James Harrington (author)
James Harrington was an English political theorist of classical republicanism, best known for his controversial work, The Commonwealth of Oceana. This work was an exposition on an ideal constitution, designed to facilitate the development of a utopian republic. Harrington was born in Upton, eldest son of Sir Sapcote Harrington of Rand, Lincolnshire who died 1629, great-nephew of the first Lord Harington of Exton who died 1615, his mother was Jane Samwell of daughter of Sir William Samwell. He was for a time a resident, with his father, in the Manor House at Milton Malsor, Northamptonshire. A blue plaque on the Manor house marks this fact; the village church contains a decorative plaque on the Chancel wall, on the south side, to Dame Jane, the late wife of Sir Sapcote. According to a memorial in Holy Cross Church in Milton, she died on 30 March 1619, when James was 7 or 8 years old; the memorial reads, in modern English but punctuated as in the original "Here under lies the body of Dame Jane, daughter of Sir William Samwell Knight, & late wife to Sir Sapcotes Harington of Milton Knight, by whom he had issue 2 sons & 3 daughters, viz James, Jane, Anne & Elizabeth.
Which Lady died March 30, 1619". Knowledge of Harrington's childhood and early education is non-existent. In 1629, he entered Trinity College, Oxford as a gentleman commoner and left two years with no degree. For a brief time, one of his tutors was the royalist High Churchman William Chillingworth, he entered abruptly left the Middle Temple despising lawyers forever, an animus which appeared in his writings. By this time, Harrington's father had died, his inheritance helped pay his way through several years of continental travel, he enlisted in a Dutch militia regiment, before touring the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy. He was in Geneva with James Zouche in the summer of 1635 and subsequently travelled to Rome where on 14 January 1636 he dined at the Jesuit-run English College with Zouche and Henry Neville or his elder brother Richard. In the light of this, Toland's reference to his visiting the Vatican, where he'refused to kiss the Pope's foot' refers to early 1636. Harrington returned to England in the same year.
The following decade, including his comings and goings during the Civil Wars, are unaccounted for by anything other than unsubstantiated stories of the ilk: that he accompanied Charles I to Scotland in 1639 in connection with the first Bishops' War. Otherwise, he appears to have "resided at Rand, an unmarried country gentleman of studious tastes." Harrington's apparent political loyalty to Parliament did not interfere with a strong personal devotion to the King. Following his capture, Harrington accompanied a "commission" of MPs appointed to persuade Charles to move from Newcastle to Holmby House, as to be nearer London; when a further attempt was made to forcibly transfer the King to the capital, Harrington intervened. In May 1647, he became a gentleman groom of the royal bedchamber. Sometime around New Year 1649, his attendance on the King was abruptly terminated by parliamentarians furious, it is said, over his refusal to swear to report anything he might hear of a royal escape attempt. At least two contemporary accounts have Harrington with Charles on the scaffold, but these do not rise above the level of rumour.
After Charles' death Harrington devoted his time to the composition of his The Commonwealth of Oceana. By order of England's Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, it was seized when passing through the press. Harrington, managed to secure the favour of Cromwell's favourite daughter, Mrs Claypole; the views embodied in Oceana those bearing on vote by ballot and rotation of magistrates and legislators and others endeavoured to push but with no success. Harrington's manuscripts have vanished; the first two editions are known as the "Chapman" and the "Pakeman". Their contents are nearly identical, his Works, including the Pakeman Oceana and the somewhat important A System of Politics, were first edited with biography by John Toland in 1700. Toland's edition, with numerous substantial additions by Thomas Birch, appeared first in Dublin in 1737 and 1758, in England in 1747 and 1771. Oceana was reprinted in Henry Morley's Universal Library in 1883. B. Liljegren reissued a fastidiously prepared version of the Pakeman edition in 1924.
Harrington's modern editor is J. G. A. Pocock. In 1977, he edited a comprehensive compilation of Harrington tracts, with a lengthy historical introduction. Harrington's prose was marred by what Pocock described as an undisciplined work habit and a conspicuous "lack of sophistication." He never attained the level of "a great literary stylist." For example, as contrasted with Hobbes and Milton, "nowhere" to be found are: "important shades of meaning...conveyed rhythm and punctuation. He wrote hastily, in a periodic style in which he more than once lost his way, he suffered from Latinisms...his notions of how t
Xinhai Revolution
The Xinhai Revolution known as the Chinese Revolution or the Revolution of 1911, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty and established the Republic of China. The revolution was named Xinhai because it occurred in 1911, the year of the Xinhai stem-branch in the sexagenary cycle of the Chinese calendar; the revolution consisted of many uprisings. The turning point was the Wuchang uprising on 10 October 1911, the result of the mishandling of the Railway Protection Movement; the revolution ended with the abdication of the six-year-old Last Emperor, Puyi, on 12 February 1912, that marked the end of 2,000 years of imperial rule and the beginning of China's early republican era. The revolution arose in response to the decline of the Qing state, which had proven ineffective in its efforts to modernize China and confront foreign aggression. Many underground anti-Qing groups, with the support of Chinese revolutionaries in exile, tried to overthrow the Qing; the brief civil war that ensued was ended through a political compromise between Yuan Shikai, the late Qing military strongman, Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Tongmenghui.
After the Qing court transferred power to the newly founded republic, a provisional coalition government was created along with the National Assembly. However, political power of the new national government in Beijing was soon thereafter monopolized by Yuan and led to decades of political division and warlordism, including several attempts at imperial restoration; the Republic of China in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on the mainland both consider themselves the legitimate successors to the Xinhai Revolution and honor the ideals of the revolution including nationalism, modernization of China and national unity. 10 October is commemorated in Taiwan as Double Ten Day, the National Day of the ROC. In mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, the day is celebrated as the Anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution. After suffering its first defeat to the West in the First Opium War in 1842, the Qing imperial court struggled to contain foreign intrusions into China. Efforts to adjust and reform the traditional methods of governance were constrained by a conservative court culture that did not want to give away too much authority to reform.
Following defeat in the Second Opium War in 1860, the Qing tried to modernize by adopting certain Western technologies through the Self-Strengthening Movement from 1861. In the wars against the Taiping, the Muslims of Yunnan and the Northwest, the traditional imperial troops proved themselves incompetent and the court came to rely on local armies. In 1895, China suffered another defeat during the First Sino-Japanese War; this demonstrated that traditional Chinese feudal society needed to be modernized if the technological and commercial advancements were to succeed. In 1898 the Guangxu Emperor was guided by reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao for a drastic reform in education and economy under the Hundred Days' Reform; the reform was abruptly cancelled by a conservative coup led by Empress Dowager Cixi. The Guangxu Emperor, who had always been a puppet dependent on Cixi, was put under house arrest in June 1898. Reformers Kang and Liang would be exiled. While in Canada, in June 1899, they tried to form the Emperor Protection Society in an attempt to restore the emperor.
Empress Dowager Cixi controlled the Qing dynasty from this point on. The Boxer Rebellion prompted another foreign invasion of Beijing in 1900 and the imposition of unequal treaty terms, which carved away territories, created extraterritorial concessions and gave away trade privileges. Under internal and external pressure, the Qing court began to adopt some of the reforms; the Qing managed to maintain its monopoly on political power by suppressing with great brutality, all domestic rebellions. Dissidents could operate only in secret societies and underground organizations, in foreign concessions or in exile overseas. There were many revolutionaries and groups that wanted to overthrow the Qing government to re-establish Han led government; the earliest revolutionary organizations were founded outside of China, such as Yeung Ku-wan's Furen Literary Society, created in Hong Kong in 1890. There were 15 members, including Tse Tsan-tai, who did political satire such as "The Situation in the Far East", one of the first Chinese manhua, who became one of the core founders of the South China Morning Post.
Sun Yat-sen's Xingzhonghui was established in Honolulu in 1894 with the main purpose of raising funds for revolutions. The two organizations were merged in 1894; the Huaxinghui was founded in 1904 with notables like Huang Xing, Zhang Shizhao, Chen Tianhua and Song Jiaoren, along with 100 others. Their motto was "Take one province by force, inspire the other provinces to rise up"; the Guangfuhui was founded in 1904, in Shanghai with Cai Yuanpei. Other notable members include Tao Chengzhang. Despite professing the anti-Qing cause, the Guangfuhui was critical of Sun Yat-sen. One of the most famous female revolutionaries was Qiu Jin, who fought for women's rights and was from Guangfuhui. There were many other minor revolutionary organizations, such as Lizhi Xuehui in Jiangsu, Gongqianghui in Sichuan and Hanzudulihui in Fujian, Yizhishe in Jiangxi, Yuewanghui in Anhui and Qunzhihui in Guangzhou. There were criminal organizations that were anti-Manchu, including the Green Gang and Hongmen Zhigongtang.
Sun Yat-sen himself came in cont
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, feminists cite both her life and work as important influences. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women are not inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education, she suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became important.
After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts; this daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, became an accomplished writer herself, as Mary Shelley, whose best known work was Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in London, she was the second of the seven children of Edward John Wollstonecraft. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father squandered it on speculative projects; the family became financially unstable and they were forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. The family's financial situation became so dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages.
As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters and Eliza, throughout her life. For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced Eliza, suffering from what was postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant; the human costs, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work. Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life; the first was with Jane Arden in Beverley. The two read books together and attended lectures presented by Arden's father, a self-styled philosopher and scientist. Wollstonecraft revelled in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her friendship with Arden sometimes to the point of being possessive. Wollstonecraft wrote to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship... I am a little singular in my thoughts of friendship. In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she reveals the volatile and depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout her life.
The second and more important friendship was with Fanny Blood, introduced to Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple in Hoxton who became parental figures to her. Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft struck out on her own in 1778 and accepted a job as a lady's companion to Sarah Dawson, a widow living in Bath. However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along with the irascible woman. In 1780 she returned home, called back to care for her dying mother. Rather than return to Dawson's employ after the death of her mother, Wollstonecraft moved in with the Bloods, she realized during the two years she spent with the family that she had idealized Blood, more invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to her family throughout her life. Wollstonecraft had envisioned living in a female utopia with Blood. In order to make a living, her sisters, Blood set up a school together in Newington Green, a Dissenting community. Blood soon became engaged and after their marriage her husband, Hugh Skeys, took her to Lisbon, Portugal, to improve her health, which had always been precarious.
Despite the change of surroundings Blood's health further deteriorated when she became pregnant, in 1785 Wollstonecraft left the school and followed Blood to nurse her, but to no avail. Moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure. Blood's death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first novel, Mary: A Fiction. After Blood's death, Wollstonecraft's friends helped her obtain a position as governess to the daughters of the Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family in Ireland. Although she could not get along with Lady Kingsborough, the children foun
American Revolution
The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America, they defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War in alliance with others. Members of American colonial society argued the position of "no taxation without representation", starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, they rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them because they lacked members in that governing body. Protests escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, during which Patriots destroyed a consignment of taxed tea; the British responded by closing Boston Harbor followed with a series of legislative acts which rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's rights of self-government and caused the other colonies to rally behind Massachusetts. In late 1774, the Patriots set up their own alternative government to better coordinate their resistance efforts against Great Britain.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when the king's army attempted to capture and destroy Colonial military supplies at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The conflict developed into a global war, during which the Patriots fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War; each of the thirteen colonies formed a Provincial Congress that assumed power from the old colonial governments and suppressed Loyalism, from there they built a Continental Army under the leadership of General George Washington. The Continental Congress determined King George's rule to be tyrannical and infringing the colonists' rights as Englishmen, they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 2, 1776; the Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, they proclaimed that all men are created equal. The Continental Army forced the redcoats out of Boston in March 1776, but that summer the British captured and held New York City and its strategic harbor for the duration of the war.
The Royal Navy blockaded ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but they failed to defeat Washington's forces. The Patriots unsuccessfully attempted to invade Canada during the winter of 1775–76, but captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. France now entered the war as an ally of the United States with a large army and navy that threatened Britain itself; the war turned to the American South where the British under the leadership of Charles Cornwallis captured an army at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780 but failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. A combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781 ending the war; the Treaty of Paris was signed September 3, 1783, formally ending the conflict and confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada and Spain taking Florida.
Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of the United States Constitution, establishing a strong federal national government that included an executive, a national judiciary, a bicameral Congress that represented states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives. The Revolution resulted in the migration of around 60,000 Loyalists to other British territories British North America; as early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the American colonies. On October 9, the Navigation Acts were passed pursuant to a mercantilist policy intended to ensure that trade enriched only Great Britain, barring trade with foreign nations; some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious, as the merchants most directly affected were most politically active. King Philip's War ended in 1678, much of it was fought without significant assistance from England.
This contributed to the development of a unique identity from that of the British people. In the 1680s, King Charles II determined to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized administration in order to regulate trade more effectively, his efforts were fiercely opposed by the colonists, resulting in the abrogation of their colonial charter by the Crown. Charles' successor James II finalized these efforts in 1686, establishing the Dominion of New England. Dominion rule triggered bitter resentment throughout New England. New Englanders were encouraged, however, by a change of government in England that saw James II abdicate, a populist uprising overthrew Dominion rule on April 18, 1689. Colonial governments reasserted their control in the wake of the revolt, successive governments made no more attempts to restore the Dominion. Subsequent English governments continued in their efforts to tax certain goods, passing acts regulating the trade of wool and molasses; the Molasses Act of 1733 in particular was egregious to the colonists, as a significant part of colonial trade relied on the product.
The taxes damaged the N
Trienio Liberal
The Trienio Liberal is a period of three years in the modern history of Spain between 1820 and 1823, when a liberal government ruled Spain after a military uprising in January 1820 by the lieutenant-colonel Rafael de Riego against the absolutist rule of Ferdinand VII. It ended in 1823 when, with the approval of the crowned heads of Europe, a French army invaded Spain and reinstated the King's absolute power; this invasion is known in France as the "Spanish Expedition", in Spain as "The Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis". King Ferdinand VII provoked widespread unrest in the army, by refusing to accept the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812; the King sought to reclaim the Spanish colonies in the Americas that had revolted consequently depriving Spain from an important source of revenue. In January 1820, soldiers assembled at Cádiz for an expedition to South America, angry over infrequent pay, bad food and poor quarters, mutinied under the leadership of Colonel Rafael del Riego y Nuñez. Pledging fealty to the 1812 Constitution, they seized their commander.
Subsequently, the rebel forces moved to nearby San Fernando, where they began preparations to march on the capital, Madrid. Despite the rebels' relative weakness, Ferdinand accepted the constitution on March 9, 1820, granting power to liberal ministers and ushering in the so-called Liberal Triennium, a period of popular rule. However, political conspiracies of both right and left proliferated in Spain, as was the case across much of the rest of Europe. Liberal revolutionaries stormed the King's palace and seized Ferdinand VII, a prisoner of the Cortes in all but name for the next three years and retired to Aranjuez; the elections to the Cortes Generales in 1822 were won by Rafael del Riego. Ferdinand's supporters set themselves up at Urgell, took up arms and put in place an absolutist regency. Ferdinand's supporters, accompanied by the Royal Guard, staged an uprising in Madrid, subdued by forces supporting the new government and its constitution. Despite the defeat of Ferdinand's supporters at Madrid, civil war erupted in the regions of Castile and Andalusia.
Three years of liberal rule followed. The Progresista government reorganized Spain into 52 provinces, it intended to reduce the regional autonomy, a hallmark of Spanish bureaucracy since Habsburg rule in the 16th and 17th centuries. Opposition of the affected regions, in particular, Aragon and Catalonia, shared in the king's antipathy for the liberal government; the anticlerical policies of the Progresista government led to friction with the Roman Catholic Church, attempts to bring about industrialisation alienated old trade guilds. The Spanish Inquisition, abolished by both Joseph Bonaparte and the Cádiz Cortes during the French occupation, was ended again by the government, which led to accusations of it being nothing more than afrancesados, only six years earlier, had been forced out of the country. More radical liberals attempted to revolt against the entire idea of a monarchy, regardless of how little power it had. In 1821, they were suppressed, but the incident served to illustrate the frail coalition that bound the government together.
The election of a radical liberal government in 1823 further destabilized Spain. The army, whose liberal leanings had brought the government to power, began to waver when the Spanish economy failed to improve, in 1823, a mutiny in Madrid had to be suppressed; the Jesuits, banned by Charles III in the 18th century, only to be rehabilitated by Ferdinand VII after his restoration, were banned again by the government. For the duration of liberal rule, Ferdinand lived under virtual house arrest in Madrid; the Congress of Vienna, ending the Napoleonic Wars, had inaugurated the "Congress system" as an instrument of international stability in Europe. Rebuffed by the "Holy Alliance" of Russia and Prussia in his request for help against the liberal revolutionaries in 1820, by 1822, the "Concert of Europe" was so concerned by Spain's liberal government and its surprising hardiness that it was prepared to intervene on Ferdinand's behalf. In 1822, the Congress of Verona authorized France to intervene. Louis XVIII of France was only too happy to put an end to Spain's liberal experiment, a massive army, the 100,000 Sons of Saint Louis, was dispatched across the Pyrenees in April 1823.
The Spanish army, fraught by internal divisions, offered little resistance to the well organised French force, who seized Madrid and reinstalled Ferdinand as absolute monarch. The liberals' hopes for a new Spanish War of Independence were dashed. Regarding the policy for America in the absolutist period, the new government changed political repression into negotiation. Sending troops was replaced by commissioners to attract pro-independence leaders, who were invited to submit to royal authority in exchange for recognition by Spain. With that in mind, the government announced a ceasefire for negotiations with the rebels until the 1812 Constitution, superseded by Ferdinand's actions, was accepted. According to the ceasefire, Spain would end the persecution and would issue a blanket amnesty for the insurgents; the 11 commissioners failed since the patriots demanded recognition of their independence from Spain. In 1822, Ferdinand VII applied the terms of the Congress of Vienna, lobbied for the assistance of the other absolute monarchs of Europe, in the process joining the Holy Alliance formed by Russia, Prussia and France to restore absolutism.
In France, the ultra-royalists pressured Lo
Republic of Florence
The Republic of Florence known as the Florentine Republic, was a medieval and early modern state, centered on the Italian city of Florence in Tuscany. The republic originated in 1115, when the Florentine people rebelled against the Margraviate of Tuscany upon the death of Matilda of Tuscany, a woman who controlled vast territories that included Florence; the Florentines formed a commune in her successors' place. The republic was ruled by a council known as the Signoria of Florence; the signoria was chosen by the gonfaloniere, elected every two months by Florentine guild members. The republic had a checkered history of counter-coups against various factions; the Medici faction gained governance of the city in 1434 under Cosimo de' Medici. The Medici kept control of Florence until 1494. Giovanni de' Medici re-conquered the republic in 1512. Florence repudiated Medici authority for a second time in 1527, during the War of the League of Cognac; the Medici re-assumed their rule in 1531 after an 11-month siege of the city.
The republican government was disestablished in 1532, when Pope Clement VII appointed Alessandro de' Medici "Duke of the Florentine Republic", making the "republic" a hereditary monarchy. The city of Florence was established in 59 B. C. by Julius Caesar. Before the death of Matilda of Tuscany in 1115, the city had been part of the Marquisate of Tuscany founded in 846 A. D; the city did not submit to her successor Rabodo, killed in a dispute with the city. It is not known when the city formed its own government independent of the marquisate; the first official mention of the Florentine republic was in 1138, when several cities around Tuscany formed a league against Henry X of Bavaria. The country was nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire. According to a study carried out by Enrico Faini of the University of Florence, there were about fifteen old aristocratic families who moved to Florence between 1000 and 1100: Amidei. Florence prospered in the 12th century through extensive trade with foreign countries.
This, in turn, provided a platform for the demographic growth of the city, which mirrored the rate of construction of churches and palazzi. This prosperity was shattered when Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa invaded the Italian peninsula in 1185; as a result, the margraves of Tuscany re-acquired its townlands. The Florentines re-asserted their independence when Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI died in 1197. Florence's population continued to grow into the 13th century, reaching a level of 30,000 inhabitants; as has been said, the extra inhabitants supported the city's vice versa. Several new bridges and churches were built, most prominently the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, begun in 1294; the buildings from this era serve as Florence's best examples of Gothic Architecture. Politically, Florence was able to maintain peace between its competing factions; the precarious peace that existed at the beginning of the century was destroyed in 1216 when two factions, known as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, began to war.
The Ghibellines were supporters of the noble rulers of Florence. The Ghibellines, who had ruled the city under Frederick of Antioch since 1244, were deposed in 1250 by the Guelphs; the Guelphs led Florence to prosper further. Their mercantile orientation soon became evident in one of their earliest achievements: the introduction of a new coin, the florin, in 1252, it was used beyond Florence's borders due to its reliable, fixed gold content and soon became one of the common currencies of Europe and the Near East. The same year saw the creation of the Palazzo del Popolo; the Guelphs lost the reins of power after Florence suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Montaperti against Siena in 1260. The Ghibellines resumed power and undid many of the advances of the Guelphs, for example the demolition of hundreds of towers and palaces; the fragility of their rule caused the Ghibellines to seek out an arbitrator in the form of Pope Clement IV, who favoured the Guelphs, restored them to power. The Florentine economy reached a zenith in the latter half of the 13th century, its success was reflected by the building of the famed Palazzo della Signoria, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio.
The Florentine townlands were divided into administrative districts in 1292. In 1293, the Ordinances of Justice were enacted, which became the constitution of the republic of Florence throughout the Italian Renaissance; the city's numerous luxurious palazzi were becoming surrounded by townhouses built by the prospering merchant class. In 1298, the Bonsignori family of Siena, one of the leading banking families of Europe, went bankrupt, the city of Siena lost its status as the most prominent banking center of Europe to Florence. In 1304, the war between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs led to a great fire which destroyed much of the city. Napier gives the following account: The golden florin of the Republic of Florence was the first European gold coin struck in sufficient quantities to play a significant commercial role since the 7th century; as many Florentine banks were international companies with branches across Europe, the florin became the dominant trade coin of Western Europe for large scale transactions, replacing silver bars in multiples of the mark.
In fact, with the collapse of the Bonsignori family, several new banking families sprang up in Fl
Nasserism
Nasserism is a socialist Arab nationalist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and Egypt's second President. Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, developing world solidarity and international non-alignment. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nasserism was amongst the most potent political ideologies in the Arab world; this was true following the Suez Crisis of 1956, the political outcome of, seen as a validation of Nasserism and a tremendous defeat for Western imperial powers. During the Cold War, its influence was felt in other parts of Africa and the developing world with regard to anti-imperialism and non-alignment; the scale of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967 damaged the standing of Nasser and the ideology associated with him. Though it survived Nasser's death in 1970, certain important tenets of Nasserism were revised or abandoned by his successor Anwar Sadat during what he termed the Corrective Revolution and his Infitah economic policies.
Under the three decade rule of Sadat's successor Hosni Mubarak, most of the remaining socialist infrastructure of Egypt was replaced by neoliberal policies at odds with Nasserist principles. In the international arena, Mubarak departed entirely from traditional Egyptian policy, becoming a steadfast ally of both the United States government and Israel, the latter still viewed by most Egyptians with enmity and distrust, derived from the five wars that Egypt fought against Israel between 1948 and 1973. During Nasser's lifetime, Nasserist groups were encouraged and supported financially by Egypt to the extent that many became seen as willing agents of the Egyptian government in its efforts to spread revolutionary nationalism in the Arab world. In the 1970s, as a younger generation of Arab revolutionaries came to the fore Nasserism outside Egypt metamorphosed into other Arab nationalist and pan-Arabist movements, including component groups of the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War.
The main Nasserite movements that continued to be active until today on the Lebanese scene are represented by the organization in Sidon of populist Nasserist partisans that are led by Oussama Saad and in Beirut as represented by the Al-Mourabitoun movement. Both groups have been active since the early 1950s among Sunni Muslims and they are associated politically with the March 8 coalitions in Lebanese politics. Nasserism continues to have significant resonance throughout the Arab world to this day and informs much of the public dialogue on politics in Egypt and the wider region. Prominent Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi competed in the first round of the 2012 Egyptian Presidential election and only narrowly avoided securing a position in the run-off against eventual winner Mohamed Morsi. "Nasserism", the broad term used in literature to describe the aspects of Nasser's rule and his legacy, can be interpreted in many ways. Granted that there is a multitude of ways in which the term is read and used, P. J. Vatikiotis in his book Nasser and his Generation argues that Nasserism had the limited political connotation of a phenomenon of "personal charismatic leadership, not to a movement or ideology".
Vatikiotis elaborates upon Nasser's use of speech as a political tool to sway his constituents despite their deprivation of any participation in their leader's policies. To this end, Nasser addressed masses on both radio and television as well as in huge rallies, with a "repeated hypnotic incantation of "imperialism" and "agents of imperialism", "reactionaries", "revenge", "dignity and self-respect", "Zionism" and "Arabism". Crowds were galvanized to hysteria as Nasser excited them with hopes and aspirations of strong leadership and Arab unity. In Rethinking Nasserism and Winckler discuss another interpretation of Nasserism. According to them, "Western social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, perceived Nasserism as a modernization movement and Nasser as a modernizing leader…Egypt was seen as a typical Third World country undergoing a process of decolonization and, under new revolutionary leadership, aspiring to national prosperity through modernization. Thus, Nasserism was perceived as an attempt to transform Egyptian traditional society through the modernization of its economy and society".
Yet another insight into Nasserism is provided in Political Trends in the Fertile Crescent by Walid Khalidi, who discusses it as not an ideological movement, rather an "attitude of mind", "eclectic, empirical and yet conservative". According to Walidi, Nasserism was able to attract support in the Arab world because it "transferred, if only to the Arab world itself, the center of decisions concerning the future of that world". Khalidi asserts that this change inspired self-confidence in the Arab community, welcome after the recent shock over the loss of Palestine. Nasserism is an Arab nationalist and pan-Arabist ideology, combined with a vaguely defined socialism distinguished from Eastern Bloc or Western socialist thought by the label "Arab socialism". Though opposed ideologically to Western capitalism, Arab socialism developed as a rejection of communism, seen as incompatible with Arab traditions and the religious underpinnings of Arab society; as a consequence, Nasserists from the 1950s to the 1980s sought to prevent the rise of communism in the Arab world and advocated harsh penalties for individuals and organizations identified as attempting
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