James Grant Wilson
James Grant Wilson was an American editor, author and publisher, who founded the Chicago Record in 1857, the first literary paper in that region. During the American Civil War, he served as a colonel in the Union Army. In recognition of his service, in 1867, he was nominated and confirmed for appointment as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865, he settled in New York, where he edited biographies and histories, was a public speaker, served as president of the Society of American Authors and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. James Grant Wilson was born on April 28, 1832 in Edinburgh, the son of the poet William Wilson and his second wife, Miss Jane Sibbald of Hawick. In infancy, he moved with his family to the United States, where they settled at Poughkeepsie, New York, he had two younger brothers. Wilson was educated in Poughkeepsie at College Hill, continued his studies in the languages and drawing, under private teachers, he joined his father in business as a bookseller/publisher becoming his partner.
In 1855, Wilson started on his tour of Europe and its capitals. Upon his return in 1857, he settled in the growing city of Chicago, where he founded the Chicago Record, a journal of art and literature, it was the first literary paper published in that region. He became known as a speaker. During the Civil War, Wilson sold his journal and entered the Union Army late in 1862, he was commissioned as a major of the 15th Illinois Cavalry, commanded the 4th U. S. C. Cavalry as colonel, he resigned from the Army on June 16, 1865. On February 27, 1867, President Andrew Johnson nominated Wilson for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865, the United States Senate confirmed the appointment on March 2, 1867, his middle brother was killed at Fredericksburg and his youngest brother served. After the war, Wilson settled in New York City, he became known as a speaker, a frequent contributor to periodicals, president of the Society of American Authors, after 1885, of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
He edited Fitz-Greene Halleck's Poems and wrote his biography, published in 1869. He edited A Memorial History of the City of New York. On November 3, 1869, he married Jane Emily Searle Cogswell, the sister of Andrew Kirkpatrick Cogswell and the daughter of Rev. Jonathan Cogswell and Jane Eudora Kirkpatrick. Jane's grandfather was Andrew Kirkpatrick and her great-grandfather was John Bayard. Before her death in 1904, they had one daughter together: Jane Wilson, who married Frank Sylvester Henry After his first wife's death in 1904, he married Mary H. Nicholson, the widow of his friend Admiral James William Augustus Nicholson, in 1907, he resided at 143 West 79th Street in New York City. Wilson died in New York City and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York. Biographical Sketches of Illinois Officers Life of Fitz-Greene Halleck Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers Poets and Poetry of Scotland Blackie & Son, Edinburgh 1876 Centennial History of the Diocese of New York, 1775-1885 Bryant and his Friends Commodore Isaac Hull and the Frigate Constitution Wilson, James Grant.
The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892. New York History Co. Love in Letters Life of General Grant Thackeray in the United States List of American Civil War brevet generals Notes SourcesEicher, John H.. "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead. "Wilson, James Grant". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. "Wilson, James Grant". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people." In 2012–13, the National Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, an additional 15,506 metres of manuscript material. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT; the National Library of Australia, while formally established by the passage of the National Library Act 1960, had been functioning as a national library rather than a Parliamentary Library since its inception. In 1901, a Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was established to serve the newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia. From its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a national collection. In 1907 the Joint Parliamentary Library Committee under the Chairmanship of the Speaker, Sir Frederick William Holder defined the objective of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in the following words: The Library Committee is keeping before it the ideal of building up, for the time when Parliament shall be established in the Federal Capital, a great Public Library on the lines of the world-famed Library of Congress at Washington.
The present library building was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden in the Late Twentieth Century Stripped Classical style; the foyer is decorated in marble, with stained-glass windows by Leonard French and three tapestries by Mathieu Matégot. The building was listed on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004. In 2012–13 the Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, with an estimated additional 2,325,900 items held in the manuscripts collection; the Library's collections of Australiana have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers and illustrators are sought and well represented—whether published in Australia or overseas; the Library's collection includes all formats of material, from books, journals and manuscripts to pictures, maps, oral history recordings, manuscript papers and ephemera.
92.1% of the Library's collection has been catalogued and is discoverable through the online catalogue. The Library has digitized over 174,000 items from its collection and, where possible, delivers these directly across the Internet; the Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques, maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive. The Library collects material produced by Australians, for Australians or about the Australian experience in all formats—not just printed works—books, newspapers, posters and printed ephemera—but online publications and unpublished material such as manuscripts and oral histories. A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson; the Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance. The Library's considerable collections of general overseas and rare book materials, as well as world-class Asian and Pacific collections which augment the Australiana collections.
The print collections are further supported by extensive microform holdings. The Library maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection; the Library houses the largest and most developing research resource on Asia in Australia, the largest Asian language collections in the Southern hemisphere, with over half a million volumes in the collection, as well as extensive online and electronic resources. The Library collects resources about all Asian countries in Western languages extensively, resources in the following Asian languages: Burmese, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Thai and Vietnamese; the Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers and bibliophiles. These collections include: Australian Buddhist Library Collection Braga Collection Claasz Collection Coedes Collection London Missionary Society Collection Luce Collection McLaren-Human Collection Otley Beyer Collection Sakakibara Collection Sang Ye Collection Simon Collection Harold S. Williams Collection The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Library's catalogue.
The National Library holds an extensive collection of manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space; the collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Pacific. The collection holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have been received as part of formed book collections; the Australian manuscript collections date from the period of maritime exploration and settlement in the 18th century until the present, with the greatest area of strength dating from the 1890s onwards. The collection includes a large number of outstanding single items, such as the 14th century Chertsey Cartulary, the journal of James Cook on the HM Bark Endeavour, inscribed on t
Miriam Leslie
Miriam Florence Squier Leslie was an American publisher and author. She was the wife of Frank Leslie and the heir to his publishing business which she developed into a paying concern from a state of precarious indebtedness. After her husband's death, she changed her own name to Frank Leslie; the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission was an organization formed by Carrie Chapman Catt using funds willed for the purpose by Leslie. Miriam Florence Folline was born in New Orleans, June 5, 1836, she described her own childhood as "starved and pinched" as far as "love and merriment go." Leslie was the descendant of a noble Huguenot family. After a trip to France, in 1901, she claimed the title Baroness de Bazus, she grew up in New York City, was well educated in the French and Italian languages. She was married four times, her first marriage, March 25, 1854, was to David Charles Peacock. That marriage was annulled two years and she married her second husband, the anthropologist Ephraim Squier; when the editor of Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine had fallen ill in the late 1860s, she volunteered to fill in while the ill editor still received the salary.
The editor died, she took on the position permanently, the November 18, 1871, issue of the magazine appearing with the notation "conducted by Miriam F. Squier." She divorced Ephraim Squier on May 1873, to marry publisher Frank Leslie. During their honeymoon, the couple met author Joaquin Miller; the new Mrs. Leslie and Miller began an affair and the main character in his book The One Fair Woman was modeled after her; the Leslies' summer home was in Saratoga Springs, New York, where they entertained many notables, she was a leader in society. In 1877, they took a lavish train trip with a numerous retinue from New York City to San Francisco, she wrote her recollections of this trip in her book From Gotham to the Golden Gate. The expense of the trip, a business depression left Leslie's business badly in debt; when Frank Leslie died in 1880, the debts amounted to $300,000, his will was contested. Miriam Leslie took the business in hand and put it on a paying basis going so far as to having her name changed to Frank Leslie in June 1881.
She effected a reorganization of the business, became its president. The circulation of the Popular Monthly increased 200,000 in four months under her management. While abroad in 1891, Miriam Leslie married Willie Wilde, the older brother of Oscar Wilde, but two years was divorced from him. In 1902 she sold out all her publishing interests, she died September 18, 1914. Her remains are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The New York City. By her will, she made Carrie Chapman Catt residuary legatee, in the expectation that most of her fortune would be devoted to women's suffrage. Relatives contested the will, she was the author of: California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate, May, June, 1877 Rents in our Robes Are Men Gay Deceivers? and Other Sketches A Social Mirage This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.. "Leslie, Frank". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead; the 1915 edition of this source gives 1828 as her birthdate. Young, Rose Emmet.
The Record of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc. 1917-1929, by Rose Young. New York: The Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc. Richard Reinhardt, 1967, Out West on the Overland, The Frank Leslie Party, 1877, The American West Publishing Company, Palo Alto CA Smithsonian Magazine, November 1997. Madeleine B. Stern, 1953, Purple Passage: The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie, University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. Mrs. Frank Leslie. California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate, May, June, 1877. Nieuwkoop, Netherlands: B. De Graaf. Full text facsimile from American Memory with a biographical introduction by Madeleine B. Stern. Mrs. Frank Leslie. California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate.. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. Facsimile of the original 1877 publication at archive.org. Allene Alder and Jennilyn Brockbank, "The Transcontinental Tourist: The Writings and Travels of Miriam F. Leslie, 1877" Mrs. Frank Leslie. Are we all deceivers?: The lover's blue book. New York: F. Tennyson Neely
Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time; the panic had both foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame. On May 10, 1837, banks in New York City suspended specie payments, meaning that they would no longer redeem commercial paper in specie at full face value. Despite a brief recovery in 1838, the recession persisted for seven years. Banks collapsed, businesses failed, prices declined, thousands of workers lost their jobs. Unemployment may have been as high as 25% in some locales; the years 1837 to 1844 were speaking, years of deflation in wages and prices. The crisis followed a period of economic expansion from mid-1834 to mid-1836; the prices of land and slaves rose in these years.
The origins of this boom had many sources, both international. Because of the peculiar factors of international trade at the time, abundant amounts of silver were coming into the United States from Mexico and China. Land sales and tariffs on imports were generating substantial federal revenues. Through lucrative cotton exports and the marketing of state-backed bonds in British money markets, the United States acquired significant capital investment from Great Britain; these bonds financed transportation projects in the United States. British loans, made available through Anglo-American banking houses like Baring Brothers, fueled much of the United States's westward expansion, infrastructure improvements, industrial expansion, economic development during the antebellum era. In 1836, directors of the Bank of England noticed that the Bank's monetary reserves had declined precipitously in recent years because of poor wheat harvests that forced Great Britain to import much of its food. To compensate, the directors indicated that they would raise interest rates from 3 to 5 percent.
The conventional financial theory held that banks should raise interest rates and curb lending when faced with low monetary reserves. Raising interest rates, according to the laws of supply and demand, was supposed to attract species since money flows where it will generate the greatest return. In the open economy of the 1830s, characterized by free trade and weak trade barriers, the monetary policies of the hegemonic power – in this case, Great Britain – were transmitted to the rest of the interconnected global economic system, included the U. S; the result was that as the Bank of England raised interest rates, major banks in the United States were forced to do the same. When New York banks raised interest rates and scaled back on lending, the effects were damaging. Since the price of a bond bears an inverse relationship to the yield, the increase in prevailing interest rates would have forced down the price of American securities. Demand for cotton plummeted; the price of cotton fell by 25% in February and March 1837.
The United States economy in the southern states, was dependent on stable cotton prices. Receipts from cotton sales provided funding for some schools, balanced the nation's trade deficit, fortified the US dollar, procured foreign exchange earnings in British pound sterling, the world's reserve currency at the time. Since the United States was still a predominantly agricultural economy centered on the export of staple crops and an incipient manufacturing sector, a collapse in cotton prices would have caused massive reverberations. Within the United States, there were several contributing factors. In July 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States, the nation's central bank and fiscal agent; as the BUS wound up its operations in the next four years, state-chartered banks in the West and South relaxed their lending standards, maintaining unsafe reserve ratios. Two domestic policies, in particular, exacerbated an volatile situation; the Specie Circular of 1836 mandated that western lands could be purchased only with gold and silver coin.
The circular was an executive order issued by Andrew Jackson and favored by Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and other hard-money advocates. The intent was to curb speculation in public lands, but the circular set off a real estate and commodity price crash as most buyers were unable to come up with sufficient hard money or "specie" to pay for the land. Secondly, the Deposit and Distribution Act of 1836 placed federal revenues in various local banks across the country. Many of these banks were located in western regions; the effect of these two policies was to transfer specie away from the nation's main commercial centers on the East Coast. With lower monetary reserves in their vaults, major banks and financial institutions on the East Coast had to scale back their loans, a major cause of the panic along with the real estate crash. Americans at the time attributed the cause of the panic principally to domestic political conflicts. Democrats blamed the bankers. Whigs blamed Jackson for refusing to renew the charter of the Bank, resulting in the withdrawal of government funds from the bank.
Martin Van Buren, who became president in March 1837, was blamed for the panic though his inauguration preceded the panic by only five weeks. Van Buren's refusal to use government intervention to address the crisis (such as emergency relief and increa
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives. NARA is responsible for maintaining and publishing the authentic and authoritative copies of acts of Congress, presidential directives, federal regulations; the NARA transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress. The Archivist of the United States is the chief official overseeing the operation of the National Archives and Records Administration; the Archivist not only maintains the official documentation of the passage of amendments to the U. S. Constitution by state legislatures, but has the authority to declare when the constitutional threshold for passage has been reached, therefore when an act has become an amendment; the Office of the Federal Register publishes the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, United States Statutes at Large, among others.
It administers the Electoral College. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission —the agency's grant-making arm—awards funds to state and local governments and private archives and universities, other nonprofit organizations to preserve and publish historical records. Since 1964, the NHPRC has awarded some 4,500 grants; the Office of Government Information Services is a Freedom of Information Act resource for the public and the government. Congress has charged NARA with reviewing FOIA policies and compliance of Federal agencies and to recommend changes to FOIA. NARA's mission includes resolving FOIA disputes between Federal agencies and requesters; each branch and agency of the U. S. government was responsible for maintaining its own documents, which resulted in the loss and destruction of records. Congress established the National Archives Establishment in 1934 to centralize federal record keeping, with the Archivist of the United States as chief administrator; the National Archives was incorporated with GSA in 1949.
The first Archivist, R. D. W. Connor, began serving in 1934; as a result of a first Hoover Commission recommendation, in 1949 the National Archives was placed within the newly formed General Services Administration. The Archivist served as a subordinate official to the GSA Administrator until the National Archives and Records Administration became an independent agency on April 1, 1985. In March 2006, it was revealed by the Archivist of the United States in a public hearing that a memorandum of understanding between NARA and various government agencies existed to "reclassify", i.e. withdraw from public access, certain documents in the name of national security, to do so in a manner such that researchers would not be to discover the process. An audit indicated that more than one third withdrawn since 1999 did not contain sensitive information; the program was scheduled to end in 2007. In 2010, Executive Order 13526 created the National Declassification Center to coordinate declassification practices across agencies, provide secure document services to other agencies, review records in NARA custody for declassification.
NARA's holdings are classed into "record groups" reflecting the governmental department or agency from which they originated. Records include paper documents, still pictures, motion pictures, electronic media. Archival descriptions of the permanent holdings of the federal government in the custody of NARA are stored in the National Archives Catalog; the archival descriptions include information on traditional paper holdings, electronic records, artifacts. As of December 2012, the catalog consisted of about 10 billion logical data records describing 527,000 artifacts and encompassing 81% of NARA's records. There are 922,000 digital copies of digitized materials. Most records at NARA are in the public domain, as works of the federal government are excluded from copyright protection. However, records from other sources may still be protected by donor agreements. Executive Order 13526 directs originating agencies to declassify documents if possible before shipment to NARA for long-term storage, but NARA stores some classified documents until they can be declassified.
Its Information Security Oversight Office monitors and sets policy for the U. S. government's security classification system. Many of NARA's most requested records are used for genealogy research; this includes census records from 1790 to 1940, ships' passenger lists, naturalization records. Archival Recovery Teams investigate the theft of records; the most well known facility of the National Archives and Records Administration is the National Archives Building, located north of the National Mall on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D. C.. A sister facility, known as the National Archives at College Park was opened 1994 near the University of Maryland, College Park; the Washington National Records Center located in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area, is a large warehouse facility where federal records that are still under the control of the creating agency are stored. Federal government agencies pay a yearly fee for storage at the facility. In accordance with federal records schedules, documents at WNRC are transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives after a certain time.
Temporary records at WNRC are
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, biofacts or ecofacts and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered a branch of the humanities. In North America archaeology is a sub-field of anthropology, while in Europe it is viewed as either a discipline in its own right or a sub-field of other disciplines. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, the study of fossil remains, it is important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world. Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying and analysis of data collected to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research, it draws upon anthropology, art history, ethnology, geology, literary history, semiology, textual criticism, information sciences, statistics, paleography, paleontology and paleobotany. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, has since become a discipline practiced across the world. Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Since its early development, various specific sub-disciplines of archaeology have developed, including maritime archaeology, feminist archaeology and archaeoastronomy, numerous different scientific techniques have been developed to aid archaeological investigation. Nonetheless, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, opposition to the excavation of human remains.
The science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with particular attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts, as well as historical sites. Antiquarianism focused on the empirical evidence that existed for the understanding of the past, encapsulated in the motto of the 18th-century antiquary, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts not theory". Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist historian, created a systematic guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century, for which he has been called an early founder of archaeology. Antiquarians of the 16th century, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, drawing and interpreting the monuments that they encountered.
One of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, he was ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings. He attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture and shield-shapes. Excavations were carried out by the Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both of, covered by ash during the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79; these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and human shapes, as well the unearthing of frescos, had a big impact throughout Europe. However, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard; the father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington. He undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798.
Cunnington made meticulous recordings of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, the terms he used to categorize and describe them are still used by archaeologists today. One of the major achievements of 19th-century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy; the idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. The application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites. In the third and fourth decades of the 19th-century, archaeologists like Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order. A major figure in the development of archaeology into a rigorous science was the army officer and ethnologist, Augustus Pitt Rivers, who began excavations on his land in England in the 1880s, his approach was methodical by the standards of the time, he is regarded as the first scientific archaeologist.
He arranged his artifacts by type or "typologically, within types by date or "chronologically"
Peru
Peru the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, in the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains vertically extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon Basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon river. Peruvian territory was home to several ancient cultures. Ranging from the Norte Chico civilization in the 32nd century BC, the oldest civilization in the Americas and one of the five cradles of civilization, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in pre-Columbian America, the territory now including Peru has one of the longest histories of civilization of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 4th millennia BCE; the Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a viceroyalty that encompassed most of its South American colonies, with its capital in Lima.
Peru formally proclaimed independence in 1821, following the military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, the decisive battle of Ayacucho, Peru secured independence in 1824. In the ensuing years, the country enjoyed relative economic and political stability, which ended shortly before the War of the Pacific with Chile. Throughout the 20th century, Peru endured armed territorial disputes, social unrest, internal conflicts, as well as periods of stability and economic upswing. Alberto Fujimori was elected to the presidency in 1990. Fujimori left the presidency in 2000 and was charged with human rights violations and imprisoned until his pardon by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2017. After the president's regime, Fujimori's followers, called Fujimoristas, have caused political turmoil for any opposing faction in power causing Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to resign in March 2018; the sovereign state of Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. It is classified as an emerging market with a high level of human development and an upper middle income level with a poverty rate around 19 percent.
It is one of the region's most prosperous economies with an average growth rate of 5.9% and it has one of the world's fastest industrial growth rates at an average of 9.6%. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing and fishing; the country forms part of The Pacific Pumas, a political and economic grouping of countries along Latin America's Pacific coast that share common trends of positive growth, stable macroeconomic foundations, improved governance and an openness to global integration. Peru ranks high in social freedom. Peru has a population of 32 million, which includes Amerindians, Europeans and Asians; the main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua or other native languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine and music; the name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a local ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama City, in the early 16th century.
When his possessions were visited by Spanish explorers in 1522, they were the southernmost part of the New World yet known to Europeans. Thus, when Francisco Pizarro explored the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador, he said the name Birú was that of a common Indian happened upon by the crew of a ship on an exploratory mission for governor Pedro Arias de Ávila, went on to relate more instances of misunderstandings due to the lack of a common language. The Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, which became Republic of Peru after independence; the earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to 9,000 BC. Andean societies were based on agriculture, terracing.
Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money. The oldest known complex society in Peru, the Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BC; these early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed around the coastal and Andean regions throughout Peru. The Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BC along what is now Peru's Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Incan culture; the Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BC was more of a religious than a political phenomenon, with their religious centre in Chavín de Huantar. After the decline of the Chavin culture around the beginning of the 1st century AD, a series of localized and specialized cultures rose and fell
Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
