchcraft, blasphemy, bigamy, sodomy and freemasonry also fell under the Inquisition’s purview. In tribunals across Spain (and spreading to other European kingdoms in diluted form) the accused were tortured, tried and often found guilty. If condemned (and most were), their property was confiscated and they were given the choice of an auto-de-fé (a public return to the true Church) or execution. Of the roughly 150,000 “processed” by the Inquisition until its abolishment in July 1834, some 5000 were put to death. The Inquisition also oversaw the fight against heretical texts, and burned those books censored by the papal indices (but such pyres were not near as entertaining as burning heretics and sodomites, and thus drew far less attention).


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Isabella – Ferdinand was more skeptical – also funded a Genoese madman who thought that he could reach the fabulous Far East by sailing west across the open ocean rather than contending with greedy Portugal, which had reached there already by sailing around Africa. In 1492, Christopher Columbus bumped into the New World, and Spain would become the first true “world power” in history. He was followed by adventurers of all ilk, including conquistadors such as Cortez and Pizarro just out for a quick buck, as well as missionaries and colonists with longer-term plans. The Spanish led the world in this “Age of Discovery,” accumulating vast amounts of wealth from their numerous colonies and principalities. At its height, the Spanish Empire counted holdings across the entirety of the known world, from large chunks of North and South America and small pieces of Europe, to various cities in North Africa and the entirety of the East Indies. It was said, and rightfully so, that the sun always shone somewhere (despite the hurricanes, volcanos and smoke from slash-and-burn farming) in the Spanish Empire.


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Spain’s new holdings not only provided precious metals, spices and agricultural bounty, it also brought new knowledge and culture to Europe. This Spanish “Golden Age” likewise saw the creation of intellectual and spiritual reforms as well, starting with the rise of humanism, beginnings of the Protestant Reformation (despite the Inquisition’s best efforts), and the founding of the School of Salamanca. But, Spain would expend a lot of treasure and blood to hold its empire together – perhaps more than it was worth in the long run.


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With great power comes great burdens, at least if one doesn’t want Barbary pirates and English sea dogs conducting raids along the empire’s coastal holdings. Besides the growing British and Ottoman threats, Spain found itself routinely at war with France. Religious unrest and wars shook the Catholic empire, as the Protestant Reformation dragged it into an increasing number of military engagements across Europe. The Hapsburg monarchs faced revolts in such uncivilized places as Mexico and the Netherlands … and a lot of other locales. What unrest and religious fanaticism didn’t touch, the plague did, and in the 1650s the entire empire was rocked by the Great Plague of Seville.


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From this point forward, Spain’s power and influence went into a gradual, and then not-so-gradual, decline. Spain even began to lose her European holdings, primarily the separation of Portugal and the Netherlands, and then suffered military setbacks from the highly destructive Thirty Years War. Wars and more wars threatened and decimated the once proud empire for the next two centuries. The War of Succession saw the Hapsburgs toppled from the throne and the coming of the Bourbons. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave the British Gibraltar, an anachronism that continues to this day. At the end of the 18th Century, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the country by guile, claiming he was on his way to Portugal. Then in the early 19th Century, a nationalist revolt to overthrow their French-occupation government led to the Spanish War of Independence (better known as the Peninsular War). Despite their eventual victory over the French (mostly due to Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign) the country was thrown into political turmoil … and so they restored the Bourbons to the throne.


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Spain soon found itself on the opposite side of the cause of freedom due to multiple independence movements in its own foreign colonies. Spanish America was swept by wars of “liberation” (most of the new nations ended up under dictatorships and military juntas) from 1808 through 1833. To the long list of native revolts could be added those in the Philippines, Cuba and others in Africa and Asia. Towards the end of the 19th Century, the United States of America decided to rip off a few pieces from the tottering empire for itself; hence the Spanish-American War.


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Although there had briefly (1873-1874) been a Spanish Republic, the monarchy was restored and “constitutional” kings of the Bourbon ilk continued to sit on the throne until 1931. During this period, besides (or perhaps because of) losing the remnants of their empire, the Spanish dreamed of days of cultural glory past – artists such as El Greco and Goya, authors such as de Cervantes and Lope de Vega, composers such as de Sarasate and Fernando Sor underwent a rediscovery and resurgence in popularity. Regional diversity in language and cuisine was celebrated. But the people proved rather more passionate about politics, unfortunately.


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With the elections of April 1931 it became evident that a deep rift existed between the Monarchist and the Republican parties. When crowds gathered in the street to protest the economy and the continued Monarchist control of the Cortes Generales, friends advised King Alfonso XIII (fittingly unlucky) to flee, which he promptly did. The Second Spanish Republic did give women the right to vote and acceded to Basque desires for more autonomy, but it didn’t solve the economic or social woes, and so only lasted five years. A rising tide of bloodshed and violence finally resulted in a military coup and a bitter three-year civil war against the democratic, leftist republic … a conflict that devastated the country, caused an estimated half-million casualties, involved contending European powers, and ended with Fascism, in the guise of General Francisco Franco, the law of the land for the next 36 years.


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Franco’s death in 1975 gave rise to the restoration of the constitutional monarchy in the person of Juan Carlos I de Borbon y Borbon. The Bourbons were back, this time to stay. With a hand-picked council of advisors and popular backing, the young king proved himself a sensible agent for change. As a result, the Cortes adopted a new mostly-democratic constitution, ratified by popular vote in December 1978. The Spanish could again return to long siestas and dreams of past glory, and celebrating their rich heritage with world-famous festivals and holidays… despite rampant urbanization, industrialization and pollution.


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Never really a kingdom nor empire, more a collection of city-states with common customs and a sometimes central authority, Sumeria nevertheless is considered the world’s first “civilization.” Kingship (or more precisely, hegemony) came to be conferred by the priesthood, which tended to create successive short-lived dynasties from the rulers of established and influential city-states: Kish, Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Adab and so forth. At some point before 3000 BC, the Sumerians developed a written language (well, a logographic in their proto-literate period), so at least historians have some idea of what they were doing.


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Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_2
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From these writings, and archaeological evidence in case there’s any doubt, it seems the Ubaidians were the first civilizing (standards for civilization not being high) force in the region that came to be named Sumer. They drained marshes along the River Euphrates, built mudbrick huts and walls, irrigated fields, developed weaving, leatherwork, masonry and pottery, and a written language. In time, they acquired another trait of civilized societies – the use of slaves, captured in the hill country to the north. Then they built a few towns, generally temple-centered with a central administration of some sort (usually a priest-king with a bunch of elderly advisers). With all this urbanization, Sumerian civilization finally coalesced sometime around the fourth millennia BC.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_3
Text:
The evolution of the priest-kings into just plain autocratic kings occurred sometime around 2900 BC and begins the “Dynastic Period” of Sumer, recounted in the lengthy Sumerian King List. A number of dynasties held the kingship of Sumer for several years, and often multiple times (there were, for instance, five dynasties of Uruk and three of Kish). Hegemony over the city-state collective was conferred by the priesthood in holy Nippur. It is likely that the authority of the Sumerian king tended to be limited – except in his own city – but he was tasked with maintaining tranquility throughout Sumer nonetheless.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_4
Text:
It appears they didn’t do a very good job. As the various surviving bits of writing and monuments show, the next few hundred years were marked by increasing violence, attested to by the building of high walls (like Gilgamesh did for his city of Uruk) and the disappearance of small villages in southern Mesopotamia. In time, the more influential city-states banded together for purposes of trade and defense. Also, in time, it was inevitable that some city-state would seek to lord it over the others permanently … by force of arms.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_5
Text:
First to succeed was the dynasty of Lagash (c. 2500-2270), in the person of Eannatum, who annexed practically all of Sumer – Kish, Uruk, Larsa, and others – as well as reducing to a tribute client the city of Umma, Lagash’s arch-rival. The Lagash kings seemed to have used terror as a matter of state policy; the aptly-labelled Stele of Vultures depicts what happened to enemies of Lagash (it wasn’t nice). Eventually, the kings of Umma overthrew Lagash, conquered Uruk to make it the capital of their realm, which they claimed reached from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. The Ummans were the last ethnic Sumerians to rule before the Akkadian Sargon the Great swept in.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_6
Text:
From this point on, the fates of the non-Semite Sumerians and the Semitic Akkadians are inextricably intertwined. The Akkadian Empire reached its peak c. 2400 BC when Sargon’s superior troops overran most of the city-states they could reach. Bowing to the inevitable (and with Akkadians occupying Nippur that was prudent), the priesthood acknowledged the Akkadian hegemony over Sumer. The Semitic Akkadian language supplanted native Sumerian, which became over time a “literary language.” Akkadian customs mutated into Sumerian customs, and the religions blended into one pantheon.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_7
Text:
Everything went smoothly for all concerned (save perhaps the slaves and peasants) until the Akkadian Empire collapsed, ushering in a regional Dark Age that lasted until the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2112 BC. It was a period of anarchy. Irrigation systems collapsed; fields lay fallow; and the barbarian Guti tribes from the Zagros Mountains swept over Sumer. These Gutians seemed to have had little regard for the niceties of civilization. Having installed themselves as rulers in most of the city-states, they showed no concern for agriculture, written records or public safety. They reputedly had all the Sumerian livestock released to wander freely; coupled with a severe decades-long drought and rocketing grain prices, this led to famine throughout the region.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_8
Text:
In the midst of all this, the capital at Akkad was sacked – multiple times – so thoroughly (barbarians are really good at sacking) that its ruins remain undiscovered. Taking advantage of all this confusion, several of the more southerly Sumerian city-states managed to re-establish independent rule. As the Gutians, unable to handle all this domesticity, withdrew, the dynasty in Lagash rose to local prominence yet again. Around 2093 BC or so, the Lagash dynasty – now claiming descent from divinity – was declared by the Nippurian priests to have primacy over all others.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_9
Text:
It didn’t last long, though. Within 50 years the second Lagash dynasty was replaced by the third dynasty of Ur, under the kings Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi. When Utu-Hengal of Uruk (the next dynasty after Lagash) defeated the remnants of the Gutians under their last king Tirigan, Sumer was back. But the fifth Uruk dynasty ended abruptly after seven years (according to the King List) with the ascension of Ur-Nammu. Circumstances are hazy; some historians hypothesize a revolt by Ur, others believe that Nammu was somehow related to Hengal and became king peacefully. Whatever the case, Nammu and his son conquered or coerced all the city-states as far as northern Mesopotamia to take part in the “Sumerian Renaissance.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_10
Text:
The Renaissance saw refinement return, new stelae appear all over the place, religion rebounds after those atheist Guti left, agriculture flourishes again, and that cornerstone of civilization – a code of law – comes in the form of the Code of Ur-Nammu which set out a long list of crimes and prescribed punishments (mostly monetary, although leavened with some executions and limbs chopped off). Nammu also undertook great engineering projects, and art and literary works were sponsored by the wealthy. Developments in architecture and sculpture were especially noteworthy (the Ziggurat of Ur being one such accomplishment). So advanced was this age that it has come to termed Neo-Sumeria by historians just so they can keep track of it.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_11
Text:
Shulgi outdid his illustrious father. He took decisive steps to formalize the procedures of his administration centered in the capital of Ur. He is credited with standardizing the bureaucracy, archival documentation, the tax system, and the calendar – all for which modern civilization should thank him. He established a standing army for his realm, putting all those well-documented taxes to work. So impressed was the priesthood that Shulgi was deified while he was still alive, which, unlike the present age, was a very rare honor.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_12
Text:
But by the time of his grandson Ibbi-Sin, who ascended to the kingship in 1963 BC, things weren’t so rosy for Sumeria. Over the first twenty years of his reign, repeated raids and invasions by the warlike Amorites brought a growing lack of faith among his subjects in his ability to lead. Elam declared its independence and joined the general raiding of trade caravans and unguarded settlements. Things got worse. Ibbi-Sin fortified the areas around Ur and Nippur, without much effect.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_13
Text:
Since the king didn’t seem to be able to defend Sumer, more and more city-states followed Elam’s lead and broke away from the tottering hegemony. The price of grain increased by 60 times the usual; plague ravaged several city-states; the Four Horsemen were abroad in Sumeria. In the last years of Sumeria, Ibbi-Sin governed only his own city-state of Ur. In 1940 BC, an Elamite army along with “wild” tribesmen from the Zagros sacked Ur and took Ibbn-Sin captive. He was taken to Elam and imprisoned, and died shortly thereafter (the cause of his untimely end isn’t recorded).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_14
Text:
The glory of Sumer had passed. But its accomplishments – mostly because they were the first – have stood the test of time. The pundit Samuel Noah Kramer lists 39 in his seminal work, History Begins at Sumer, such as...


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_15
Text:
The Sumerians, farming in a semi-arid land along rivers, were the first to build irrigation ditches, canals and eventually reservoirs. While perhaps not the first to develop writing, they were certainly the most proficient at it – for many centuries, in fact – and they wrote everything down so it could be remembered by future generations. And they were the first to store all this scribbling, in depositories (so, the first “libraries"). In the process, they were also the first to develop all sorts of literary forms: love poetry, heroic tales, animal fables, autobiographies, elegies, and so forth.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_16
Text:
What with all this writing, the Sumerians also developed the concept of a written contract (it goes without saying these got stored in the depositories so one could not wiggle out of an agreement), and that boon to finance “credit.” The idea that one only had to initially pay some of the asking price and “owe” the rest certainly spurred the Sumerian economy, if not all that attractive to sellers. They standardized numbers in order that one could keep track of all this. And so payments would be made in an orderly fashion, the Sumerians also were the first to divide the year into months and the day into standard increments.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_17
Text:
Additionally, they were the first civilization to put the wheel to good use. Carts had wheels; plows had wheels; chariots had wheels. Trade, farming, and war didn’t take so long anymore. If the Sumerians didn’t invent the wheel (and historians have debated this point ad nauseam), they certainly found lots of uses for it. Too bad they didn’t have many horses.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CIVILIZATIONS_PAGE_CIVILIZATION_SUMERIA_CHAPTER_HISTORY_PARA_19
Text:
In the end, though, it was their lack of decent building materials – mudbricks just don’t make very tall or sturdy walls to keep out all those barbarians from the north, south and east – that brought about their downfall. In time, though, the Babylonian and the Assyrian empires would owe their formation to Sumer, the true “cradle of civilization.”


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_INTRO_CHAPTER_INTRO_PARA_1
Text:
Welcome to the Civilopedia for Sid Meier's Civilization VI! Here you will find detailed descriptions of all aspects of the game. Clicking on the tabs on the top edge of the screen will take you to the various major sections of the Civilopedia. The Navigation Bar on the left side of the screen will display the various entries within a section. Click on an entry to go directly there.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Cities are vital to your civilization's success. They allow you to build units, buildings, and wonders. They allow you to research new technologies and gather wealth. You cannot win without powerful, well-situated cities.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Cities are constructed by Settler units. If the Settler is in a location where a city can be constructed, the "Found City" action button will appear. Click on the button and the Settler will disappear, to be replaced by the new city.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Cities should be constructed in locations with plenty of [ICON_Food] Food and [ICON_Production] Production and with access to Strategic, Luxury, and Bonus resources. It is often a good idea to build a city on a River or coastal hex, as sources of water are very important to a growing [ICON_Citizen] Population. Cities constructed on Hills gain a defensive bonus, making it harder for enemies to capture them.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
With a Settler selected, ideal city locations will be shown on the map with an icon. Additionally, every Settler after your first will show the Settler Lens, giving you an idea of where on the map will provide the best source of water for your city, and indicating unavailable tiles.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Your city will grow, or add more [ICON_Citizen] Citizens, with surplus [ICON_Food] Food. Any amount of [ICON_Food] Food over the total consumption of a city's [ICON_Citizen] Citizens, 2 per, is considered surplus, and is added as progress towards a new [ICON_Citizen] Citizen.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
A city will add all surplus [ICON_Food] Food towards growth if its current [ICON_Citizen] Population is 2 or more below the city's [ICON_Housing] Housing limit. If the city is 1 [ICON_Citizen] Population below its [ICON_Housing] Housing limit, its growth will slow to 50%. When the [ICON_Citizen] Population is at the [ICON_Housing] Housing limit, it will grow only at 25% the normal rate. A city can grow to 5 [ICON_Citizen] Citizens over its [ICON_Housing] Housing limit at this rate, and then it will stop growing entirely.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
A city will stagnate and not grow if it does not have surplus [ICON_Food] Food. If it makes less [ICON_Food] Food than its [ICON_Citizen] Citizens consume, the city will starve and slowly lose [ICON_Citizen] Population until it is able to support itself again.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_13_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A city requires 2 [ICON_Food] Food per [ICON_Citizen] Citizen (another term for "[ICON_Citizen] Population") per turn to avoid starvation. A city acquires [ICON_Food] Food (as well as other yields) by assigning its [ICON_Citizen] Citizens to "work" the land around the city. The city can work any tile within 3 spaces of the city that is also within the civilization's borders, provided as well that it is not being worked by another city. Cities cannot work tiles occupied by wonders.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_13_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Left to its own devices, the city will assign as many [ICON_Citizen] Citizens as needed to acquire its [ICON_Food] Food.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_14_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Housing] Housing is a representation of the maximum amount of [ICON_Citizen] Citizens or [ICON_Citizen] Population you can have in each city. The base source of [ICON_Housing] Housing is a water source.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_14_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Many buildings grant [ICON_Housing] Housing. After researching Pottery, every city is able to build a Granary, which adds 2 [ICON_Housing] Housing, and later they can build Sewers, which also adds 2 [ICON_Housing] Housing. Buildings in other districts sometimes add [ICON_Housing] Housing, such as the Barracks in the Encampment district, the University in the Campus, and the Lighthouse in the Harbor. The Palace building in your capital city also adds 1 [ICON_Housing] Housing.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_14_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Each Farm, Pasture, Plantation, or Camp supports a small amount of [ICON_Citizen] Population — 1 [ICON_Housing] Housing for every 2 such improvements. Supporting rural [ICON_Citizen] Population in this fashion will allow for slightly larger [ICON_Citizen] Populations prior to the Industrial Era, when the Neighborhood district becomes available.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_15_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Placing your city near a water source should be one of your first decisions in any game. The presence of a good water source will immediately set the initial [ICON_Housing] Housing level of a city. A city not adjacent to any water will have a max [ICON_Citizen] Population of 2 at the start. A city on the coast will have a max [ICON_Citizen] Population of 3. And a city adjacent to a River, Lake, or Oasis will have a max [ICON_Citizen] Population of 5.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_15_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
The fresh water status of a city may be upgraded by adding an Aqueduct tile next to the City Center. Aqueducts may only be placed in tiles that are adjacent to a River, Lake, or Mountain that is also adjacent to the City Center.  Completion of the Aqueduct district raises the city’s [ICON_Housing] Housing from water by 2 or up to 6, whichever is larger—so 7 if adjacent to River, Lake or Oasis, or 6 otherwise.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_10_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
In Civilization VI, buildings are no longer trapped in your City Center, but may sprawl across your territory as part of districts. The map is more important than ever as you are faced with important strategic placement decisions. The Campus and Holy Site each receive special boosts from placement near Mountain tiles, but the Campus also benefits from a nearby Rainforest tile.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_10_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
A city must expand its [ICON_Citizen] Population before it can construct multiple districts:[NEWLINE]• 1 [ICON_Citizen] Population for 1 District[NEWLINE]• 4 [ICON_Citizen] Population for 2 Districts[NEWLINE]• 7 [ICON_Citizen] Population for 3 Districts[NEWLINE]• Each additional District requires +3 [ICON_Citizen] Population[NEWLINE]The Aqueduct, Neighborhoods, and Spaceports ignore this [ICON_Citizen] Population requirement. Districts which require a certain number of [ICON_Citizen] Population are specialty districts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_10_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
When a city is ready to construct something, the Choose Production button will appear. If a district can be constructed, it will appear on this menu. Click on the district to order the city to begin construction, opening the district placement lens. Here, you will be given an overview of the different yield outcomes available on the tiles surrounding your City Center, and you can better make a decision about where to place your district. This lens will also show you which tiles are unavailable, as some districts have very specific placement requirements (for example, the Encampment cannot be built adjacent to a City Center). Furthermore, all districts must be built within 3 tiles of a City Center.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_10_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Districts may be placed on top of features such as Woods or Rainforest if you have the technology to remove those features, but for a longer construction time. No District can be built on a floodplain.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_11_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Neighborhoods are a special district that allows a city to house more [ICON_Citizen] Population and is affected by Appeal. The term “Appeal” is used to describe a special form of adjacency bonus that just applies to Neighborhoods, and also will affect the Culture Victory’s [ICON_Tourism] Tourism system through National Parks and Seaside Resorts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
After your district has been built, you may now begin populating it with buildings. Buildings can be built through the Production Menu similarly to how you build your district. Some buildings have prerequisites, such as other buildings or technology requirements; these buildings will not be visible in your Production Menu. You may notice that you have some buildings available to build before you place any districts, such as the Monument. These buildings reside in the City Center.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Wonders are a special type of building that fills an entire hex and has a significant impact on gameplay. When you select one to build from the Production Menu, you will enter the placement lens, just like you would for building a district. Most wonders have specific placement requirements, and the lens will highlight which tiles are available. All wonders must be built within 3 tiles of a City Center. If you complete a wonder in a city, that city will immediately expand its borders by two tiles.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Each wonder is unique. Though multiple civilizations may attempt to build the same wonder, only the civilization that first completes the wonder can reap its benefits. Civilizations failing to complete a wonder in time are refunded a portion of [ICON_Production] Production and some [ICON_Gold] Gold.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
The Palace is a special building. Part building, part wonder, the Palace automatically appears in the first city you build, which makes that city the [ICON_Capital] Capital of your empire. The Palace provides a small amount of [ICON_Production] Production, [ICON_Science] Science, [ICON_Gold] Gold, and [ICON_Culture] Culture to your civilization. If your [ICON_Capital] Capital is captured by another civilization and you still have other cities under your control, the Palace will automatically transfer to another city, which will become your new [ICON_Capital] Capital.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_8_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Cities thrive based upon the land around them. Their [ICON_Citizen] Citizens "work" the land, harvesting [ICON_Food] Food, [ICON_Gold] Gold, [ICON_Production] Production, [ICON_Science] Science, and many other yields from the tiles. [ICON_Citizen] Citizens can work tiles that are within three tiles' distance from the city and that are within your civilization's borders. As your city grows, it automatically assigns its [ICON_Citizen] Citizens to work the lands around it. It seeks to provide a balanced amount of [ICON_Food] Food, [ICON_Production] Production, and [ICON_Gold] Gold. You may order a city's [ICON_Citizen] Citizens to work other tiles – for example, if you want a certain city to concentrate on generating [ICON_Gold] Gold, or [ICON_Production] Production, select the Manage Citizens icon in the City Selection Panel to choose specific tiles for your [ICON_Citizen] Citizens to work.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_16_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Happiness measures the contentment of your people in a single city, and is measured by seeing if the [ICON_Citizen] Population of that city has as many [ICON_Amenities] Amenities as expected. 1 [ICON_Amenities] Amenity is required for each 2 [ICON_Citizen] Population, starting at a [ICON_Citizen] Population of 3. A Content city will not have any modifier applied to it, but a Happy city will have a 10% growth increase and a 5% yield increase. Furthermore, an Ecstatic city will have a 20% growth increase and 10% yield increase. Likewise, having too few [ICON_Amenities] Amenities will create displeasure among your [ICON_Citizen] Citizens, and the growth and yields will receive negative modifiers. At the level of Unrest, your growth will stop and you may find rebel partisans in your city.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_17_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Amenities] Amenities can come from a wide variety of sources. Each type of Luxury resource can contribute up to 4 [ICON_Amenities] Amenities to your empire (1 per city) to the 4 cities that need them most. Distribution happens automatically, as long as the Luxury resource is improved (a Plantation improvement built on Spices, for example). The Arena, built in the Entertainment Complex, provides [ICON_Amenities] Amenities to its local city. The Zoo and Stadium also provide [ICON_Amenities] Amenities, but regionally. Some wonders also provide [ICON_Amenities] Amenities. Furthermore, there are a few Religious Beliefs and policies that provide [ICON_Amenities] Amenities. Some [ICON_GreatPerson] Great People also provide [ICON_Amenities] Amenities.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_9_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Specialists are alternative assignments for [ICON_Citizen] Citizens, which involve working a district tile instead of a normal tile. As a general rule, specialists are a good way to get yields otherwise hard to find on normal tiles, but the city needs a solid support base of [ICON_Food] Food to support them in the long term. Specialists are also particularly useful when a city grows large later in the game, and has more [ICON_Citizen] Population than there are normal tiles to work. There are different types of specialists, each with different effects. All specialist types except the generic [ICON_Citizen] Citizen have a limit on how many assignments there can be in a city. This limit is determined by the number of buildings in the district associated with that specialist type. Check the building's page to see if they add to the district additional [ICON_Citizen] Citizens yields.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CITIES_9_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Commanders work in the Encampment and provide +1 [ICON_Production] Production and +2 [ICON_Gold] Gold.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
In Civilization VI, the world is made up of hexagonally-shaped "tiles" (also occasionally known as hexes and spaces). These tiles come in a variety of "terrain-types" -  Desert, Plains, Grassland, Hills, and so forth  - and many also include "features" like Woods and Rainforest. These elements help to determine the tile's usefulness to a nearby city as well as how easy or difficult it is to move through the tile. A tile's terrain and features may have important effects upon any combat occurring there.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Every tile in the game belongs to a continent. Continents are geographical boundaries, and are not necessarily tied to a landmass—the Pangaea map, for example, is made up of several continents. You can determine a tile's continent by that tile's tooltip or by viewing the continent lens.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Resources are sources of a variety of different yields ([ICON_Food] Food, [ICON_Production] Production, etc.), and some provide other special bonuses to a civilization. They appear in certain hexes. Some are visible at the start of the game, while others require the acquisition of specific technologies before you can see them. To utilize a resource, it must be within your civilization's borders and you must construct the appropriate "improvement" in that hex. There are three types of resources: Bonus, Luxury, and Strategic.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Bonus resources can increase the [ICON_Food] Food, [ICON_Gold] Gold, or [ICON_Production] Production output of a hex. Bonus resources cannot be traded to other civilizations. These resources can be "harvested" by Builders to remove the resource and provide an immediate, one-time sum of [ICON_Food] Food or [ICON_Production] Production to the city that owns the hex.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Luxury resources increase your civilization's happiness by providing [ICON_Amenities] Amenities and provide a small bonus to the hex's yield output. Only one source of a specific Luxury resource provides [ICON_Amenities] Amenities.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Strategic resources are not always visible at the start of the game—they may require knowledge of a particular technology before they appear on a map. Strategic resources allow you to build certain units. When you construct an improvement on a Strategic resource hex, it allows you to build units that require that resource (i.e. Musketmen require Niter) in any of your cities that has an appropriate district—Encampment for land units, Harbor for naval units, or Aerodrome for air units. If you build an improvement on 2 copies of that resource, you can build or purchase those units in any city, whether it has the appropriate district or not.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Natural wonders are the great and glorious creations of nature that awe and inspire us all. These include Crater Lake and the Great Barrier Reef – all places that truly display the grand beauty of the natural world. All natural wonders provide unique benefits to your civilization, and some even have additional special effects (for instance, healing adjacent to the Dead Sea will make a unit’s health refill completely.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Traditionally, cities have been built along Rivers, and for good reason. Rivers provide fresh water for people to drink and irrigation, improving the farmland around the city. They also protect a city, as it is quite difficult to mount an assault against a city across a River.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Tribal Villages are less civilized than other civilizations, but are friendly nonetheless. Visiting tribal villages provide a random benefit to the civilization of the unit that first enters their tile. The village disappears after its gifts have been claimed. Gifts include survivors, such as Builders or Traders, technology or technology boosts, military units, [ICON_Faith] Faith, [ICON_Gold] Gold, [ICON_GreatWork_Relic] Relics, or civic boosts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Barbarians come from "outposts", which may appear randomly in any tile that cannot be seen by a unit. Each Barbarian unit belongs to its own home outpost. There are three types of Barbarian outposts: Naval, Cavalry, and Melee. A civilization will earn a [ICON_Gold] Gold reward for dispersing a Barbarian outpost − in addition to the benefit of stopping it from spawning more Barbarian units.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Naval Barbarian outposts on the coastline can create naval units (equal to those that can be created by the civilization with the most advanced tech). These units will menace your coastline, destroy naval improvements and attack hapless land units which stray too near the coastline. It's important to maintain a navy to keep them off your back, but the best way to stop these attacks is to destroy the coastal outposts nearby.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_5
Text:
Every outpost will first generate a Scout, searching for targets. If you’re spotted by a Barbarian Scout, it will return to its outpost and begin building units for an invasion or raid. Watch out, because you’re going to be the next target. If you don’t move fast, you’ll soon see a party of Barbarians at your borders, ready to destroy your improvements or conquer your city. This is why it's important to periodically sweep the countryside around your civilization, destroying outposts before they become a threat.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Lenses are a tool you can use to change your view of the world. Each lens will overlay important information that will help you make strategic decisions in the game. Some lenses are activated automatically, like when you choose to place a district from a city's Production Menu. Others can be activated manually from the Lenses button on the mini-map. These are the lenses you can use in game and what they do:


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_WORLD_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Appeal. Shows the appeal level of each tile.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Continent. Shows the geographic extent of each continent.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]District Placement. Shows valid placement locations for wonders and districts, as well as any adjacency bonuses available for districts. This will only appear when attempting to build a district or wonder.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Government. Shows the distribution of governments across the map.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Political. Shows the owner of each tile.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Religion. Shows the majority religion and religious follower distribution across the map. This appears whenever a Religious unit is selected.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Settler. Shows recommended city sites and water availability at each tile.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Tourism. Shows the number of [ICON_Tourism] Tourists a tile is attracting.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Empire. Shows your city borders and district locations with adjacency bonuses.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Combat occurs between two political entities that are at war with each other. A civilization may be at war with another civilization or with a city-state. Barbarians are always at war with all civilizations and city-states.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
There are a few ways to declare war. The first requires you move a military unit you control into another civilization's unit. This will prompt a pop-up message to appear asking if you want to start a war. Alternately, war can be declared in the Diplomacy Window. Within that window, you will always have the option to make a surprise declaration of war, except against your declared allies. Your civilization will suffer a costly warmongering penalty if you make a surprise declaration of war. To avoid some of this penalty (but not all), denounce the offending civilization and soon the option to formally declare war will appear in the Diplomacy Window.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Having a nation that is constantly at war will diminish the productivity and happiness of your people. War weariness grows for every battle you fight. This accumulation is worse when those battles occur in foreign territory or when your units are killed. It is worse still if those units are killed by a nuclear weapon, but launching a nuclear weapon yourself is the greatest source of war weariness. All war weariness you accumulate is increased depending on the era and if you declared war without using a Casus Belli.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
War weariness is applied to every city you own as a negative [ICON_Amenities] Amenity, lowering your city growth and productivity. Having low [ICON_Amenities] Amenities for too long can cause rebel partisans to spawn in your cities. These hostile units will attack your units and pillage your tiles and districts.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
While war weariness will slowly reduce while you are still at war, it reduces at a greatly increased rate when you are not at war with any player.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_11_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Warmongering is more than just a diplomatic consequence; it can be a state of mind, considered a most honorable thing from a certain point of view. It is believed that a soldier in Napoleon's early days of conquest saw his General and Emperor’s constant warmongering to be of righteous cause! There are, however, some stiff penalties for launching a non-justified, or lack of Casus Belli, war.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_11_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
A player who launches into a non-Casus Belli war (see the section on Casus Belli under Diplomacy) will start to accumulate diplomatic warmongering penalties from other civilizations that player has come in contact with, on top of any war weariness already suffered. Launching a surprise war, capturing opposing civilizations cities, razing captured cities, and using nuclear devices increases the diplomatic penalty based on what era the player is in.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_11_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
The other approach is to denounce the opposing civilization first and then declare war formally. With this avenue to war, the warmonger penalties are NOT increased and there is the opportunity to use a Casus Belli to reduce those penalties.  However, because you must first denounce your opponent, such a plan is "telegraphed" for the target and you will not have the advantage of surprise.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Wars can end violently or peacefully. A war ends violently when one side is destroyed. This occurs when that side has lost its last city. The peaceful resolution of a war involves diplomatic negotiations. You or your opponent may initiate a Peace Deal. See the section on Diplomacy for further details.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Barbarians will never negotiate. War with Barbarians will continue until the Barbarians are destroyed.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
In Civilization VI, military units have five combat oriented stats: Hit Points, [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength, [ICON_Ranged] Ranged Strength, [ICON_Bombard] Bombard Strength, and [ICON_Range] Range.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
All units have 100 Hit Points. As a unit takes damage, it loses Hit Points. A unit is destroyed once it loses all of its Hit Points.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
All military units have [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength. Melee units use their [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength when attacking or defending. Ranged units use their [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength when defending.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Any unit that can engage in ranged combat has a [ICON_Ranged] Ranged Strength statistic. This number is compared with the target's [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength to determine the results of the attack. Land units with a [ICON_Ranged] Ranged Strength can also attack district defenses but at a reduced effectiveness.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_5
Text:
[ICON_Bombard] Bombard Strength is the anti-district strength of a unit. Units with [ICON_Bombard] Bombard Strength can also attack units, but at a reduced effectiveness. Land units cannot have both a [ICON_Bombard] Bombard and [ICON_Ranged] Ranged Strength, but naval units essentially function as both [ICON_Bombard] Bombard and [ICON_Ranged] Ranged units.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_6
Text:
The unit's [ICON_Range] Range stat determines the distance at which a unit can launch a ranged attack. A [ICON_Range] Range of "2" means that the target can be in an adjacent tile or one tile distant. A [ICON_Range] Range of "1" would mean that the target had to be adjacent to the attacker.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_7
Text:
Some units have an [ICON_AntiAir_Large] anti-air combat value. These units automatically defend against air attacks within their anti-aircraft range. The [ICON_AntiAir_Large] anti-air strength is used to evaluate combat with the attacking aircraft.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Generally, there must be no obstructions, such as a Mountain, between a ranged unit and its target. Units on Hills or flying can often see over obstructing terrain.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Warfare is not practiced by just the experienced and well equipped. Military history has shown time and time again that the combatant, using superior tactics, leadership, and the terrain to their advantage can defeat a numerically superior and better equipped force. In Civilization VI, it is no different.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
In combining your military might with the right force organization of combined arms, leadership, and intuitive use of terrain you can have the power to destroy your enemies armies, no matter how big or small, advanced or not. Using terrain to your advantage, you can position your forces on Hills, in Rainforests or Woods, and across Rivers from your enemy to ensure a distinct defensive advantage. Looking at the enemies movements across terrain as they approach you can also help you better understand what their battle plan is or where they look to strike.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Terrain can also be detrimental to your fight; be sure to avoid fighting on Flood Plains and Marshes as these have a negative effect on your defensibility. If you find yourself on indefensible terrain, and do not feel you can defeat your enemy on the attack, perhaps building a few Forts will help you push back the enemy. Remember to attack the enemy's flanks, it is their weakest point and will also grant you advantage! Using a well-rounded military force with the proper terrain dispositions while having the use of a Great General will ensure victory!


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_7_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Flanking and Support bonuses: Outmaneuvering the enemy as well as making sure units in the field are supported by their counterparts is important in order to insure victory in the field. In Civilization VI we simulate this with the Flanking and Support bonuses. Once a player has completed the Military Tradition civic, their military is considered advanced enough in order to benefit from these bonuses.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Flanking: If an enemy melee unit is surrounded by 2 or more adjacent friendly melee units during an attack, it is considered flanked, granting a +2 combat bonus to the melee attacker for each additional flanking melee unit.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Support: When defending against an enemy melee attack, a defending unit can gain a +2 combat bonus for every adjacent friendly unit.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_8_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A unit that survives combat or discovers a Tribal Village will gain "Experience Points" (XP). Once a unit reaches a certain amount of XP it will 'level up', at which point it can receive a promotion. Promotions enhance the unit in some way. When selecting a promotion, the unit is healed an amount of Hit Points. The unit will not continue to gain any further XP until the promotion is selected.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_9_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Cities may be attacked and captured by military units. Each city has a "City Combat Strength" stat that determines its strength when attacked by other units. The higher the city's City Combat Strength, the more difficult it is to capture the city. Unless the city is extremely weak or the attacking unit is extremely strong, it will take multiple turns to capture a city.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_9_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Walls add extra protection to a city or Encampment, making it even more difficult to conquer. This protection is like armor, shielding the city from attacks. Melee units deal only 15% of their normal damage to walls, and ranged units deal only 50% of their normal damage. Only Bombard units deal 100% of their normal damage to walls, making them necessary to capture a fortified city. If the walls are damaged, they stop being as effective and the district's health will start taking a little bit of damage with every attack. Walls can only recover health with a Project found in the city's Production Queue, like repairing district buildings, that becomes available if the district has not taken any damage for 3 consecutive turns. Once a city has walls, it can make ranged attacks against enemy units using a "City Ranged Strength" stat.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]The City Combat Strength is based on the [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength of the strongest melee unit built by your civilization, minus 10, or by the [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength of a garrisoned military unit.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]The City Ranged Strength is based on the [ICON_Ranged] Ranged Strength of the strongest ranged unit built by your civilization.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]The city gets additional bonuses to its City Combat Strength for each non-pillaged district it has, making big cities harder to capture, and from terrain and a few other modifiers sources.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_9_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Cities can also be under siege from attacking units. The City Center and other defensible districts like the Encampment are considered under siege if all 6 tiles around them are occupied by enemy units, under enemy Zone of Control, or are impassable due to mountains or Natural Wonders. In these circumstances, the district will not recover lost health, instead of healing automatically every turn as normal.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_10_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
When your unit enters an enemy city, you have two choices: you can destroy the city (if it was not a [ICON_Capital] Capital) or you can annex it and make it part of your empire. If that city once belonged to another civilization, you may also chose to liberate it to its original owner.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Formations allow you to easily move units together. This can be useful for escorting civilian units in hostile lands, or even creating stronger units in Corps and Armies. A military unit can create a formation with a support or civilian unit at any time. Naval military units may also create a formation with embarked land units. Support units, such as siege units, are most effective in battle when linked with another military unit.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Starting in the Industrial era after completing the Nationalism civic, players will be able to unlock the ability to combine multiple military units of the same type into a single stronger unit. Two military units of the same type will be able to combine to create a Corps, giving them +10 to their base [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength. After researching Mobilization, three units of the same type may be combined into an Army, giving +7 to their base [ICON_Strength] Combat Strength. Keep in mind that their HP is NOT increased when units are combined in this way.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_12_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Once a Corps or Army has been formed, the units may not be broken apart into individual units again. The experience and promotions of the highest experience unit is preserved when creating this type of formation, so it is beneficial to combine rookies with more experienced units. Naval units may also be combined into Fleets and Armadas.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_13_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Both improvements and buildings in districts without garrisons can be pillaged. This action renders them inoperable and awards the pillaging unit with some form of "plunder." With the exception of healing, these plunder awards increase in magnitude as you progress through the game.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_13_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Pillaging a district takes 3 Movement Points, or all of your movement. Each building in a district must be pillaged separately, and awards some sort of plunder based on the district. Refer to the district's page for specific yields. Once pillaged, a building cannot be pillaged again until it is brought back online by its owner (done through the Production Menu and takes 25% of the [ICON_Production] Production cost of initial construction of that building.)


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_COMBAT_13_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Pillaging an improvement will take 3 Movement Points, or all your movement (if you have [ICON_Movement] Movement Points of less than 3).  It will mark the improvement in the tile as "pillaged".  Once pillaged, an improvement cannot be pillaged again until it is brought back online by its owner (a Builder operation that always takes one turn but does not require a Builder charge).Refer to the improvement's page for specific yields.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_MOVEMENT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
All mobile units have a certain number of [ICON_Movement] Movement points that they can expend on [ICON_Movement] Movement every turn. Once they've expended those [ICON_Movement] Movement points, they can't move any more until the next turn. Units expend [ICON_Movement] Movement points to enter tiles, to attack other units, or to pillage improvements or districts. The terrain of the tile a unit is entering determines the [ICON_Movement] Movement point cost of the move.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_MOVEMENT_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Roads are an important part of moving around the world. Placed by Trader units beginning in the Ancient Era, roads begin by reducing the [ICON_Movement] Movement cost of a tile to 1 when moving from one road tile to another. As technology progresses, you will unlock the ability to build better and better roads, and even bridges. Modern roads, for example, reduce [ICON_Movement] Movement to a half [ICON_Movement] Movement point per tile, when moving from one road tile to another. All roads allow units to ignore terrain-based movement penalties.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_MOVEMENT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Many combat units exert a "Zone of Control" (ZOC) influence over the tiles around them. Combat units that enter an enemy's ZOC must stop, regardless of any remaining [ICON_Movement] Movement. Units that have been stopped by an enemy's ZOC have the option to attack if they have the required [ICON_Movement] Movement to do so.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Ranged and Bombard class units do not exert ZOC. Cavalry units, as well as Naval Raider class units have the ability to ignore an enemy's ZOC.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Religious units exert ZOC against other religious units.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_MOVEMENT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Generally, naval units follow the same rules as land units, except that they move in the water rather than on land. Early naval units are often limited to coastal waters (those adjacent to land tiles) and coastal cities. Eventually, you'll produce naval units that can enter deep ocean tiles, and thus explore the world.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_MOVEMENT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
At the start of the game, your land units cannot enter any water tiles. However, once you've learned the Sailing technology, Builders will be able to move into coastal water tiles. After Celestial Navigation, Traders will be able to embark. And after Shipbuilding, all units will be able to embark. To embark a unit, move the unit to a coastal tile and then click on the "Move To" Action. Once embarked, the unit must move into water.[NEWLINE]Land units that embark are considered to be in a transport ship, and do not have the same combat abilities as they do on land. Embarked land units also suffer a reduced combat strength, and can only heal in friendly waters, making them much more vulnerable to attack from enemy naval units.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_SCIENCE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Each technology you acquire gives your civilization access to some advanced unit, building, resource, or wonder, or gives you some other tangible benefit such as the ability to chop Woods and harvest Cattle. Each new technology makes your civilization that much more powerful. Every turn, your civilization receives [ICON_Science] Science added to its pool, and when you have accumulated enough [ICON_Science] Science, you acquire a new technology.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_SCIENCE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Science] Science comes from a variety of sources, including your [ICON_Citizen] Citizens (0.7 per [ICON_Citizen]), your Palace, some Policies, some Religious Beliefs, some resources, wonders, trading, and of course the Campus district and its buildings. Look through the Civilopedia to find sources of [ICON_Science] Science.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_SCIENCE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Eureka moments, also known as "technology boosts", provide an immediate and significant boost towards your research of a technology. These boosts will be earned as you play the game naturally, and your actions will determine what sort of Eureka moments you encounter. For example, settling a city on the coast will boost your progress towards Sailing and creating a Pasture will boost your progress towards Horseback Riding. The Technology Tree lists boosts associated with each technology, but you may gain them from other sources (such as Great People, Research Agreements, or team shared research).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_SCIENCE_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
To see how all of this works in the game, check out the amazing Technology Tree. It displays all of the technologies and shows how they are intertwined. You can click on a technology to order your civilization to research it – if your civilization doesn't know the prerequisite technologies it will research them as well. The technology tree will plot the quickest route to the requested tech, and you will research the necessary precursors in the order it displays.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Culture] Culture is the way that you advance through the Civics Tree, unlocking new policies and Governments. It’s also how you increase the size of your cities’ territories. Most importantly, [ICON_Culture] Culture can be another path to victory. Each civic you acquire gives your civilization access to policies or governments, as well as some buildings, districts, and diplomatic advancements. You acquire civics by accumulating [ICON_Culture] Culture. Every turn your civilization gets some amount of [ICON_Culture] Culture added to its pool. Each civic costs a certain amount of [ICON_Culture] Culture to learn; when you've accumulated enough [ICON_Culture] Culture, you acquire the civic. When you get the new civic, your pool is depleted and you start accumulating all over again, saving up for the next civic.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Culture] Culture can be earned from wonders, policies, leader abilities, natural wonders, city-states, Beliefs, [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes, and of course the Theater Square district. Look through the Civilopedia to find sources of [ICON_Culture] Culture.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Inspiration moments, also known as "civic boosts", provide an immediate and significant boost towards your study of a civic. These boosts will be earned as you play the game naturally, and your actions will determine what sort of Inspiration moments you encounter. For example, building a wonder boosts your progress towards Drama and Poetry, and building any district will boost your progress towards State Workforce. The Civics Tree lists boosts associated with each civic, but you may gain them from other sources (such as Great People or team shared research).


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
To see how all of this works in the game, check out the amazing Civics Tree. It displays all of the civics and shows how they are intertwined. You can click on a civic to order your civilization to study it – if your civilization doesn't know the prerequisite civic it will research them as well. The Civics Tree will plot the quickest route to the requested civic, and you will study the necessary precursors in the order it displays.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A Culture Bomb is an action that allows you to wrest control of adjacent tiles and add them to your own empire, even if owned by another player. Tiles gained in this way must be within 3 spaces of your city that is expanding. Tiles that already contain a completed district or wonder do not switch ownership from Culture Bombs. Incomplete district or wonder tiles will switch ownership, but the partially-built contents of those tiles will be destroyed.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_CULTURE_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Culture Bombs are often restricted to unique abilities for civilizations, such as Australia or Poland. Refer to those entries for more details on how to trigger Culture Bombs.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOLD_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Gold] Gold is the lifeblood of a civilization. It may be true that "money can't buy you love," but it can purchase a submarine armed with nuclear missiles, and that's not bad.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOLD_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_Gold] Gold comes from a variety of sources. You'll obtain [ICON_Gold] Gold by working the tiles around your cities, but other sources are available as well: terrains and improvements, trading posts, districts and buildings, [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes, Barbarian outposts, Tribal Villages, city-states, pillaging enemy improvements, capturing cities, and diplomacy with other civilizations.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOLD_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
There are many times that you can and will spend [ICON_Gold] Gold. Units, nukes, districts, and buildings have "maintenance costs" that must be paid every turn. You can also extend your civilization's territory by purchasing individual tiles, or you can use the [ICON_Gold] Gold to purchase units and buildings. Upgrading obsolete units will also cost [ICON_Gold] Gold. [ICON_Gold] Gold may also be exchanged with other civilizations during diplomacy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOLD_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
If your treasury is at zero and you're running a negative budget, you will begin to receive a -1 penalty to your [ICON_Amenities] Amenities per every 10 [ICON_Gold] Gold you drop below 0. Additionally, at -10 [ICON_Gold] Gold you will automatically disband a unit, at -20 [ICON_Gold] Gold, two units will be disbanded, and so forth.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_FAITH_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Your Religion choices are incredibly important and can be game-changing. With the Religious Victory and Theological Combat, you have new and exciting tools at your disposal to spread your beliefs to other cities and civilizations.


Language: en_US
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[ICON_Faith] Faith is the currency of Religion and can be earned from wonders, policies, leader abilities, natural wonders, city-states, Beliefs, [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes, and of course the Holy Site district and its buildings. Look through the Civilopedia to find sources of [ICON_Faith] Faith.


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Once you accumulate enough [ICON_Faith] Faith, you’ll be prompted to found a Pantheon, a precursor to the full-blown Religions to be founded later. Choosing which Pantheon to found depends on your short- and long-term goals for your civilization. After earning a Pantheon, you are well on your way to establishing your Religion. Unlike a full Religion, a Pantheon you choose will be unique to your civilization, and cannot spread outside your borders, or be displaced.


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You may found your Religion once you have earned (or purchased) a [ICON_GreatProphet] Great Prophet. Religious buildings will accumulate the [ICON_GreatProphet] Great Prophet points necessary to bring this special unit to your civilization. After the [ICON_GreatProphet] Great Prophet has been earned, send the unit to your Holy Site, and then found your Religion. [ICON_GreatProphet] Great Prophets may also be earned from Stonehenge.


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After founding your Religion, you will be prompted to choose a name and icon to represent your beliefs. You may choose a historical Religion, or create one of your own! A newly established Religion will consist of two beliefs: a Follower belief, and one of three additional types of beliefs that can be tailored to your play style. Once your Religion is founded, all of your cities with Holy Sites will automatically convert to the Religion.


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You can then use the Evangelize Belief action on Apostles to add additional beliefs to your Religion. You can have a total of 4 beliefs in a Religion.


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Follower beliefs provide some kind of yield or other inherent bonus. This applies to all cities and civilizations that follow that Religion.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Founder beliefs provide a bonus that relies on the number of followers it has. Followers are citizens that follow that religion in all cities, regardless of whether or not that Religion is predominant in a city. This bonus is applied only to the civilization that founded that Religion.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Worship beliefs grant a unique type of building that can be built in Holy Sites, or purchased there with [ICON_Faith] Faith. Every Worship building has different benefits.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Enhancer beliefs help spread the religion by making its natural religious pressure stronger or by making Missionaries and Apostles cheaper.


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There are four types of Religious units: Missionaries, Apostles, Gurus, and Inquisitors. Religious units may be purchased through your city with [ICON_Faith] Faith and will adopt the majority Religion of the city in which they are built. Religious units' primary purpose is to spread their Religion to other cities. To do so, move the unit adjacent to a City Center—or inside it, if the city is yours—and use the Spread Religion action. This will convert some of the citizens of that city to Followers of your Religion.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]If more than half the citizens in the city are Followers of a particular Religion and that Religion has the majority of Followers in that city, that Religion will become predominant in that city. Cities with a dominant Religion will apply religious pressure on other cities within 10 tiles, slowly converting the citizens of those cities to that Religion.


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Missionaries may be purchased with [ICON_Faith] Faith in any city with a Shrine and a dominant Religion, and have the ability to spread your Religion to any City Center in an adjacent hex.


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Apostles may be purchased with [ICON_Faith] Faith in any city with a Temple and a dominant Religion, and are stronger than Missionaries. Apostles get to select a unique promotion when they are created which makes them more unique, such as having more charges or removing other religions from a city.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Apostles have several unique actions available in addition to spreading their Religion. They can Evangelize Belief, adding additional beliefs to your Religion, or Launch Inquisition, granting the ability to purchase Inquisitors. Furthermore, Apostles may initiate theological combat against other Religious units.


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Inquisitors are special units that must be unlocked with the Launch Inquisition action on an Apostle. You only need to use this action once; once you have started an Inquisition, it never ends! You can then purchase Inquisitors with [ICON_Faith] Faith in cities that follow the religion of the Apostle that launched the Inquisition. Inquisitors are not good at spreading a Religion, but instead remove all other Religions from a user owned city. They may also engage in theological combat against other Religious units.


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Gurus serve as Religious support units, providing healing to the Religious units nearby. When it expends a healing charge, the Guru heals itself and all adjacent units of the same religion.


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Religion can also spread through [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes. Whenever a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route is created between two cities, there is an exchange of Religion between those two cities. The origin city has greater outgoing religious pressure, but there is still pressure that comes back from the endpoint city. This information will appear in the menu with the [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route yield when choosing where to send a Trader.


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Theological combat is the best way to defend against other Religions trying to spread across the map. Only Apostles and Inquisitors may initiate theological combat, and then only against other Religious units. You do not need to be at war with another civilization to engage in theological combat. Doing so will not by itself provoke a war, though it could result in negative diplomatic consequences from a Religious pressure drop. Religious units exert a Zone of Control against other religious units, restricting their movement when close.


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Theological combat works just like combat with military units, just attack one Religious unit with another. They will deal damage to each other based on their strength. Religious units can get bonuses to their theological combat strength from promotions, policies, flanking and support bonuses from other units, the Theocracy government, if they are in or adjacent to a Holy Site following their Religion, if they are in the territory of a city following their Religion, or a huge bonus if they are in the territory of their Religion's Holy City.


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A damaged Religious unit suffers a penalty to the strength of its Spread Religion action, meaning it will convert fewer Followers. If a Religious unit is reduced to 0 Hit Points from theological combat, it will die. When a Religious unit is defeated this way, all cities within 10 tiles have a religious pressure drop of the defeated unit's Religion equal to the strength of an Apostle at full health and then a boost in the victorious unit's Religion of the same amount. If a Religious unit is killed by a hostile military unit, then the Religious pressure will drop in cities within 6 tiles, and the Religious pressure drop is halved.


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Religious units can heal any damage they have by staying adjacent to or in a Holy Site in the player's territory, regardless of the Religion of that Holy Site. Religious units heal damage equivalent to 3 times the Faith output of that Holy Site. Some improvements may also act as an alternative source of healing to religious units.


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Religious units are also vulnerable to attack from combat units. Condemn Heretic is an action that combat units may take against them when on the same tile, and works similarly to plundering a Trade Route.


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You can accomplish a lot through diplomacy. You can gain allies and isolate your enemies. You can create defensive and offensive pacts. You can increase your technology through cooperative research ventures. You can end wars that are going badly for you. You can bluff the credulous and bully the timid.


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To initiate diplomacy, click on the leader you wish to contact in the upper right portion of the screen. The Diplomacy Panel will appear, displaying all known civilizations. Click on any leader to speak with them. Alternatively, you can click on a civilization's city banner to open communications with them.


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When you engage in diplomacy with civilizations, you will have a number of options available, depending on your current relationship. This screen will also provide important information about your relationship, as well as the latest gossip about what that leader has been doing.


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You may choose to declare war, or denounce the leader. You may also negotiate a trade deal, or demand stuff from another civilization. You can also propose friendship, defensive pacts, and send delegations.


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Every other leader in the game has an opinion of you. Their opinion might be positive or it might be negative; it is in constant flux from events in the game. You can tell what your relationship with another leader is by the icon on their leader portrait, or by selecting Our Relationship with that leader on the Diplomacy Panel. The following relationship states exist in the game:


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Allies. When in an Alliance with a leader, you may not declare a formal war on each other, you automatically share Open Borders, you may make Research Agreements and Defensive Pacts, and deals you make with each other are likely to be very favorable. Territory owned by the other civilization in the Alliance is considered 'Friendly', allowing the same privileges as your own territory.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Declared Friend. When you choose to declare your friendship with a leader, you may not declare a formal war on each other, you may make Research Agreements, and deals you make with each other will be more favorable. This relationship state is required to make an Alliance.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Friendly. This means the leader thinks positively of you and you have a better chance of getting favorable deals with them.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Neutral. You have done nothing to upset or impress the leader, and your interactions with them will be standard.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Unfriendly. For some reason, you have done something to upset this leader, and deals with them will likely be unfavorable for you, or you can choose to make demands of them. [NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Denounced. This leader has let the other leaders in the world know that you have done something to offend them. Your deals with them will be unfavorable if they will make them at all, but you can declare a Formal War against them and make demands.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]At War. Open hostilities have broken out between you, and you can attack or invade this leader but you will accrue warmongering and war weariness penalties.


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You can make trade deals with other players by selecting Make Deal from the Diplomacy Panel with a leader selected. You will enter a negotiation table with that leader.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]On the left of the table are items you are able to trade, and on the right of the table are items the other player has available to trade. You can trade anything from [ICON_Gold] Gold to resources to cities! Select items from the other leader's side of the table to request they trade them to you, and select items from your side of the table to offer in exchange.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]When the other leader finds the deal acceptable, an "Accept Deal" button will appear, which will confirm the trade that is on the table. You will lose any items you proposed and gain any items from the other leader.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]If the leader does not like the deal, you can select the "Make this deal more equitable" button to cause the leader to propose a deal they believe is fair. You may then adjust their offer to suit your needs, and see if they accept. You can also ask the leader for something and select "What would it take?" to see what they want from you in trade.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]If you propose an item but do not ask anything in return, you can select "Give Gift" to give the item to the leader for free. Who doesn't like gifts? Or you can select "What would you give me?" to ask the leader what they would be willing to pay.


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If you are Unfriendly with a leader or either of you has Denounced each other, you will see the Make Demand option on the Diplomacy Panel with that leader selected. This option will take you to a negotiation table, but your side of the table will be blank. Instead, you select items from their side of the table to demand as tribute! Select "Demand Deal" to see if they will pay you what you ask. The leader may not take kindly to your demands.


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Whether making a Deal or a Demand, some items are given permanently and some are only loaned to the leader. Sums of [ICON_Gold] Gold, Great Works, [ICON_GreatWork_Relic] Relics, [ICON_GreatWork_Artifact] Artifacts, and captured Spies are all permanent trades—once you give those items away, you have to trade again to get them back. Resources and gold per turn, however, are temporary, and once the deal has run its course you will get them back.


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Depending on your interactions with a leader, you might also have the Discuss option on the Diplomacy Panel. Selecting it will show you a list of actions you can ask the leader to promise to stop doing towards you, but only if the leader has already done that action at least once. You can ask them to stop settling new cities near you, to stop spreading their religion to you, to stop spying on you, or to stop attacking a City State you are Suzerain of.


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Delegations and Resident Embassies can be established between players to improve relations and gain Diplomatic Visibility.


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A Delegation, or Embassy, needs to be sent to every leader individually. Delegations cost 10 [ICON_Gold] Gold and Embassies cost 25 [ICON_Gold] Gold, which is paid to the other leader. This will give you a small positive bonus in your relationship with that leader. It also gives you 1 level of Diplomatic Visibility.  See the Diplomatic Visibility and Gossip section of the Civilopedia for more information on Diplomatic Visibility.


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Resident Embassies are unlocked with the Diplomatic Service Civic, at which point they replace Delegations. The effects of Resident Embassies and Delegations do not stack.


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Open Borders is an agreement with another leader to allow them to move their units, military or civilian, through your territory. Without this agreement, entering another leader's territory is an act of war, except with Religious Units, who can ignore borders entirely. If you have Open Borders with a leader, their border will appear as a dotted line instead of a solid one. Open Borders is unlocked with the Early Empire Civic. Prior to that, your borders are open to everyone.


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Open Borders can be offered as part of a Deal trade agreement if both parties have researched the Early Empire Civic, but it is offered individually by each leader—you can be granted Open Borders with a leader without granting them Open Borders in return. The deal lasts for 30 turns, and then it needs to be renewed.


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If you are in an Alliance with another leader, you both grant each other Open Borders automatically.


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Two allied or declared friendly players can enter into a Research Agreement to get a tech boost for a chosen tech, if both players have researched Scientific Theory. As a part of forming this deal, a specific technology must be agreed upon. The number of turns it will take to complete the research will depend on the current research rates of both users. If either player earns the boost or tech by any other means, the agreement ends and the other player will get the boost immediately.


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A Defensive Pact is an agreement between two leaders to come to each other's aid when targeted by a Declaration of War. It is unlocked by the Mobilization Civic, and both partners must possess this Civic in order to create a Defensive Pact. If either member of the Defensive Pact is targeted, the other member will also declare war against the aggressor. Defensive Pacts are available through the Make Deal negotiation table. The two leaders must be in an Alliance to make the deal.


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After researching the civic Foreign Trade, a Joint War may be proposed between players who have researched Foreign Trade. If you accept or propose a Joint War, you and another player will immediately be at war with the target player as set in the deal parameters.


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Friendly: Territory owned by your civilization. Friendly territory can also be established by becoming allies with a major civilization, or by becoming the Suzerain of a city-state. Units will heal faster in territory that is friendly to them, as well as take advantage of special abilities and policies associated with friendly territory. Units must be in friendly territory in order to be upgraded.


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Neutral: Territory that is not currently owned by a civilization or city state. This territory may be claimed by a civilization or a city state, through expansion of city borders or by founding a new city there. With the exception of the Fort and Airstrip improvements, players are not allowed to construct items in neutral territory.


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Rival: Territory that is owned by another civilization or city-state. Players cannot move into a rival’s territory without first establishing Open Borders with that civilization. Unit healing is lowest in rival territory.


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Casus Belli represent reasons to go to war where the normal Warmonger penalty for a declaration of war or capturing cities are reduced or eliminated.  Once you reach the Renaissance-era civic Diplomatic Service, you may accumulate Casus Belli against other powers. You must Denounce the other power in order to use a Casus Belli against them. See the table below for the conditions for each Casus Belli, the civic that unlocks them, and the percentage of the usual warmonger penalty that is applied.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Holy War: If one of your cities is converted to the enemy's religion[NEWLINE](Diplomatic Service, 50% warmongering)[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]War of Liberation: If a friend or ally had cities conquered[NEWLINE](Diplomatic Service, no warmongering penalty when liberating cities that have been conquered)[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]War of Reconquest: If you had cities conquered in a previous war[NEWLINE](Defensive Tactics, no warmongering penalty when retaking your previous cities)[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Protectorate War: if a city-state you are Suzerain of is attacked[NEWLINE](Defensive Tactics, no warmongering penalty when liberating a city-state target)[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Colonial War: if target civilization is two eras behind you in technology[NEWLINE](Nationalism, 50% warmongering)[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]War of Territorial Expansion: if target civilization borders your nation[NEWLINE](Mobilization, 75% warmongering)


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Diplomatic Agendas are a major driving force in your relationship with other leaders. They drive the desires and behavior of those leaders. You can use Agendas to know how to get on a leader's good side, or what to do to avoid making them angry.


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Leaders have a Historic Agenda and a Hidden Agenda. The Historic Agenda is based on that leader's real-world historical personality and achievements. The Hidden Agenda is assigned at beginning of every game, and could be a wide variety of things—maybe they like other civilizations with lots of culture or gold, or maybe they dislike warmongers. Revealing the Hidden Agenda is important to knowing what pleases and displeases a leader. Increase your Diplomatic Visibility with each civilization to find out what their leaders' Hidden Agendas are.


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Diplomatic Visibility allows you to receive Gossip, information about another player's actions. You gain more detailed Gossip based on your level of visibility, of which there are 5 levels: None, Limited, Open, Secret, and Top Secret. For example, when you have just met a civilization, you will receive information about their declarations of war, denouncements, friendships, alliances, and when they do something like found a Pantheon or complete a wonder. If you gain Limited Diplomatic Visibility, you will find out some information about their opinion of you and what government they have. At the Open level, you will have access to that civilization's diplomatic agendas, their relationships with other civilizations, and know when they have launched an inquisition.


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You must accumulate Diplomatic Visibility levels individually for each civilization. Levels may be gained by accumulating various sources of Gossip, including:


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Traders. Establish a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route to a civilization to increase visibility by one level.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Send a Delegation. Send a Delegation to a civilization to increase visibility by one level. Once Embassies are available, establishing an Embassy will replace this.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Send a spy on a Listening Post Mission. Performing the Listening Post mission in another civilization's city increases visibility by one level.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Forming an Alliance. Alternatively to spying, you can form an alliance with a friendly civilization. These two actions do not add separate Diplomatic Visibility levels - it does no good to spy on your allies![NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Research the Printing Press technology. This will increase your visibility with ALL civilizations by one level.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Play as Catherine de Medici. She gives France one level of access above normal at all times with civilizations she has met.


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Starting in the Renaissance era, Spies will become available. You may earn Spies from certain technologies and civics. They can be built in any city, but they cannot be purchased with [ICON_Gold] Gold or [ICON_Faith] Faith. Spies begin at the Recruit level, and may gain levels from successful offensive operations, or capturing an enemy Spy. Upon reaching level 2, Spies may also earn promotions.


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Spies are not moved like other units. They jump from city to city using air, sea, road, or foot travel, each with their own travel time, but they may not move to an ally's city. Once established in a city, a Spy can be sent to a specific district and begin their mission. Missions include stealing technology boosts, creating rebel units, or simply increasing diplomatic visibility. Each mission takes a certain amount of time, and will have a different outcome. Your Spy may be killed or captured, or maybe he failed his mission but was not detected, or perhaps it was not detected and the mission was a success.


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City-states are the smaller political entities. They cannot win a game – they're not competing against you – but they can greatly assist or impede your progress towards victory. You can befriend city-states and gain a number of important benefits, you can ignore them and concentrate on bigger and more important foes, or you can conquer them and take their stuff. It's up to you.


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There are six different "flavors" of city-states. Each can provide you with different benefits if you befriend or ally with them.


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An industrial city-state can provide [ICON_Production] Production towards wonders, buildings, and districts.


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In order to communicate with a city-state, you must find it first. When one of your units encounters a city-state, the city-state will tell you what type it is, and if you're the first to discover it, you will automatically earn an [ICON_Envoy] Envoy with that city-state. Once you have met, you will be able to undertake "quests" from that city-state. If you want to get in touch with the city-state, you can click on the city itself, or you can go through the City-State Panel.


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The bonuses you earn from a city-state depend on how many [ICON_Envoy] Envoys you have sent to the city-state. [ICON_Envoy] Envoys are earned over time with influence points (which come from Governments and Policies), or instantly by completing certain Civics. Once earned, you will receive a prompt to choose which city-states to send them to. If you have multiple [ICON_Envoy] Envoys, you may divide them between city-states as you desire.


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Declaring war directly on a city-state removes all [ICON_Envoy] Envoys you had there. Otherwise, [ICON_Envoy] Envoys stay on the city-state permanently. [ICON_Envoy] Envoys at a city-state are visible to all players, and placing them may have diplomatic consequences. The bonuses earned are based on how many [ICON_Envoy] Envoys you have present, regardless of who else has [ICON_Envoy] Envoys there. City-states of a type all share the same Type Bonuses. They are cumulative, so that as a player places more and more [ICON_Envoy] Envoys on a city-state, they stack with the bonuses from before. Each [ICON_Envoy] Envoy placed in a city-state expands its borders by 1 tile.


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The civilization with the most [ICON_Envoy] Envoys on a city-state, and at least 3 [ICON_Envoy] Envoys, is considered that city-state's Suzerain. There can be at most one Suzerain; ties are not allowed. If nobody has [ICON_Envoy] Envoys on a city-state, there is no Suzerain. The Suzerain gets several significant benefits:


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Unique Bonus: This is a powerful bonus awarded to the Suzerain which no other city-state will provide.


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Friendly Territory: The city-state's territory is considered 'Friendly' to its Suzerain, allowing the Suzerain to gain the same privileges that are provided by its own territory.


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The Trader unit is unlocked by researching Foreign Trade, and built in cities. Trader units are on a separate map layer, and do not interact with most normal things on a map. They can freely stack with any other units, and they ignore cultural borders.


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Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
When a Trader is in a city the player owns, it can begin a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route between that city and another city that is in range, as long as none of your [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes are already going there (for example, if I already have a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route to the city of Athens, I cannot send a second one there), and the player has not reached their maximum number of [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Once made, the [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route will last for at least 20 turns on Standard game speed. The Trader unit will move automatically along its path for the duration of the route, but will not finish the route until it has returned to the origin city's tile. When on an active route, the Trader unit will disregard terrain restrictions and move 1 tile every turn, placing a Road as it moves. Don't forget to protect your Trader from Barbarians or hostile civilizations, as it is vulnerable to pillaging.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
At the end of the [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route's duration, you will have the option of renewing the previous [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route, assigning a new [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route from the current city, or reassigning the Trader to a new city.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A player can only maintain a limited number of active [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes. This capacity is determined primarily by the number of Commercial Hub and Harbor districts they have, but can be increased by other means as well. Note that [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes from Commercial Hub and Harbor districts do not stack in the same city—the benefit only applies with the first one you build.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
On land, a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route can reach destinations within a range of 15 tiles. Once the player researches the technology that allows embarkation, Traders can also move over water. On water, the range is 30 tiles. If you have a [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Post in the city, the Trader "refuels" its allowance for the new travel domain, and can move further. Otherwise, it must stop at that city.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Changing between land and water can only be done at a City Center or Harbor district, and the allowance does not carry over.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Extend your trade network and make it more lucrative with [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Posts. A [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Post is placed at a city once a [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route to or from that city successfully completes. It belongs to the player that owned the [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Your [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Routes can “refuel” their [ICON_Movement] Movement range in any city that has one of your [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Posts, allowing them to reach further destinations. If the city belongs to another player, the [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Post also makes the [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route more valuable, providing +1 [ICON_Gold] Gold for its income.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route provides yields each turn to its origin city, primarily based on which districts are at its destination city. For example, trading with a city with a Holy Site will provide [ICON_Faith] Faith, and trading with a city with a Theater Square district will provide [ICON_Culture] Culture. Additionally, Religion and [Icon_Tourism] Tourism can spread along [Icon_TradeRoute] Trade Routes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
It also gets yields based on the path it takes. If it passes through a [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Post you own in a foreign city, it is worth an additional 1 [ICON_Gold] Gold. Long paths which pass through several [ICON_TradingPost] Trading Posts are very valuable.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_TRADE_6_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
A City earns 1 [ICON_Gold] Gold per turn for every [ICON_TradeRoute] Trade Route belonging to another player that routes through its City Center.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Governments allow you to customize your civilization to match your play style by offering different combinations of slots to elect different types of policies, as well as offering distinct bonuses.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Unlocked through the Civics Tree, the available governments will change as you progress through time. In the beginning, you will have a simple government with only a handful of slots. But as you reach later eras, more slots in different combinations will be unlocked. On top of this, governments have their own special bonuses; the Theocracy government, for instance, will allow you to purchase land units with [ICON_Faith] Faith and offers a discount on [ICON_Faith] Faith purchases when active.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Finally, all governments have Legacy bonuses based on how long that government was active within your empire. For example, though you may have moved past the Theocracy government, you will receive a Legacy bonus of [ICON_Faith] Faith discounts based on how long that government was active in your empire’s history. You may switch your government at any time. If you switch to a previously adopted government, you will enter a state of Anarchy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Policies have concrete effects for gameplay. Some increase your cities’ [ICON_Production] Production, while others generate more wealth, and still others help create a more effective military. There are no right or wrong policy choices in the game, and one policy may be better for a given circumstance than other, or better suit your personal playing style. Try them out and see.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
There are 6 types of policies, each of which may be slotted into a corresponding slot in a given government. Slotting these individual policies will give you the benefits described and enhance your game.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
You can choose to adopt policies once you have gained [ICON_Culture] Culture to unlock your first government. Policies will be unlocked as you progress through the Civics Tree, and changing your government will allow you to slot different combinations of policies to better suit your play style. Any time a new government or policy is unlocked from the Civics Tree, you will have the opportunity to reselect policies or change your government for free. Otherwise, there will be a cost to make these changes.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
There are 4 different policy types to explore, each attributing to a different style of government. All types must be applied to an empty slot of the same type in the government, but a Wildcard slot can house any type of policy.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Economic: These policies can be useful in increasing all sorts of yields, whether through increasing district adjacency bonuses or reducing costs.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_4
Text:
Diplomatic: These policies are best for players with a strong interest in building relationships, and can help strengthen the bonds with city-states or improve espionage operations.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Switching to a previously adopted government briefly places your civilization into a state of Anarchy, which has the following negative effects:


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
1. You receive no [ICON_Gold] Gold, [ICON_Science] Science, [ICON_Culture] Culture, or [ICON_Faith] Faith from any source.[NEWLINE]2. Anarchy has no government special bonus or Legacy.[NEWLINE]3. Your policies provide no benefit and cannot be slotted.[NEWLINE]4. You won't be able to change governments until the state of Anarchy ends.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GOVT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Anarchy lasts a minimum of three turns. The more you previously adopted this form of government, the longer Anarchy will last.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_GreatPerson] Great People are the artists, merchants, engineers, scientists, generals, and admirals who can, singlehandedly, change the course of a civilization. There are nine types of [ICON_GreatPerson] Great People: [ICON_GreatArtist] Great Artists, [ICON_GreatWriter] Great Writers, [ICON_GreatMusician] Great Musicians, [ICON_GreatEngineer] Great Engineers, [ICON_GreatMerchant] Great Merchants, [ICON_GreatScientist] Great Scientists, [ICON_GreatProphet] Great Prophets, [ICON_GreatAdmiral] Great Admirals, and [ICON_GreatGeneral] Great Generals.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_GreatPerson] Great People can be earned by generating enough of the right type of points. They are visible to all players, and they are visibly competed for between all players. Only major civilizations can earn [ICON_GreatPerson] Great People, not Barbarians or city-states. Each type of [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person has its own points which are tracked separately. [ICON_GreatScientist] Great Scientist Points cannot count as [ICON_GreatArtist] Great Artist Points, and so on. The number of points needed to earn a particular [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person depends on that [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person’s era. A Renaissance-era [ICON_GreatScientist] Great Scientist will cost much less [ICON_GreatScientist] Great Scientist Points than a Modern-era one. The points come from a variety of sources.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Each district, and the buildings within it, provides points towards its associated [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person type. This is the slow but steady source of points. Districts also allow a city to use [ICON_Production] Production towards projects which, when completed, contribute [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person points.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Players can also spend [ICON_Gold] Gold or [ICON_Faith] Faith to patronize a Great Person, earning that person instantly. The patronage cost is based on how many more [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person points the player would need to recruit that person normally.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Each [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person individual has a different effect, inspired by history. Most effects are strongly linked to a particular era of play, and are not optimal for use outside of that time. The effects fall into two broad categories, Passive Effects and Action Effects.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
A Passive Effect happens as soon as the [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person is spawned on the map. These are mostly found on Great Generals and Great Admirals.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
An Action Effect must be activated by the [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person by using a “charge” at a certain location. The number of charges, the type of location needed, and the effect activated will vary based on the individual. Most individuals only have 1 charge and can only activate at a district matching its type (ex. most [ICON_GreatScientist] Great Scientists have 1 charge and must use it at a Campus). Like other charge-based units, the individual will disappear when all charges are depleted.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_GREATPEOPLE_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
[ICON_GreatPerson] Great People can move about the board like any other units. They are non-combat units, which means that they cannot stack in a tile with other non-combat units (Workers, Settlers), but they can stack with one military unit. If an enemy unit enters a [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person's tile, that [ICON_GreatPerson] Great Person automatically retreats to a nearby city if able (the enemy doesn't capture it.) These units may also be transferred to another city when in a city center.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
There are four main types of air units: support reconnaissance, support defense, fighters, and strategic bombers. These can be produced in any city that has built an Aerodrome and researched the prerequisite technologies.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Air units do not move around the map like ground and naval units. They must be "based" somewhere. The City Center can always hold one air unit, but building an Aerodrome, Airstrip, or Aircraft Carrier can increase your available slots. The Aerodrome can have up to 8 slots, the Airstrip 3, and the Aircraft Carrier begins with 2 but can gain more through promotions.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Fighter aircraft can be deployed to a valid hex within their [ICON_Movement] Movement range from a friendly air base. After it is deployed, the aircraft will begin flying an orbiting pattern around its effective intercept range (currently 1 hex radius). This should make it more clear to both the attacker and defender the status of the Fighters in the Patrol state.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
The Patrol state is continuing, somewhat like the 'Fortify' unit operation. Once an aircraft has been set to Patrol it will do so until it is ordered otherwise or it is destroyed. While Patrolling, the aircraft will continue to intercept and defend against multiple attackers.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
At any time during the player's turn, Fighter aircraft can 'Return to Base' (station at a friendly air base) in order to heal. Aircraft stationed at an air base do not intercept attacking aircraft. Aircraft can heal at the end of the game turn when stationed on a City Center, Aerodrome, Airstrip, or Aircraft Carrier only if they have not been involved in combat. Healing is 'fastest' on an Aerodrome district, and less so on Airstrips and Carriers. These values can be increased through promotions and/or Policies.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_4_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Heavy Bomber aircraft cannot deploy on Patrols, but they are instead considered 'stationed' at a friendly air base and can carry out attacks from that base. Unlike Fighter aircraft, Bombers do not engage in dogfighting, but they head straight for their target and attack.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Strategic Bombing: Bomber aircraft can attack district buildings and city improvements directly, if no land unit currently occupies the target location. When successful, the result of this type of attack is the same as a ground unit Pillage action with one exception - the attacking air unit does not get the resulting benefit from the pillage action. In order for a bombing attack to be successful, the attacking air unit must be at 50% health or higher after resolving any damage taken from defending fighter aircraft and anti-air support units.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Priority Target: Air units also have the Priority Target ability which allows them to attack Support class units directly, without first having to eliminate the enemy combat unit placed in the same location.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_AIRCOMBAT_5_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
Fighters can be deployed to a location on the map within range where they will patrol the adjacent plots.  If an air unit tries an air strike against a target within the range of an intercepting unit, the interceptor will fire on the attacker and do damage to it.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]If an attacking aircraft enters the defensive radius of more than one patrolling aircraft, the highest strength aircraft is chosen to intercept. The remaining aircraft act in support of the defense by adding +5 to the strength of the main interceptor.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Once combat is resolved with any anti-air ground units and intercepting air units, if the attacking bomber survives, combat is then resolved with the original target. If a fighter is intercepted by another fighter on its way to a ground target, it is forced to only engage the enemy fighter and will not attack the ground target. Bombers do not have this restriction, and will continue to the target if they survives any defending interceptors and anti-air attacks.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_NUKES_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
There are 2 categories of atomic weapons: the Nuclear Device and the Thermonuclear Device.  They can be built as a city Project in any city and both require the Uranium resource to produce. There is no limit on the number that a player can build. [NEWLINE][NEWLINE]Once a Nuclear or Thermonuclear Device is created, it is added to the player's inventory and can then be used by any unit or improvement capable of deploying it on the map. This includes bomber aircraft, Nuclear Submarines, and the Missile Silo.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_NUKES_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_2
Text:
Nuclear Devices have a blast radius of 1. When deployed from a Missile Silo, they have a [ICON_Range] Range of 12. They cost 14 [ICON_Gold] Gold per turn to maintain.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_NUKES_1_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_3
Text:
Thermonuclear Devices have a blast radius of 2. When deployed from a Missile Silo, they have a [ICON_Range] Range of 15. They cost 16 [ICON_Gold] Gold per turn to maintain.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_NUKES_2_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
When an atomic weapon is detonated, several things happen to all the hexes within the blast radius. [ICON_Citizen] Citizens "working" the affected tiles are eliminated, units occupying the affected tiles are destroyed, and all tile improvements are pillaged. Any districts and buildings in the affected tiles are also pillaged and must be repaired to be used again. All tiles affected are contaminated with radioactive fallout.


Language: en_US
Tag: LOC_PEDIA_CONCEPTS_PAGE_NUKES_3_CHAPTER_CONTENT_PARA_1
Text:
After a nuclear attack, fallout will contaminate every tile affected by the blast. Any units that end their turn in a contaminated tile take 50 damage each turn. [ICON_Production] Production cannot be applied to anything in tiles containing contamination, such as repairing buildings and districts. Tiles that are contaminated cannot be worked by the city until the contamination timer expires or until the tile is "cleaned."


