Dejima
Dejima was a Dutch trading post located in Nagasaki, Japan from 1641 to 1854. Dejima was a small fan-shaped artificial island in the bay of Nagasaki covering an area of 120 m × 75 m or 9,000 m2, is listed in old Western documents Latinised as Deshima, Desjima, Disma, or Disima. Dejima was built in 1634 to house Portuguese traders and separate them from Japanese society by digging a canal through a small peninsula; the Dutch were moved to Dejima in 1641 and during most of the Edo period the island was the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world. Dejima was abolished after the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854 and the island was integrated into Nagasaki city through land reclamation. In 1922, the "Dejima Dutch Trading Post" was designated a Japanese national historic site. In 1543, the history of direct contacts between Japan and Europe began with the arrival of storm-blown Portuguese merchants on Tanegashima. Six years the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima.
At first Portuguese traders were based in Hirado. In 1570 daimyō Ōmura Sumitada converted to Catholicism and made a deal with the Portuguese to develop Nagasaki. In 1580 Sumitada gave the jurisdiction of Nagasaki to the Jesuits, the Portuguese obtained the de facto monopoly on the silk trade with China through Macau; the shōgun Iemitsu ordered the construction of the artificial island in 1634, to accommodate the Portuguese traders living in Nagasaki and prevent the propagation of their religion. This was one of the many edicts put forth by Iemitsu between 1633 and 1639 moderating contact between Japan and other countries. However, in response to the uprising of the predominantly Christian population in the Shimabara-Amakusa region, the Tokugawa government decided to expel the Portuguese in 1639. Since 1609, the Dutch East India Company had run a trading post on the island of Hirado; the departure of the Portuguese left the Dutch employees of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie as the sole Westerners with trade access to Japan.
For 33 years they were allowed to trade freely. At its maximum the Hirado trading post covered a large area. In 1637 and 1639 stone warehouses were constructed within the ambit of this Hirado trading post. Christian-era year dates were used on the stonework of the new warehouses and these were used in 1640 as a pretext to demolish the buildings and relocate the trading post to Nagasaki. With the expulsion of the last Portuguese in 1639, Dejima became a failed commercial post and without the annual trading with Portuguese ships from Macau, the economy of Nagasaki suffered greatly; the Dutch were forced by government officials to move from Hirado to Dejima in Nagasaki. From 1641 on, only Chinese and Dutch ships were allowed to come to Japan, Nagasaki harbor was the only harbor they were allowed to enter. On the administrative level, the island of Dejima was part of the city of Nagasaki; the 25 local Japanese families who owned the land received an annual rent from the Dutch. Dejima was a small island, 120 metres by 75 metres, linked to the mainland by a small bridge, guarded on both sides, with a gate on the Dutch side.
It contained houses for about twenty Dutchmen and accommodation for Japanese officials. The Dutch were watched by a number of Japanese officials, night watchmen, a supervisor with about fifty subordinates. Numerous merchants supplied goods and catering, about 150 interpreters served, they all had to be paid by the VOC. Like the city of Nagasaki, Dejima was under the direct supervision of Edo through a governor; every ship that arrived in Dejima was inspected. Its sails were held by the Japanese, they confiscated religious weapons. The Dutch were not allowed to hold any religious services on the island. Despite the financial burden of maintaining the isolated outpost on Dejima, the trade with Japan was profitable for the Dutch yielding profits of 50% or more. Trade declined in the 18th century. After the bankruptcy of the East-India Company in 1795, the Dutch government took over exchange with Japan. Times were hard when the Netherlands was under French Napoleonic rule. All ties with the homeland were severed at Dejima, for a while, it was the only place in the world where the Dutch flag was flown.
The chief Dutch official in Japan was called the Opperhoofd by the Dutch, or Kapitan by the Japanese. This descriptive title did not change. Throughout these years, the plan was to have one incumbent per year—but sometimes plans needed to be flexible; the Dutch traded in silk and materia medica from China and India, but sugar became more important later. Deer pelts and shark skin were transported to Japan from Taiwan, as well as books, scientific instruments and many other rarities from Europe. In return, the Dutch traders bought Japanese copper, camphor, lacquer ware and rice. To this was added the personal trade of VOC employees on Dejima, an important source of income for them and their Japanese counterparts, they sold more than 10,000 foreign books on various scientific subjects to the Japanese from the end of the 18th to the early 19th century. These became a factor in the Rangaku movement, or Dutch studies. In all, 606 Dutch ships arrived at Dejima during its two centuries of se
Portuguese Malacca
Portuguese Malacca was the territory of Malacca that, for 130 years, was a Portuguese colony. According to the 16th-century Portuguese historian Emanuel Godinho de Erédia, the site of the old city of Malacca was named after the Phyllanthus emblica, fruit-bearing trees along the banks of a river called Airlele; the Airlele river was said to originate from Buquet China. Eredia cited that the city was founded by Permicuri the first King of Malacca in 1411; the news of Malacca's wealth attracted the attention of Manuel I, King of Portugal and he sent Admiral Diogo Lopes de Sequeira to find Malacca, to make a trade compact with its ruler as Portugal's representative east of India. The first European to reach Malacca and Southeast Asia, Sequeira arrived in Malacca in 1509. Although he was well received by Sultan Mahmud Shah, trouble however ensued; the general feeling of rivalry between Islam and Christianity was invoked by a group of Goa Muslims in the sultan's court after the Portuguese had captured Goa.
The international Muslim trading community convinced Mahmud. Mahmud subsequently captured several of his men, killed others and attempted to attack the four Portuguese ships, although they escaped; as the Portuguese had found in India, conquest would be the only way they could establish themselves in Malacca. In April 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque set sail from Goa to Malacca with a force of some 1200 men and seventeen or eighteen ships; the Viceroy made a number of demands—one of, for permission to build a fortress as a Portuguese trading post near the city. The Sultan refused all the demands. Conflict was unavoidable, after 40 days of fighting, Malacca fell to the Portuguese on 24 August. A bitter dispute between Sultan Mahmud and his son Sultan Ahmad weighed down the Malaccan side. Following the defeat of the Malacca Sultanate on 15 August 1511 in the capture of Malacca, Afonso de Albuquerque sought to erect a permanent form of fortification in anticipation of the counterattacks by Sultan Mahmud.
A fortress was designed and constructed encompassing a hill, lining the edge of the sea shore, on the south east of the river mouth, on the former site of the Sultan's palace. Albuquerque remained in Malacca until November 1511 preparing its defences against any Malay counterattack. Sultan Mahmud Shah was forced to flee Malacca; as the first base of European Christian trading kingdom in Southeast Asia, it was surrounded by numerous emerging native Muslim states. With hostile initial contact with the local Malay policy, Portuguese Malacca faced severe hostility, they endured years of battles started by Malay sultans who wanted to get rid of the Portuguese and reclaim their land. The Sultan made several attempts to retake the capital, he rallied the support from his ally the Sultanate of Demak in Java who, in 1511, agreed to send naval forces to assist. Led by Pati Unus, the Sultan of Demak, the combined Malay–Java efforts failed and were fruitless; the Portuguese forced the sultan to flee to Pahang.
The sultan sailed to Bintan Island and established a new capital there. With a base established, the sultan rallied the disarrayed Malay forces and organized several attacks and blockades against the Portuguese's position. Frequent raids on Malacca caused the Portuguese severe hardship. In 1521 the second Demak campaign to assist the Malay Sultan to retake Malacca was launched, however once again failed with the cost of the Demak Sultan's life, he was remembered as Pangeran Sabrang Lor or the Prince who crossed to North. The raids helped convince the Portuguese. A number of attempts were made to suppress the Malay forces, but it wasn't until 1526 that the Portuguese razed Bintan to the ground; the sultan retreated to Kampar in Riau, Sumatra where he died two years later. He left behind two sons named Muzaffar Shah and Alauddin Riayat Shah II. Muzaffar Shah was invited by the people in the north of the peninsula to become their ruler, establishing the Sultanate of Perak. Meanwhile, Mahmud's other son, Alauddin made a new capital in the south.
His realm was the successor of Malacca. Several attempts to remove Malacca from Portuguese rule were made by the Sultan of Johor. A request sent to Java in 1550 resulted in Queen Kalinyamat, the regent of Jepara, sending 4,000 soldiers aboard 40 ships to meet the Johor sultan's request to take Malacca; the Jepara troops joined forces with the Malay alliance and managed to assemble around 200 warships for the upcoming assault. The combined forces attacked from the north and captured most of Malacca, but the Portuguese managed to retaliate and force back the invading forces; the Malay alliance troops were thrown back to the sea. Only after their leaders were slain did the Jepara troops withdraw; the battle continued on the beach and in the sea resulting in more than 2,000 Jepara soldiers being killed. A storm stranded two Jepara ships on the shore of Malacca, they fell prey to the Portuguese. Fewer than half of the Jepara soldiers managed to leave Malacca. In 1567, Prince Husain Ali I Riayat Syah from the Sultanate of Aceh launched a naval attack to oust the Portuguese from Malacca, but this once again ended in failure.
In 1574 a combined attack from Aceh Sultanate and Javanese Jepara tried again to capture Malacca from the Portuguese, but ended in failure due to poor coordination. Competition from other ports such as Johor saw Asian traders bypass Malacca and the city began to decline as a trading port. Rather than achieving their ambition of dominating it, the Portuguese h
Ryukyu Kingdom
The Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent kingdom that ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th to the 19th century. The kings of Ryukyu unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan. Despite its small size, the kingdom played a central role in the maritime trade networks of medieval East and Southeast Asia the Malacca Sultanate. In the 14th century, small domains scattered on Okinawa Island were unified into three principalities: Hokuzan, Chūzan, Nanzan; this was known as the Three Kingdoms, or Sanzan period. Hokuzan, which constituted much of the northern half of the island, was the largest in terms of land area and military strength but was economically the weakest of the three. Nanzan constituted the southern portion of the island. Chūzan was economically the strongest, its political capital at Shuri, Nanzan was adjacent to the major port of Naha, Kume-mura, the center of traditional Chinese education.
These sites and Chūzan as a whole would continue to form the center of the Ryukyu Kingdom until its abolition. Many Chinese people moved to Ryukyu to serve the government or to engage in business during this period. At the request of the Ryukyuan King, the Ming Chinese sent thirty-six Chinese families from Fujian to manage oceanic dealings in the kingdom in 1392, during the Hongwu emperor's reign. Many Ryukyuan officials were descended from these Chinese immigrants, being born in China or having Chinese grandfathers, they assisted the Ryukyuans in advancing diplomatic relations. On 30 January 1406, the Yongle Emperor expressed horror when the Ryukyuans castrated some of their own children to become eunuchs to serve in the Ming imperial palace. Emperor Yongle said that the boys who were castrated were innocent and did not deserve castration, he returned them to Ryukyu, instructed the kingdom not to send eunuchs again. According to statements by Qing imperial official Li Hongzhang in a meeting with Ulysses S. Grant, China had a special relationship with the island and the Ryukyu had paid tribute to China for hundreds of years, the Chinese reserved certain trade rights for them in an amicable and beneficial relationship.
These three principalities battled, Chūzan emerged victorious. The Chūzan leaders were recognized by Ming dynasty China as the rightful kings over those of Nanzan and Hokuzan, thus lending great legitimacy to their claims; the ruler of Chūzan passed his throne to King Hashi. Hashi received the surname "Shō" 尚 from the Ming emperor in 1421, becoming known as Shō Hashi 尚巴志. Shō Hashi adopted the Chinese hierarchical court system, built Shuri Castle and the town as his capital, constructed Naha harbor; when in 1469 King Shō Toku, a grandson of Shō Hashi, died without a male heir, a palatine servant declared he was Toku's adopted son and gained Chinese investiture. This pretender, Shō En, began the Second Shō Dynasty. Ryukyu's golden age occurred during the reign of Shō Shin, the second king of that dynasty, who reigned from 1478 to 1526; the kingdom extended its authority over the southernmost islands in the Ryukyu archipelago by the end of the 15th century, by 1571 the Amami Ōshima Islands, to the north near Kyūshū, were incorporated into the kingdom as well.
While the kingdom's political system was adopted and the authority of Shuri recognized, in the Amami Ōshima Islands, the kingdom's authority over the Sakishima Islands to the south remained for centuries at the level of a tributary-suzerain relationship. For nearly two hundred years, the Ryukyu Kingdom would thrive as a key player in maritime trade with Southeast and East Asia. Central to the kingdom's maritime activities was the continuation of the tributary relationship with Ming dynasty China, begun by Chūzan in 1372, enjoyed by the three Okinawan kingdoms which followed it. China provided ships for Ryukyu's maritime trade activities, allowed a limited number of Ryukyuans to study at the Imperial Academy in Beijing, formally recognized the authority of the King of Chūzan, allowing the kingdom to trade formally at Ming ports. Ryukyuan ships provided by China, traded at ports throughout the region, which included, among others, China, Đại Việt, Java, Luzon, Pattani, Palembang and Sumatra.
Japanese products—silver, fans, folding screens—and Chinese products—medicinal herbs, minted coins, glazed ceramics, textiles—were traded within the kingdom for Southeast Asian sappanwood, rhino horn, sugar, ambergris, Indian ivory, Arabian frankincense. Altogether, 150 voyages between the kingdom and Southeast Asia on Ryukyuan ships were recorded in the Rekidai Hōan, an official record of diplomatic documents compiled by the kingdom, as having taken place between 1424 and the 1630s, with 61 of them bound for Siam, 10 for Malacca, 10 for Pattani, 8 for Java, among others; the Chinese policy of haijin, limiting trade with China to tributary states and those with formal authorization, along with the accompanying preferential treatment of the Ming Court towards Ryukyu, allowed the kingdom to flourish and prosper for 150 years. In the late 16th century, the kingdom's commercial prosperity fell into decline; the rise of the wokou ("Japanese
Shimabara Rebellion
The Shimabara Rebellion was an uprising that occurred in the Shimabara Domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan from 17 December 1637 to 15 April 1638. Matsukura Katsuie, the daimyō of the Shimabara Domain, enforced unpopular policies set by his father Matsukura Shigemasa that drastically raised taxes to construct the new Shimabara Castle and violently prohibited Christianity. In December 1637, an alliance of local rōnin and Catholic peasants led by Amakusa Shirō rebelled against the Tokugawa shogunate due to discontent over Katsuie's policies; the Tokugawa Shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops supported by the Dutch to suppress the rebels and defeated them after a lengthy siege against their stronghold at Hara Castle in Minamishimabara. Following the successful suppression of the rebellion, Shirō and an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers were executed by beheading, the Portuguese traders suspected of helping them were expelled from Japan. Katsuie was beheaded for misruling, becoming the only daimyō to be beheaded during the Edo period, the Shimabara Domain was given to Kōriki Tadafusa.
Japan's policies of national seclusion and persecution of Christianity were tightened until the Bakumatsu. The Shimabara Rebellion was the largest civil conflict in Japan during the Edo period, was one of only a handful of instances of serious unrest during the peaceful period of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule. In the mid-1630s, the peasants of the Shimabara Peninsula and Amakusa, dissatisfied with overtaxation and suffering from the effects of famine, revolted against their lords; this was in territory ruled by two lords: Matsukura Katsuie of the Shimabara Domain, Terasawa Katataka of the Karatsu Domain. Those affected included fishermen and merchants; as the rebellion spread, it was joined by rōnin who once had served families, such as the Amakusa and Shiki, who had once lived in the area, as well as former Arima clan and Konishi retainers. As such, the image of a "peasant" uprising is not accurate. Shimabara was once the domain of the Arima clan, Christian; the Arima were replaced by the Matsukura.
The new lord, Matsukura Shigemasa, hoped to advance in the shogunate hierarchy, so he was involved with various construction projects, including the building and expansion of Edo Castle, as well as a planned invasion of Luzon in the Spanish East Indies. He built a new castle at Shimabara; as a result, he placed a disproportionate tax burden on the people of his new domain and further angered them by persecuting Christianity. The policies were continued by Katsuie; the inhabitants of the Amakusa Islands, part of the fief of Konishi Yukinaga, suffered the same sort of persecution at the hands the Terasawa family, like the Matsukura, had been moved there. Other masterless samurai in the region included former retainers of Katō Tadahiro and Sassa Narimasa, both of whom had once ruled parts of Higo Province; the discontented rōnin of the region, as well as the peasants, began to meet in secret and plot an uprising, which broke out on 17 December 1637, when the local daikan Hayashi Hyōzaemon was assassinated.
At the same time, others rebelled in the Amakusa Islands. The rebels increased their ranks by forcing all in the areas they took to join in the uprising. A charismatic 16-year-old youth, Amakusa Shirō, soon emerged as the rebellion's leader; the rebels laid siege to the Terasawa clan's Tomioka and Hondo castles, but just before the castles were about to fall, armies from the neighboring domains in Kyūshū arrived, forcing them to retreat. The rebels crossed the Ariake Sea and besieged Matsukura Katsuie's Shimabara Castle, but were again repelled. At this point they gathered on the site of Hara Castle, the original castle of the Arima clan before their move to the Nobeoka Domain, but had since been dismantled, they built up palisades using the wood from the boats they had crossed the water with, were aided in their preparations by the weapons and provisions they had plundered from the Matsukura clan's storehouses. The allied armies of the local domains, under the command of the Tokugawa shogunate with Itakura Shigemasa as commander-in-chief began their siege of Hara Castle.
The swordsman Miyamoto Musashi was present in the besieging army, in an advisory role to Hosokawa Tadatoshi. The event where Musashi was knocked off his horse by a stone thrown by one of the peasants is one of the only few verifiable records of him taking part in a campaign; the shogunate troops requested aid from the Dutch, who first gave them gunpowder, cannons. Nicolaes Couckebacker, Opperhoofd of the Dutch factory on Hirado, provided the gunpowder and cannons, when the shogunate forces requested that he send a vessel, he accompanied the vessel de Ryp to a position offshore, near Hara Castle; the cannons sent were mounted in a battery, an all-out bombardment of the fortress commenced, both from the shore guns as well as from the 20 guns of the de Ryp. These guns fired 426 rounds in the space of 15 days, without great result, two Dutch lookouts were shot by the rebels; the ship withdrew at the request of the Japanese, following contemptuous messages sent by the rebels to the besieging troops: "Are there no longer courageous soldiers in the realm to do combat with us, weren't they ashamed to have called in the assistance of foreigners against our small contingent?"
In an attempt to take the castle, Itakura Shigemasa was killed. More shogunat
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is carbon with variable amounts of other elements. Coal is formed if dead plant matter decays into peat and over millions of years the heat and pressure of deep burial converts the peat into coal. Vast deposits of coal originates in former wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous and Permian times; as a fossil fuel burned for heat, coal supplies about a quarter of the world's primary energy and two-fifths of its electricity. Some iron and steel making and other industrial processes burn coal; the extraction and use of coal causes much illness. Coal damages the environment, including by climate change as it is the largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide, 14 Gt in 2016, 40% of the total fossil fuel emissions; as part of the worldwide energy transition many countries use less coal. The largest consumer and importer of coal is China.
China mines account for half the world's coal, followed by India with about a tenth. Australia accounts for about a third of world coal exports followed by Russia; the word took the form col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula, which in turn is hypothesized to come from the Proto-Indo-European root *gu-lo- "live coal". Germanic cognates include the Old Frisian kole, Middle Dutch cole, Dutch kool, Old High German chol, German Kohle and Old Norse kol, the Irish word gual is a cognate via the Indo-European root. Coal is composed of macerals and water. Fossils and amber may be found in coal. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas. Due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil; as more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed. The temperature rose as they sank deeper and deeper; as the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation by mud or acidic water.
This trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were covered and buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was converted to coal; the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called coalification. Coalification starts with dead plant matter decaying into peat. Over millions of years the heat and pressure of deep burial causes the loss of water and carbon dioxide and an increase in the proportion of carbon, thus first lignite sub-bituminous coal, bituminous coal, lastly anthracite may be formed. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, although coal is known from most geological periods; the exception is the coal gap in the Permian -- Triassic extinction event. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants—this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae. Sometimes coal seams are interbedded with other sediments in a cyclothem; as geological processes apply pressure to dead biotic material over time, under suitable conditions, its metamorphic grade or rank increases successively into: Peat, a precursor of coal Lignite, or brown coal, the lowest rank of coal, most harmful to health, used exclusively as fuel for electric power generation Jet, a compact form of lignite, sometimes polished.
Bituminous coal, a dense sedimentary rock black, but sometimes dark brown with well-defined bands of bright and dull material It is used as fuel in steam-electric power generation and to make coke. Anthracite, the highest rank of coal is a harder, glossy black coal used for residential and commercial space heating. Graphite is difficult to ignite and not used as fuel. Cannel coal is a variety of fine-grained, high-rank coal with significant hydrogen content, which consists of liptinite. There are several international standards for coal; the classification of coal is based on the content of volatiles. However the most important distinction is between thermal coal, burnt to generate electricity via steam. Hilt's law is a geological observation, the higher its rank, it applies if the thermal gradient is vertical. The earliest recognized use is from the Shenyang area of China where by 4000 BC Neolithic inhabitants had begun carving ornaments from black lignite. Coal from the Fushun mine in northeastern China was used to smelt copper as early as 1000 BC.
Marco Polo, the Italian who traveled to China in the 13th century, described coal as "black stones... which burn like logs", said coal was so plentiful, people could take three hot baths a week. In Europe, the earliest reference to the use of coal as fuel is from the geological treatise On stones by the Greek scientist Theophrastus: Among the materials that are dug because they are useful, those known as anthrakes are made of earth, once set on fire, they burn like charcoa
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, S. J. was a Navarrese Roman Catholic missionary, a co-founder of the Society of Jesus. Born in Javier, Kingdom of Navarre, he was a companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris, in 1534, he led an extensive mission into Asia in the Portuguese Empire of the time and was influential in evangelization work, most notably in India. The Goa Inquisition was proposed by St. Francis Xavier, he was the first Christian missionary to venture into Japan, the Maluku Islands, other areas. In those areas, struggling to learn the local languages and in the face of opposition, he had less success than he had enjoyed in India. Xavier was about to extend his missionary preaching to China, he was beatified by Pope Paul V on 25 October 1619 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. In 1624 he was made co-patron of Navarre. Known as the "Apostle of the Indies" and "Apostle of Japan", he is considered to be one of the greatest missionaries since Saint Paul.
In 1927, Pope Pius XI published the decree "Apostolicorum in Missionibus" naming Saint Francis Xavier, along with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, co-patron of all foreign missions. He is now co-patron saint of Navarre with San Fermin; the Day of Navarre in Navarre, marks nowadays the anniversary of Saint Francis Xavier's death, on 3 December 1552. Francis Xavier was born in the royal castle of Xavier, in the Kingdom of Navarre, on 7 April 1506 according to a family register, he was the youngest son of Juan de Jasso y Atondo, seneschal of Xavier castle, who belonged to a prosperous farming family and had acquired a doctorate in law at the University of Bologna. Juan became privy counsellor and finance minister to King John III of Navarre. Francis's mother was Doña María de Azpilcueta y Aznárez, sole heiress of two noble Navarrese families, he was through her related to philosopher Martín de Azpilcueta. In 1512, King of Aragon and regent of Castile, invaded Navarre, initiating a war that lasted over 18 years.
Three years Francis's father died when Francis was only nine years old. In 1516, Francis's brothers participated in a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders from the kingdom; the Spanish Governor, Cardinal Cisneros, confiscated the family lands, demolished the outer wall, the gates, two towers of the family castle, filled in the moat. In addition, the height of the keep. Only the family residence inside the castle was left. In 1522 one of Francis's brothers participated with 200 Navarrese nobles in dogged but failed resistance against the Castilian Count of Miranda in Amaiur, the last Navarrese territorial position south of the Pyrenees. In 1525, Francis went to study in Paris at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, University of Paris, where he would spend the next eleven years. In the early days he acquired some reputation as a high-jumper. In 1529, Francis shared lodgings with his friend Pierre Favre. A new student, Ignatius of Loyola, came to room with them. At 38, Ignatius was much older than Francis, who were both 23 at the time.
Ignatius convinced Pierre to become a priest, but was unable to convince Francis, who had aspirations of worldly advancement. At first Francis regarded the new lodger as a joke and was sarcastic about his efforts to convert students; when Pierre left their lodgings to visit his family and Ignatius was alone with Francis, he was able to break down Francis's resistance. According to most biographies Ignatius is said to have posed the question: "What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, lose his own soul?" However, according to James Broderick such method is not characteristic of Ignatius and there is no evidence that he employed it at all. In 1530 Francis received the degree of Master of Arts, afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy at Beauvais College, University of Paris. On 15 August 1534, seven students met in a crypt beneath the Church of Saint Denis, on the hill of Montmartre, overlooking Paris, they were Francis, Ignatius of Loyola, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laínez, Nicolás Bobadilla from Spain, Peter Faber from Savoy, Simão Rodrigues from Portugal.
They made private vows of poverty and obedience to the Pope, vowed to go to the Holy Land to convert infidels. Francis began his study of theology in 1534 and was ordained on 24 June 1537. In 1539, after long discussions, Ignatius drew up a formula for a new religious order, the Society of Jesus. Ignatius's plan for the order was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. In 1540 King John of Portugal had Pedro Mascarenhas, Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, request Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new possessions in India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was encouraged by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to recruit the newly graduated students that would establish the Society of Jesus. Ignatius promptly appointed Simão Rodrigues. At the last moment, Bobadilla became ill. With some hesitance and uneasiness, Ignatius asked Francis to go in Bobadilla's place.
Thus, Francis Xavier began his life as the first Jesuit missionary accidentally. Leaving Rome on 15 March 1540, in the Ambassador's train, Franci