History Land

Galileo

2012-01-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

No one was supposed to question any teachings about astronomy or physics in the 1500s. Most of the teachings came from ancient Greeks. Galileo thought that the ancient Greeks were wrong about many ideas. He believed that making careful measurements could help people learn accurate facts about astronomy and physics. Galileo was one of the people who began what we now call the modern scientific revolution.

LIFE AND CAREER

Galileo Galilei was born near Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564. After attending the university, he taught mathematics. He also observed how things move. There is a story that he dropped two objects of different weights at the same time from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He found that light and heavy objects fell at the same rate. The ancient Greek Aristotle taught that heavier objects fell faster.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

In the early 1600s, Galileo was the first person to use a telescope to look at objects in the night sky. He discovered many things, including mountains and craters on the Moon and four moons going around Jupiter. Galileo also defended the idea of Polish astronomer Copernicus that Earth goes around the Sun. The ancient astronomer Ptolemy said that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun went around Earth. Ptolemy’s system was the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Church authorities ordered Galileo not to defend Copernicus’s theory.

HERESY TRIAL AND CONVICTION

In 1632, Galileo published a book that compared Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s ideas. The book concluded that Copernicus was right. Galileo was ordered to go to Rome and stand trial for heresy (holding ideas opposed to church teachings). Galileo was forced to say that Copernicus was wrong. Galileo was sentenced to life in prison. He was old and sick, so instead they kept him inside his house. In 1992, Pope John Paul II said the church was wrong to convict Galileo of heresy.

Eli Whitney

2012-01-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that changed America’s history: the cotton gin.

Whitney’s invention made growing cotton much more profitable. Cotton soon became the most important crop in America’s Southern states.

EARLY LIFE

Eli Whitney was born in 1765 in Westboro, Massachusetts. He attended Yale College (now Yale University).

In 1792, Whitney traveled to the South. While in Georgia, Whitney designed and built a model for the cotton gin.

WHAT DID THE COTTON GIN DO?

Before the cotton gin, cottonseeds had to be picked from the cotton fibers by hand. This took a great deal of time. Whitney’s machine quickly separated the seeds from the fibers. In fact, Whitney’s cotton gin cleaned more cotton in one day than a person could clean by hand in a whole year!

THE COTTON GIN’S IMPACT

The invention of the cotton gin made cotton the most important crop of the American South. Millions of acres of cotton blanketed Southern fields. In turn, the boom in cotton tied millions of slave workers to the fields. They picked cotton for the cotton gins.

The price of cotton clothing fell. Cotton fabrics, such as calico and muslin, could easily be dyed in bright colors and patterns. Soon, everyone wanted to wear these fashionable cotton clothes. This prompted the growth of textile mills in New England and Great Britain. The mills demanded more and more raw cotton to turn into cloth.

DID WHITNEY GET RICH?

Eli Whitney made little money from his cotton gin. Whitney and a partner opened a factory in Connecticut to make cotton gins. But a fire prevented the company from making enough machines to fill the flood of orders.

Other factories soon began copying Whitney’s invention. Whitney had applied for a patent to protect his rights to his invention in 1794. But his patent was not enforced until 1807. Then in 1812, his request to renew his patent was denied.

WHAT ELSE DID WHITNEY DO?

In 1798, Whitney won a contract to provide 10,000 muskets for the American military. Whitney experimented with making standard parts he could use in different guns. He was one of the first manufacturers to do this. Whitney died in 1825.

Copernicus

2012-01-17T10:39:00.000-08:00

When Nicolaus Copernicus went to school, he learned that Earth was the center of the universe and that everything in the heavens revolved around Earth. The Sun and all the planets circled around Earth, he was told.

The Earth-centered theory taught to Copernicus had been developed 1,400 years before by an astronomer named Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. Copernicus looked into Ptolemy’s system more carefully and came up with a different idea. He was sure that the Sun is the center of our solar system and that Earth and the other planets go around the Sun. He was right, of course. Today, we think of Copernicus as the founder of modern astronomy.

HIS LIFE AND CAREER

Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in Toruñ, Poland. His family was well-to-do. Copernicus went to the best schools. He studied medicine, law, and religion in Italy. He also became interested in astronomy. In 1503, he went back to Poland to work for his uncle. He also worked on his new theory about how Earth moves.

HIS SUN-CENTERED SYSTEM

Copernicus thought that Earth turns once a day and goes around the Sun once a year. Copernicus decided that the way Earth turns makes it look like the Sun, stars, and planets are going around the Earth.

In 1530, he wrote a book called On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. The book was published in 1543, just before Copernicus died. Most astronomers and church officials thought his ideas were too radical. Some others, however, secretly thought he was right.

The Italian astronomer Galileo, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, and English physicist Sir Isaac Newton later did studies that supported the ideas of Copernicus. Not until the early 1700s, however, did most scientists agree that Copernicus was right.

Charles Darwin

2012-01-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

Charles Darwin had no idea when he set off on a sea voyage to explore South America in the 1830s that he would set off a controversy that continues today. Darwin studied animals in isolated places. He thought that differences he saw in similar species (kinds) of animals meant that the animals had evolved, or changed over time. His important idea is called the theory of evolution by natural selection.

WHAT DARWIN OBSERVED

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809. He came from a wealthy family and never had to work. He studied medicine and theology. In 1831, he had the chance to go on a scientific expedition. He sailed as a volunteer scientist aboard the HMS Beagle.

Everywhere the Beagle stopped, Darwin made observations of plants and animals. In the Galápagos Islands, Darwin noted that each island had its own form of tortoise, mockingbird, and finch. Each species on each island was slightly different. Darwin wondered if there were links between the similar species.

WHAT DARWIN DECIDED

For the next 20 years Darwin thought about what his observations might mean. He decided that the young of any species must compete for food in order to survive. Those with traits best suited to survival would grow up and reproduce offspring with those traits. Eventually, a new species would evolve. Darwin also thought that all species were descended from common ancestors. In 1859, he wrote a book called On the Origin of Species.

Many scientists did not believe his theory until modern genetics—the study of inherited traits—began in the early 1900s. Most attacks on Darwin’s ideas came from religious opponents. They thought that evolution denied the divine creation of human beings and made people and animals equal.

Darwin spent the rest of his life writing about his theory. He died on April 19, 1882.

Benjamin Franklin

2012-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

Was Benjamin Franklin a famous scientist? Or was he an inventor? Was he a diplomat and a statesman? Or a printer and a writer? Franklin was not just one of these things—he was all of them!

EARLY LIFE

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706. His father, Josiah, had 17 children. Franklin’s mother, Abiah Folger, was Josiah’s second wife.

Like many boys at that time, young Ben attended school for only a few years. At age 10 he began training in his father’s candle-making shop. Ben didn’t like the work. When he was 13, his father sent him to work with his older brother James.

LEARNING A TRADE

James Franklin taught his brother about the printing business. Ben learned to work the heavy printing press. He sold newspapers and even began writing articles. Franklin loved to read and study in his free time, teaching himself math, science, literature, and foreign languages.

In 1722, James Franklin was arrested for criticizing Boston’s leaders in his newspaper. Ben Franklin kept the paper running in his brother’s absence.

In 1724, 18-year-old Ben Franklin sailed to London, England. There he learned all he could about printing and publishing.

Franklin returned to America and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1726. There he bought a small newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. He married Deborah Read in 1730.

A MAN OF IDEAS

Despite his lack of schooling, Franklin had many ideas on how to improve people’s lives. For example, he organized one of the first public libraries in America. He also started the first fire department and one of the first hospitals in Philadelphia. He busied himself with plans to improve city streets and lighting.

Franklin wrote about improving education, and he helped found a school that became the University of Pennsylvania. In 1732, he began publishing a popular, witty advice book called Poor Richard’s Almanack. Franklin also founded the American Philosophical Society, based in Philadelphia, to discuss the latest scientific theories.

Around 1744, Franklin invented the Franklin stove, which provided more heat while using less fuel. A few years later, he began experimenting with electricity. In 1752, he invented a lightning rod, which keeps lightning from striking buildings and other structures. His scientific ideas and inventions became known in Europe as well as in America.

HOW FRANKLIN SERVED HIS COUNTRY

At the same time, Franklin added politics to his list of achievements. He wrote and published many articles about political issues. In 1754, the colonies sent representatives to a meeting to discuss how they should respond to the French and Indian War. There Franklin proposed his Albany Plan, calling for the colonies to keep their independence while working together on issues that affected all of them. His plan was rejected, but his vision of government would later influence the writing of the United States Constitution.

From 1757 to 1772, Franklin spent most of his time living in London. He represented the colonies in British politics. Franklin explained America’s views of British tax policies, such as the Stamp Act. His efforts helped get the hated Stamp Act repealed by the British government.

Like many Americans, Franklin felt torn between remaining connected to Great Britain and the desire for independence. He understood the growing anger of Americans over British taxes and other actions. Franklin returned to Pennsylvania in May 1775. The American Revolution (1775-1783) had begun a month earlier when fighting broke out in Massachusetts.

In 1775, the 70-year-old Franklin served as a representative at the Second Continental Congress, an early American governing body. He worked on many committees, including the committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence.

FRANKLIN AND THE REVOLUTION

Franklin spent most of the war years in Europe as a diplomat representing the American congress. He helped convince France to loan the Americans money to fund the war effort. Franklin’s humor and intelligence made him very popular in France. Eventually, France joined America in fighting—and defeating—the British.

As the war wound down, Franklin helped negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain. The treaty, signed in 1783, recognized American independence and ended the long war.

STILL BUSY IN HIS EIGHTIES

Pennsylvania sent Franklin as a delegate to the 1787 convention that planned and wrote the United States Constitution. He was the convention’s oldest delegate.

Franklin remained interested in social causes in his old age. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, an antislavery group. He sent a petition to the United States Congress calling for an end to slavery.

Franklin died on April 17, 1790. His wisdom, wit, and hard work had served his country well.

Albert Einstein

2012-01-17T10:27:00.000-08:00

Dents in space, light in bundles, and matter that turns into energy sound like science-fiction fantasies. However, Albert Einstein said they were real. Other scientists proved through observations that Einstein’s theories were right. Einstein revolutionized the science of physics and helped bring in the atomic age.

WHERE DID EINSTEIN GROW UP?

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. He grew up in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Einstein taught himself geometry when he was 12 years old. School bored him because it required endless memorizing and reciting. He often skipped classes to study on his own or to play his violin. Yet he graduated from college in 1900 and earned a Ph.D. degree in 1905. From 1902 to 1907, Einstein worked as a clerk in the patent office in Zürich, Switzerland. His job left him plenty of time to think.

WHAT DID EINSTEIN THINK ABOUT?

Einstein thought about the rules that govern the way the world works. For example, he explained why small particles in liquids wiggle around, a movement called Brownian motion. He said that the particles were being bumped into by tiny bits of matter called atoms that are too small to see.

He also thought about light and electricity. Einstein knew that light shining on metal sometimes causes electricity to flow. He explained this result, called the photoelectric effect, by saying that light is made of tiny bundles of energy called photons. Photons hitting the metal knock particles called electrons away. Since electricity is simply moving electrons, he had solved the mystery of the photoelectric effect. In 1921, Einstein won the most famous prize in science, the Nobel Prize, for this work.

Another thing Einstein thought about was time. He said that time does not always flow at the same rate. He proposed that motion affects time. He called this idea the special theory of relativity.

Einstein then came up with his general theory of relativity. This theory has a new explanation for gravity. Einstein said that gravity comes from curves or dents in the fabric of space. Objects make dents in space the way a bowling ball makes a dent in a mattress. The Moon falls into the dent made by Earth and rolls around the Earth. Scientists later proved that the dent a star makes in space-time bends light as the light passes by.

Einstein changed physics by showing that new ideas could come just from thinking. Before Einstein, most new ideas in physics had come from experiments in the laboratory.

EINSTEIN AND ATOMIC ENERGY

Einstein also said that matter and energy are the same thing. He expressed this relation in a famous equation: E=mc2. This equation says that energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light squared (c2). Energy can therefore be changed into matter, and matter into energy. The ability to turn matter into energy led to the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear power.

FAME AND LATER YEARS

Einstein’s theories made him famous, even though few people understood them. He became a university professor and director of a physics institute in Berlin, Germany. After the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein left. In 1933, he came to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955.

Einstein’s last great idea was that every force in nature is part of one master force. Physicists are still working on this idea, which they call the theory of everything.

Joseph Stalin

2009-09-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Joseph Stalin was one of the most ruthless and feared leaders of the 20th century. He was born into poverty, yet he rose to become a powerful dictator.

Stalin ruled the Soviet Union—a massive empire that included Russia and countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Stalin terrorized the Soviet people. He jailed or killed those who opposed him. But he also transformed the Soviet Union from a poor, farming society into a major industrial and military power.

EARLY LIFE

Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 in Gori, a mountain village in Georgia (a part of the Russian Empire). His father was a shoemaker and his mother cleaned houses.

Stalin’s real name was Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Later in life, Joseph adopted the name Stalin, a Russian term that means “man of steel.”

Joseph was a good student. He won a scholarship to attend a religious seminary in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. The seminary was a Christian college where young men trained to become priests.

YOUNG REVOLUTIONARY

At college, Joseph learned about the ideas of Karl Marx, a German philosopher. Marx said that working people everywhere should revolt and take control of their governments. Joseph joined a secret Marxist group. He began to spread Marxist ideas, a political philosophy called communism.

Joseph gave up his religious studies in 1899 to become a Marxist revolutionary. He encouraged working people to overthrow Russia’s government and accept communism. This made him a danger to the Russian government, which ruled with complete power. From 1902 to 1913, he was jailed many times. The experience toughened him, and around 1910 he took the name Stalin.

RISE TO POWER

Stalin was drawn to the Bolshevik Party, a group led by a man named Vladimir Lenin. Bolsheviks were communists who wanted to organize a revolution in Russia. In 1912, Lenin promoted Stalin to the Bolshevik Central Committee, the party’s powerful decision-making body.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew the government and took power. Lenin became the dictator of Russia. He transformed the Russian Empire into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union). Stalin became an official in Lenin’s government.

After Lenin died in 1924, a struggle for power broke out among Bolshevik leaders. Stalin won, beating out rivals such as Leon Trotsky. By 1929, Stalin was the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. After he took power, Stalin had his rivals imprisoned or executed.

STALIN THE DICTATOR

Stalin wanted to modernize the Soviet Union to make it strong. He wanted to build big factories, a powerful army, and large farms that produced more food. To do this, he introduced economic programs called five-year plans. The plans set out ambitious goals for economic growth.

A major goal of the first five-year plan, introduced in 1929, was to increase food production. It forced millions of farmers to give up their small fields to create huge, government-run farms. This policy was called collectivization. Many farmers resisted collectivization. They destroyed livestock and crops in protest. Farming in the country nearly collapsed.

Stalin blamed rich farmers, called kulaks, for the unrest. In truth, any farmer who opposed collectivization was called a kulak. To punish resistors, Stalin had thousands of farmers executed, and millions more were sent to faraway places like Siberia. Millions of people died from starvation. Others who opposed Stalin were sent to work in labor camps, where many died.

During the 1930s, the Soviet economy grew rapidly. Many factories were built. But these achievements came only after great suffering by the Soviet people.

WARTIME LEADER

World War II, the 20th century’s greatest conflict, began in 1939. Before the war began, Stalin had many Soviet army leaders arrested and executed. He feared the army might turn on him. But without experienced officers, the Soviet army was weak.

In 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. The Germans soon advanced to the outskirts of Moscow, the nation’s capital. Defeat was close for Stalin. He called on all Soviet citizens to defend their homeland. Stalin ordered his soldiers to die fighting rather than be taken prisoner.

A turning point in the war came at the Battle of Stalingrad. (An old Russian city called Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad in 1925 to honor Stalin. Today it is called Volgograd.) In November 1942, the Soviet army surrounded the city, trapping German soldiers inside. The soldiers surrendered in February 1943. Stalin then pushed the German army out of the Soviet Union. Later, the Soviet army was the first to enter Berlin, the capital of Germany.

STALIN’S FINAL YEARS

After World War II ended in 1945, Stalin built the Soviet Union into a world power. During the war, the Soviet army occupied much of Eastern Europe, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany. The Soviet army stayed after the war, and Stalin set up communist governments in these countries.

Relations between the Soviet Union and the other victors in World War II soon broke down. Many world leaders feared that Stalin wanted to spread communism to other countries. The world entered a period of tension and distrust known as the Cold War. The Soviet Union stood on one side, and countries of the West, led by the United States, stood on the other.

Stalin died in March 1953. During his rule, people were afraid to criticize him. But three years after his death, the new leaders of the Soviet Union denounced Stalin and the brutal way he ruled.

Joan of Arc

2009-09-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

She was a simple peasant girl who couldn’t read or write. Yet Joan of Arc united France and helped free her country from English rule. Today, she is remembered as one of the greatest heroines in history.

VOICES FROM HEAVEN

Joan of Arc was born in Domrémy, France, in 1412. Her parents were farmers. When Joan was 13, she started to hear strange, sweet voices. She thought the saints were calling to her from heaven.

Joan believed the voices were telling her to save France. At that time, the English and French were fighting the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). In 1429, Joan went to see Charles, the future king of France. She was just 17 years old.

JOAN VISITS THE KING

Charles was feeling desperate. He was losing the war against England. Not all of France accepted Charles as king. Charles feared he might never be king of all France. So Charles listened to young Joan.

Charles decided that Joan could help him. The heavenly voices she heard might inspire his soldiers. She might make the men think God was on their side. He gave Joan a coat of armor to wear and a big white banner to carry into battle.

JOAN LEADS AN ARMY TO VICTORY

Joan led her army to Orléans, a city the English were about to capture. Her forces defeated the English! For this victory, Joan earned the name Maid of Orléans. Soon afterwards, Charles was crowned king of France as Charles VII. Joan had a place of honor at his side.

JOAN’S CAPTURE, TRIAL, AND DEATH

The next year, Joan led another French army. But she was captured and handed over to the English. The English believed Joan was evil. They said the voices Joan heard and the soldier’s clothes she wore were signs of wickedness. They asked the Catholic Church to put her on trial as a witch!

The church found Joan guilty and condemned her to death. But Joan begged forgiveness. She was sent to prison instead.

In jail, Joan began wearing soldier’s clothes again. The English accused her of going back to her wicked ways. Joan was burned at the stake in 1431.

SAINT JOAN

In 1456, when the war was over, the Catholic Church declared that Joan had been innocent. In 1920, the church made Joan a saint.

Jean Chrétien

2009-08-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

As a boy, Jean Chrétien was often picked on. A childhood illness left his face partially paralyzed. It also made him deaf in one ear. When he was teased about these things, he would fight back, and sometimes get in trouble.

Chrétien’s fighting spirit also helped him overcome obstacles. When he grew up, he became Canada’s 20th prime minister.

EARLY LIFE

Jean Joseph Jacques Chrétien was born in 1934 in the province of Québec. He was the 18th of 19 children. Ten of his siblings died young.

When Chrétien was five years old, he was sent to boarding school. Chrétien disliked it so much he once faked an attack of appendicitis, a serious illness. He had surgery so he would be sent home!

Young Chrétien took an interest in politics. His father was an organizer for Canada’s Liberal Party. By age 14, Chrétien was attending rallies and handing out information for the Liberal Party.

After graduating from college, Chrétien decided to become a lawyer. He earned his license to practice law at the age of 24. By the age of 29, he had won a seat in Canada’s Parliament representing Québec.

CAREER IN PARLIAMENT

When Chrétien entered Parliament in 1963, English was Canada’s only official language. But Chrétien had grown up in French-speaking Québec. As an adult, he had to learn English as a second language!

In 1968, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made Chrétien the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Chrétien served in Canada’s Parliament for 27 years. During that time, he held 12 ministerial posts.

PRIME MINISTER

In 1990, the Liberal Party elected Chrétien as its leader. In 1993, Chrétien became Canada’s prime minister.

One of Chrétien’s biggest achievements as the nation’s leader was to cut government spending. This reduced the government’s huge debts. Chrétien’s spending cuts won credit for helping Canada’s economy grow.

Chrétien also fought a separatist movement in Québec. Some people in Québec did not want to be part of Canada. They did not believe the government cared much about their interests. Chrétien worked to defeat the Separatists, and support for their cause declined.

In 2003, Chrétien retired from office after ten years as prime minister.

Jesus Christ

2009-08-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

The teachings of Jesus inspired one of the world’s major religions—Christianity. Jesus’ followers, known as Christians, gave him the title of Christ, which means “savior.” They believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who came to save humanity from sin.

The story of Jesus’ life and his teachings was written down in four books called the Gospels. Gospel means “good news,” the good news that Jesus brought. The Gospels were written soon after the death of Jesus. They form part of the New Testament of the Bible.

SON OF MARY

Jesus was born between 8 bc and 4 bc, in Bethlehem in the Roman territory of Judea. His family was Jewish. The Gospels say that an angel told Mary, the mother of Jesus, that she would have God’s son. The Gospels also report that shepherds and wise men came to worship the baby Jesus, as Mary sheltered him in a stable.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Jesus lived quietly until he was 30 years old. Then, about ad 27, he left home to be a preacher. Large crowds gathered to hear his words. The Gospels say he performed many miracles.

Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was coming. He warned everyone to get ready. He told them to be kind to their neighbors, care for the poor and for weak and hungry people, and live pure, holy lives. He said good behavior like this was more important for entering the Kingdom of God than obeying old, Jewish religious laws.

Jesus had many devoted followers. They hailed him as the Messiah, or Christ, who was predicted by Jewish prophets. These prophets had said that a Messiah chosen by God would bring peace and justice to the world.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION

The teachings of Jesus alarmed Jewish leaders. They feared that Jesus would lead people to ignore Jewish laws. They were also afraid that his teachings would land them in trouble with the Roman rulers. Jesus was arrested and sentenced to death for the religious crime of claiming to be the Son of God and King of the Jews.

Jesus was crucified (killed on a cross) around ad 29. But three days later, his followers said they had seen him. Soon afterward, they reported that Jesus had appeared again and had told them to spread his teachings around the world. Jesus’ rising from the dead is known as the Resurrection. The Resurrection gives Christians hope in life after death. According to the Bible, Jesus rose to heaven 40 days after the Resurrection.

Florence Nightingale

2009-08-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Florence Nightingale revolutionized the job of nursing. She cared for sick and wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War (1853-1856), and she saved many lives. Her success in improving nursing care brought her great fame.

A PASSION FOR NURSING

Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 to a wealthy English family. She decided in her teens to become a nurse, even though her parents disapproved. At that time, most nurses were from poor families and had little or no training.

But Nightingale was determined to have her way. In 1850 and 1851, she received training at hospitals in Egypt and Germany.

In 1853, Nightingale took charge of a hospital in London, England. Here she showed skills as a nurse and an organizer. She had bells put beside patients’ beds. When patients needed a nurse, they rang their bell. Nobody had thought of this idea before.

THE CRIMEAN WAR

In 1853, Britain, France, and Turkey went to war against Russia. The fighting took place in a part of Russia called the Crimean Peninsula. A newspaper story described how sick and wounded British soldiers were neglected. The British government soon acted. It sent Nightingale and 38 nurses to a military hospital in Turkey. Conditions at the hospital were filthy, and there were few medical supplies.

Nightingale organized the hospital. She got bandages and medicines, had drains cleaned, and improved the water supply. Patients were given clean sheets and healthy food. Nightingale became the soldiers’ friend. They called her “the Lady with the Lamp,” after the lantern she carried at night.

AFTER THE WAR

The Crimean War ended in 1856, and Nightingale returned to Britain. She was a national hero, but she disliked all the attention. She saw that many problems remained in health care.

Nightingale devoted the rest of her long life to improving public health and educating people about the importance of good hygiene. Britain’s hospitals accepted her ideas, and they became cleaner, healthier places.

In 1860, Nightingale set up a training school for nurses in London. The “Nightingale nurses,” as its graduates were called, helped spread Nightingale’s ideas around the world. Nightingale died in 1910 at the age of 90.

Confucius

2009-08-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

Confucius helped shape Chinese civilization. He lived a quiet life and made no great discoveries. But by teaching people to respect old ideas of good behavior, he set standards that are still admired today.

STUDENT AND TEACHER

Confucius was born in Lu, a state in northeast China, about 551 bc. His father died when he was three years old, and he grew up very poor. Even so, Confucius got a good education. He married young, and worked as a laborer to support his wife and children. Then in 527 bc, he began a new career as a teacher.

ANCIENT ADVICE

Confucius found the government of China corrupt and lawless. He wanted reform. Confucius studied the writings of ancient Chinese sages (wise men), and he taught their ideas to his students. He said that people should be kind, honest, polite, wise, and obedient. They should respect their parents and honor their ancestors. They should be good citizens.

Confucius also encouraged rulers to set an example of good behavior. He believed that people would copy the rulers. Everyone would then live peacefully, and the Chinese people would be rich and happy.

About 501 bc, Confucius was made a judge. The next year, he became the government official in charge of law and order in his home state of Lu. This gave him the chance to make laws based on his own teachings. They were very successful! In his state, crime almost disappeared. But jealous rivals plotted against him, and he was dismissed in 496 bc.

Confucius spent the next 12 years as a teacher. He won great fame and respect. In 484 bc, he retired to Lu, where he died about 5 years later. Confucius never wrote down his teachings. But his students remembered them and wrote them down. These teachings and later writings were collected in the SiShu (Four Books). These books were studied by Chinese scholars for the next 2,400 years, and they still guide many Chinese communities.

Christopher Columbus

2009-08-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

Christopher Columbus tried to take a shortcut, and ended up somewhere he never intended to go. He discovered two continents that people in Europe didn’t even know existed. By crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, Columbus opened contacts between lands and peoples that were unknown to each other.

Columbus’s voyage to the Americas opened an exciting period in history. Animals, plants, and new ideas were exchanged between continents. But it also caused terrible tragedy. Millions of Native Americans died as Europeans rushed to take land and riches for themselves.

MASTER SAILOR

Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. He became a sailor at the age of 14. In 1476, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal. Portugal was Europe’s top seafaring nation at that time. Columbus settled there.

Columbus studied geography and navigation, the science of figuring out where things are on Earth’s surface. He became a master sailor. He met explorers who had sailed along the coast of Africa seeking an eastward sea route to the rich lands of Asia. Europeans called these lands “the Indies.” Europeans wanted to bring gold and other treasures from the Indies back to Europe.

DARING DREAM

Columbus began to think about a wonderful adventure, which he called the “Enterprise of the Indies.” He dreamed of reaching the Indies by sailing west! This was not a new idea, but no one had ever managed to make the voyage. Columbus thought the trip to the Indies west across the ocean would be much shorter than sailing around Africa.

Columbus had high hopes, but no money. Who would pay for his expedition? He asked the king of Portugal, but the king refused. Columbus didn’t give up. He went to the rulers of Portugal’s neighbor, Spain. At first they also refused. Eventually, however, the Spanish king and queen agreed to provide three small ships—the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María. They also paid for crews and supplies for the voyage.

HISTORIC VOYAGE

Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, on August 3, 1492. He stopped at the Canary Islands southwest of Spain, then headed west into unknown seas. He had no idea what lay ahead, but he had faith in his sailing skills and his bold idea. A swift current carried his ships along, and on October 12, the crew sighted the islands of the Bahamas. Columbus thought he had reached Asia. He called the islands the Indies.

Columbus was greeted by the Arawak people who lived on the islands. They offered food, but had only a little gold. Columbus was disappointed not to find Asian treasures, but still felt sure he had reached Japan in Asia. He spent two months exploring, then headed home. One of his ships sank in a storm, but back in Spain he was hailed as a hero. The king and queen offered rich rewards and made him “Admiral of the Ocean Seas.”

THREE FAILURES

Columbus made three more voyages to America. None went well. He was a skillful sailor, but his greed and stubbornness made him a bad leader and created enemies.

During his second voyage (1493-1496), Columbus claimed land for Spanish settlements. He fought against Caribbean peoples who lived on the land he claimed and forced them to work as slaves.

On the third voyage (1498-1500), Columbus quarreled with Spanish settlers so violently that he was sent back to Europe as a prisoner in chains.

On his fourth and final voyage (1502-1504), Columbus was marooned on an island for more than a year. He had to be rescued. He was very ill by the time he returned home to Spain.

AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPLORER

Columbus died in 1506. He quarreled with the king and queen right up until his death. He wanted authority over Spanish colonies and a larger share of the riches that were brought back from America. It was a sad end to an extraordinary career that still shapes our lives today. When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he changed the world forever.

Anne Frank

2009-08-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

Anne Frank’s life was short and tragic. Yet her brave spirit has survived in her diary. She wrote this diary while hiding from the Nazis during World War II (1939-1945).

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929. Her family was Jewish. In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. The Nazis blamed Jews for the nation’s problems and began a campaign against Jews. The Frank family moved to Amsterdam in The Netherlands to escape the Nazis. But in 1940, Germany invaded The Netherlands, and Jewish people there began to suffer under anti-Jewish policies.

HIDDEN AWAY

Anne’s father prepared a hiding place for his family. He sealed off several rooms at the back of his office building, and he covered the entrance with a movable bookcase. In July 1942, Anne, her mother and father, her sister Margot, and four Jewish friends stepped behind the bookcase into the hidden rooms.

The Frank family and their friends stayed shut away in secret for over two years. Brave friends risked their lives to bring them food. But constant fear and loss of freedom were hard to bear. For comfort, Anne started to write a diary. She was very good at expressing her thoughts and feelings in words.

HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

Anne was 13 when she started to write. Her diary reveals that, just like other teenagers, she looked forward to adult life. She hoped to have a career as a writer, and she longed to find love. She had high ideals and wished “to be useful or give pleasure to people around me.”

Throughout her time in hiding, Anne maintained her faith in human nature. She wrote, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

BETRAYED

In 1944, the Frank family’s hiding place was betrayed to the Gestapo (German secret police). Anne was sent to the Bergen-Belsen prison camp in Germany. She died at the camp in 1945 at the age of 15.

Otto, Anne’s father, was the only member of the Frank family to survive the war. He published her diary in 1947. Since then, it has been published in more than 50 languages. Millions of people have visited the family’s hiding place in Amsterdam. Anne Frank’s story still inspires people to fight against all kinds of discrimination.

Adolf Hitler

2009-08-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Adolf Hitler was a struggling young artist who became a feared dictator. He led his country into a bloody war that killed millions of people.

Hitler rose to power in Germany in the 1930s. He eventually started World War II (1939-1945), a conflict that left Europe in ruins.

HITLER’S CHILDHOOD

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. He came from a well-to-do family in Austria-Hungary. His father was an important government worker. After his father died, Hitler quit school in the ninth grade. He decided to become an artist but had trouble finding work.

WORLD WAR I

Hilter volunteered for the German army during World War I (1914-1918) and served the whole war. Germany lost the war, and the country suffered terribly. Many Germans became jobless and poor. The people wanted someone to lead them back to glory again. Hitler wanted to be that person.

RISE TO POWER

After the war, Hitler joined the National German Socialists Workers’ Party. Many people called it the Nazi Party, for short. Hitler was an excellent public speaker. He appealed to German pride by constantly speaking about their racial superiority. This was the idea that one type of people are naturally better than others. He blamed other people, especially Jews, for Germany’s problems. His speeches attracted thousands of people who thought Hitler could be a great leader. The Nazi Party grew rapidly.

Hitler ran for political office in Germany and was elected in 1930. Three years later, in January 1933, Hitler became Germany’s chancellor, which was similar to a president. He immediately passed laws giving himself total power. Soon, Hitler had become a dictator. He controlled Germany’s government completely.

Hitler passed laws to get rid of people he did not like. They included his political enemies and Germans who were disabled or Jewish. Many of these people were sent to large camps, where they were held prisoner. Huge numbers of people were killed.

WORLD WAR II

Hitler also began rebuilding Germany’s military. He wanted a powerful army so he could conquer other countries, and eventually take over the world. He started by declaring Germany's union with the neighboring country of Austria. Then he ordered German troops to occupy all of Czechoslovakia. When Hitler’s army invaded Poland in 1939, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.

Germany’s mighty army soon captured France and began bombing England. In 1941, Hitler’s armies also invaded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), often called Russia. This turned out to be a big mistake because the German army had trouble fighting in several countries at once.

THE HOLOCAUST

Hitler’s soldiers forced tens of thousands of Jews in Poland into small sections of the cities, known as ghettos. The Jews were not given adequate food, and many of them starved to death. Hitler’s army also sent millions of Jews from Germany and other countries to concentration camps. There, many were killed. The deaths of millions of Jews under Hitler is known as the Holocaust. About one-third of the world’s 18 million Jews died in the Holocaust, one of history’s greatest tragedies.

HITLER’S SUICIDE

The United States entered World War II in December 1941. Slowly, Germany began to lose the war. America and its allies launched the D-Day invasion of western Europe on June 6, 1944. They fought their way through France and into Germany in 1945. Facing defeat, Hitler killed himself. His reign of terror was finally over.

Buddha

2009-08-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

Buddha (563?-483?bc), Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism, born in Lumbinī, Nepal. He was the son of the head of the Sakya warrior caste, with the private name of Siddhartha; in later life he was known also as Sakyamuni (Sage of the Sakyas). The name Gautama Buddha is a combination of the family name Gautama and the appellation Buddha, meaning “Enlightened One.”

All the surviving accounts of Buddha's life were written many years after his death by idealizing followers rather than by objective historians. Consequently, it is difficult to separate facts from the great mass of myth and legend in which they are embedded. From the available evidence, Buddha apparently showed an early inclination to meditation and reflection, displeasing his father, who wanted him to be a warrior and ruler rather than a religious philosopher. Yielding to his father's wishes, he married at an early age and participated in the worldly life of the court. Buddha found his carefree, self-indulgent existence dull, and after a while he left home and began wandering in search of enlightenment. One day in 533, according to tradition, he encountered an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse, and he suddenly and deeply realized that suffering is the common lot of humankind. He then came upon a mendicant monk, calm and serene, whereupon he determined to adopt his way of life and forsake family, wealth, and power in the quest for truth. This decision, known in Buddhism as the Great Renunciation, is celebrated by Buddhists as a turning point in history. Gautama was then 29 years old, according to tradition.

Wandering as a mendicant over northern India, Buddha first investigated Hinduism. He took instruction from some famous Brahman teachers, but he found the Hindu caste system repellent and Hindu asceticism futile. He continued his search, attracting but later losing five followers. About 528, while sitting under a bo tree near Gaya, in what is now Buddh Gaya in the state of Bihār, he experienced the Great Enlightenment, which revealed the way of salvation from suffering. Shortly afterward he preached his first sermon in the Deer Park near Benares (now Vārānasi). This sermon, the text of which is preserved, contains the gist of Buddhism. Many scholars regard it as comparable, in its tone of moral elevation and historical importance, to Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount.

The five disciples rejoined Buddha at Benares. Accompanied by them, he traveled through the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his doctrines, gathering followers, and establishing monastic communities that admitted anyone regardless of caste. He returned briefly to his native town and converted his father, his wife, and other members of his family to his beliefs. After 45 years of missionary activity Buddha died in Kusinagara, Nepal, as a result of eating contaminated food. He was about 80 years old.

Buddha was one of the greatest human beings, a man of noble character, penetrating vision, warm compassion, and profound thought. Not only did he establish a great new religion, but his revolt against Hindu hedonism, asceticism, extreme spiritualism, and the caste system deeply influenced Hinduism itself. His rejection of metaphysical speculation and his logical thinking introduced an important scientific strain heretofore lacking in Oriental thought. Buddha's teachings have influenced the lives of millions of people for nearly 2500 years.

Ludwig van Beethoven

2009-08-07T00:53:00.000-07:00

I INTRODUCTION

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer, considered one of the greatest musicians of all time. Having begun his career as an outstanding improviser at the piano and composer of piano music, Beethoven went on to compose string quartets and other kinds of chamber music, songs, two masses, an opera, and nine symphonies. His Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125 (Choral, completed 1824), perhaps the most famous work of classical music in existence, culminates in a choral finale based on the poem “Ode to Joy” by German writer Friedrich von Schiller. Like his opera Fidelio, op. 72 (1805; revised 1806, 1814) and many other works, the Ninth Symphony depicts an initial struggle with adversity and concludes with an uplifting vision of freedom and social harmony.

II LIFE

Beethoven was born in Bonn. His father’s harsh discipline and alcoholism made his childhood and adolescence difficult. At the age of 18, after his mother’s death, Beethoven placed himself at the head of the family, taking responsibility for his two younger brothers, both of whom followed him when he later moved to Vienna, Austria.

In Bonn, Beethoven’s most important composition teacher was German composer Christian Gottlob Neefe, with whom he studied during the 1780s. Neefe used the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach as a cornerstone of instruction, and he later encouraged his student to study with Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom Beethoven met briefly in Vienna in 1787. In 1792 Beethoven made another journey to Vienna to study with Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, and he stayed there the rest of his life.

The combination of forceful, dramatic power with dreamy introspection in Beethoven’s music made a strong impression in Viennese aristocratic circles and helped win him generous patrons. Yet just as his success seemed assured, he was confronted with the loss of that sense on which he so depended, his hearing. Beethoven expressed his despair over his increasing hearing loss in his moving “Heiligenstadt Testament,” a document written to his brothers in 1802. This impairment gradually put an end to his performing career. However, Beethoven’s compositional achievements did not suffer from his hearing loss but instead gained in richness and power over the years. His artistic growth was reflected in a series of masterpieces, including the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major op. 55 (the Eroica, completed 1804), Fidelio, and the Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67 (1808). These works embody his second period, which is called his heroic style.

Around 1810 Beethoven was especially drawn to the poetry and drama of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom he met in 1812 through the initiative of Goethe’s young literary friend Bettina Brentano. Bettina’s sister-in-law Antonia Brentano was probably the intended recipient of Beethoven’s famous letter to the “Immortal Beloved.” The letter dates from July 1812 and apparently marks the collapse of Beethoven’s hopes to seek happiness through marriage. Following this disappointment, Beethoven’s output declined significantly, and during 1813 he was generally depressed and unproductive.

Beethoven’s fame during his lifetime reached its peak in 1814. The enthusiastic response of the public to his music at this time was focused on showy works, such as Wellington’s Victory op. 91 (1813; also known as the Battle Symphony), and a series of patriotic crowd-pleasers, including the cantata The Glorious Moment op. 136 (1814), but his enhanced popularity also made possible the successful revival of Fidelio.

During the last decade of his life Beethoven had almost completely lost his hearing, and he was increasingly socially isolated. He had assumed the guardianship of his nephew Karl after a lengthy legal struggle, and despite Beethoven’s affection for Karl, there was enormous friction between the two. Notwithstanding these difficulties, between 1818 and 1826 Beethoven embarked upon a series of ambitious large-scale compositions, including the Sonata in B-flat major op. 106 (Hammerklavier, 1818), the Missa Solemnis in D major op. 123 (1823), the Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli in C major op. 120 (1823), the Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125 (1824), and his last string quartets. Plagued at times by serious illness, Beethoven nevertheless maintained his sense of humor and often amused himself with jokes and puns. He continued to work at a high level of creativity until he contracted pneumonia in December 1826. He died in Vienna in March 1827.

III MUSIC

Beethoven’s music is generally divided into three main creative periods. The first, or early, period extends to about 1802, when the composer made reference to a “new manner” or “new way” in connection with his art. The second, or middle, period extends to about 1812, after the completion of his Seventh and Eighth symphonies. The third, or late, period emerged gradually; Beethoven composed its pivotal work, the Hammerklavier Sonata, in 1818. Beethoven’s late style is especially innovative, and his last five quartets, written between 1824 and 1826, can be regarded as marking the onset of a fourth creative period.

Although Beethoven’s music of the early period is sometimes described as imitative of Mozart and Haydn, much of it is startlingly original, especially the works for piano. His early piano sonatas often have a forceful, bold quality, which is set into relief by the searching inwardness of the slow movements. The Sonata in C minor op. 13 (Pathétique, 1798), the most famous of these sonatas, transfers Haydn’s practice of employing slow introductions to his symphonies to the genre of the sonata. The title refers to a quality of pathos or suffering, which is felt especially in the brooding slow introduction and is twice recalled in later stages of the first movement. The main body of this swift, brilliant movement seems to convey willful resistance to the sense of suffering that dominates the slow introduction.

At the threshold of his middle period Beethoven sought a variety of new approaches to musical form. In the Sonata in C-sharp minor (Moonlight, 1801), he begins with a slow movement, while typical sonatas of that time began with a fast movement. The movement’s placid motif (repeated phrase) of broken chords is reinterpreted in the final movement as forceful figuration reaching across the entire keyboard. The sonatas of op. 31, from 1802, each open in an original fashion. The G major, op. 31 no. 1, begins with striking shifts in key, in contrast to the usual practice of remaining in the same key to “ground” the listener. The D minor, op. 31 no. 2 (Tempest), on the other hand, breaks up the opening theme into contrasting segments in different tempi, whereas customary practice called for stating the theme in its entirety at the beginning of a movement.

In the first movement of the Eroica Symphony, one of the major works from Beethoven’s middle period, he again sought ways to expand upon the prevailing musical forms. At that time, composers usually organized movements in three major parts. First, the exposition introduces the musical themes of the piece. Next, the development takes these themes into other keys, often modifying or fragmenting them. Finally, the recapitulation restates the themes, grounded in the original key. Prefaced by two massive, emphatic chords, the opening theme of the Eroica lingers on a mysterious dark moment of harmony—a gesture that is not reinterpreted until much later, at the outset of the recapitulation. After the rhythmic climax of the enormous development section—it is twice as long as the development section in any other symphony of the time—Beethoven reshapes classical norms by introducing extensive new material, which is resolved in a sort of recapitulation in the coda (concluding passage), which follows the movement’s recapitulation.

The four movements of the Eroica bear the following expressive associations: struggle, death (a funeral march), rebirth (a scherzo, or rapid dancelike movement, that begins quietly), and glorification. In its narrative design, the Eroica is connected to the ballet music of Beethoven’s Prometheus, op. 43 (1801), from which he borrowed the theme for the symphony’s finale. This movement of the symphony expresses the exaltation of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus in a series of variations on the ballet’s theme. Beethoven had originally intended to dedicate the work to French general Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he idolized, but he angrily withdrew the dedication after learning that Napoleon had taken the title of emperor.

Beethoven’s other instrumental works from the period of the Eroica also tend to expand the formal framework that he inherited from Haydn and Mozart. The Piano Sonata in C major op. 53 (Waldstein) and the Piano Sonata in F minor op. 57 (Appassionata), completed in 1804 and 1805 respectively, each employ bold contrasts in harmony, and they use a broadened formal plan, in which the meditative slow movements flow directly into the final movements. The symbolism of the keys used for these sonatas shares in the expressive world of Beethoven’s opera, entitled Leonore in its original version from 1805. The grim F-minor character of the Appassionata recalls the dungeon scenes in this key from the opera, whereas the jubilant close of the Waldstein in C major recalls the stirring C-major conclusion of the opera to the words “Hail to the day! Hail to the hour!”

The celebrated Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67 from 1808 is the most thematically concentrated of Beethoven’s works. Variants of the four-note motif that begins this symphony drive all four movements. The dramatic turning point in the symphony—where a sense of foreboding, struggle, or mystery yields to a triumphant breakthrough—comes at the transition to the final movement, where the music is reinforced by the entrance of the trombones. Beethoven uses here a large-scale polarity between the darker sound of C minor and the brighter, more radiant effect of C major, which is held largely in reserve until the finale.

The series of gigantic masterpieces of Beethoven’s third period include the technically demanding Hammerklavier Sonata, completed in 1818, about which he correctly predicted on account of its challenges that “it will be played fifty years hence,” and the Diabelli Variations. The latter work for piano transforms a trivial waltz by Viennese publisher Anton Diabelli into an astonishing, seemingly endless series of pieces, each with a unique character; some are humorous or even parodies. These and other late works incorporate fugues—melodies played in succession and interwoven—that reflect Beethoven’s lifelong interest in the music of J. S. Bach (known for his keyboard work Art of the Fugue). Beethoven’s second mass, the Missa Solemnis in D major op. 123 (1823), also poses formidable technical challenges, as do his fascinating and sometimes enigmatic last quartets and the Ninth Symphony, whose most readily accessible movement is the choral finale.

IV EVALUATION

Beethoven combined the dramatic classical style of lively contrasts and symmetrical forms, which was brought to its highest development by Mozart, with the older tradition of unified musical character that he found in the music of J. S. Bach. In some early works and especially in his middle or heroic period, Beethoven gave voice through his music to the new current of subjectivity and individualism that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the rise of middle classes. Beethoven disdained injustice and tyranny, and used his art to sing the praises of the Enlightenment, an 18th-century movement that promoted the ideals of freedom and equality, even as hopes faded for progress through political change. (His angry cancellation of the dedication of the Eroica Symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte reveals Beethoven’s refusal to compromise his principles.)

The fact that Beethoven realized his artistic ambitions in spite of his hearing impairment added to the fascination and inspiration of his life for posterity, and the extraordinary richness and complexity of his later works insured that no later generation would fail to find challenge in his music. Beethoven’s artistic achievement cast a long shadow over the 19th century and beyond, having set a standard against which later composers would measure their work. Subsequent composers have had to respond to the challenge of Beethoven’s Ninth, which appeared to have taken the symphony to its ultimate development.

Aristotle

2009-08-07T00:41:00.000-07:00

I INTRODUCTION
AristotleA student of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Aristotle shared his teacher’s reverence for human knowledge but revised many of Plato’s ideas by emphasizing methods rooted in observation and experience. Aristotle surveyed and systematized nearly all the extant branches of knowledge and provided the first ordered accounts of biology, psychology, physics, and literary theory. In addition, Aristotle invented the field known as formal logic, pioneered zoology, and addressed virtually every major philosophical problem known during his time. Known to medieval intellectuals as simply “the Philosopher,” Aristotle is possibly the greatest thinker in Western history and, historically, perhaps the single greatest influence on Western intellectual development.Corbis
Aristotle (384-322 bc), Greek philosopher and scientist, who shares with Plato and Socrates the distinction of being the most famous of ancient philosophers.

Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a physician to the royal court. At the age of 17, he went to Athens to study at Plato's Academy. He remained there for about 20 years, as a student and then as a teacher.

Raphael’s School of Athens The School of Athens (1510-1511) by Italian Renaissance painter Raphael adorns a room in the Vatican Palace. The artist depicts several philosophers of classical antiquity and portrays each with a distinctive gesture, conveying complex ideas in simple images. In the center of the composition, Plato and Aristotle dominate the scene. Plato points upward to the world of ideas, where he believes knowledge lies, whereas Aristotle holds his forearm parallel to the earth, stressing observation of the world around us as the source of understanding. In addition, Raphael draws comparisons with his illustrious contemporaries, giving Plato the face of the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci, and Heraclitus, who rests his elbow on a large marble block, the face of the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo. Euclid, bending down at the right, resembles the Renaissance architect Bramante. Raphael paints his own portrait on the young man in a black beret at the far right. In accordance with Renaissance ideas, artists belong to the ranks of the learned and the fine arts have the stature and merit of the written word.© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
When Plato died in 347 bc, Aristotle moved to Assos, a city in Asia Minor, where a friend of his, Hermias, was ruler. There he counseled Hermias and married his niece and adopted daughter, Pythias. After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345 bc, Aristotle went to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he became the tutor of the king's young son Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum. Because much of the discussion in his school took place while teachers and students were walking about the Lyceum grounds, Aristotle's school came to be known as the Peripatetic (“walking” or “strolling”) school. Upon the death of Alexander in 323 bc, strong anti-Macedonian feeling developed in Athens, and Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea (Évvoia). He died there the following year.

II WORKS

Aristotle, like Plato, made regular use of the dialogue in his earliest years at the Academy, but lacking Plato's imaginative gifts, he probably never found the form congenial. Apart from a few fragments in the works of later writers, his dialogues have been wholly lost. Aristotle also wrote some short technical notes, such as a dictionary of philosophic terms and a summary of the doctrines of Pythagoras. Of these, only a few brief excerpts have survived. Still extant, however, are Aristotle's lecture notes for carefully outlined courses treating almost every branch of knowledge and art. The texts on which Aristotle's reputation rests are largely based on these lecture notes, which were collected and arranged by later editors.

Among the texts are treatises on logic, called Organon (“instrument”), because they provide the means by which positive knowledge is to be attained. His works on natural science include Physics, which gives a vast amount of information on astronomy, meteorology, plants, and animals. His writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being, which Aristotle called First Philosophy (Protē philosophia), were given the title Metaphysics in the first published edition of his works (60? bc), because in that edition they followed Physics. His treatment of the Prime Mover, or first cause, as pure intellect, perfect in unity, immutable, and, as he said, “the thought of thought,” is given in the Metaphysics. To his son Nicomachus he dedicated his work on ethics, called the Nicomachean Ethics. Other essential works include his Rhetoric, his Poetics (which survives in incomplete form), and his Politics (also incomplete).

III METHODS

Perhaps because of the influence of his father's medical profession, Aristotle's philosophy laid its principal stress on biology, in contrast to Plato's emphasis on mathematics. Aristotle regarded the world as made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward proper self-realization as a specimen of its type. Growth, purpose, and direction are thus built into nature. Although science studies general kinds, according to Aristotle, these kinds find their existence in particular individuals. Science and philosophy must therefore balance, not simply choose between, the claims of empiricism (observation and sense experience) and formalism (rational deduction).

One of the most distinctive of Aristotle's philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more than one “reason” that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. Earlier Greek thinkers had tended to assume that only one sort of cause can be really explanatory; Aristotle proposed four. (The word Aristotle uses, aition, “a responsible, explanatory factor” is not synonymous with the word cause in its modern sense.)

These four causes are the material cause, the matter out of which a thing is made; the efficient cause, the source of motion, generation, or change; the formal cause, which is the species, kind, or type; and the final cause, the goal, or full development, of an individual, or the intended function of a construction or invention. Thus, a young lion is made up of tissues and organs, its material cause; the efficient cause is its parents, who generated it; the formal cause is its species, lion; and its final cause is its built-in drive toward becoming a mature specimen. In different contexts, while the causes are the same four, they apply analogically. Thus, the material cause of a statue is the marble from which it was carved; the efficient cause is the sculptor; the formal cause is the shape the sculptor realized—Hermes, perhaps, or Aphrodite; and the final cause is its function, to be a work of fine art.

In each context, Aristotle insists that something can be better understood when its causes can be stated in specific terms rather than in general terms. Thus, it is more informative to know that a sculptor made the statue than to know that an artist made it; and even more informative to know that Polycleitus chiseled it rather than simply that a sculptor did so.

Aristotle thought his causal pattern was the ideal key for organizing knowledge. His lecture notes present impressive evidence of the power of this scheme.

IV DOCTRINES

Some of the principal aspects of Aristotle's thought can be seen in the following summary of his doctrines, or theories.

A Physics, or Natural Philosophy

In astronomy, Aristotle proposed a finite, spherical universe, with the earth at its center. The central region is made up of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. In Aristotle's physics, each of these four elements has a proper place, determined by its relative heaviness, its “specific gravity.” Each moves naturally in a straight line—earth down, fire up—toward its proper place, where it will be at rest. Thus, terrestrial motion is always linear and always comes to a halt. The heavens, however, move naturally and endlessly in a complex circular motion. The heavens, therefore, must be made of a fifth, and different element, which he called aither. A superior element, aither is incapable of any change other than change of place in a circular movement. Aristotle's theory that linear motion always takes place through a resisting medium is in fact valid for all observable terrestrial motions. He also held that heavier bodies of a given material fall faster than lighter ones when their shapes are the same, a mistaken view that was accepted as fact until the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo conducted his experiment with weights dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

B Biology

In zoology, Aristotle proposed a fixed set of natural kinds (“species”), each reproducing true to type. An exception occurs, Aristotle thought, when some “very low” worms and flies come from rotting fruit or manure by “spontaneous generation.” The typical life cycles are epicycles: The same pattern repeats, but through a linear succession of individuals. These processes are therefore intermediate between the changeless circles of the heavens and the simple linear movements of the terrestrial elements. The species form a scale from simple (worms and flies at the bottom) to complex (human beings at the top), but evolution is not possible.

C Aristotelian Psychology

For Aristotle, psychology was a study of the soul. Insisting that form (the essence, or unchanging characteristic element in an object) and matter (the common undifferentiated substratum of things) always exist together, Aristotle defined a soul as a “kind of functioning of a body organized so that it can support vital functions.” In considering the soul as essentially associated with the body, he challenged the Pythagorean doctrine that the soul is a spiritual entity imprisoned in the body. Aristotle's doctrine is a synthesis of the earlier notion that the soul does not exist apart from the body and of the Platonic notion of a soul as a separate, nonphysical entity. Whether any part of the human soul is immortal, and, if so, whether its immortality is personal, are not entirely clear in his treatise On the Soul.

Through the functioning of the soul, the moral and intellectual aspects of humanity are developed. Aristotle argued that human insight in its highest form (nous poetikos, “active mind”) is not reducible to a mechanical physical process. Such insight, however, presupposes an individual “passive mind” that does not appear to transcend physical nature. Aristotle clearly stated the relationship between human insight and the senses in what has become a slogan of empiricism—the view that knowledge is grounded in sense experience. “There is nothing in the intellect,” he wrote, “that was not first in the senses.”

D Ethics

It seemed to Aristotle that the individual's freedom of choice made an absolutely accurate analysis of human affairs impossible. “Practical science,” then, such as politics or ethics, was called science only by courtesy and analogy. The inherent limitations on practical science are made clear in Aristotle's concepts of human nature and self-realization. Human nature certainly involves, for everyone, a capacity for forming habits; but the habits that a particular individual forms depend on that individual's culture and repeated personal choices. All human beings want “happiness,” an active, engaged realization of their innate capacities, but this goal can be achieved in a multiplicity of ways.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is an analysis of character and intelligence as they relate to happiness. Aristotle distinguished two kinds of “virtue,” or human excellence: moral and intellectual. Moral virtue is an expression of character, formed by habits reflecting repeated choices. A moral virtue is always a mean between two less desirable extremes. Courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and thoughtless rashness; generosity, between extravagance and parsimony. Intellectual virtues are not subject to this doctrine of the mean. Aristotle argued for an elitist ethics: Full excellence can be realized only by the mature male adult of the upper class, not by women, or children, or barbarians (non-Greeks), or salaried “mechanics” (manual workers) for whom, indeed, Aristotle did not want to allow voting rights.

In politics, many forms of human association can obviously be found; which one is suitable depends on circumstances, such as the natural resources, cultural traditions, industry, and literacy of each community. Aristotle did not regard politics as a study of ideal states in some abstract form, but rather as an examination of the way in which ideals, laws, customs, and property interrelate in actual cases. He thus approved the contemporary institution of slavery but tempered his acceptance by insisting that masters should not abuse their authority, since the interests of master and slave are the same. The Lyceum library contained a collection of 158 constitutions of the Greek and other states. Aristotle himself wrote the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, and after being lost, this description was rediscovered in a papyrus copy in 1890. Historians have found the work of great value in reconstructing many phases of the history of Athens.

E Logic

In logic, Aristotle developed rules for chains of reasoning that would, if followed, never lead from true premises to false conclusions (validity rules). In reasoning, the basic links are syllogisms: pairs of propositions that, taken together, give a new conclusion. For example, “All humans are mortal” and “All Greeks are humans” yield the valid conclusion “All Greeks are mortal.” Science results from constructing more complex systems of reasoning. In his logic, Aristotle distinguished between dialectic and analytic. Dialectic, he held, only tests opinions for their logical consistency; analytic works deductively from principles resting on experience and precise observation. This is clearly an intended break with Plato's Academy, where dialectic was supposed to be the only proper method for science and philosophy alike.

F Metaphysics

In his metaphysics, Aristotle argued for the existence of a divine being, described as the Prime Mover, who is responsible for the unity and purposefulness of nature. God is perfect and therefore the aspiration of all things in the world, because all things desire to share perfection. Other movers exist as well—the intelligent movers of the planets and stars (Aristotle suggested that the number of these is “either 55 or 47”). The Prime Mover, or God, described by Aristotle is not very suitable for religious purposes, as many later philosophers and theologians have observed. Aristotle limited his “theology,” however, to what he believed science requires and can establish.

V INFLUENCE

Aristotle's works were lost in the West after the decline of Rome. During the 9th century ad, Arab scholars introduced Aristotle, in Arabic translation, to the Islamic world (see Islam). The 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroës is the best known of the Arabic scholars who studied and commented on Aristotle. In the 13th century, the Latin West renewed its interest in Aristotle's work, and Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a philosophical foundation for Christian thought. Church officials at first questioned Aquinas's use of Aristotle; in the early stages of its rediscovery, Aristotle's philosophy was regarded with some suspicion, largely because his teachings were thought to lead to a materialistic view of the world. Nevertheless, the work of Aquinas was accepted, and the later philosophy of scholasticism continued the philosophical tradition based on Aquinas's adaptation of Aristotelian thought.

The influence of Aristotle's philosophy has been pervasive; it has even helped to shape modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the Prime Mover as final cause played an important role in theology. Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle's logic. Until the Renaissance, and even later, astronomers and poets alike admired his concept of the universe. Zoology rested on Aristotle's work until British scientist Charles Darwin modified the doctrine of the changelessness of species in the 19th century. In the 20th century a new appreciation has developed of Aristotle's method and its relevance to education, literary criticism, the analysis of human action, and political analysis.

Not only the discipline of zoology, but also the world of learning as a whole, seems to amply justify Darwin's remark that the intellectual heroes of his own time “were mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle.”

Meiji

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(1852–1912). For several centuries before the year 1868, Japan was governed by warlords called shoguns. When the emperor Meiji Tenno was crowned in 1868, the last shogunate—that of the Tokugawas—ended, and Japan began its radical transformation from a feudal society into one of the most powerful nations in the modern world.

Meiji, whose personal name was Mutsuhito, was born in Kyoto on Nov. 3, 1852. He was declared crown prince in 1860, and on the death of his father in 1866 he came to the throne. At his coronation two years later he took the name Meiji, meaning “enlightened government,” by which his reign is known. Unlike his father he advocated the modernization of Japan after 250 years of isolation from the West. He instigated the creation of a new school system, ended feudal land holdings, and adopted the cabinet system of government. A new constitution was issued in 1889, and a parliament called the Diet opened in 1890.

The emperor's sweeping reforms were justified on the basis of being a return to antiquity. All loyalties that had focused on local lords and the shoguns were transferred to the emperor, creating a patriotism that helped unite Japan. He was the first emperor to come out of seclusion to make inspection trips around the country, thereby enhancing his popularity.

Part of Japan's modernization included a strong emphasis on the military. Meiji actively encouraged the development of a modern army and navy and helped his country pursue its aims of overseas expansion. He was actively involved in prosecution of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and the annexation of Korea in 1910. Meiji died on July 30, 1912.

Marie Antoinette

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(1755–93). Frivolous and extravagant, Marie Antoinette, queen of France and wife of Louis XVI, became the symbol of the people's hatred for the old regime during the French Revolution. According to legend, when informed that the poor people had no bread to eat, she responded, “Let them eat cake.” Her extravagance contributed only slightly to France's staggering debt, but her callous disregard for the country's plight and her foreign connections made her the focus of hatred and distrust.

Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna on Nov. 2, 1755. She was the daughter of Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa of Austria. France and Austria, long bitter enemies, made a treaty of alliance . To strengthen the alliance, Marie Antoinette was married to the dauphin (heir to the French throne) in 1770. At that time Marie Antoinette was 15 years old and the dauphin 16.

The dauphin was a well-meaning person, but he was dull and unsociable. His beautiful and vivacious young wife went her own way, bent on pleasure, and shocked the French court by disregarding its strict etiquette. In 1774 Louis XV died, and the dauphin became king as Louis XVI. The country was almost bankrupt, but extravagance continued to be the rule at the palace of Versailles. The people blamed much of their distress on the queen. On Oct. 5, 1789, after the French Revolution had begun, several thousand men and women walked from Paris to Versailles to present their demands to the king. They forced the royal family to return with them to Paris.

After months of being virtual prisoners in their palace in Paris, Marie Antoinette finally persuaded the king that they should flee the country. On the night of June 20, 1791, dressed as ordinary travelers, the family left by coach for the eastern border. Before they reached it they were recognized and forced to turn back. This incident strengthened the popular suspicion that the king and queen were plotting to bring about foreign intervention.

On Aug. 10, 1792, revolutionaries stormed the Palace of the Tuileries and massacred the Swiss Guards. The royal family was imprisoned. On September 22 France was proclaimed a republic. Louis XVI was beheaded on Jan. 21, 1793. On October 14, during the Reign of Terror, the queen was tried and condemned for treason. Two days later she was put to death on the guillotine. (See also Louis, Kings of France, “Louis XVI.”)

Louis, kings of France

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The first of the many French kings to bear the name Louis was actually Clovis (see Clovis). He ruled from 481 to 511 and founded the kingdom of the Franks. Later the “C” was dropped and the “v” was written as “u,” thus making the name Louis. It is the same as the English Lewis and the German Ludwig.

Louis the Pious

(born 778, ruled 814–40) is usually reckoned as Louis I. The son of Charlemagne, he succeeded his father as king of the Franks and Holy Roman emperor. The great empire built up by Charlemagne was divided after Louis I died, and the next four rulers of this name left little mark on the course of history.

Louis VI, the Fat
(born 1081, ruled 1108–37), was the first important king of the Capetian line. This line sprang from Hugh Capet, who became king in 987. Louis the Fat was a great fighter, a great hunter, and a great eater. At 46 he became too fat to mount a horse, but he remained the embodiment of warlike energy. His great task was to reduce to order the petty nobles of the royal domain, who could truly be called robber barons. When Louis came to the throne, every lord of a castle robbed at will and it was not safe for even the king to pass along the road. Twenty years of hard fighting were necessary to remedy this condition, but in the end, law and order prevailed. So that such evils might not recur, every castle that was captured was destroyed or given to faithful followers.

Louis VII
(born 1120, ruled 1137–80) was the eldest son of Louis VI. Shortly before his death, Louis VI arranged for his son's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. By this marriage southwest France was added to the domains of the new French king. Unfortunately Louis, who was very religious and prone to be jealous, soon discovered that his beautiful queen was a capricious flirt.

In 1147 Louis departed for the Holy Land on the Second Crusade, taking his queen with him. This Crusade was a miserable failure (see Crusades). After they returned, Louis had his marriage annulled in 1152. Eleanor at once sent an embassy to Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, proposing marriage. Henry was overjoyed because the alliance transferred to him the great duchy of Guienne. Two years later Henry and Eleanor were crowned king and queen of England (see Henry, Kings of England, “Henry II”). France thus lost a rich territory to England, its greatest rival.

Louis VIII
(born 1187, ruled 1223–26), the son of Philip Augustus, reigned too short a time to accomplish anything of real importance.

Louis IX
(born 1214, ruled 1226–70), called St. Louis, was one of the most virtuous and heroic kings of France. He was the dutiful son of Louis VIII and his queen, Blanche of Castile. Blanche bravely faced numerous revolts of powerful feudal nobles during her son's youth. Louis IX had all the good qualities and few of the bad ones of the age in which he lived. Indeed, his virtues were so remarkable that after his death the Roman Catholic church declared him a saint.

Louis's acts of piety, such as wearing a haircloth shirt, fasting, and waiting on lepers, were usually performed in private. To the world he was a fearless knight, thoroughly trained in the art of war, and a conscientious, just, and able king—usually good-humored and kindly, but at times impatient and angry. He was a strong ruler, who greatly strengthened the royal power. He improved the government by appointing local officials who were responsible to him for the administration of justice, the collection of taxes, and the government of their districts. He encouraged the people to appeal to him if the nobles oppressed them or if his officials were unjust. He improved the administration of justice by abolishing trials by combat and by using in his courts the new lawyers, trained in the Roman law, in place of the churchmen who formerly were the only people who could read and write. These reforms not only benefited the peasants but also checked the power of the nobles, who, according to a writer of the time, “undertook nothing against their king, seeing clearly that the hand of the Lord was with him.”

St. Louis made two crusades—to Egypt and the Holy Land, from 1248 to 1254, on which he was captured and held for ransom by Muhammadans; and to Tunis, in 1270, where he died of the plague.

Louis X
(born 1289) ruled for only two years, from 1314 to 1316.

Louis XI
(born 1423, ruled 1461–83) presented a striking contrast to Louis IX. In appearance Louis XI was ugly and unkingly; in character he was unscrupulous and underhanded. Like his contemporaries, Cesare Borgia and Richard III, he was an embodiment of the principles that are called Machiavellian. He believed that “he who has success has honor” and cared nothing for the way in which he attained success. He made promises only to break them, unless he had sworn by one particular saint: then his word was good.

His one ambition seemed to be to extend the boundaries of France. Although he was too stingy to buy a hat to replace the shabby one he wore, he spent large sums in buying back border cities. In his conflicts with the nobles, especially with Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, he also acquired much territory, so that by the time of his death most of the land of France was under the direct control of the king. The power of the crown in the latter part of his reign was truly absolute over the territory it held.

Sir Walter Scott, in his novel ‘Quentin Durward', gives a fine description of the court of Louis XI, as well as an excellent survey of the customs and traditions of the period.

Louis XII
(born 1462, ruled 1498–1515) is chiefly noted for the Italian wars, begun by his predecessor, Charles VIII, and continued after the reign of Louis XII by Francis I.

Louis XIII
(born 1601, ruled 1610–43) kept his able minister, Richelieu, in power for 18 years despite strong opposition . The first years of the reign were filled with anarchy and disorder. The king was a child, and his mother, who ruled for him, was weak and selfish. When Richelieu came into power, however, all this was changed. The Huguenots were reduced from a powerful political party to a mere religious body, and the nobles were humbled . National unity and religious peace were secured at home, and France was raised to the first position among the powers of Europe.

Louis XIV
(born 1638, ruled 1643–1715) inherited this power from his father and carried it further. He was styled the Grand Monarch, and his brilliant court at Versailles became the model and the despair of other less rich and powerful princes, who accepted his theory of absolute monarchy (L'état c'est moi, “I am the state”). Until 1661 the government was largely in the hands of the wily Italian Cardinal Mazarin. At the cardinal's death Louis declared that he would be his own prime minister. From then on he worked faithfully at his “trade of a king.”

A passion for fame and the desire to increase French territory in Europe were the leading motives of Louis XIV. He neglected the opportunities to gain an empire in America and India and involved France in wars that ruined the country financially and paved the way for the outbreak of the French Revolution.

His first war, fought from 1667 to 1668, was an attempt to enforce flimsy claims to part of the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium). His second (1672–78) was directed against “their High Mightinesses,” the States-General of Holland, who had blocked his objective in the first contest. In spite of the great military power of France, the Dutch admiral De Ruyter twice defeated the fleets of the French and their English allies, and Louis XIV failed ingloriously in his attempt to conquer Holland. The third war (1689–97) also was directed chiefly against Holland, whose stadholder had by then become King William III of England. The German province of the Palatinate was terribly wasted, but the Peace of Ryswick brought only slight gains for France. Louis's last and greatest effort was the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13). In this conflict the English duke of Marlborough was the principal leader of the opposing European coalition. The right to seat his grandson Philip V on the throne of Spain was small compensation for the thousands of lives and the millions in treasure that the French king wasted in the struggle.

Millions more were spent by Louis in building the beautiful palace at Versailles, near Paris, and in maintaining his brilliant court. There, etiquette became the “real constitution of France.” It required seven persons, some of them the highest princes of the realm, to put the king's shirt on him at his getting up (levée) in the morning. A French historian says of Louis XIV: “He was a god in his temple, celebrating his own worship in the midst of his host of priests and faithful.” This extravagance of the court meant a heavy burden of taxation for the common people, who were thereby reduced to a misery so great that they eventually rose up in rebellion and drove the Bourbons from the throne.

Louis XIV had the distinction of ruling longer than any other European king: it was 72 years from the time when he ascended the throne, as a child of less than 5, until his death in 1715. The Grand Monarch, who had outlived both his son and his son's son, was succeeded by his 5-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, the last son of the duke of Burgundy.

Louis XV
(born 1710, ruled 1715–74). The luxurious court of Louis XIV was continued under Louis XV. The evils from which the country suffered were clearly recognized, but by the time the king grew up he was too lazy and selfish to try to remedy them. Misgovernment was common at home, and the position of France abroad was lowered by the loss of its colonial possessions in India and America. These misfortunes, however, made little impression on the king, whose attitude was expressed in the phrase, “After me the deluge!”

Louis XVI
(born 1754, ruled 1774–92). The storm broke during the reign of Louis XVI. Awkward and timid, no man could have appeared less like a king than did Louis XVI, who was 20 years old when he came to the throne. No man could have seemed more out of place in the brilliant and polished court of which he was the center. Louis realized this and often wished, even before the Revolution, that he were only a common man. He was a good horseman, fond of hunting, and he delighted in making and mending locks. His greatest fault was that he was always ready to listen to and follow the advice of others. When this advice was good, all went well; but in the latter part of Louis's reign the advice was bad and it cost the king his life.

When Louis XVI first came to the throne, he entrusted the management of the finances of the kingdom to Turgot, one of the greatest of statesmen. As long as the king followed his minister's advice, the state of the kingdom was improved. But he was more often under the influence of the beautiful but frivolous and extravagant queen, Marie Antoinette . He was also swayed by his selfish courtiers, who opposed any financial reforms that would threaten their graft and pensions and life of ease. They soon persuaded the king to dismiss his able minister.

The political climate gradually grew worse, and finally Louis XVI was forced to call the Estates-General, a body that had not met since 1614 . Its meeting was the first step in the French Revolution . The members of the Third Estate refused to follow the old method of voting and finally declared themselves a national assembly.

At first the king seemed inclined to work with the revolution and to try to remedy conditions in the country. But the influence of the queen and of the courtiers proved too strong for his weak will. Encouraged by them, he disregarded the promises he had made and sought to flee from France in order to obtain aid against the revolution from Austria.

This attempted flight was the beginning of the end for the court of Louis XVI. The people saw that they could not trust the king and the “Austrian woman,” as they called the queen. His disregard of his promises to abide by the constitution led to the storming of the royal palace of the Tuileries on Aug. 10, 1792. The king and his family escaped before the mob arrived and took refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly. The assembly declared that the king was suspended from office and ordered that he and his family should be imprisoned. They then called a new assembly (the Convention) to decide whether France should continue to be a monarchy.

The Convention first decided against a monarchy and declared the king deposed. They then brought Louis XVI to trial on the charge of conspiring with foreign countries for the invasion of France. Almost unanimously Louis Capet, as he was now called, was declared guilty and was sentenced to death. Consequently, the next day he was beheaded, meeting his fate with a steadfast courage, according to accounts, and proving greater in death than he had ever been in life. His execution had important consequences for France, because it aroused opinion in other countries against the French Revolution.

Louis XVII,
the Dauphin (born 1785), never had the opportunity to rule France. He was imprisoned with his parents, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, when he was 7. According to the French government, he died at the age of 10.

Louis XVIII
(born 1755, ruled 1814–24). When the Bourbons returned to the throne of France in 1814, the younger brother of Louis XVI assumed the crown as Louis XVIII. The difficult task of reconstruction was before the king, but he seemed admirably adapted to meet the situation. He was cold-blooded and cared nothing for revenge; therefore he was satisfied to leave alone those who had driven his family from France. He was a lazy man, and his one ambition was to keep his throne. This ambition at first seemed likely to go unfulfilled, for in 1815 Napoleon returned from exile on the island of Elba, and Louis XVIII fled in a panic from France. At the end of the period known as the Hundred Days, however, Napoleon was again overthrown, at Waterloo, and the Allies entered Paris, “bringing Louis XVIII in their baggage.”.

Until 1820 the king was able to resist the demands of the extreme royalists for vengeance and to build up his kingdom, but finally, under the leadership of his brother, they became too strong for him. He yielded to their demands for a reactionary government. This marked the beginning of the end of the Bourbons; ten years later, under his brother, Charles X, they were finally driven from the throne of France.

Louis-Philippe
(born 1773, ruled 1830–48). Having disposed of the old Bourbons, the French had to set up a new government. Influenced by Lafayette , they decided to perpetuate the French monarchy with Louis-Philippe, a member of the Orléans family. He accepted the crown on Aug. 9, 1830.

Louis-Philippe was known for his democratic ideas, but his government was not democratic. Demands for a more liberal government were not met.

When the government forbade a banquet organized by supporters of political reform, which was to be held on Feb. 22, 1848, the Republicans of Paris revolted. The prime minister, François Guizot, was forced to resign. This did not satisfy the rioters, however, and Louis-Philippe abdicated on February 24. He fled to England, where he died two years later.

Industrial Revolution

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Most products people in the industrialized nations use today are turned out swiftly by the process of mass production, by people (and sometimes, robots) working on assembly lines using power-driven machines. People of ancient and medieval times had no such products. They had to spend long, tedious hours of hand labor even on simple objects. The energy, or power, they employed in work came almost wholly from their own and animals' muscles. The Industrial Revolution is the name given the movement in which machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacture.

About the time of the American Revolution, the people of England began to use machines to make cloth and steam engines to run the machines. A little later they invented locomotives. Productivity began a spectacular climb. By 1850 most Englishmen were laboring in industrial towns and Great Britain had become the workshop of the world. From Britain the Industrial Revolution spread gradually throughout Europe and to the United States.

Changes That Led to the Revolution
The most important of the changes that brought about the Industrial Revolution were.

(1) the invention of machines to do the work of hand tools;
(2) the use of steam, and later of other kinds of power, in place of the muscles of human beings and of animals; and
(3) the adoption of the factory system.

It is almost impossible to imagine what the world would be like if the effects of the Industrial Revolution were swept away. Electric lights would go out. Automobiles and airplanes would vanish. Telephones, radios, and television would disappear Most of the abundant stocks on the shelves of department stores would be gone. The children of the poor would have little or no schooling and would work from dawn to dark on the farm or in the home. Before machines were invented, work by children as well as by adults was needed in order to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter for all.

The Industrial Revolution came gradually. It happened in a short span of time, however, when measured against the centuries people had worked entirely by hand. Until John Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733 and James Hargreaves the spinning jenny 31 years later, the making of yarn and the weaving of cloth had been much the same for thousands of years. By 1800 a host of new and faster processes were in use in both manufacture and transportation.

This relatively sudden change in the way people live deserves to be called a revolution. It differs from a political revolution in its greater effects on the lives of people and in not coming to an end, as, for example, did the French Revolution.

Instead, the Industrial Revolution grew more powerful each year as new inventions and manufacturing processes added to the efficiency of machines and increased productivity. Indeed, since World War I the mechanization of industry has increased so enormously that another revolution in production is taking place.

Expanding Commerce Affects Industry
Commerce and industry have always been closely related. Sometimes one is ahead and sometimes the other, but the one behind is always trying to catch up. Beginning in about 1400, world commerce grew and changed so greatly that writers sometimes use the term “commercial revolution” to describe the economic progress of the next three and a half centuries.

Many factors helped bring about this revolution in trade. The Crusades opened up the riches of the East to Western Europe. America was discovered, and European nations began to acquire rich colonies there and elsewhere. New trade routes were opened. The strong central governments which replaced the feudal system began to protect and help their merchants. Trading firms, such as the British East India Company, were chartered by governments. Larger ships were built, and flourishing cities grew up.

With the expansion of trade, more money was needed. Large-scale commerce could not be carried on by barter, as much of the earlier trade had been. Gold and silver from the New World helped meet this need. Banks and credit systems developed. By the end of the 17th century Europe had a large accumulation of capital. Money had to be available before machinery and steam engines could come into wide use for they were costly to manufacture and install.

By 1750 large quantities of goods were being exchanged among the European nations, and there was a demand for more goods than were being produced. England was the leading commercial nation, and the manufacture of cloth was its leading industry.

Organizing Production
Several systems of making goods had grown up by the time of the Industrial Revolution. In country districts families produced most of the food, clothing, and other articles they used, as they had done for centuries. In the cities merchandise was made in shops much like those of the medieval craftsmen, and manufacturing was strictly regulated by the guilds and by the government. The goods made in these shops, though of high quality, were limited and costly. (See also; Middle Ages.)

The merchants needed cheaper items, as well as larger quantities, for their growing trade. As early as the 15th century they already had begun to go outside the cities, beyond the reach of the hampering regulations, and to establish another system of producing goods.

From Cottage Industry to Factory
Cloth merchants, for instance, would buy raw wool from the sheep owners, have it spun into yarn by farmers' wives, and take it to country weavers to be made into textiles. These country weavers could manufacture the cloth more cheaply than city craftsmen could because they got part of their living from their gardens or small farms.

The merchants would then collect the cloth and give it out again to finishers and dyers. Thus they controlled clothmaking from start to finish. Similar methods of organizing and controlling the process of manufacture came to prevail in other industries, such as the nail, cutlery, and leather goods.

Some writers call this the putting-out system. Others call it the domestic system because the work was done in the home (“domestic” comes from the Latin word for home). Another term is cottage industry, for most of the workers belonged to the class of farm laborers known as cotters and carried on the work in their cottages.

This system of industry had several advantages over older systems. It gave the merchant a large supply of manufactured articles at a low price. It also enabled him to order the particular kinds of items that he needed for his markets. It provided employment for every member of a craft worker's family and gave jobs to skilled workers who had no capital to start businesses for themselves. A few merchants who had enough capital had gone a step further. They brought workers together under one roof and supplied them with spinning wheels and looms or with the implements of other trades. These establishments were factories, though they bear slight resemblance to the factories of today.

Why the Revolution Began in England
English merchants were leaders in developing a commerce which increased the demand for more goods. The expansion in trade had made it possible to accumulate capital to use in industry. A cheaper system of production had grown up which was largely free from regulation.

There also were new ideas in England which aided the movement. One of these was the growing interest in scientific investigation and invention. Another was the doctrine of laissez-faire, or letting business alone. This doctrine had been growing in favor throughout the 18th century. It was especially popular after the British economist Adam Smith argued powerfully for it in his great work ‘The Wealth of Nations' (1776).

For centuries the craft guilds and the government had controlled commerce and industry down to the smallest detail. Now many Englishmen had come to believe that it was better to let business be regulated by the free play of supply and demand rather than by laws. Thus the English government for the most part kept its hands off and left business free to adopt the new inventions and the methods of production which were best suited to them.

The most important of the machines that ushered in the Industrial Revolution were invented in the last third of the 18th century. Earlier in the century, however, three inventions had been made which opened the way for the later machines. One was the crude, slow-moving steam engine built by Thomas Newcomen (1705), which was used to pump water out of mines. The second was John Kay's flying shuttle (1733). It enabled one person to handle a wide loom more rapidly than two persons could operate it before. The third was a frame for spinning cotton thread with rollers, first set up by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt (1741). Their invention was not commercially practical, but it was the first step toward solving the problem of machine spinning.

Inventions in Textile Industry
As the flying shuttle sped up weaving, the demand for cotton yarn increased. Many inventors set to work to improve the spinning wheel. James Hargreaves, a weaver who was also a carpenter, patented his spinning jenny in 1770. It enabled one worker to run eight spindles instead of one.

About the same time Richard Arkwright developed his water frame, a machine for spinning with rollers operated by water power. In 1779 Samuel Crompton, a spinner, combined Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's roller frame into a spinning machine, called a mule. It produced thread of greater fineness and strength than the jenny or the roller frame. Since the roller frame and the mule were large and heavy, it became the practice to install them in mills, where they could be run by water power. They were tended by women and children.

These improvements in spinning machinery called for further improvements in weaving. In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom. In spite of the need for it, weaving machinery came into use very slowly. First, many improvements had to be made before the loom was satisfactory. Second, the hand weavers violently opposed its adoption because it threw many of them out of work. Those who got jobs in the factories were obliged to take the same pay as unskilled workers. Thus they rioted, smashed the machines, and tried to prevent their use. The power loom was only coming into wide operation in the cotton industry by 1813. It did not completely replace the hand loom in weaving cotton until 1850. It was not well adapted to the making of some woolens. As late as 1880 many hand looms were still in use for weaving woolen cloth.

Many other machines contributed to the progress of the textile industry. In 1785 Thomas Bell of Glasgow invented cylinder printing of cotton goods. This was a great improvement on block printing. It made successive impressions of a design “join up” and did the work more rapidly and more cheaply. In 1793 the available supply of cotton was increased by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. In 1804 J.M. Jacquard, a Frenchman, perfected a loom on which patterns might be woven in fabrics by mechanical means. This loom was later adapted to the making of lace, which became available to everyone.

Watt's Steam Engine
While textile machinery was developing, progress was being made in other directions. In 1763 James Watt, a Scottish mechanic, was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine. He saw how crude and inefficient it was and by a series of improvements made it a practical device for running machinery.

Wheels turned by running water had been the chief source of power for the early factories. These were necessarily situated on swift-running streams. When the steam engine became efficient, it was possible to locate factories in more convenient places.

Coal and Iron
The first users of steam engines were the coal and iron industries. They were destined to be basic industries in the new age of machinery. As early as 1720 many steam engines were in operation. In coal mines they pumped out the water which usually flooded the deep shafts. In the iron industry they pumped water to create the draft in blast furnaces.

The iron industry benefited also from other early inventions of the 18th century. Iron was scarce and costly, and production was falling off because England's forests could not supply enough charcoal for smelting the ore. Ironmasters had long been experimenting with coal as a fuel for smelting. Finally the Darby family, after three generations of effort, succeeded with coal that had been transformed into coke. This created a new demand for coal and laid the foundation for the British coal industry. The next great steps were taken in the 1780s, when Henry Cort developed the processes of puddling and rolling. Puddling produced nearly pure malleable iron. Hand in hand with the adoption of the new inventions went the rapid development of the factory system of manufacture.

Changing Conditions in England
The new methods increased the amount of goods produced and decreased the cost. The worker at a machine with 100 spindles on it could spin 100 threads of cotton more rapidly than 100 workers could on the old spinning wheels. Southern planters in the United States were able to meet the increased demand for raw cotton because they were using the cotton gin. This machine could do the job of 50 men in cleaning cotton. Similar improvements were being made in other lines of industry. British merchants no longer found it a problem to obtain enough goods to supply their markets. On the contrary, at times the markets were glutted with more goods than could be sold. Then mills were closed and workers were thrown out of employment.

With English factories calling for supplies, such as American cotton, and sending goods to all parts of the world, better transportation was needed. The roads of England were wretchedly poor and often impassable. Packhorses and wagons crawled along them, carrying small loads. Such slow and inadequate transportation kept the cost of goods high. Here again the need produced the invention. Thomas Telford and John MacAdam each developed a method of road construction better than any that had been known since the ancient Romans built their famous roads.

Building Canals and Railways
Many canals were dug. They connected the main rivers and so furnished a network of waterways for transporting coal and other heavy goods. A canalboat held much more than a wagon. It moved smoothly if slowly over the water, with a single horse hitched to the towline. In some places, where it was impossible to dig canals and where heavy loads of coal had to be hauled, mine owners laid down wooden or iron rails. On these early railroads one horse could haul as much coal as 20 horses could on ordinary roads.

Early in the 19th century came George Stephenson's locomotive and Robert Fulton's steamboat, an American invention. They marked the beginning of modern transportation on land and sea. Railroads called for the production of more goods, for they put factory-made products within reach of many more people at prices they could afford to pay.

The Condition of Labor
As conditions in industry changed, social and political conditions changed with them. Farm laborers and artisans flocked to the manufacturing centers and became industrial workers. Cities grew rapidly, and the percentage of farmers in the total population declined.

The population of England as a whole began to increase rapidly after the middle of the 18th century. Because of progress in medical knowledge and sanitation, fewer people died in infancy or childhood and the average length of life increased.

Far-reaching changes were gradually brought about in the life of the industrial workers. For one thing, machines took a great burden of hard work from the muscles of human beings. Some of the other changes, however, were not so welcome.

The change from domestic industry to the factory system meant a loss of independence to the worker. The home laborer could work whenever he pleased. Although the need for money often drove him to toil long hours, he could vary the monotony of his task by digging or planting his garden patch. When he became a factory employee, he not only had to work long hours, but he had to leave his little farm. He lived near the factory, often in a crowded slum district. He was forced to work continuously at the pace set by the machine. The long hours and the monotonous toil were an especially great hardship for the women and children. The vast majority of the jobs were held by them by 1816.

The change was particularly hard on the weavers and the other skilled workers who sank to the position of factory workers. They had been independent masters, capitalists in a small way, and managers of their own businesses. They had pride in their skill. When they saw themselves being forced into factories to do other men's bidding for the same pay as unskilled workers, it is no wonder that they rioted and broke up looms.

Problems of Capital and Labor
A person had to have a lot of capital to buy machines and open a factory. Those who were successful made huge profits with which to buy more machines, put up larger buildings, and purchase supplies in greater quantities at enormous savings. Thus capital increased far more rapidly than it ever had before. Much of it was invested in building canals, railroads, and steamships and in developing foreign trade. The men who controlled these enterprises formed a powerful new class in England—the industrial capitalists.

The capitalists had a struggle to obtain a voice in the government. They needed a better system of banking, currency, and credit. They had to find and hold markets for their products. They had many difficulties in organizing their factories to run efficiently. They also had to make a profit on their investments in the face of intense competition.

Laissez-faire was the rule in England. This meant that the government had accepted the doctrine that it should keep hands off business. Factory owners could therefore arrange working conditions in whatever way they pleased. Grave problems arose for the workers—problems of working hours, wages, unemployment, accidents, employment of women and children, and housing conditions.

Children could tend most of the machines as well as older persons could, and they could be hired for less pay. Great numbers of them were worked form 12 to 14 hours a day under terrible conditions. Many were apprenticed to the factory owners and housed in miserable dormitories. Ill-fed and ill-clothed, they were sometimes driven under the lash of the overseer. The high death rate of these child slaves eventually roused Parliament to pass laws limiting the daily toil for apprentices.

Rise of Labor Unions
Workers sought to win improved conditions and wages through labor unions. These unions often started as “friendly societies” that collected dues from workers and extended aid during illness or unemployment. Soon, however, they became organizations for winning improvements by collective bargaining and strikes.

Industrial workers also sought to benefit themselves by political action. They fought such legislation as the English laws of 1799 and 1800 forbidding labor organizations. They campaigned to secure laws which would help them. The struggle by workers to win the right to vote and to extend their political power was one of the major factors in the spread of democracy during the 19th century.

Revolution Spreads to the United States
Until 1815 France was busy with the Napoleonic wars. It had little opportunity to introduce machinery. When peace came France began to follow England. It followed slowly, however, and has never devoted itself as exclusively to manufacturing as England has. Belgium was ahead of France in adopting the new methods. The other European countries made little progress until the second half of the 19th century.

The United States too was slow in adopting machine methods of manufacture. Farming and trading were its chief interests until the Civil War. The new nation had little capital with which to buy the machinery and put up the buildings required. Such capital as existed was largely invested in shipping and commerce. Labor was scarce because men continued to push westward, clearing the forests and establishing themselves on the land.

A start in manufacturing, however, was made in New England in 1790 by Samuel Slater. An employee of Arkwright's spinning mills, Slater came to the United States in 1789. He was hired by Moses Brown of Providence, R. I., to build a mill on the Pawtucket, or Seekonk, River. English laws forbade export of either the new machinery or plans for making it. Slater designed the machine from memory and built a mill which started operation in 1790. When the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812 upset commerce and made English products difficult to obtain, more American investors began to build factories.

Pioneer Industries and Inventions
New England soon developed an important textile industry. It had swift streams for power and a humid climate, which kept cotton and wool fibers in condition for spinning and weaving. In Pennsylvania iron for machines, tools, and guns was smelted in stone furnaces. They burned charcoal, plentiful in this forested land. Spinning machines driven by steam were operating in New York by 1810. The first practical power loom was installed at Waltham, Mass., by Francis Cabot Lowell in 1814. Shoemaking was organized into a factory system of production in Massachusetts in the early 19th century. New England was the first area in the United States to industrialize.

American inventors produced many new machines that could be applied to industry as well as to agriculture. Oliver Evans designed a steam engine more powerful than that of James Watt. Engineers quickly adopted the new engine and used it to power locomotives and steamboats.

Cyrus McCormick invented several machines used to mechanize farming. His mechanical reaper, patented in 1834, revolutionized harvesting, making it quicker and easier. Elias Howe's sewing machine eased the life of the housewife and made the manufacture of clothing less expensive.

Techniques of factory production were refined in American workshops. Eli Whitney led the movement to standardize parts used in manufacture. They became interchangeable, enabling unskilled workers to assemble products from boxes of parts quickly. American factories used machine tools to make parts. These machines were arranged in lines for more efficient production. This was called the “American system of manufacturing,” and it was admired by all other industrial nations. It was first applied to the manufacture of firearms and later spread to other industries like clock and lock making.

Second Industrial Revolution
The machines of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries were simple, mechanical devices compared with the industrial technology that followed. Many new products were devised, and important advances were made in the system of mass production. Changes in industry were so great that the period after 1860 has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. New scientific knowledge was applied to industry as scientists and engineers unlocked the secrets of physics and chemistry. Great new industries were founded on this scientific advance: steel, chemicals, and petroleum benefited from new understandings of chemistry; breakthroughs in the study of electricity and magnetism provided the basis for a large electrical industry. These new industries were larger and more productive than any industries existing before. Germany and the United States became the leaders, and by the end of the 19th century they were challenging Great Britain in the world market for industrial goods.

The age of electricity began in 1882 when Thomas A. Edison introduced a system of electric lighting in New York City. Electricity was later applied to driving all kinds of machinery as well as powering locomotives and streetcars. Electric lighting quickly spread across the United States and was soon adopted in Europe. The electrical industry was dominated by large companies that developed new products and then manufactured and marketed them. These companies were based in Germany and the United States but sold their goods all over the world. They were the first multinational companies. Companies like Westinghouse and General Electric helped to electrify cities in Europe, Africa, and South America.

The steel and chemical industries used new technology that greatly increased production. The size of factories increased rapidly, employing more workers and using more machinery. These industries integrated all stages of production under a single corporate structure. They bought out competitors and acquired sources of raw materials and retail outlets. Corporations such as U.S. Steel and Standard Oil controlled all stages of manufacturing the product, from mining and drilling to delivering it to the customer. This gave them great economic power, and the United States government took measures to limit their monopolies in steel and petroleum.

The larger size of business presented great challenges to managers who administered enormous organizations with many branches and subsidiaries. Advances in communications and transportation helped decision makers to maintain control. The electric telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse in 1844 and was used to relay commercial information about prices and markets. It was used in the stock exchanges and on the railway systems. Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone in 1876, and networks of telephone lines were built quickly across the United States.

The telephone became a useful tool for managers to keep in contact with the widely dispersed parts of their businesses. New methods of management were devised that stressed central control, planning, and efficient production methods. One of the leading advocates of “scientific management” was Frederick Winslow Taylor.

The Second Industrial Revolution marked great progress in the methods of mass production. More and more industries used interchangeable parts and machine tools. Electric power replaced steam power in factories; it was cheaper, faster, and more flexible. It allowed machine tools to be arranged more efficiently. Human power was replaced by machine power. In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in the manufacture of his Model T Ford. Parts were assembled on a moving conveyor belt, and the Model T took shape as it moved from one work station to the next. The assembly line greatly increased the speed of manufacture and soon was used in many industries.

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, only a small number of industries in the most industrialized nations of the world had adopted advanced production methods and organization. Much of the world had not yet begun a first industrial revolution. Russia, Canada, Italy, and Japan were just beginning to industrialize.

Only Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, and some parts of the Scandinavian countries had successfully completed an industrial revolution. Most of the world's population still worked in primitive agricultural economies. China, India, and Spain did not begin to industrialize until well into the 20th century.

House of Hapsburg

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Atop the 1,682-foot- (513-meter-) high Wülpelsberg, a mountain near Aarau in northern Switzerland, stands the ruins of the Habichtsburg, or Hawk's Castle. This castle, built in 1020, was the original seat of the famous Hapsburg (or Habsburg) family. Members of this family ruled Austria from 1278 to the end of World War I.

With only one exception, Charles VII, who ruled from 1742 to 1745, all the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire from 1438 until the abolition of the empire in 1806 were members of the House of Hapsburg. One of these rulers, Emperor Charles V (1519–56), a Hapsburg by descent on his father's side, was also king of Spain as Charles I.

Before his death, Charles V divided his dominions between his brother and his son, creating two Hapsburg houses. One of these houses ruled Spain until the extinction of that line in 1700; the other house continued to rule Austria.

A full lower lip and a long pointed chin—the famous “Hapsburg chin”—were family features inherited from a Bohemian princess who married into the House of Hapsburg in the 15th century.

gold rush

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John Augustus Sutter emigrated from Switzerland to California in 1839. California was then a Mexican province, and from its governor he gained title to land in order to start a settlement named New Switzerland at the meeting point of the Sacramento and American rivers. He took possession of 50,000 acres (20,235 hectares), and 10 years later he was a prosperous rancher. When the Mexican War of 1846–48 brought California to the United States, Sutter's future seemed assured. Then, suddenly, events turned against him.

On the morning of Jan. 24, 1848, one of his employees, James Wilson Marshall, discovered gold at the site of a sawmill construction project. Marshall and Sutter agreed to become partners in mining the gold, but soon the news leaked out. Sutter's property was besieged by thousands of trappers, farmers, sailors, lawyers, preachers, and people from nearly every other occupation—all of whom wanted to strike it rich in the new gold find. This was the beginning of the first, and still most famous, gold rush of modern times. Within a year, the “Forty-niners” flooded by the thousands into California seeking wealth, and in the process they built up northern California and the city of San Francisco.

The gold rush of 1849 played a significant role in the social and economic development of California. It was an important factor in turning the region into a thriving U.S. state. Although the average production of the gold fields was barely half a troy ounce (15.6 grams) per man per day, some 2.5 million troy ounces (77.8 million grams) of gold passed through buyers' and dealers' hands in one 12-month period. After a few years the gold fever faded, and there were few new finds, but gold is still found in California from time to time. Gold rushes have played similar roles in the settlement and development of Australia, South Africa, and northwestern Canada.

Australia
In Australia the gold rush mania began in 1851, while the one in California was still under way. In Australia's New South Wales, the Ophir gold rush began, as in California, with an accidental discovery. It was followed later in the same year by discoveries in Victoria—at Mount Alexander, Ballarat, Bendigo, and McIvor. Gold seekers rushed to all these sites in Victoria from other parts of Australia and from overseas once the news had spread.

The gold finds in Australia differed significantly from those in California in the nature of the gold itself. While the gold found in North America was usually in the form of dust or very fine grains, it was commonplace in Australia to find nuggets of enormous size. The famous “Sierra Sands” nugget, for instance, weighed 1,117 ounces (34,739 grams), or slightly more than 93 pounds.

The “Lady Hotham” weighed 1,177 ounces (36,605 grams), and the “Welcome Stranger” weighed more than 2,000 ounces (62,200 grams). The largest find at the time was the “Holtermann nugget.” It weighed more than 200 pounds (90 kilograms). Hence, the Australian fields were often the answer to dreams of instant wealth. Nuggets were frequently found only a few inches below the surface of the Earth, and some were stumbled on by accident.

South Africa
The California, Australia, and the later Canadian gold strikes were all individual endeavors. The individuals, either alone or in very small groups, staked their claims, worked the mines, and reaped the rewards. In South Africa, the greatest gold producing area in the world, however, the situation was different. There the claims were soon consolidated into holdings by large mining companies.

In 1886 a diamond digger from the Kimberley mines named George Harrison discovered gold while working as a farmhand. Within a month he had sold his claim and disappeared. By the end of the year the area had been proclaimed a gold field, and the prospectors began moving in. A village, now the city of Johannesburg, was the largest population settlement.

The geology of the Witwatersrand area called for the use of large machinery in order to extract the ore from the ground economically. Thus it soon became apparent that this was not a gold field for the private prospector and his crude methods. The arrival of financiers from the Kimberley diamond region soon promoted the gold mining, and the holdings were consolidated into large mining groups that could mobilize the capital and buy the equipment needed to exploit the gold resources effectively.

A temporary slump occurred in 1890 when sulfur-bearing ore was found. But in about two years the cyanide process for extracting gold from sulfides was perfected, and the rush was on again. Since 1901, after the fever of the gold rush and the subsequent Boer War, the South African mining operation has continued to produce much of the world's gold.

Klondike Discoveries
The last major gold strike of the 19th century took place in the frozen north—in the Yukon Territory of Canada. In the whole history of mankind's desire for gold, the Klondike gold rush has probably fired the imagination of more people than any other event. Jack London and Robert Service are two of the authors who wrote of the inaccessibility of the region and its often terrible hardships. Yet, even with the worst that the environment could muster against them, the miners extracted millions of dollars in gold.

Rich gold-bearing gravels were found in the area between the Yukon and Klondike rivers in about 1896. Within two years there was a wild rush to this inhospitable region. A population of about 30,000 arrived within four years. The annual output of gold reached a peak of 22 million dollars in 1900. Production steadily declined after that, until it fell to 5.6 million dollars in 1906. By 1910 most of the population had left for Alaska and other regions.

The great gold rushes of the 19th century were an aspect of frontier movements on three continents. With the end of the gold rush period, the mining was largely taken over by corporations and governments. The flow and uses of gold became much more controlled than in those frenzied “Wild West” days that glamorized the settling of once-open territory.

Giuseppe Garibaldi

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(1807–82). When the Italian patriot and soldier Garibaldi was born, there was no Italy, only a group of small backward states. These states had long been under foreign domination. Garibaldi was one of the three great leaders who freed the Italians from foreign rule and unified the country. Giuseppe Mazzini inspired the people to demand liberation. Camillo Cavour organized the new state. Garibaldi was the daring military leader.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice on July 4, 1807. His father was a fisherman. In search of a life of adventure, the boy went to sea. He was in the navy of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia when he joined Young Italy, a secret society of young men that was formed by Mazzini to drive Austria from Italy and to unify the peninsula.

In 1834 Garibaldi plotted to seize the frigate on which he was sailing to help in the freeing of Genoa. The plot was discovered, but he escaped to Marseilles. Finally he made his way to South America. There he took part in wars, first in Brazil and then in Uruguay, where he raised and commanded the Italian Legion. He also met the daring Anna Maria Ribeiro da Silva (called Anita), whom he married in 1842.

Revolution and insurrection raged throughout the Italian peninsula in 1848. Garibaldi returned, a master of guerrilla warfare, and was hailed as the “hero of Montevideo.” He raised volunteers and was given command of the forces of the short-lived Roman Republic, which Mazzini had set up. After a desperate defense he was forced to flee with his followers across the peninsula, pursued by the Austrians. Once more Garibaldi became an exile. For a time he worked as a candlemaker in New York City.

Returning to Italy in 1854, Garibaldi bought part of the small island of Caprera and settled down to farm. In 1859 war broke out anew with Austria. After fighting in the Alps, Garibaldi decided to aid the Sicilians, who had revolted against their king, Francis II of Naples. In May 1860 his thousand “red shirts” on two small steamers reached the island. He took Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel II.

Thousands of volunteers rushed to join Garibaldi's army. In August he crossed to the mainland to march on Naples. When he entered the city, crowds sang the popular national anthem, now called ‘Garibaldi's Hymn'. After turning over the city to Victor Emmanuel II, Garibaldi returned to his humble life on Caprera. On Feb. 18, 1861, the kingdom of Italy was finally proclaimed.

Garibaldi was determined to seize Rome, which was still under the rule of the pope. This would have brought both France and Austria against Italy. Twice the Italian government was forced to take the radical Garibaldi prisoner. When Italian troops finally did enter Rome, in 1870, he had no part in the triumph. He was helping the French Republic in the Franco-Prussian War. When the Franco-Prussian War was over, Garibaldi retired once more, on a generous pension, to Caprera. There he spent the rest of his life, dying on June 2, 1882.