Professional Documents
Culture Documents
* 1 Ancient Rome
* 2 Cuisine
* 3 Culture
* 4 Fictional charactersOtto von Bismarck
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Not to be confused with Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck.
"Bismarck" redirects here. For other uses, see Bismarck (disambiguation).
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help
improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (June 2008)
Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
1st Chancellor of the German Empire
In office
21 March 1871 � 20 March 1890
Monarch Wilhelm I (1871-1888)
Frederick III (1888)
Wilhelm II (1888-1890)
Preceded by First Chancellor
Succeeded by Leo von Caprivi
9th Minister President of the Kingdom of Prussia
In office
23 September 1862 � 1 January 1873
Monarch Wilhelm I
Preceded by Adolf of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen
Succeeded by Albrecht von Roon
11th Minister President of the Kingdom of Prussia
In office
9 November 1873 � 20 March 1890
Monarch Wilhelm I (1873-1888)
Frederick III (1888)
Wilhelm II (1888-1890)
Preceded by Albrecht von Roon
Succeeded by Leo von Caprivi
Federal Chancellor of the North German Confederation
In office
1867 � 1871
President Wilhelm I
Preceded by Confederation established
Succeeded by German Empire
23rd Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Prussia
In office
1862 � 1890
Monarch Wilhelm I (1862-1888)
Frederick III (1888)
Wilhelm II (1888-1890)
Prime Minister 1862-1873
1873-1890)
Preceded by Albrecht von Bernstorff
Succeeded by Leo von Caprivi
Born 1 April 1815(1815-04-01)
Sch�nhausen, Prussia
Died 30 July 1898 (aged 83)
Friedrichsruh, Germany
Political party none
Spouse Johanna von Puttkamer
Religion Lutheran
Signature Otto von Bismarck's signature
* 1 Early years
* 2 Early political career
* 5 Military
* 6 People
* 7 Places
* 8 Science
* 9 See also
The origin of the name has been much disputed, even in antiquity. It is probably
not related to the root "to cut", a possible etymology for Caesarian section.
It was borne by many members of the ancient Roman Gens Julia, most famously
* Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC�44 BC) Roman general and dictator, hence
o Julius Caesar (play), a tragedy by William Shakespeare
o Julius Caesar (mini), a 2002 mini-series about Caesar, directed by Uli
Edel
o Caesar (novel), an historical novel by Colleen McCullough
* Gaius Julius Caesar (proconsul of Asia, 90s BC), father of the dictator
* Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the first Roman Emperor, nephew and adoptive
son of the dictator
* Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, fourth Roman Emperor of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty
* Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus),
fifth and final Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
* Other members of the Julii Caesares, the family from which the dictator came
* Caesar (title), a title used by Roman Emperors and also Ottoman Turkish
Emperors, related as well to "Tsar", "Kaiser" and "Kaisar"
* Lives of the Twelve Caesars, a book written by Suetonius on Julius Caesar
and the eleven emperors after him
* Caesar!, a series of plays on BBC Radio 4 written by Mike Walker, each
looking at a different Roman ruler.[citation needed]
Malkiel Ashkenazi was a Sephardic rabbi and leader of the Jewish community in
Hebron in 1540.
In 1517, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Palestine, Sephardic Jews living in
exile in Ottoman Salonika were allowed to return to the Holy Land. Many of these
Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492. Hakham Malkiel Ashkenazi purchased a
walled compound in Hebron and founded the Abraham Avinu Synagogue which became a
center of study for Kabbalah. [1] Malkiel was a respected authority in Jewish law,
and his decisions on religious matters were widely accepted, also outside of
Hebron. [1]
A model of a typical ANZAC soldier and his horse during the campaign
Date January 28, 1915 -October 28, 1918
Location Sinai Peninsula, Palestine, and Syria
Result British Victory
Territorial
changes Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire
Belligerents
Flag of the United Kingdom British Empire
France
Flag of Italy Kingdom of Italy
Ottoman Empire
German Empire
Commanders
Flag of the United Kingdom Sir John Maxwell
Flag of the United Kingdom Sir Archibald Murray
Flag of the United Kingdom Philip Chetwode
Flag of the United Kingdom Charles Dobell
Flag of the United Kingdom Edmund Allenby
Flag of Australia Henry George Chauvel Ottoman flag Djemal Pasha
Ottoman flag Jadir Bey
Ottoman flag Tala Bey
Flag of German Empire Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein
Flag of German Empire Erich von Falkenhayn
Flag of German Empire Otto Liman von Sanders
[show]
v � d � e
Sinai and Palestine Campaign
Suez � Romani � Magdhaba � Rafa � 1st Gaza � 2nd Gaza � El Buggar � Beersheba �
3rd Gaza � Mughar Ridge � Jerusalem � Abu Tellul � Arara � Megiddo
[show]
v � d � e
Theatres of World War I
European
Balkans � Western Front � Eastern Front � Italian Front
Middle Eastern
Caucasus � Mesopotamia � Sinai and Palestine � Gallipoli � Persia
African
South-West Africa � West Africa � East Africa
Asian and Pacific
Other
Atlantic Ocean � Mediterranean � Naval � Aerial
The Sinai and Palestine Campaign during the Middle Eastern Theatre of World War I
was a series of battles which took place on the Sinai Peninsula, Palestine, and
Syria between January 28, 1915 and October 28, 1918. British, Indian, Australian,
and New Zealand forces opposed the German and Turkish forces.
Contents
[hide]
The Ottoman Empire, at the urging of their German ally, chose to attack British
and Egyptian forces in Egypt and shut the Suez Canal in the First Suez Offensive.
The Ottoman army, under the command of the Turkish Minister of Marine, Djemal
Pasha, was based in Jerusalem. At this time, the Sinai was an almost empty desert
and very hard for an army to cross (no roads, no water). The chief of staff for
Ottoman army was Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, who organized the attack and
managed to get supplies for the army as it crossed the desert.
The Ottoman Suez Expeditionary Force arrived at the canal on February 2, 1915. The
attack failed to achieve surprise as the British and Egyptians were aware of the
Ottoman army's approach. In fighting that lasted for two days the Ottomans were
beaten, losing some 2000 men. Allied losses were minimal.
Because the Suez Canal was vital to the Allied war effort, this failed attack
caused the British to leave far more soldiers protecting the canal than they had
planned on, resulting in a smaller force for the Gallipoli Campaign. The British
forced the colonial Egyptian Army and Egyptian Navy to be enlarged to help defend
Egypt. However, most Egyptians were poorly-armed and poorly-trained.
More than a year passed with the British troops content to guard the Suez Canal
and the Ottomans busy fighting the Russians in the Caucusus and the British at
Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia. Then in July, the Ottoman army tried another
offensive against the Suez. Again, the Ottomans advanced with an over-sized
division. Again they ran into a well prepared Allied force, this time at Romani.
Again, they retreated after two days of fighting August 3 - August 5, 1916.
Following this victory, the Allied forces sought to eject the Turkish Canal
Expeditionary Force from threatening the Suez Canal by removing them from Bir el
Abd. On August 9, 1916, the indecisive action at Bir el Abd was fought leading to
the Turkish withdrawal to El Arish while leaving a rear guard force at Bir el
Mazar.
This attack convinced the British to push their defence of the Canal further out,
into the Sinai, and so starting in October, the British under Lieutenant General
Sir Charles Dobell began operations into the Sinai desert and on to the border of
Palestine. Initial efforts were limited to building a railway and a waterline
across the Sinai. After several months building up supplies and troops, the
British were ready for an attack. The first battle was the capture of Magdhaba on
December 23 1916. This was a success, the fort was captured.
On January 8, 1917 the Anzac Mounted Division attacked the fort-town of Rafa. The
attack was successful and the majority of the Turkish garrison was captured. The
British had accomplished their objective of protecting the Suez Canal from Turkish
attacks but the new government of David Lloyd George wanted more.
The British army in Egypt was ordered to go on the offensive against the Ottoman
Turks in Palestine. In part this was to support the Arab revolt which had started
early in 1916, in part this was to try and accomplish something positive after the
years of fruitless battles on the Western Front. The British commander in Egypt,
Sir Archibald Murray, suggested that he needed more troops and ships, but this
request was refused.
Assault on Gaza, 1917
The Ottoman forces were holding a rough line from the fort at Gaza, on the shore
of the Mediterranean Sea, to the town of Beersheba, which was the terminus of the
Ottoman railway that extended north to Damascus. The British commander in the
field, Dobell, choose to attack Gaza, using a short hook move on March 26, 1917.
The British attack was essentially a failure. Due to mis-communication, some units
retreated when they should have held onto their gains and so the fortress was not
taken.
The government in London believed the reports from the field which indicated a
substantial victory had been won and ordered General Murray to move on and capture
Jerusalem. The British were in no position to attack Jerusalem as they first
needed to break through the Ottoman defensive positions. These positions were
rapidly improved and credit for the Turkish defence is given to the German chief-
of-staff Baron Kress von Kressenstein.
A second attack on the fort of Gaza was launched one month later on April 17,
1917. This attack, supported by naval gunfire, chlorine gas and even a few early
tanks was also a failure. It was essentially a frontal assault on a fortified
position, and it didn't work more through inflexibility in operations rather than
plan but it cost of some 6,000 British casualties. As a result both General Dobell
and General Murray were removed from command. The new man put in charge was
General Sir Edmund Allenby and his orders were clear: take Jerusalem by Christmas.
Allenby - after personally reviewing the Ottoman defensive positions - asked for
more forces: three more infantry divisions, aircraft, and artillery. This request
was granted and by October, 1917, the British were ready for their next attack.
The Ottoman army had three active fronts at this time: Mesopotamia, Arabia, and
the Gaza front. They also had substantial forces deployed around Constantinople
and in the (now quiet) Caucasus front. Given all these demands, the army in Gaza
was only about 35,000 strong, lead by the Ottoman General Kustafa and concentrated
in three main defensive locations: Gaza, Tell Esh Sheria, and Beersheba. Allenby's
army was now much larger, some 88,000 troops in good condition and well equipped.
Many of the British forces were Anzacs from Australia and New Zealand.
The occupation of Karm by the Allies on 22 October 1917 created a major point for
supply and water for the troops in the immediate area. For the Ottoman forces, the
placement of the station at Karm placed under threat the defensive positions known
as the Hureira Redoubt and Rushdie System which formed a powerful bulwark against
any Allied action. Karm Station pointed right to the heart of this system.
To overcome this, General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Commander of the Yildirim
Group, proposed a two phase attack. Firstly the plan called for a reconnaissance
in force from Beersheba for 27 October which was to be followed by an all out
attack launched by the 8th Army from Hureira, ironically scheduled to occur on the
morning of 31 October 1917, the day when the Battle of Beersheba began. On the
morning of 27 October, the battle began.
A key feature to the British attack was to convince the Turks (and their German
leaders) that once again, Gaza was to be attacked. This deception campaign was
extremely thorough and convincing. The the Battle of El Buggar Ridge, launched by
the Turks, completed the deception. When the Allies launched their attack on
Beersheba, the Turks were taken by surprise. In one of the most remarkable feats
of planning and execution, the Allies were able to move some 40,000 men and a
similar number of horses over hostile and inhospitable terrain without being
detected by the Turks. The Turkish defeat at Beersheba on October 31 was not a
complete rout. The Turks retreated into the hills and pre-prepared defensive
positions to the north of Beersheba. For the Allies, the following days were spent
fighting a difficult and bloody battle at Tel el Khuweilifeh, to the north east of
Beersheba.
Allenby's Offensive, November-December 1917
To break through the Turkish defensive line, the Allied forces attacked the
Ottoman positions at Tel Esh Sheria on November 6 and followed this up with a
further attack at Huj the following day, November 7. With the imminent collapse of
Gaza at the same time, the Turks quickly retreated to a new line of defence.
On the 7th, the British attacked Gaza for the 3rd time and this time, the Turks,
worried about being cut off, retreated in the face of the British assault. Gaza
had finally been captured.
The Turkish defensive position was shattered, the Ottoman army was retreating in
some disarray, General Allenby ordered his army to pursue the enemy. The British
followed closely on the heels of the retreating Ottoman forces. An attempt by the
Turks to form a defence of a place called Junction Station (Wadi Sarar) was foiled
by a British attack November 13, 1917. General Falkenhayn next tried to form a new
defensive line from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Jaffa. The first British attack on
Jerusalem failed but with a short rest and the gathering of more infantry
divisions, Allenby tried again and on December 9, 1917 Jerusalem was captured.
This was a major political event for the British government of David Lloyd George,
one of the few real successes the British could point to after three long bloody
years of war.
On the Turkish side, this defeat marked the exit of Djemal Pasha back to Istanbul.
Djemal had given real command to German officers like von Kressenstein and von
Falkenhayn more than a year earlier but now, defeated like Enver Pasha was at the
Battle of Sarikamis, he gave up even nominal command and returned to the capital.
Less than a year remained before he was forced out of the government. General
Falkenhayn was also replaced, in March 1918.
The British government had hopes that the Ottoman Empire could be defeated early
in the coming year with successful campaigns in Palestine and Mesopotamia but the
Spring Offensive by the Germans on the Western Front delayed the expected attack
on Syria for nine full months. General Allenby's army was largely redeployed to
France and he was given brand new divisions recruited from India. These divisions
spent the spring and summer of 1918 training.
Because the British achieved complete control of the air with their new fighter
planes, the Turks, and their new German commander General Liman von Sanders, had
no clear idea where the British were going to attack. Compounding the problems,
the Turks, at the direction of their War Minister Enver Pasha withdrew their best
troops during the summer for the creation of Enver's Army of Islam, leaving behind
poor quality, dispirited soldiers. T. E. Lawrence and his Arab fighters were of
significant use during this time. His forces staged many hit-and-run attacks on
Turkish supply lines and tied down thousands of soldiers in garrisons throughout
Palestine, Jordan, and Syria.
[edit] Battle of Megiddo
Main article: Battle of Megiddo (1918)
General Allenby finally launched his long-delayed attack on September 19, 1918.
The campaign has been called the Battle of Megiddo (which is a transliteration of
the Hebrew name of an ancient town known in the west as Armageddon). Again, the
British spent a great deal of effort to deceive the Turks as to their actual
intended target of operations. This effort was, again, successful and the Turks
were taken by surprise when the British attacked Meggido in a sudden storm. The
Turkish troops started a full scale retreat, the British bombed the fleeing
columns of men from the air and within a week, the Turkish army in Palestine had
ceased to exist as a military force.
From there it was decided to march off to Damascus. Two separate Allied columns
marched towards Damascus. The first approached from Galilee composed of mainly
cavalry, both Indian and Australian while the other column travelled along the
Hejaz Railway northwards composed of Indian Cavalry and the ad hoc militia
following T.E. Lawrence. Australian Light Horse troops marched unopposed into
Damascus on October 1, 1918 despite there being some 12,000 Turkish soldiers at
Baramke Barracks. Major Olden of the Australian 10th Light Horse Regiment received
the Official Surrender of the City at 7 am at the Serai. Later that day, T.E.
Lawrence and his ad hoc Arab militia entered Damascus to claim full credit for its
capture. The war in Palestine was over but in Syria lasted for a further month.
The Turkish government was quite prepared to sacrifice these non-Turkish provinces
without surrendering. Indeed, while this battle was raging, the Turks sent an
expeditionary force into Russia to enlarge the ethnic Turkish elements of the
empire. It was only after the surrender of Bulgaria which put Turkey into a
vulnerable position for invasion that the Turkish government compelled to sign an
armistice on October 28, 1918 and outright surrendered two days later. 600 years
of Ottoman rule over the Middle East had come to an end.
This campaign has been depicted in several films. The most famous by far is
Lawrence of Arabia (1962), though it focused primarily on T.E. Lawrence and the
Arab Revolt. Other films dealing with this topic include Forty Thousand Horsemen
(1941), and The Lighthorsemen (1987), with Peter Phelps and Nick Waters, both of
which focused on the role of the ANZAC forces during the campaign.
[edit] Summary
The British lost a total of 550,000 casualties [citation needed] - more than 90%
of these were not due to battle but instead due to disease, heat, etc. Total
Turkish losses are unknown but almost certainly larger. They lost an entire army
in the fighting and the Turks poured a vast number of troops into the front over
the three years of combat. Military historians argue if this campaign by the
British was worth the effort. In the opinion of General Esposito (the editor of
the West Point Atlas of American Wars) This considerable subsidiary effort might
have been put to better use on the more decisive Western front.
Even so, the historical consequences of this campaign are hard to overestimate.
The British conquest of Palestine led directly to the British mandate over
Palestine and Trans-Jordan which, in turn, paved the way for the creation of the
states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.Gallipoli Star (Ottoman Empire)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Gallipoli Star badge.
The Ottoman War Medal (Turkish: Harp Madalyasi), better known as the Gallipoli
Star, or the Iron Crescent (from German Eiserner Halbmond, in allusion to the Iron
Cross) was a military decoration of the Ottoman Empire which was instituted by the
Sultan Mehmed Reshad V on 1 March 1915 for gallantry in battle. This decoration
was awarded for the duration of World War I to Ottoman and other Central Powers
troops, primarily in Ottoman areas of engagement.
Contents
[hide]
Along with the badge came a ribbon with red and white stripes. The dimensions of
the ribbon for combatants are: red 2.5 mm; white, 5 mm.; red, 29 mm.; white, 5
mm.; red 2.5 mm. For non-combatant awardees, the colors are reversed.
The campaign bar is a right-pointing parabola of white at 56mm in length and 7mm
in height. In the field is red Arabic script denoting the specific campaign:
* Chanakkale/Chanak (Gallipoli)
* Gaza
* Kanal
* Kut-al-Amara
* Sanatorium
[edit] Wear
When in formal dress, the badge was worn at the center, below the right breast
pocket. Wear of the badge was exclusive; in everyday wear was substituted by the
ribbon. The ribbon was worn from the second hole in the tunic button.
For Austrian and German awardees (usually members of the Asienkorps), the award
took lower precedence to their own Iron Cross 2nd class, and the ribbon of the
Iron Crescent was placed beneath that of the Iron Cross.
The ribbon could also be fashioned into a chest riband for placement on a ribbon
bar when in undress.
Modern Chronology
Modern history describes the history of the Modern Times, the era after the Middle
Ages.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Modernity
* 2 As a subject
o 2.1 Oxford
* 3 References
[edit] Modernity
The concepts and ideas developed since then are part of Modernity. Modern history
may contain references to the history of Early modern Europe from the turn of the
15th century until the late 18th century, but generally refers to the history of
the world since the advent of the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment in
the 17th and 18th centuries and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The
term should not be confused with modernism, a late 19th and early 20th century
movement in art.
[edit] As a subject
Although many of the subjects of modern history coincide with that of standard
history, the subject is taught in some parts of the world. A-level is the lowest
tier of education at which modern history is taught in the UK, and students can
also choose the subject at University. The material covered includes from the mid-
18th century, to analysis of the present day. Virtually all colleges and sixth
forms that do teach modern history do it alongside standard history; very few
teach the subject exclusively.
[edit] Oxford
At the University of Oxford 'Modern History' has a somewhat different meaning. The
contrast is not with the Middle Ages but with Antiquity. The earliest period that
can be studied in the Final Honour School of Modern History begins in
285.[1]History of Europe
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This article's introduction may be too long. Please help by moving some
material from it into the body of the article. Read the layout guide and
Wikipedia's lead section guidelines for more information. Discuss this issue on
the talk page.
Europe depicted by Antwerp cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1595
The history of Europe describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting the
European continent to the present day. For convenience sake, historians divide
long periods into more manageable eras. The first evidence of Homo sapiens in
Europe dates back to at least 35,000 BC, the European paleolithic period. When
settlements, agriculture, and domesticated livestock appear would be the start of
the neolithic, which in Europe would be around 7000 BC. From the earliest
civilization with writing to the temporary disappearance of civilization around
1200 BC, the preferred metal for tools and weapons was bronze, and historians have
labeled this the Bronze Age.
Europe's classical antiquity dates from the reappearance of writing in Ancient
Greece of around 700 BC. The Roman Republic was established in 509 BC. The Romans
expanded their territorial control over Italy, then over the Mediterranean basin
and western Europe. The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent around 150.
The Christian religion became legal under the emperor Constantine in the early
fourth century. Within a few generations, Christianity had become the official
religion of the empire. The Vulgate Bible in Latin emerged just before the sack of
Rome in 410 by a Germanic people, the Visigoths. These were the first of a number
of tribes to move west and south from beyond Roman boundaries into former Roman
territories. The last Roman emperor in the west was removed from power in 476.
Southeastern Europe and some parts of the Mediterranean remained under the
increasingly beleaguered Roman Empire, but ruled from Constantinople rather than
Rome. Under the Emperor Justinian, Roman armies restored imperial rule to many
parts of the Mediterranean, but this expansion began to erode in the later sixth
century. As Constantinople's hold on western territories faltered, more Germanic
peoples invaded and established kingdoms. Eastern Mediterranean territories
remained largely in the hands of the Christian emperor in Constantinople through
the sixth century. Historians generally label this remnant of the Roman Empire the
Byzantine Empire. A serious threat to its power and lands was to emerge in the
seventh century from an unexpected source: the Arabian peninsula and the newly
united and converted peoples of Islam.
In western Europe, many of the new states had only the Latin written language,
some lingering Roman customs, and the Christian religion in common. Much of
Christian territory in the west was brought under the rule of the Franks,
particularly king Charlemagne, whom the pope crowned as western Emperor in 800.
His territories were divided within two generations and Europe came under attack
from three groups: Vikings of Scandinavia, Muslims from north Africa, and Magyars
from Hungary. The response to these attacks differed; some regions united to deal
with the threat, others divided. Starting in the mid-tenth century, the Muslim and
Magyar threat to western Europe had diminished, but the Vikings remained
entrenched or threatening for longest in the British Isles.
A schism within the church in 1054 A.D. aggravated earlier divisions that emerged
at the 451 Council of Chalcedon and was followed by the Crusades from the west to
rescue the east from Muslim conquests that had begun to encroach on the
Byzantines. However, the Crusades were not confined to recapturing Muslim lands
taken in the East: Spain, southern France, Lithuania and other Pagan regions were
consolidated under the papal power at this time. Feudal society began to break
down as Mongol invaders broke through frontier areas in Europe and growing trade
with other regions brought Black Death to first southern and then most of
Europe.[1]. Complex feudal loyalties developed and nobles of most of the new
nations were very closely related by intermarriage. Thanks largely to learning
recovered from Muslim and Jewish scholars in Spain and the Mideast, and its own
monastic traditions, Europe awoke from the medieval period through rediscovery of
classical learning of the Greeks and Romans and a few key innovations from the
Muslim world (including colleges, scientific medicine, copyright, guilds, the
citation index and astronomy) - respected to this day by the wearing of caps and
gowns originally derived from learned Muslim scholars' attire at graduations.
After the Renaissance consolidation of knowledge began to challenge some
traditional doctrines in both science and theology, the Protestant Reformation
began, as German priest Martin Luther attacked Papal authority. Simultaneously the
turbulent love life, desire for a son, and political ambitions of Henry VIII
sundered the English Church from that same authority and let the English ally more
flexibly in the ensuing religious wars between German and Spanish rulers. The
Reconquista of Spain and Portugal in 1492 and opening of the Americas to European
colonization by Christopher Columbus simultaneously ended the Crusades east and
began European colonization of the Americas west. However, religious wars
continued until the Thirty Years War,[2], which was ended by the Peace of
Westphalia; the Glorious Revolution consolidated that consensus.
The combination of resource inflows from the New World and the Industrial
Revolution, beginning in Great Britain, allowed the development of a new economy
based more on manufacturing and trade and less on indigenous subsistence
agriculture.[3] The early British Empire split as its colonies in America revolted
to establish a representative government. Political change in continental Europe
was spurred by the French Revolution, as people cried out for libert�, egalit�,
fraternit�. The ensuing French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, conquered and reformed
the social structure of the continent through war up to 1815. As more and more
small property holders were granted the vote, in France and the UK, socialist and
trade union activity developed and revolution gripped Europe in 1848. The last
vestiges of serfdom were abolished in Austria-Hungary in 1848. Russian serfdom was
abolished in 1861.[4] The Balkan nations began to regain their independence from
the Ottoman Empire. After the Franco-Prussian War, Italy and Germany were formed
from the groups of principalities in 1870 and 1871. Conflict spread across the
globe, in a chase for empires, until the search climaxed with the outbreak of
World War I. In the desperation of war and extreme poverty, the Russian Revolution
promised "peace, bread and land", and radically altered the politics of Eastern
Europe, and the world, up to the present day. The defeat of Germany came at the
price of economic destruction, codified into the Treaty of Versailles, manifested
in the Great Depression and the return to a Second World War. With the victory of
capitalism and communism over fascism Western Europe now formed a free trade area,
divided by the former Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union, which had formed a complex
of communist police states. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Europe signed a new
treaty of union, which, as of 2007, encompasses 27 European countries with a
population of over 400 million people. NATO, a post World War II military
organization, also expanded to include states up to the border of Russia - the
most unified and militarily dominant Europe since the first century Roman Empire.
History of Europe Timeline
360 BC Plato attacks Athenian democracy in the Republic.
323 BC Alexander the Great dies and his Macedonian Empire fragments.
44 BC Julius Caesar is murdered. The Roman Republic drawing to a close.
27 BC Establishment of the Roman Empire under Octavian.
AD 330 Constantine makes Constantinople into his capital, a new Rome.
395 Following the death of Theodosius I, the Empire is permanently split into
eastern and western halves.
527 Justinian I is crowned emperor of Byzantium.
800 Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor.
1054 Start of the East-West Schism, which divides the Christian church for
centuries.
1066 Successful Norman Invasion of England by William the Conqueror.
1095 Pope Urban II calls for the First Crusade.
1340 Black Death kills a third of Europe's population.
1337 - 1453 The Hundred Years War
1453 Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
1492 Christopher Columbus lands in the New World.
1498 Leonardo da Vinci paints The Last Supper in Milan, as the Renaissance
flourishes.
1517 Martin Luther nails his demands for Reformation to the door of the church in
Wittenberg.
1648 The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War.
1789 The French Revolution.
1815 Following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte the Treaty of Vienna is signed.
1860s Russia emancipates its serfs and Karl Marx completes the first volume
of Das Kapital.
1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated and World War I begins.
1945 The World War II ends with Europe in ruins.
1989 - 1992 The Berlin Wall comes down and the Treaty of the European Union
is signed in Maastricht.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Prehistory
* 2 Classical Antiquity
o 2.1 Ancient Greece
o 2.2 The rise of Rome
o 2.3 Late Antiquity and Migration period
o 2.4 Decline of the Roman Empire
* 3 Middle Ages
o 3.1 Early Middle Ages
+ 3.1.1 A Byzantine light
+ 3.1.2 Feudal Christendom
o 3.2 High Middle Ages
+ 3.2.1 A divided church
+ 3.2.2 Holy wars
o 3.3 Late Middle Ages
* 4 Early Modern Europe
o 4.1 Renaissance
o 4.2 Reformation
o 4.3 Exploration and Conquest
o 4.4 Enlightenment
* 5 1789 to 1914
o 5.1 Industrial revolution
o 5.2 Political revolution
o 5.3 Nations rising
o 5.4 Empires
* 6 1914 to 1991
o 6.1 Apocalypse
o 6.2 Cold War
* 7 Recent history
* 8 See also
* 9 References
* 10 External links
[edit] Prehistory
Main article: Prehistoric Europe
Further information: Palaeolithic Europe, Mesolithic Europe, Neolithic Europe,
Stone Age, Bronze Age Europe, and Iron age Europe
Europe's physical landscape
Homo erectus and Neanderthals migrated from Africa to Europe after the emergence
of modern humans, Homo sapiens. The bones of the earliest Europeans are found in
Dmanisi, Georgia, dated at 1.8 million years before the present. The earliest
appearance of anatomically modern people in Europe has been dated to 35,000 BC.
Evidence of permanent settlement dates from the 7th millennium BC in the Balkans.
The Neolithic reached Central Europe in the 6th millennium BC and parts of
Northern Europe in the 5th and 4th millennium BC. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
5508-2750 BC was the first big civilization in Europe and among the earliest in
the world.
Starting from Neolithic we have the civilization of the Camunni in Valle Camonica,
Italy, that left to us more than 350,000 petroglyphs, the biggest site in Europe.
Also known as the Copper Age, European Chalcolithic is a time of changes and
confusion. The most relevant fact is the infiltration and invasion of large parts
of the territory by people originating from Central Asia, considered by mainstream
scholars to be the original Indo-Europeans, although there are again several
theories in dispute. Other phenomena are the expansion of Megalithism and the
appearance of the first significant economic stratification and, related to this,
the first known monarchies in the Balkan region. The first well-known literate
civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans of the island of Crete and later
the Mycenaens in the adjacent parts of Greece, starting at the beginning of the
2nd millennium BC.
Though the use of iron was known to the Aegean peoples about 1100 BCE, it didn't
reach Central Europe before 800 BCE, giving way to the Hallstatt culture, an Iron
Age evolution of the culture of the Urn Fields. Probably as by-product of this
technological peculiarity of the Indo-Europeans, soon after, they clearly
consolidate their positions in Italy and Iberia, penetrating deep inside those
peninsulas (Rome founded in 753 BCE).
The Greeks and the Romans left a legacy in Europe which is evident in current
language, thought, law and minds. Ancient Greece was a collection of city-states,
out of which the original form of democracy developed. Athens was the most
powerful and developed city, and a cradle of learning from the time of Pericles.
Citizens forums debated and legislated policy of the state, and from here arose
some of the most notable classical philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, the last of whom taught Alexander the Great. The king of the Greek
kingdom of Macedon, Alexander's military campaigns spread Hellenistic culture and
learning to the banks of the River Indus. But the Roman Republic, strengthened
through victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars was rising in the region. Greek
wisdom passed into Roman institutions, as Athens itself was absorbed under the
banner of the Senate and People of Rome (Senatus Populusque Romanus). The Romans
expanded from Arabia to Britannia. In 44 BC as it approached its height, its
leader Julius Caesar was murdered on suspicion of subverting the Republic, to
become dictator. In the ensuing turmoil, Octavian usurped the reins of power and
bought the Roman Senate. While proclaiming the rebirth of the Republic, he had in
fact ushered in the transfer of the Roman state from a republic to an empire,
Roman Empire.
The Hellenic city-states founded a large number of colonies on the shores of the
Black Sea and the Mediterranean sea, Asia Minor, Sicily and Southern Italy in
Magna Graecia, but in the 5th century BC their eastward expansions led to
retaliation from the Achaemenid Persian Empire. In the Greco-Persian Wars, the
Hellenic city-states formed an alliance and defeated the Persian Empire at the
Battle of Plataea, repelling the Persian invasions. The Greeks formed the Delian
League to continue fighting Persia, but Athens' position as leader of this league
led to Sparta forming the rival Peloponnesian League. The two leagues began the
Peloponnesian War over leadership of Greece, leaving the Peloponnesian League as
the victor. Discontent with the Spartan hegemony that followed led to the
Corinthian War where an alliance led by Thebes crushed Sparta at the Battle of
Leuctra. Continued Hellenic infighting made Greek city states easy prey for king
Philip II of Macedon, who united all the Greek city states. The campaigns of his
son Alexander the Great spread Greek culture into Persia, Egypt and India, but
also favoured contact with the older learnings of those countries, opening up a
new period of development, known as Hellenism. Alexander died in 323 BC, splitting
his empire into many Hellenistic civilizations.
Much of Greek learning was assimilated by the nascent Roman state as it expanded
outward from Italy, taking advantage of its enemies' inability to unite: the only
real challenge to Roman ascent came from the Phoenician colony of Carthage, and
its defeat in the end of the 3rd century BC marked the start of Roman hegemony.
First governed by kings, then as a senatorial republic (the Roman Republic), Rome
finally became an empire at the end of the 1st century BC, under Augustus and his
authoritarian successors. The Roman Empire had its centre in the Mediterranean
Sea, controlling all the countries on its shores; the northern border was marked
by the Rhine and Danube rivers. Under emperor Trajan (2nd century AD) the empire
reached its maximum expansion, controlling approximately 5,900,000 km� (2,300,000
sq mi) of land surface, including Britain, Romania and parts of Mesopotamia. The
empire brought peace, civilization and an efficient centralized government to the
subject territories, but in the 3rd century a series of civil wars undermined its
economic and social strength. In the 4th century, the emperors Diocletian and
Constantine were able to slow down the process of decline by splitting the empire
into a Western and an Eastern part. Whereas Diocletian severely persecuted
Christianity, Constantine declared an official end to state-sponsored persecution
of Christians in 313 with the Edict of Milan, thus setting the stage for the
empire to later become officially Christian in about 380 (which would cause the
Church to become an important institution).
When Emperor Constantine had reconquered Rome under the banner of the cross in
312, he soon afterwards issued the Edict of Milan in 313, declaring the legality
of Christianity in the Roman Empire. In addition, Constantine officially shifted
the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to the Greek town of Byzantium, which he
renamed Constantinople ("City of Constantine"). In 395 Theodosius I, who had made
Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, would be the last emperor
to preside over a united Roman Empire, and from thenceforth, the empire would be
split into two halves: the Western Roman Empire centered in Ravenna, and the
Eastern Roman Empire (later to be referred to as the Byzantine Empire) centered in
Constantinople. The Western Roman Empire was repeatedly attacked by marauding
Germanic tribes (see: Migration Period), and in 476 finally fell to the Heruli
chieftan Odoacer. Roman authority in the West completely collapsed and the western
provinces soon became a patchwork of Germanic kingdoms. However, the city of Rome,
under the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church, still remained a centre of
learning, and did much to preserve classic Roman thought in Western Europe. In the
meantime, the Roman emperor in Constantinople, Justinian I, had succeeded in
codifying all Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis (529-534). For the duration
of the 6th century, the Eastern Roman Empire was embroiled in a series of deadly
conflicts, first with the Persian Sassanid Empire (see Roman-Persian Wars),
followed by the onslaught of the arising Islamic Caliphate (Rashidun and Umayyad).
By 650, the provinces of Egypt, Palestine and Syria were lost to the Muslim
forces, followed by Hispania and southern Italy in the 7th and 8th centuries (see
Muslim conquests).
In Western Europe, a political structure was emerging: in the power vacuum left in
the wake of Rome's collapse, localised hierarchies were based on the bond of
common people to the land on which they worked. Tithes were paid to the lord of
the land, and the lord owed duties to the regional prince. The tithes were used to
pay for the state and wars. This was the feudal system, in which new princes and
kings arose, the greatest of which was the Frank ruler Charlemagne. In 800,
Charlemagne, reinforced by his massive territorial conquests, was crowned Emperor
of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) by Pope Leo III, effectively solidifying his
power in western Europe. Charlemagne's reign marked the beginning of a new
Germanic Roman Empire in the west, the Holy Roman Empire. Outside his borders, new
forces were gathering. The Kievan Rus' were marking out their territory, a Great
Moravia was growing, while the Angles and the Saxons were securing their borders.
The Roman Empire had been repeatedly attacked by invading armies from Northern
Europe and in 476, Rome finally fell. Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the
Western Roman Empire surrendered to the Germanic King Odoacer. British historian
Edward Gibbon argued in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) that the
Romans had become decadent, they had lost civic virtue. Gibbon said that the
adoption of Christianity, meant belief in a better life after death, and therefore
made people lazy and indifferent to the present. "From the eighteenth century
onward", Glen W. Bowersock has remarked,[6] "we have been obsessed with the fall:
it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a
symbol for our own fears." It remains one of the greatest historical questions,
and has a tradition rich in scholarly interest.
Some other notable dates are the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of
Theodosius I in 395 (the last time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the
crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes after the withdrawal of the
legions in order to defend Italy against Alaric I, the death of Stilicho in 408,
followed by the disintegration of the western legions, the death of Justinian I,
the last Roman Emperor who tried to reconquer the west, in 565, and the coming of
Islam after 632. Many scholars maintain that rather than a "fall", the changes can
more accurately be described as a complex transformation.[7] Over time many
theories have been proposed on why the Empire fell, or whether indeed it fell at
all.
The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (or
by some scholars, before that) in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early
Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation-states, the
division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the
Italian Renaissance, and the beginnings of European overseas expansion which
allowed for the Columbian Exchange.[8]
The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western
Europe. Many modern European states owe their origins to events unfolding in the
Middle Ages; present European political boundaries are, in many regards, the
result of the military and dynastic achievements during this tumultuous period.
The Early Middle Ages span roughly five centuries from 500 to 1000.[9] During this
period, most of Europe was Christianized, and the "Dark Ages" following the fall
of Rome, the establishment of the Frankish Empire by the 9th century gave rise to
the Carolingian Renaissance on the continent. Europe still remained a backwater
compared to the rising Muslim world, with its vast network of caravan trade, or
India with its Golden Period under the Gupta Empire and the Pratiharas or China,
at this time the world's most populous empire under the Song Dynasty. By AD 1000,
Constantinople had a population of about 300,000, but Rome had a mere 35,000 and
Paris 20,000. Islam had over a dozen major cities stretching from C�rdoba, Spain,
at this time the world's largest city with 450,000 inhabitants, to central Asia.
The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic that afflicted the Byzantine Empire,
including its capital Constantinople, in the years 541�542. It is estimated that
the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the
world.[11][12] It caused Europe's population to drop by around 50% between 541 and
700.[13] It also may have contributed to the success of the Arab
conquests.[14][15]
The Holy Roman Empire emerged around 800, as Charlemagne, king of the Franks, was
crowned by the pope as emperor. His empire based in modern France, the Low
Countries and Germany expanded into modern Hungary, Italy, Bohemia, Lower Saxony
and Spain. He and his father received substantial help from an alliance with the
Pope, who wanted help against the Lombards. The pope was officially a vassal of
the Byzantine Empire, but the Byzantine emperor did (could do) nothing against the
Lombards.
To the east Bulgaria was established in 681 and became the first Slavic country.
The powerful Bulgarian Empire was the main rival of Byzantium for control of the
Balkans for centuries and from the 9th century became the cultural center of
Slavic Europe. Two states, Great Moravia and Kievan Rus', emerged among the
Western and Eastern Slavs respectively in the 9th century. In the late 9th century
and 10th century, northern and western Europe felt the burgeoning power and
influence of the Vikings who raided, traded, conquered and settled swiftly and
efficiently with their advanced sea-going vessels such as the longships. The
Hungarians pillaged mainland Europe, the Pechenegs raided eastern Europe and the
Arabs the south. In the 10th century independent kingdoms were established in
Central Europe, for example, Poland and Kingdom of Hungary. Hungarians had stopped
their pillaging campaigns; prominent nation states also included Croatia and
Serbia in the Balkans. The subsequent period, ending around 1000, saw the further
growth of feudalism, which weakened the Holy Roman Empire.
The slumber of the Dark Ages was shaken by renewed crisis in the Church. In 1054,
a schism, an insoluble split, between the two remaining Christian seats in Rome
and Constantinople.
The High Middle Ages of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries show a rapidly
increasing population of Europe, which brought about great social and political
change from the preceding era. By 1250, the robust population increase greatly
benefited the economy, reaching levels it would not see again in some areas until
the 19th century. From about the year 1000 onwards, Western Europe saw the last of
the barbarian invasions and became more politically organized. The Vikings had
settled in the British Isles, France and elsewhere, whilst Norse Christian
kingdoms were developing in their Scandinavian homelands. The Magyars had ceased
their expansion in the 10th century, and by the year 1000, a Christian Kingdom of
Hungary was recognized in central Europe. With the brief exception of the Mongol
invasions, major barbarian incursions ceased.
In the 11th century, populations north of the Alps began to settle new lands, some
of which had reverted to wilderness after the end of the Roman Empire. In what is
known as the "great clearances," vast forests and marshes of Europe were cleared
and cultivated. At the same time settlements moved beyond the traditional
boundaries of the Frankish Empire to new frontiers in eastern Europe, beyond the
Elbe River, tripling the size of Germany in the process. Crusaders founded
European colonies in the Levant, the majority of the Iberian Peninsula was
conquered from the Moors, and the Normans colonized southern Italy, all part of
the major population increase and resettlement pattern.
The High Middle Ages produced many different forms of intellectual, spiritual and
artistic works. This age saw the rise of modern nation-states in Western Europe
and the ascent of the great Italian city-states. The still-powerful Roman Church
called armies from across Europe to a series of Crusades against the Seljuk Turks,
who occupied the Holy Land. The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle led Thomas
Aquinas and other thinkers to develop the philosophy of Scholasticism. In
architecture, many of the most notable Gothic cathedrals were built or completed
during this era.
The Great Schism between the Western and Eastern Christian Churches was sparked in
1054 by Pope Leo IX asserting authority over three of the seats in the Pentarchy,
in Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Since the mid eighth century, the Byzantine
Empire's borders had been shrinking in the face of Islamic expansion. Antioch had
been wrested back into Byzantine control by 1045, but the resurgent power of the
Roman successors in the West claimed a right and a duty for the lost seats in Asia
and Africa. Pope Leo sparked a further dispute by defending the filioque clause in
the Nicene Creed which the West had adopted customarily. Eastern Orthodox today
state that the 28th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council explicitly proclaimed
the equality of the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople. The Orthodox also state
that the Bishop of Rome has authority only over his own diocese and does not have
any authority outside his diocese. There were other less significant catalysts for
the Schism however, including variance over liturgical. The Schism of Catholic and
Orthodox followed centuries of estrangement between Latin and Greek worlds.
Further changes were set afoot with a redivision of power in Europe. William the
Conqueror, a Duke of Normandy invaded England in 1066. The Norman Conquest was a
pivotal event in English history for several reasons. This linked England more
closely with continental Europe through the introduction of a Norman aristocracy,
thereby lessening Scandinavian influence. It created one of the most powerful
monarchies in Europe and engendered a sophisticated governmental system. Being
based on an island, moreover, England was to develop a powerful navy and trade
relationships that would come to constitute a vast part of the world including
India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many key naval strategic points like
Bermuda, Suez, Hong Kong and especially Gibraltar. These strategic advantages grew
and were to prove decisive until after World War II.
After the East-West Schism, Western Christianity was adopted by newly created
kingdoms of Central Europe: Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. The Roman Catholic Church
developed as a major power, leading to conflicts between the Pope and Emperor. In
1129 AD the Roman Catholic Church established the Inquisition to make Western
Europeans Roman Catholic by force. The Inquisition punished those who practised
heresy (heretics) to make them repent. If they could not do so, the penalty was
death. During this time many Lords and Nobles ruled the church. The Monks of Cluny
worked hard to establish a church where there were no Lords or Nobles ruling it.
They succeeded. Pope Gregory VII continued the work of the monks with 2 main
goals, to rid the church of control by kings and nobles and to increase the power
of the pope. The area of the Roman Catholic Church expanded enormously due to
conversions of Pagan kings (Scandinavia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary), Christian
reconquista of Al-Andalus, and crusades. Most of Europe was Roman Catholic in the
15th century.
The 13th and 14th century, when the Mongol Empire came to power, is often called
the Age of the Mongols. Mongol armies expanded westward under the command of Batu
Khan. Their western conquests included almost all of Russia (save Novgorod, which
became a vassal),[16] Kipchak lands, Hungary, and Poland (Which had remained
sovereign state). Mongolian records indicate that Batu Khan was planning a
complete conquest of the remaining European powers, beginning with a winter attack
on Austria, Italy and Germany, when he was recalled to Mongolia upon the death of
Great Khan �gedei. Most historians believe only his death prevented the complete
conquest of Europe[citation needed]. In Russia, the Mongols of the Golden Horde
ruled for almost 250 years.
The Late Middle Ages span the 14th and 15th centuries. Around 1300, centuries of
European prosperity and growth came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues,
such as the Great Famine of 1315�1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population
by as much as half according to some estimates. Along with depopulation came
social unrest and endemic warfare. France and England experienced serious peasant
risings: the Jacquerie, the Peasants' Revolt, and the Hundred Years' War. To add
to the many problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered
by the Great Schism. Collectively these events are sometimes called the Crisis of
the Late Middle Ages.[17]
Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress within
the arts and sciences. A renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts led to
what has later been termed the Italian Renaissance. Toward the end of the period,
an era of discovery began. The growth of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the
fall of Constantinople in 1453, cut off trading possibilities with the east.
Europeans were forced to discover new trading routes, as was the case with
Columbus�s travel to the Americas in 1492, and Vasco da Gama�s circumnavigation of
India and Africa in 1498.
Monks infected with plague given a priest's blessing
One of the largest catastrophes to have hit Europe was the Black Death. There were
numerous outbreaks, but the most severe was in the mid-1300s and is estimated to
have killed a third of Europe's population.
Beginning in the 14th century, the Baltic Sea became one of the most important
trade routes. The Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading cities, facilitated the
absorption of vast areas of Poland, Lithuania and other Baltic countries into the
economy of Europe. This fed the growth of powerful states in Eastern Europe
including Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and Muscovy. The conventional end
of the Middle Ages is usually associated with the fall of the city Constantinople
and of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Turks made the city
the capital of their Ottoman Empire, which lasted until 1922 and also included
Egypt, Syria and most of the Balkans. The Ottoman wars in Europe, also sometimes
referred as the Turkish wars, marked an essential part of the history of
southeastern Europe.
The Early Modern period spans the three centuries between the Middle Ages and the
Industrial Revolution, roughly from 1500 to 1800, or from the discovery of the New
World in 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789. The period is characterized by the
rise to importance of science and increasingly rapid technological progress,
secularized civic politics and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their
rise, beginning in northern Italian republics such as Genoa. The early modern
period also saw the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. As
such, the early modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance,
in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom and the power of the
Catholic Church. The period includes the Protestant Reformation, the disastrous
Thirty Years' War, the European colonization of the Americas and the European
witch-hunts.
[edit] Renaissance
Main article: Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European
intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to
the north and west during a cultural lag of some two and a half centuries, its
influence affected literature, philosophy, art, politics, science, history,
religion, and other aspects of intellectual enquiry.
The Renaissance was inspired by the growth in study of Latin and Greek texts and
the admiration of the Greco-Roman era as a golden age. This prompted many artists
and writers to begin drawing from Roman and Greek examples for their works, but
there was also much innovation in this period, especially by multi-faceted artists
such as Leonardo da Vinci. Many Roman and Greek texts were already in existence in
the European Middle Ages. The monks had copied and recopied the old texts and
housed them for a millennium, but they had regarded them in another light. Many
more flowed in with the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following
the Fall of Constantinople while other Greek and Roman texts came from Islamic
sources, who had inherited the ancient Greek and Roman texts and knowledge through
conquest, even attempting to improve upon some of them.[citation needed] With the
usual pride of advanced thinkers, the Humanists saw their repossession of a great
past as a Renaissance -- a rebirth of civilization itself.
Important political precedents were also set in this period. Niccol� Machiavelli's
political writing in The Prince influenced later absolutism and real-politik. Also
important were the many patrons who ruled states and used the artistry of the
Renaissance as a sign of their power.
[edit] Reformation
Main article: Protestant Reformation
The Ninety-Five Theses of German monk Martin Luther which broke Papal autocracy
During this period corruption in the Catholic Church led to a sharp backlash in
the Protestant Reformation. It gained many followers especially among princes and
kings seeking a stronger state by ending the influence of the Catholic Church.
Figures other than Martin Luther began to emerge as well like John Calvin whose
Calvinism had influence in many countries and King Henry VIII of England who broke
away from the Catholic Church in England and set up the Anglican Church(Contrary
to polular belief this only half true, his daughter Queen Elizabeth finished the
organization of the church). These religious divisions brought on a wave of wars
inspired and driven by religion but also by the ambitious monarchs in Western
Europe who were becoming more centralized and powerful.
The Protestant Reformation also led to a strong reform movement in the Catholic
Church called the Counter-Reformation, which aimed to reduce corruption as well as
to improve and strengthen Catholic Dogma. An important group in the Catholic
Church who emerged from this movement were the Jesuits who helped keep Eastern
Europe within the Catholic fold. Still, the Catholic Church was somewhat weakened
by the Reformation, portions of Europe were no longer under its sway and kings in
the remaining Catholic countries began to take control of the Church institutions
within their kingdoms.
The numerous wars did not prevent the new states from exploring and conquering
wide portions of the world, particularly in Asia (Siberia) and the newly-
discovered Americas. In the 15th century, Portugal led the way in geographical
exploration, followed by Spain in the early 16th century. They were the first
states to set up colonies in America and trade stations on the shores of Africa
and Asia, but they were soon followed by France, England and the Netherlands. In
1552, Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible conquered two major Tatar khanates, Kazan and
Astrakhan, and the Yermak's voyage of 1580 led to the annexation of Siberia into
Russia.
Colonial expansion proceeded in the following centuries (with some setbacks, such
as successful wars of independence in the British American colonies and then later
Mexico, Brazil, and others surrounding the Napoleonic Wars). Spain had control of
part of North America and a great deal of Central America and South America, the
Caribbean and the Philippines; Britain took the whole of Australia and New
Zealand, most of India, and large parts of Africa and North America; France held
parts of Canada and India (nearly all of which was lost to Britain in 1763),
Indochina, large parts of Africa and Caribbean islands; the Netherlands gained the
East Indies (now Indonesia) and islands in the Caribbean; Portugal obtained Brazil
and several territories in Africa and Asia; and later, powers such as Germany,
Belgium, Italy and Russia acquired further colonies.
This expansion helped the economy of the countries owning them. Trade flourished,
because of the minor stability of the empires. By the late 16th century American
silver accounted for one-fifth of the Spain's total budget.[18] The European
countries fought wars that were largely paid for by the money coming in from the
colonies. Nevertheless, the profits of the slave trade and of plantations of the
West Indies, most profitable of all the British colonies at that time, amounted to
less than 5% of the British Empire's economy (but was generally more profitable)
at the time of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.
[edit] Enlightenment
Main article: Age of Enlightenment
The Battle of N�rdlingen in the Thirty Years' War.
Throughout the early part of this period, capitalism (through Mercantilism) was
replacing feudalism as the principal form of economic organization, at least in
the western half of Europe. The expanding colonial frontiers resulted in a
Commercial Revolution. The period is noted for the rise of modern science and the
application of its findings to technological improvements, which culminated in the
Industrial Revolution. Iberian (Spain and Portugal) exploits of the New World,
which started with Christopher Columbus's venture westward in search of a quicker
trade route to the East Indies in 1492, was soon challenged by English and
French[19] exploits in North America. New forms of trade and expanding horizons
made new forms of government, law and economics necessary.
The Reformation had profound effects on the unity of Europe. Not only were nations
divided one from another by their religious orientation, but some states were torn
apart internally by religious strife, avidly fostered by their external enemies.
France suffered this fate in the 16th century in the series of conflicts known as
the French Wars of Religion, which ended in the triumph of the Bourbon Dynasty.
England avoided this fate for a while and settled down under Elizabeth to a
moderate Anglicanism. Much of modern day Germany was made up of numerous small
sovereign states under the theoretical framework of the Holy Roman Empire, which
was further divided along internally drawn sectarian lines. The Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth is notable in this time for its religious indifference and a general
immunity to the horrors of European religious strife.
The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the
territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European powers.
Beginning as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy
Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a general war involving much of Europe,
for reasons not necessarily related to religion.[20] The major impact of the war,
in which mercenary armies were extensively used, was the devastation of entire
regions scavenged bare by the foraging armies. Episodes of widespread famine and
disease devastated the population of the German states and, to a lesser extent,
the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting many of the regional powers
involved. Between one-fourth and one-third of the German population perished from
direct military causes or from illness and starvation related to the war.[21] The
war lasted for thirty years, but the conflicts that triggered it continued
unresolved for a much longer time.
After the Peace of Westphalia, Europe's borders were still stable in 1708
After the Peace of Westphalia which ended the war in favour of nations deciding
their own religious allegiance, Absolutism became the norm of the continent, while
parts of Europe experimented with constitutions foreshadowed by the English Civil
War and particularly the Glorious Revolution. European military conflict did not
cease, but had less disruptive effects on the lives of Europeans. In the advanced
north-west, the Enlightenment gave a philosophical underpinning to the new
outlook, and the continued spread of literacy, made possible by the printing
press, created new secular forces in thought. Again, the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth would be an exception to this rule, with its unique quasi-democratic
Golden Freedom.
Eastern Europe was an arena of conflict for domination between Sweden, the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. This period saw a gradual decline
of these three powers which were eventually replaced by new enlightened absolutist
monarchies, Russia, Prussia and Austria. By the turn of the 19th century they
became new powers, having divided Poland between them, with Sweden and Turkey
having experienced substantial territorial losses to Russia and Austria
respectively. Numerous Polish Jews emigrated to Western Europe, founding Jewish
communities in places where they had been expelled from during the Middle Ages.
The "long nineteenth century", from 1789 to 1914 sees the drastic social,
political and economic changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution, the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and following the re-organization of the
political map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the rise of
Nationalism, the rise of the Russian Empire and the peak of the British Empire,
paralleled by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Finally, the rise of the German
Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire initiated the course of events that
culminated in the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transport had a profound
effect on socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain and subsequently spread
throughout Europe and North America and eventually the world, a process that
continues as industrialisation. In the later part of the 1700s the manual labour
based economy of the Kingdom of Great Britain began to be replaced by one
dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It started with the
mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques
and the increased use of refined coal. Once started it spread. Trade expansion was
enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The
introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery
(mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production
capacity.[22] The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades
of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for
manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread throughout Western Europe
and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world.
The impact of this change on society was enormous.[23]
See also: Steam engine, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx,
History of economic thought, and History of rail transport
At the time the assembly wanted to create a constitutional monarchy, and over the
following two years passed various laws including the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen, the abolition of feudalism, and a fundamental change in
the relationship between France and Rome. At first the king went along with these
changes and enjoyed reasonable popularity with the people, but as anti-royalism
increased along with threat of foreign invasion, the king, stripped of his power,
decided to flee along with his family. He was recognized and brought back to
Paris. On 12 January 1793, having been convicted of treason, he was executed.
On 20 September 1792 the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared
France a republic. Due to the emergency of war the National Convention created the
Committee of Public Safety, controlled by Maximilien Robespierre of the Jacobin
Club, to act as the country's executive. Under Robespierre the committee initiated
the Reign of Terror, during which up to 40,000 people were executed in Paris,
mainly nobles, and those convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, often on the
flimsiest of evidence. Elsewhere in the country, counter-revolutionary
insurrections were brutally suppressed. The regime was overthrown in the coup of 9
Thermidor (27 July 1794) and Robespierre was executed. The regime which followed
ended the Terror and relaxed Robespierre's more extreme policies.
The Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon was defeated by the Duke of Wellington in
1815
Napoleon Bonaparte was France's most successful general in the Revolutionary wars,
having conquered large parts of Italy and forced the Austrians to sue for peace.
In 1799 he returned from Egypt and on 18 Brumaire (9 November) overthrew the
government, replacing it with the Consulate, in which he was First Consul. On 2
December 1804, after a failed assassination plot, he crowned himself Emperor. In
1805, Napoleon planned to invade Britain, but a renewed British alliance with
Russia and Austria (Third Coalition), forced him to turn his attention towards the
continent, while at the same time failure to lure the superior British fleet away
from the English Channel, ending in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of
Trafalgar on 21 October put an end to hopes of an invasion of Britain. On 2
December 1805, Napoleon defeated a numerically superior Austro-Russian army at
Austerlitz, forcing Austria's withdrawal from the coalition (see Treaty of
Pressburg) and dissolving the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806, a Fourth Coalition was
set up, on 14 October Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena-
Auerstedt, marched through Germany and defeated the Russians on 14 June 1807 at
Friedland, the Treaties of Tilsit divided Europe between France and Russia and
created the Duchy of Warsaw.
On 12 June 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with a Grande Arm�e of nearly 700,000
troops. After the measured victories at Smolensk and Borodino Napoleon occupied
Moscow, only to find it burned by the retreating Russian Army, he was forced to
withdraw, on the march back his army was harassed by Cossacks, and suffered
disease and starvation. Only 20,000 of his men survived the campaign. By 1813 the
tide had begun to turn from Napoleon, having been defeated by a seven nation army
at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. He was forced to abdicate after the Six
Days Campaign and the occupation of Paris, under the Treaty of Fontainebleau he
was exiled to the Island of Elba. He returned to France on 1 March 1815 (see
Hundred Days), raised an army, but was comprehensively defeated by a British and
Prussian force at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
After the defeat of revolutionary France, the other great powers tried to restore
the situation which existed before 1789. In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, the
major powers of Europe managed to produce a peaceful balance of power among the
empires after the Napoleonic wars (despite the occurrence of internal
revolutionary movements) under the Metternich system. However, their efforts were
unable to stop the spread of revolutionary movements: the middle classes had been
deeply influenced by the ideals of democracy of the French revolution, the
Industrial Revolution brought important economical and social changes, the lower
classes started to be influenced by socialist, communist and anarchistic ideas
(especially those summarized by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto), and the
preference of the new capitalists became Liberalism. Further instability came from
the formation of several nationalist movements (in Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary
etc.), seeking national unification and/or liberation from foreign rule. As a
result, the period between 1815 and 1871 saw a large number of revolutionary
attempts and independence wars. Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, returned from
exile in England in 1848 to be elected to the French parliament, and then as
"Prince President" in a coup d'�tat elected himself Emperor, a move approved later
by a large majority of the French electorate. He helped in the unification of
Italy by fighting the Austrian Empire and fought the Crimean War with England and
the Ottoman Empire against Russia. His empire collapsed after an embarrassing
defeat for France at the hands of Prussia in which he was captured. France then
became a weak republic which refused to negotiate and was finished by Prussia in a
few months. In Versailles, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of
Germany, and modern Germany was born. Even though the revolutionaries were often
defeated, most European states had become constitutional (rather than absolute)
monarchies by 1871, and Germany and Italy had developed into nation states. The
19th century also saw the British Empire emerge as the world's first global power
due in a large part to the Industrial Revolution and victory in the Napoleonic
Wars.
[edit] Empires
Main article: Colonial Empires
Further information: History of colonialism, Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Empire,
Russian Empire, French colonial empire, British Empire, and Dutch Empire
Paris with the World Fair of 1884
The peace would only last until the Ottoman Empire had declined enough to become a
target for the others. (See History of the Balkans.) This instigated the Crimean
War in 1854 and began a tenser period of minor clashes among the globe-spanning
empires of Europe that set the stage for the First World War. It changed a third
time with the end of the various wars that turned the Kingdom of Sardinia and the
Kingdom of Prussia into the Italian and German nation-states, significantly
changing the balance of power in Europe. From 1870, the Bismarckian hegemony on
Europe put France in a critical situation. It slowly rebuilt its relationships,
seeking alliances with Russia and Britain, to control the growing power of
Germany. In this way, two opposing sides formed in Europe, improving their
military forces and alliances year-by-year.
[edit] 1914 to 1991
See also: Twentieth century
Trenches became one of the most striking symbols of World War I
The "short twentieth century", from 1914 to 1991, sees World War I, World War II
and the Cold War, including the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and of the Soviet
Union. These disastrous events spell the end of the European Colonial empires and
initiated widespread decolonization. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 to
1991 leaves the United States as the world's single superpower and triggers the
fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany and an accelerated process
of a European integration that is ongoing.
[edit] Apocalypse
Main articles: World War I, Russian Revolution (1917), Treaty of Versailles, Great
Depression, and World War II
After the relative peace of most of the 19th century, the rivalry between European
powers exploded in 1914, when World War I started. Over 60 million European
soldiers were mobilized from 1914 � 1918.[24] On one side were Germany, Austria-
Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria (the Central Powers/Triple Alliance),
while on the other side stood Serbia and the Triple Entente - the loose coalition
of France, the United Kingdom and Russia, which were joined by Italy in 1915 and
by the United States in 1917. Despite the defeat of Russia in 1917 (the war was
one of the major causes of the Russian Revolution, leading to the formation of the
communist Soviet Union), the Entente finally prevailed in the autumn of 1918.
In the Treaty of Versailles (1919) the winners imposed relatively hard conditions
on Germany and recognized the new states (such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Austria, Yugoslavia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) created in central
Europe out of the defunct German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, supposedly
on the basis of national self-determination. Most of those countries engaged in
local wars, the largest of them being the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921). In the
following decades, fear of communism and the Great Depression of 1929-1933 led to
the rise of extreme nationalist governments � sometimes loosely grouped under the
category of fascism � in Italy (1922), Germany (1933), Spain (after a civil war
ending in 1939) and other countries such as Hungary.
"Peace, Bread and Land" was the revolutionary message Bolshevik party and Lenin's
message to a Russian people, ravaged by war
After allying with Mussolini's Italy in the "Pact of Steel" and signing a non-
aggression pact with the Soviet Union, the German dictator Adolf Hitler started
World War II on 1 September 1939 attacking Poland and following a military build-
up throughout the late 1930s. After initial successes (mainly the conquest of
western Poland, much of Scandinavia, France and the Balkans before 1941) the Axis
powers began to over-extend themselves in 1941. Hitler's ideological foes were the
Communists in Russia but because of the German failure to defeat the United
Kingdom and the Italian failures in North Africa and the Mediterranean the Axis
forces were split between garrisoning western Europe and Scandinavia and also
attacking Africa. Thus, the attack on the Soviet Union (which together with
Germany had partitioned central Europe in 1939-1940) was not pressed with
sufficient strength. Despite initial successes, the German army was stopped close
to Moscow in December 1941.
Over the next year the tide was turned and the Germans started to suffer a series
of defeats, for example in the siege of Stalingrad and at Kursk. Meanwhile, Japan
(allied to Germany and Italy since September 1940) attacked the British in
Southeast Asia and the United States in Hawaii on 7 December 1941; Germany then
completed its over-extension by declaring war on the United States. War raged
between the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allied Forces (British
Empire, Soviet Union, and the United States). Allied Forces won in North Africa,
invaded Italy in 1943, and invaded occupied France in 1944. In the spring of 1945
Germany itself was invaded from the east by the Soviet Union and from the west by
the other Allies respectively; Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered in
early May ending the war in Europe.
This period was marked also by industrialized and planned genocide. Germany began
the systematic genocide of over 11 million people, including the majority of the
Jews of Europe and Gypsies as well as millions of Polish and Soviet Slavs. Soviet
system of forced labour, expulsions and great hunger in Ukraine had similar death
toll. During and after the war millions of civilians were affected by forced
population transfers.
World War I and especially World War II ended the pre-eminent position of western
Europe. The map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided as it
became the principal zone of contention in the Cold War between the two power
blocs, the Western countries and the Eastern bloc. The United States and Western
Europe (the United Kingdom, France, Italy, The Netherlands, West Germany, etc.)
established the NATO alliance as a protection against a possible Soviet invasion.
Later, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR,
Hungary, Poland, and Romania) established the Warsaw Pact as a protection against
a possible U.S. invasion.
In 1992, the Treaty on European Union was signed by members of the European Union
(EU). This transformed the 'European Project' from being the Economic Community
with certain political aspects, into the Union of deeper cooperation.
In 1985 the Schengen Agreement created largely open borders without passport
controls between those states joining it.[25]
A common currency for most EU member states, the euro, was established
electronically in 1999, officially tying all of the currencies of each
participating nation to each other. The new currency was put into circulation in
2002 and the old currencies were phased out. Only three countries of the then 15
member states decided not to join the euro (The United Kingdom, Denmark and
Sweden). In 2004 the EU undertook a major eastward enlargement, admitting 10 new
member states (eight of which were former communist states). Two more joined in
2007, establishing a union of 27 nations.
The Balkans are the part of Europe most likely to join the EU next, with Croatia
notably hoping to join before 2010.
Johannes Kepler (pronounced /'k?pl?/) (December 27, 1571 � November 15, 1630) was
a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th
century Scientific revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of
planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia
nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astrononomy. They also provided
one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz,
Austria, an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the court mathematician to
Emperor Rudolf II, a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to
General Wallenstein. He also did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented
an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and
helped to legitimize the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo
Galilei.
Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and
astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of
mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy).
Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work,
motivated by the religious conviction that God had created the world according to
an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason.[1]
Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics",[2] as "an excursion
into Aristotle's Metaphysics",[3] and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the
Heavens",[4] transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating
astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.[5]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Early years
* 2 Graz (1594�1600)
o 2.1 Mysterium Cosmographicum
o 2.2 Marriage to Barbara M�ller
o 2.3 Other research
* 3 Prague (1600�1612)
o 3.1 Work for Tycho Brahe
o 3.2 Advisor to Emperor Rudolph II
o 3.3 Astronomiae Pars Optica
o 3.4 The Supernova of 1604
o 3.5 Astronomia nova
o 3.6 Dioptrice, Somnium manuscript and other work
o 3.7 Personal and political troubles
* 4 Linz and elsewhere (1612�1630)
o 4.1 Second marriage
o 4.2 Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, calendars and the witch trial of
his mother
o 4.3 Harmonices Mundi
o 4.4 Rudolphine Tables and his last years
* 5 Reception of his astronomy
* 6 Historical and cultural legacy
* 7 Works
* 8 See also
o 8.1 Named in his honor
o 8.2 In popular culture
* 9 Notes and references
* 10 Sources
* 11 External links
Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, at the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt
(now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-W�rttemberg, 30 km
west of Stuttgart's center). His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor
of that town, but by the time Johannes was born, the Kepler family fortune was on
the decline. His father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a
mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was
believed to have died in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. His mother
Katharina Guldenmann, an inn-keeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist who was
later tried for witchcraft. Born prematurely, Johannes claimed to have been a weak
and sickly child. He was, however, a brilliant child; he often impressed travelers
at his grandfather's inn with his phenomenal mathematical faculty.[6]
He was introduced to astronomy at an early age, and developed a love for it that
would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Great Comet of 1577,
writing that he "was taken by [his] mother to a high place to look at it."[7] At
age nine, he observed another astronomical event, the Lunar eclipse of 1580,
recording that he remembered being "called outdoors" to see it and that the moon
"appeared quite red".[7] However, childhood smallpox left him with weak vision and
crippled hands, limiting his ability in the observational aspects of astronomy.[8]
In 1589, after moving through grammar school, Latin school, and lower and higher
seminary in the W�rttemberg state-run Protestant education system, Kepler began
attending the University of T�bingen as a theology student, and studied philosophy
under Vitus M�ller[9]. He proved himself to be a superb mathematician and earned a
reputation as a skillful astrologer, casting horoscopes for fellow students. Under
the instruction of Michael Maestlin, he learned both the Ptolemaic system and the
Copernican system of planetary motion. He became a Copernican at that time. In a
student disputation, he defended heliocentrism from both a theoretical and
theological perspective, maintaining that the Sun was the principal source of
motive power in the universe.[10] Despite his desire to become a minister, near
the end of his studies Kepler was recommended for a position as teacher of
mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz, Austria (later the
University of Graz). He accepted the position in April 1594, at the age of 23.[11]
With the support of his mentor Michael Maestlin, Kepler received permission from
the T�bingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the
Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable description of
the Copernican system as well as Kepler�s new ideas. Mysterium was published late
in 1596, and Kepler received his copies and began sending them to prominent
astronomers and patrons early in 1597; it was not widely read, but it established
Kepler�s reputation as a highly skilled astronomer. The effusive dedication, to
powerful patrons as well as to the men who controlled his position in Graz, also
provided a crucial doorway into the patronage system.[14]
Though the details would be modified in light of his later work, Kepler never
relinquished the Platonist polyhedral-spherist cosmology of Mysterium
Cosmographicum. His subsequent main astronomical works were in some sense only
further developments of it, concerned with finding more precise inner and outer
dimensions for the spheres by calculating the eccentricities of the planetary
orbits within it. In 1621 Kepler published an expanded second edition of
Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections
and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication.[15]
In the first years of their marriage, the Keplers had two children (Heinrich and
Susanna), both of whom died in infancy. In 1602, they had a daughter (Susanna); in
1604, a son (Friedrich); and in 1607, another son (Ludwig).[17]
Following the publication of Mysterium and with the blessing of the Graz school
inspectors, Kepler began an ambitious program to extend and elaborate his work. He
planned four additional books: one on the stationary aspects of the universe (the
Sun and the fixed stars); one on the planets and their motions; one on the
physical nature of planets and the formation of geographical features (focused
especially on Earth); and one on the effects of the heavens on the Earth, to
include atmospheric optics, meteorology and astrology.[18]
He also sought the opinions of many of the astronomers to whom he had sent
Mysterium, among them Reimarus Ursus (Nicolaus Reimers B�r) � the imperial
mathematician to Rudolph II and a bitter rival of Tycho Brahe. Ursus did not reply
directly, but republished Kepler's flattering letter to pursue his priority
dispute over (what is now called) the Tychonic system with Tycho. Despite this
black mark, Tycho also began corresponding with Kepler, starting with a harsh but
legitimate critique of Kepler's system; among a host of objections, Tycho took
issue with the use of inaccurate numerical data taken from Copernicus. Through
their letters, Tycho and Kepler discussed a broad range of astronomical problems,
dwelling on lunar phenomena and Copernican theory (particularly its theological
viability). But without the significantly more accurate data of Tycho's
observatory, Kepler had no way to address many of these issues.[19]
Instead, he turned his attention to chronology and "harmony," the numerological
relationships among music, mathematics and the physical world, and their
astrological consequences. By assuming the Earth to possess a soul (a property he
would later invoke to explain how the sun causes the motion of planets), he
established a speculative system connecting astrological aspects and astronomical
distances to weather and other earthly phenomena. By 1599, however, he again felt
his work limited by the inaccuracy of available data � just as growing religious
tension was also threatening his continued employment in Graz. In December of that
year, Tycho invited Kepler to visit him in Prague; on January 1, 1600 (before he
even received the invitation), Kepler set off in the hopes that Tycho's patronage
could solve his philosophical problems as well as his social and financial
ones.[20]
On February 4, 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe and his assistants Franz Tengnagel and
Longomontanus at Ben�tky nad Jizerou (35 km from Prague), the site where Tycho's
new observatory was being constructed. Over the next two months he stayed as a
guest, analyzing some of Tycho's observations of Mars; Tycho guarded his data
closely, but was impressed by Kepler's theoretical ideas and soon allowed him more
access. Kepler planned to test his theory from Mysterium Cosmographicum based on
the Mars data, but he estimated that the work would take up to two years (since he
was not allowed to simply copy the data for his own use). With the help of
Johannes Jessenius, Kepler attempted to negotiate a more formal employment
arrangement with Tycho, but negotiations broke down in an angry argument and
Kepler left for Prague on April 6. Kepler and Tycho soon reconciled and eventually
reached an agreement on salary and living arrangements, and in June, Kepler
returned home to Graz to collect his family.[21]
On August 2, 1600, after refusing to convert to Catholicism, Kepler and his family
were banished from Graz; several months later, Kepler returned, now with the rest
of his household, to Prague. Through most of 1601, he was supported directly by
Tycho, who assigned him to analyzing planetary observations and writing a tract
against Tycho's (now deceased) rival Ursus. In September, Tycho secured him a
commission as a collaborator on the new project he had proposed to the emperor:
the Rudolphine Tables that should replace the Prussian Tables of Erasmus Reinhold.
Two days after Tycho's unexpected death on October 24, 1601, Kepler was appointed
his successor as imperial mathematician with the responsibility to complete his
unfinished work. He illegally[clarification needed] appropriated Tycho's
observations, the property of his heirs, which subsequently led to four year
delays each to the publications of two of his works whilst he negotiated copyright
permissions for the use of Tycho's data. The next 11 years as imperial
mathematician would be the most productive of his life.[24]
[edit] Advisor to Emperor Rudolph II
Officially, the only acceptable religious doctrines in Prague were Catholic and
Utraquist, but Kepler's position in the imperial court allowed him to practice his
Lutheran faith unhindered. The emperor nominally provided an ample income for his
family, but the difficulties of the over-extended imperial treasury meant that
actually getting hold of enough money to meet financial obligations was a
continual struggle. Partly because of financial troubles, his life at home with
Barbara was unpleasant, marred with bickering and bouts of sickness. Court life,
however, brought Kepler into contact with other prominent scholars (Johannes
Matth�us Wackher von Wackhenfels, Jost B�rgi, David Fabricius, Martin Bachazek,
and Johannes Brengger, among others) and astronomical work proceeded rapidly.[26]
In October 1604, a bright new evening star (SN 1604) appeared, but Kepler did not
believe the rumors until he saw it himself. Kepler began systematically observing
the star. Astrologically, the end of 1603 marked the beginning of a fiery trigon,
the start of the ca. 800-year cycle of great conjunctions; astrologers associated
the two previous such periods with the rise of Charlemagne (ca. 800 years earlier)
and the birth of Christ (ca. 1600 years earlier), and thus expected events of
great portent, especially regarding the emperor. It was in this context, as the
imperial mathematician and astrologer to the emperor, that Kepler described the
new star two years later in his De Stella Nova. In it, Kepler addressed the star's
astronomical properties while taking a skeptical approach to the many astrological
interpretations then circulating. He noted its fading luminosity, speculated about
its origin, and used the lack of observed parallax to argue that it was in the
sphere of fixed stars, further undermining the doctrine of the immutability of the
heavens (the idea accepted since Aristotle that the celestial spheres were perfect
and unchanging). The birth of a new star implied the variability of the heavens.
In an appendix, Kepler also discussed the recent chronology work of Laurentius
Suslyga; he calculated that, if Suslyga was correct that accepted timelines were
four years behind, then the Star of Bethlehem � analogous to the present new star
� would have coincided with the first great conjunction of the earlier 800-year
cycle.[29]
The location of the stella nova, in the foot of Ophiuchus, is marked with an N (8
grid squares down, 4 over from the left).
The extended line of research that culminated in Astronomia nova (A New Astronomy)
� including the first two laws of planetary motion � began with the analysis,
under Tycho's direction, of Mars' orbit. Kepler calculated and recalculated
various approximations of Mars' orbit using an equant (the mathematical tool that
Copernicus had eliminated with his system), eventually creating a model that
generally agreed with Tycho's observations to within two arcminutes (the average
measurement error). But he was not satisfied with the complex and still slightly
inaccurate result; at certain points the model differed from the data by up to
eight arcminutes. The wide array of traditional mathematical astronomy methods
having failed him, Kepler set about trying to fit an ovoid orbit to the data.[30]
Within Kepler's religious view of the cosmos, the Sun (a symbol of God the Father)
was the source of motive force in the solar system. As a physical basis, Kepler
drew by analogy on William Gilbert's theory of the magnetic soul of the Earth from
De Magnete (1600) and on his own work on optics. Kepler supposed that the motive
power (or motive species)[31] radiated by the Sun weakens with distance, causing
faster or slower motion as planets move closer or farther from it.[32][33] Perhaps
this assumption entailed a mathematical relationship that would restore
astronomical order. Based on measurements of the aphelion and perihelion of the
Earth and Mars, he created a formula in which a planet's rate of motion is
inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Verifying this relationship
throughout the orbital cycle, however, required very extensive calculation; to
simplify this task, by late 1602 Kepler reformulated the proportion in terms of
geometry: planets sweep out equal areas in equal times � the second law of
planetary motion.[34]
Diagram of the geocentric trajectory of Mars through several periods of retrograde
motion. Astronomia nova, Chapter 1, (1609).
He then set about calculating the entire orbit of Mars, using the geometrical rate
law and assuming an egg-shaped ovoid orbit. After approximately 40 failed
attempts, in early 1605 he at last hit upon the idea of an ellipse, which he had
previously assumed to be too simple a solution for earlier astronomers to have
overlooked. Finding that an elliptical orbit fit the Mars data, he immediately
concluded that all planets move in ellipses, with the sun at one focus � the first
law of planetary motion. Because he employed no calculating assistants, however,
he did not extend the mathematical analysis beyond Mars. By the end of the year,
he completed the manuscript for Astronomia nova, though it would not be published
until 1609 due to legal disputes over the use of Tycho's observations, the
property of his heirs.[35]
In the first months of 1610, Galileo Galilei � using his powerful new telescope �
discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter. Upon publishing his account as
Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), Galileo sought the opinion of Kepler, in part
to bolster the credibility of his observations. Kepler responded enthusiastically
with a short published reply, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (Conversation with
the Starry Messenger). He endorsed Galileo's observations and offered a range of
speculations about the meaning and implications of Galileo's discoveries and
telescopic methods, for astronomy and optics as well as cosmology and astrology.
Later that year, Kepler published his own telescopic observations of the moons in
Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus, providing further support of Galileo. To Kepler's
disappointment, however, Galileo never published his reactions (if any) to
Astronomia Nova.[38]
As a New Year's gift that year, he also composed for his friend and some-time
patron Baron Wackher von Wackhenfels a short pamphlet entitled Strena Seu de Nive
Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow). In this treatise, he investigated
the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes and, extending the discussion into a
hypothetical atomistic physical basis for the symmetry, posed what later became
known as the Kepler conjecture, a statement about the most efficient arrangement
for packing spheres.[42]
Also in that year, Barbara Kepler contracted Hungarian spotted fever, then began
having seizures. As Barbara was recovering, Kepler's three children all fell sick
with smallpox; Friedrich, 6, died. Following his son's death, Kepler sent letters
to potential patrons in W�rttemberg and Padua. At the University of T�bingen in
W�rttemberg, concerns over Kepler's perceived Calvinist heresies in violation of
the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord prevented his return. The
University of Padua � on the recommendation of the departing Galileo � sought
Kepler to fill the mathematics professorship, but Kepler, preferring to keep his
family in German territory, instead travelled to Austria to arrange a position as
teacher and district mathematician in Linz. However, Barbara relapsed into illness
and died shortly after Kepler's return.[44]
Kepler postponed the move to Linz and remained in Prague until Rudolph's death in
early 1612, though between political upheaval, religious tension, and family
tragedy (along with the legal dispute over his wife's estate), Kepler could do no
research. Instead, he pieced together a chronology manuscript, Eclogae Chronicae,
from correspondence and earlier work. Upon succession as Holy Roman Emperor,
Matthias re-affirmed Kepler's position (and salary) as imperial mathematician but
allowed him to move to Linz.[45]
On October 30, 1613, Kepler married the 24-year-old Susanna Reuttinger. Following
Barbara's death, Kepler had considered 11 different matches. He eventually
returned to Reuttinger (the fifth match) who, he wrote, "won me over with love,
humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the
stepchildren."[47] The first three children of this marriage (Margareta Regina,
Katharina, and Sebald) died in childhood. Three more survived into adulthood:
Cordula (b. 1621); Fridmar (b. 1623); and Hildebert (b. 1625). According to
Kepler's biographers, this was a much happier marriage than his first.[48]
[edit] Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, calendars and the witch trial of his
mother
Since completing the Astronomia nova, Kepler had intended to compose an astronomy
textbook.[49] In 1615, he completed the first of three volumes of Epitome
astronomia Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy); the first volume (books
I-III) was printed in 1617, the second (book IV) in 1620, and the third (books V-
VII) in 1621. Despite the title, which referred simply to heliocentrism, Kepler's
textbook culminated in his own ellipse-based system. Epitome became Kepler's most
influential work. It contained all three laws of planetary motion and attempted to
explain heavenly motions through physical causes.[50] Though it explicitly
extended the first two laws of planetary motion (applied to Mars in Astronomia
nova) to all the planets as well as the Moon and the Medicean satellites of
Jupiter, it did not explain how elliptical orbits could be derived from
observational data.[51]
As a spin-off from the Rudolphine Tables and the related Ephemerides, Kepler
published astrological calendars, which were very popular and helped offset the
costs of producing his other work � especially when support from the Imperial
treasury was withheld. In his calendars � six between 1617 and 1624 � Kepler
forecast planetary positions and weather as well as political events; the latter
were often cannily accurate, thanks to his keen grasp of contemporary political
and theological tensions. By 1624, however, the escalation of those tensions and
the ambiguity of the prophecies meant political trouble for Kepler himself; his
final calendar was publicly burned in Graz.[52]
Geometrical harmonies in the perfect solids from Harmonices Mundi (1619)
The iconic frontispiece to the Rudolphine Tables celebrates the great astronomers
of the past: Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and most prominently, Tycho Brahe
Kepler was convinced "that the geometrical things have provided the Creator with
the model for decorating the whole world."[54] In Harmony, he attempted to explain
the proportions of the natural world � particularly the astronomical and
astrological aspects � in terms of music. The central set of "harmonies" was the
musica universalis or "music of the spheres," which had been studied by
Pythagoras, Ptolemy and many others before Kepler; in fact, soon after publishing
Harmonices Mundi, Kepler was embroiled in a priority dispute with Robert Fludd,
who had recently published his own harmonic theory.[55]
Kepler began by exploring regular polygons and regular solids, including the
figures that would come to be known as Kepler's solids. From there, he extended
his harmonic analysis to music, meteorology and astrology; harmony resulted from
the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies � and in the case of astrology, the
interaction between those tones and human souls. In the final portion of the work
(Book V), Kepler dealt with planetary motions, especially relationships between
orbital velocity and orbital distance from the Sun. Similar relationships had been
used by other astronomers, but Kepler � with Tycho's data and his own astronomical
theories � treated them much more precisely and attached new physical significance
to them.[56]
Among many other harmonies, Kepler articulated what came to be known as the third
law of planetary motion. He then tried many combinations until he discovered that
(approximately) "The square of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes
of the mean distances." However, the wider significance for planetary dynamics of
this purely kinematical law was not realized until the 1660s. For when conjoined
with Christian Huygens' newly discovered law of centrifugal force it enabled Isaac
Newton, Edmund Halley and perhaps Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to demonstrate
independently that the presumed gravitational attraction between the Sun and its
planets decreased with the square of the distance between them.[57] This refuted
the traditional assumption of scholastic physics that the power of gravitational
attraction remained constant with distance whenever it applied between two bodies,
such as was assumed by Kepler and also by Galileo in his mistaken universal law
that gravitational fall is uniformly accelerated, and also by Galileo's student
Borrelli in his 1666 celestial mechanics.[58]
In 1623, Kepler at last completed the Rudolphine Tables, which at the time was
considered his major work. However, due to the publishing requirements of the
emperor and negotiations with Tycho Brahe's heir, it would not be printed until
1627. In the meantime religious tension � the root of the ongoing Thirty Years'
War � once again put Kepler and his family in jeopardy. In 1625, agents of the
Catholic Counter-Reformation placed most of Kepler's library under seal, and in
1626 the city of Linz was besieged. Kepler moved to Ulm, where he arranged for the
printing of the Tables at his own expense.[59]
In 1628, following the military successes of the Emperor Ferdinand's armies under
General Wallenstein, Kepler became an official adviser to Wallenstein. Though not
the general's court astrologer per se, Kepler provided astronomical calculations
for Wallenstein's astrologers and occasionally wrote horoscopes himself. In his
final years, Kepler spent much of his time traveling, from court in Prague to Linz
and Ulm to a temporary home in Sagan, and finally to Regensburg. Soon after
arriving in Regensburg, Kepler fell ill. He died on November 15, 1630, and was
buried there; his burial site was lost after the army of Gustavus Adolphus
destroyed the churchyard.[60]
Kepler's laws were not immediately accepted. Several major figures such as Galileo
and Ren� Descartes completely ignored Kepler's Astronomia nova. Many astronomers,
including Kepler's teacher, Michael Maestlin, objected to Kepler's introduction of
physics into his astronomy. Some adopted compromise positions. Ismael Boulliau
accepted elliptical orbits but replaced Kepler's area law with uniform motion in
respect to the empty focus of the ellipse while Seth Ward used an elliptical orbit
with motions defined by an equant.[61][62][63]
Several astronomers tested Kepler's theory, and its various modifications, against
astronomical observations. Two transits of Venus and Mercury across the face of
the sun provided sensitive tests of the theory, under circumstances when these
planets could not normally be observed. In the case of the transit of Mercury in
1631, Kepler had been extremely uncertain of the parameters for Mercury, and
advised observers to look for the transit the day before and after the predicted
date. Pierre Gassendi observed the transit on the date predicted, a confirmation
of Kepler's prediction.[64] This was the first observation of a transit of
Mercury. However, his attempt to observe the transit of Venus just one month
later, was unsuccessful due to inaccuracies in the Rudolphine Tables. Gassendi did
not realize that it was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris.[65]
Jeremiah Horrocks, who observed the 1639 Venus transit, had used his own
observations to adjust the parameters of the Keplerian model, predicted the
transit, and then built apparatus to observe the transit. He remained a firm
advocate of the Keplerian model.[66][67][68]
Beyond his role in the historical development of astronomy and natural philosophy,
Kepler has loomed large in the philosophy and historiography of science. Kepler
and his laws of motion were central to early histories of astronomy such as Jean
Etienne Montucla�s 1758 Histoire des math�matiques and Jean-Baptiste Delambre's
1821 Histoire de l�astronomie moderne. These and other histories written from an
Enlightenment perspective treated Kepler's metaphysical and religious arguments
with skepticism and disapproval, but later Romantic-era natural philosophers
viewed these elements as central to his success. William Whewell, in his
influential History of the Inductive Sciences of 1837, found Kepler to be the
archetype of the inductive scientific genius; in his Philosophy of the Inductive
Sciences of 1840, Whewell held Kepler up as the embodiment of the most advanced
forms of scientific method. Similarly, Ernst Friedrich Apelt � the first to
extensively study Kepler's manuscripts, after their purchase by Catherine the
Great � identified Kepler as a key to the "Revolution of the sciences". Apelt, who
saw Kepler's mathematics, aesthetic sensibility, physical ideas, and theology as
part of a unified system of thought, produced the first extended analysis of
Kepler's life and work.[71]
The debate over Kepler's place in the Scientific Revolution has also spawned a
wide variety of philosophical and popular treatments. One of the most influential
is Arthur Koestler's 1959 The Sleepwalkers, in which Kepler is unambiguously the
hero (morally and theologically as well as intellectually) of the revolution.[74]
Influential philosophers of science � such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Norwood
Russell Hanson, Stephen Toulmin, and Karl Popper � have repeatedly turned to
Kepler: examples of incommensurability, analogical reasoning, falsification, and
many other philosophical concepts have been found in Kepler's work. Physicist
Wolfgang Pauli even used Kepler's priority dispute with Robert Fludd to explore
the implications of analytical psychology on scientific investigation.[75] A well-
received, if fanciful, historical novel by John Banville, Kepler (1981), explored
many of the themes developed in Koestler's non-fiction narrative and in the
philosophy of science.[76] Somewhat more fanciful is a recent work of nonfiction,
Heavenly Intrigue (2004), suggesting that Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to gain
access to his data.[77] Kepler has acquired a popular image as an icon of
scientific modernity and a man before his time; science popularizer Carl Sagan
described him as "the first astrophysicist and the last scientific
astrologer."[78]
In Austria, Johannes Kepler has left behind such a historical legacy that he was
one of the motifs of one of the most famous silver collector's coins: the 10-euro
Johannes Kepler silver coin, minted in September 10, 2002. The reverse side of the
coin has a portrait of Kepler, who spent some time teaching in Graz and the
surrounding areas. Kepler was acquainted with Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg
personally, and he probably influenced the construction of Eggenberg Castle (the
motif of the obverse of the coin). In front of him on the coin is the model of
nested spheres and polyhedra from Mysterium Cosmographicum.
In 2009, NASA named the Kepler Mission for Kepler's contributions to the field of
astronomy.[79]
[edit] Works
Saracen was a term used by Europeans in the Middle Ages for Fatimids at first,
then later for all who professed the religion of Islam.[1]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Etymology
* 2 Roman times
* 3 Christian literature
* 4 See also
* 5 References
o 5.1 Footnotes
o 5.2 Notations
[edit] Etymology
The Fatimid Empire at its greatest extent
The term Saracen comes from Greek Sa?a?????, which has often been thought to be
derived from the Arabic word ?????? sharqiyyin ("easterners"), though the OED
(s.v.) calls etymologies from this "not well founded". The term spread into
Western Europe through the Byzantines and Crusaders.[1] After the rise of Islam,
and especially at the time of the Crusades, its usage was extended to refer to all
Muslims, including non-Arab Muslims, particularly those in Sicily and southern
Italy.[2]
In Christian writing, the name was made to mean "those empty of Sarah" or "not
from Sarah," as Arabs were, in Biblical genealogies, descended from Hagar and also
called the Hagarenes (??a?????). According to the Arthurian Lancelot-Grail Cycle,
the name derives from Sarras, an island important in the Quest for the Holy Grail.
[edit] Roman times
Hippolytus, the book of the laws of countries and Uranius mention three distinct
peoples in Arabia during the first half of the third century, the Saraceni, Taeni
and Arabes.[3] The Taeni, later identified with the Arab tribe called Tayyi, were
located around the Khaybar Oasis all the way up to the eastern Euphrates while the
Saracenoi were placed north of them.[3] These Saracens located in the Northern
Hejaz appear as people with a certain military ability and opponents of the Roman
Empire who are characterized by the Romans as barbaroi.[3] They are described in a
Notitia dignitatum dating from the time of Diocletian, during the 3rd century, as
comprising distinctive units in the composition of the Roman army distinguishing
between Arabs, Iiluturaens and Saracens.[5] The Saracens are described as forming
the equites (heavy cavalry) from Phoenicia and Thamud.[5] In a praeteritio, the
defeated enemies of Diocletians campaign in the Syrian desert are described as
Saracens and other 4th century military reports make no mention of Arabs but refer
to groups as far as Mesopotamia, involved in battles on both the Persian as well
as Roman sides, as Saracens.[5][6]
The Historia Augusta carries an account of a letter to the Roman senate, ascribed
to Aurelian, that describes the Palmyrian queen Zenobia as: "I might say such was
the fear that this woman inspired in the peoples of the east and also the
Egyptians that neither Arabes, nor Saraceni, nor Armenians moved against her."[5]
Another early Byzantine source chronicling the Saracens are the 6th century works
by Ioannes Malalas.[5] The difference between the two accounts of Saracens is that
Malalas saw Palmyrans and all inhabitants of the Syrian desert as Saracens and not
Arabs, while the Historia Augusta saw the Saracens as not being subjects of
Zenobia and distinct from Palmyrans and Arabs.[5] Writing at the end of the fourth
century Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of Julian the Apostate, notes that the
term Saraceni designating "desert-dwellers" of the Syrian desert had replaced
Arabes scenitae.[5] After the time of Ammianus the Saracens were known as warriors
of the desert.[7] The term Saracen, popular in both Greek and Roman literature,
over time came to be associated with Arabs and Assyrians as well, and carried a
definitive negative connotation.[6]
In the second and third century the Roman-Arab relations had become
confrontational resulting in the annexation of Arab cities resulting to their
increased nomadization so that by the end of the Roman period the use of the term
Saracen in reference to Arabs had become conventional.[8]
The Middle Persian correspondent terms for Saracens are tazigan and tayyaye; who
were located by Stephanus of Byzantium in the 6th century at the Lakhmid capital
city of Al-Hirah.[9]
Saracen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Saracen (disambiguation).
For the Guinness Premiership rugby team, see Saracens F.C..
Saracen was a term used by Europeans in the Middle Ages for Fatimids at first,
then later for all who professed the religion of Islam.[1]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Etymology
* 2 Roman times
* 3 Christian literature
* 4 See also
* 5 References
o 5.1 Footnotes
o 5.2 Notations
[edit] Etymology
The Fatimid Empire at its greatest extent
The term Saracen comes from Greek Sa?a?????, which has often been thought to be
derived from the Arabic word ?????? sharqiyyin ("easterners"), though the OED
(s.v.) calls etymologies from this "not well founded". The term spread into
Western Europe through the Byzantines and Crusaders.[1] After the rise of Islam,
and especially at the time of the Crusades, its usage was extended to refer to all
Muslims, including non-Arab Muslims, particularly those in Sicily and southern
Italy.[2]
In Christian writing, the name was made to mean "those empty of Sarah" or "not
from Sarah," as Arabs were, in Biblical genealogies, descended from Hagar and also
called the Hagarenes (??a?????). According to the Arthurian Lancelot-Grail Cycle,
the name derives from Sarras, an island important in the Quest for the Holy Grail.
Hippolytus, the book of the laws of countries and Uranius mention three distinct
peoples in Arabia during the first half of the third century, the Saraceni, Taeni
and Arabes.[3] The Taeni, later identified with the Arab tribe called Tayyi, were
located around the Khaybar Oasis all the way up to the eastern Euphrates while the
Saracenoi were placed north of them.[3] These Saracens located in the Northern
Hejaz appear as people with a certain military ability and opponents of the Roman
Empire who are characterized by the Romans as barbaroi.[3] They are described in a
Notitia dignitatum dating from the time of Diocletian, during the 3rd century, as
comprising distinctive units in the composition of the Roman army distinguishing
between Arabs, Iiluturaens and Saracens.[5] The Saracens are described as forming
the equites (heavy cavalry) from Phoenicia and Thamud.[5] In a praeteritio, the
defeated enemies of Diocletians campaign in the Syrian desert are described as
Saracens and other 4th century military reports make no mention of Arabs but refer
to groups as far as Mesopotamia, involved in battles on both the Persian as well
as Roman sides, as Saracens.[5][6]
The Historia Augusta carries an account of a letter to the Roman senate, ascribed
to Aurelian, that describes the Palmyrian queen Zenobia as: "I might say such was
the fear that this woman inspired in the peoples of the east and also the
Egyptians that neither Arabes, nor Saraceni, nor Armenians moved against her."[5]
Another early Byzantine source chronicling the Saracens are the 6th century works
by Ioannes Malalas.[5] The difference between the two accounts of Saracens is that
Malalas saw Palmyrans and all inhabitants of the Syrian desert as Saracens and not
Arabs, while the Historia Augusta saw the Saracens as not being subjects of
Zenobia and distinct from Palmyrans and Arabs.[5] Writing at the end of the fourth
century Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of Julian the Apostate, notes that the
term Saraceni designating "desert-dwellers" of the Syrian desert had replaced
Arabes scenitae.[5] After the time of Ammianus the Saracens were known as warriors
of the desert.[7] The term Saracen, popular in both Greek and Roman literature,
over time came to be associated with Arabs and Assyrians as well, and carried a
definitive negative connotation.[6]
In the second and third century the Roman-Arab relations had become
confrontational resulting in the annexation of Arab cities resulting to their
increased nomadization so that by the end of the Roman period the use of the term
Saracen in reference to Arabs had become conventional.[8]
The Middle Persian correspondent terms for Saracens are tazigan and tayyaye; who
were located by Stephanus of Byzantium in the 6th century at the Lakhmid capital
city of Al-Hirah.[9]
The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935 was a poetry anthology edited by W. B.
Yeats, and published in 1936 by Oxford University Press. A long and interesting
introductory essay starts from the proposition that the poets included should be
all the 'good' ones (implicitly the field is Anglo-Irish poetry, though notably a
few Indian poets are there) active since Tennyson's death. In fact the poets
chosen by Yeats are notable as an idiosyncratic selection to represent modern
verse. The Victorians are much represented, while the war poets from World War I
are not. The modernist tendency does not predominate, though it is not ignored;
Georgian poetry is covered quite thoroughly, while a Dublin wit like Oliver St.
John Gogarty is given much space and praised in the introduction as a great poet.
Yeats was influenced by his personal feelings. Gogarty was a personal friend; he
also included poems by Margot Ruddock, with whom he was having a relationship, and
other friends such as Shri Purohit Swami. He notes that Rudyard Kipling and Ezra
Pound are under-represented because paying their royalties would have cost too
much. People have regretted that he did not say which poems he would have added
given a free hand.