Korea
Korea is a region in East Asia. Since 1948, it has been divided between two distinct sovereign states: South Korea. Korea consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, several minor islands near the peninsula. Korea is bordered by China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, neighbours Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between the three competing states of Baekje and Silla, together known as the "Three Kingdoms of Korea". In the second half of the 1st millennium and Goguryeo were conquered by Silla, leading to the "Unified Silla" period. Meanwhile, Balhae formed in the north following the collapse of Goguryeo. Unified Silla collapsed into three separate states due to civil war, ushering in the Later Three Kingdoms. Toward the end of the 1st millennium Goryeo, a revival of Goguryeo, defeated the two other states and unified the Korean Peninsula as one single state. Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo.
Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was a cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234. However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Empire during the 13th century weakened the nation, which agreed to become a vassal state after decades of fighting. Following military resistance under King Gongmin which ended Mongol political influence in Goryeo, severe political strife followed, Goryeo fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1392; the first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace. During this period, the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great in the 15th century and there was increasing influence of Confucianism. During the part of the dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the "Hermit Kingdom". By the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan. After the First Sino-Japanese War, despite the Korean Empire's effort to modernize, it was annexed by Japan in 1910 and ruled by Imperial Japan until the end of World War II in August 1945.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea in the aftermath of World War II, leaving Korea partitioned along the 38th parallel. The North was under Soviet occupation and the South under U. S. occupation. These circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their inability to agree on the terms of Korean independence; the Communist-inspired government in the North received backing from the Soviet Union in opposition to the pro-Western government in the South, leading to Korea's division into two political entities: North Korea, South Korea. Tensions between the two resulted in the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalized peace treaty; this status contributes to the high tensions. Both governments of the two Koreas claim to be the sole legitimate government of the region. "Korea" is the modern spelling of "Corea", a name attested in English as early as 1614.
Korea was transliterated as Cauli in The Travels of Marco Polo, of the Chinese 高麗. This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo, which ruled most of the Korean peninsula during Marco Polo's time. Korea's introduction to the West resulted from trade and contact with merchants from Arabic lands, with some records dating back as far as the 9th century. Goryeo's name was a continuation of Goguryeo the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, known as Goryeo beginning in the 5th century; the original name was a combination of the adjective go with the name of a local Yemaek tribe, whose original name is thought to have been either *Guru or *Gauri. With expanding British and American trade following the opening of Korea in the late 19th century, the spelling "Korea" appeared and grew in popularity; the name Korea is now used in English contexts by both North and South Korea. In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk; the name references Samhan, referring to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula.
Although written in Hanja as 韓, 幹, or 刊, this Han has no relation to the Chinese place names or peoples who used those characters but was a phonetic transcription of a native Korean word that seems to have had the meaning "big" or "great" in reference to leaders. It has been tentatively linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Central Asia. In North Korea, China and Japan, Korea as a whole is referred to as. "Great Joseon" was the name of the kingdom ruled by the Joseon dynasty from 1393 until their declaration of the short-lived Great Korean Empire in 1897. King Taejo had named them for the earlier Kojoseon, who ruled northern Korea from its legendary prehistory until their conquest in 108 BC by China's Han Empire; this go is the Hanja 古 and
Appalachian dulcimer
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family with three or four strings played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, its fretting is diatonic; the Appalachian dulcimer has many variant names. Most it is called a dulcimer; when it needs to be distinguished from the unrelated hammered dulcimer, various adjectives are added, for example: mountain dulcimer. The instrument has acquired a number of nicknames: "harmonium," "hog fiddle," "music box," "harmony box," and "mountain zither". Although the Appalachian dulcimer first appeared in the early 19th century among Scots-Irish immigrant communities in the Appalachian Mountains, the instrument has no known precedent in Ireland or Scotland; because of this, a dearth of written records, the history of the Appalachian dulcimer has been, until recently speculative. Since 1980, more extensive research has traced the instrument's development through several distinct periods, origins in several similar European instruments: the Swedish hummel, the Norwegian langeleik, the German scheitholt, the French épinette des Vosges.
Folk historian Lucy M. Long said of the instrument's history: Because few historical records of the dulcimer exist, the origins of the instrument were open to speculation until when Ralph Lee Smith and L. Alan Smith reconstructed the instrument's history by analyzing older dulcimers; the organological development of the dulcimer divides into three periods: transitional, pre-revival or traditional, revival or contemporary. Charles Maxson, an Appalachian luthier from Volga, West Virginia, speculated that early settlers were unable to make the more complex violin in the early days because of lack of tools and time; this was one of the factors which led to the building of the dulcimer, which has less dramatic curves. He too cited scheitholt and épinette des Vosges as ancestor instruments. Few true specimens of the mountain dulcimer exist from earlier than about 1880, when J. Edward Thomas of Knott County, began building and selling them; the instrument became used as something of a parlor instrument, as its modest sound volume is best-suited to small home gatherings.
But for the first half of the 20th century the mountain dulcimer was rare, with a handful of makers supplying players in scattered pockets of Appalachia. No audio recordings of the instrument exist from earlier than the late 1930s; the soprano Loraine Wyman, who sang Appalachian folk songs in concert venues around the time of the First World War, created a brief splash for the Appalachian dulcimer by demonstrating it in concerts, was portrayed in Vogue magazine holding her instrument, a Thomas. But Wyman preferred singing with the more robust support of the piano; the instrument achieved its true renaissance in the 1950s urban folk music revival in the United States through the work of Jean Ritchie, a Kentucky musician who performed with the instrument before New York City audiences. In the early 1960s, Ritchie and her partner George Pickow began distributing dulcimers made by her Kentucky relative Jethro Amburgey the woodworking instructor at the Hindman Settlement School, they began producing their own instruments in New York City.
Meanwhile, the American folk musician Richard Fariña was bringing the Appalachian dulcimer to a much wider audience, by 1965 the instrument was a familiar presence in folk music circles. In addition to Amburgey, by winding down his production, influential builders of mid-1960s included Homer Ledford, Lynn McSpadden, A. W. Jeffreys and Joellen Lapidus. In 1969 Michael and Howard Rugg formed; as well as being the first to mass-produce the instrument, they made design changes to make the instrument easier to produce and to play. The body was made larger, they installed metal friction or geared tuners, rather than traditional wooden pegs, to making tuning easier and more reliable. Organologically, the Appalachian dulcimer is a plucked box-zither. Appalachian dulcimers are traditionally constructed of wood, early instruments were made all of one wood, using wood found in the particular area of the mountains where the builder lived. More guitar aesthetics and construction ideals have been applied, with a tone wood such as spruce or cedar preferred for the top of the soundbox.
A harder wood, such as mahogany or rosewood, will be used for the back and neck, a hardwood such as rosewood, maple, or ebony is used for the fingerboard. As the modern dulcimer arose in America, the bulk of them are still made there, American hardwoods such as walnut, oak and apple are still employed by makers; as with many folk instruments the Appalachian dulcimer has been made—and continues to be made—in many shapes and variations in construction details. The general format has a long narrow soundbox, with the "neck" centered in the soundbox and running the length of the instrument. Typical instruments are 70–100 cm long; the top of the fingerboard sits about 1.25 cm (1/2
Wales
Wales is a country, part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Bristol Channel to the south, it had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2. Wales has over 1,680 miles of coastline and is mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon, its highest summit; the country has a changeable, maritime climate. Welsh national identity emerged among the Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, Wales is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of England's conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century; the whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism and the Labour Party.
Welsh national feeling grew over the century. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, development of the mining and metallurgical industries transformed the country from an agricultural society into an industrial nation. Two-thirds of the population live in South Wales, including Cardiff, Swansea and the nearby valleys. Now that the country's traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales' economy depends on the public sector and service industries and tourism. Although Wales shares its political and social history with the rest of Great Britain, a majority of the population in most areas speaks English as a first language, the country has retained a distinct cultural identity and is bilingual. Over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west.
From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the "land of song", in part due to the eisteddfod tradition. At many international sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, Rugby World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, Wales has its own national teams, though at the Olympic Games, Welsh athletes compete as part of a Great Britain team. Rugby union is seen as an expression of national consciousness; the English words "Wales" and "Welsh" derive from the same Germanic root, itself derived from the name of the Gaulish people known to the Romans as Volcae and which came to refer indiscriminately to all non-Germanic peoples. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term Wælisc when referring to the Britons in particular, Wēalas when referring to their lands; the modern names for some Continental European lands and peoples have a similar etymology. In Britain, the words were not restricted to modern Wales or to the Welsh but were used to refer to anything that the Anglo-Saxons associated with the Britons, including other non-Germanic territories in Britain and places in Anglo-Saxon territory associated with Britons, as well as items associated with non-Germanic Europeans, such as the walnut.
The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning "fellow-countrymen"; the use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era of the Welsh people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland. It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, different from other peoples. In particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage and language to the Welsh; the word came into use as a self-description before the 7th century. It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples and was the more common literary term until c. 1200. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh.
Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. The Latinised forms of these names, Cambrian and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales and the Welsh people. Examples include the Cambrian Mountains, the newspaper Cambrian News, the organisations Cambrian Airways, Cambrian Railways, Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art. Outside Wales, a related form survives as the name Cumbria in North West England, once a part of Yr Hen Ogledd; the Cumbric language, thought to
String instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when the performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the Classical music orchestra and a number of other instruments. All of the bowed string instruments can be plucked with the fingers, a technique called "pizzicato". A wide variety of techniques are used to sound notes on the electric guitar, including plucking with the fingernails or a plectrum, strumming and "tapping" on the fingerboard and using feedback from a loud, distorted guitar amplifier to produce a sustained sound.
Some types of string instrument are plucked, such as the harp and the electric bass. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, string instruments are called chordophones. Other examples include the sitar, banjo, mandolin and bouzouki. In most string instruments, the vibrations are transmitted to the body of the instrument, which incorporates some sort of hollow or enclosed area; the body of the instrument vibrates, along with the air inside it. The vibration of the body of the instrument and the enclosed hollow or chamber make the vibration of the string more audible to the performer and audience; the body of most string instruments is hollow. Some, however—such as electric guitar and other instruments that rely on electronic amplification—may have a solid wood body. Dating to around c. 13,000 BC, a cave painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow, a hunting bow used as a single-stringed musical instrument.
From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed. In turn, this led to being able to play chords. Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute; this picture of musical bow to harp bow has been contested. In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not known, he felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the 4th-century BC civilization that took the primitive technology and created "technically and artistically well-made harps, lyres and lutes."Archaeological digs have identified some of the earliest stringed instruments in Ancient Mesopotamian sites, like the lyres of Ur, which include artifacts over three thousand years old. The development of lyre instruments required the technology to create a tuning mechanism to tighten and loosen the string tension. Lyres with wooden bodies and strings used for plucking or playing with a bow represent key instruments that point towards harps and violin-type instruments.
Musicologists have put forth examples of that 4th-century BC technology, looking at engraved images that have survived. The earliest image showing a lute-like instrument came from Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. A cylinder seal from c. 3100 BC or earlier shows. From the surviving images, theororists have categorized the Mesopotamian lutes, showing that they developed into a long variety and a short; the line of long lutes may have developed into pandura. The line of short lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Northwest India, shown in sculpture from the 2nd century BC through the 4th or 5th centuries AD. During the medieval era, instrument development varied from country to country. Middle Eastern rebecs represented breakthroughs in terms of shape and strings, with a half a pear shape using three strings. Early versions of the violin and fiddle, by comparison, emerged in Europe through instruments such as the gittern, a four-stringed precursor to the guitar, basic lutes.
These instruments used catgut and other materials, including silk, for their strings. String instrument design refined during the Renaissance and into the Baroque period of musical history. Violins and guitars became more consistent in design and were similar to what we use in the 2000s and into the present day; the violins of the Renaissance featured intricate woodwork and stringing, while more elaborate bass instruments such as the bandora were produced alongside quill-plucked citterns, Spanish body guitars. In the 19th century, string instruments were made more available through mass production, with wood string instruments a key part of orchestras – cellos and upright basses, for example, were now standard instruments for chamber ensembles and smaller orchestras. At the same time, the 19th-century guitar became more associated with six string models, rather than traditional five string versions. Major changes to string instruments in the 20th century involved innovations in electro
East Anglia
East Anglia is a geographical area in the East of England. The area included has varied but the defined NUTS 2 statistical unit comprises the counties of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, including the City of Peterborough unitary authority area; the name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a tribe whose name originated in Anglia, northern Germany. Definitions of what constitutes; the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia, established in the 6th century consisted of the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and expanded west into at least part of Cambridgeshire. The modern NUTS 2 statistical unit of East Anglia comprises Norfolk and Cambridgeshire; those three counties have formed the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia since 1976, were the subject of a possible government devolution package in 2016. Essex has sometimes been included in definitions of East Anglia, including by the London Society of East Anglians. However, the Kingdom of Essex to the south, was a separate element of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England and did not identify as Angles but Saxons.
The county of Essex by itself forms a NUTS 2 statistical unit in the East of England region. Other definitions of the area have been proposed over the years. For example, the Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1969, which followed the Royal Commission on the Reform of Local Government, recommended the creation of eight provinces in England; the proposed East Anglia province would have included northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire and a small part of Northamptonshire as well as Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. The kingdom of East Anglia consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of the East Anglian princess Etheldreda, the Isle of Ely became part of the kingdom; the kingdom was formed about the year 520 by the merging of the North and the South Folk and was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms. For a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around the year 616, East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, its King Raedwald was Bretwalda.
However, this did not last and over the next forty years East Anglia was defeated by the Mercians twice and continued to weaken in relation to the other kingdoms. In 794, Offa of Mercia had king Æthelberht killed and took control of the kingdom himself. Although independence was temporarily restored by rebellion in 825, on 20 November 869 the Danes killed King Edmund and captured the kingdom. By 917, after a succession of Danish defeats, East Anglia was incorporated into the Kingdom of England by Edward the Elder, afterwards becoming an earldom. Despite some engineering work in the form of sea barriers constructed by the Roman Empire, much of East Anglia remained marshland and bogs until the 17th century. From this point onward a series of systematic drainage projects using drains and river diversions along the lines of Dutch practice, converted the alluvial land into wide swathes of productive arable land. In the 1630s thousands of Puritan families from East Anglia settled in the American region of New England, taking much East Anglian culture with them that can still be traced today.
East Anglia, which based much of its earnings on wool and arable farming, was a rich area of England until the effects of the Industrial Revolution saw manufacturing and development shift to the Midlands and the North. During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces constructed many airbases in East Anglia for the heavy bomber fleets of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Nazi-occupied Europe. East Anglia was ideally suited to airfield construction as it comprises large areas of open, level terrain and is close to mainland Europe; the reduced flight time to mainland Europe therefore reduced the fuel load required and enabled a larger bomb load to be carried. Building the airfields was a massive civil engineering project and by the end of the war there was one every 8 miles. Many of these airfields can still be seen today from aerial photographs, a few remain in use today, the most prominent being Norwich International Airport. Pillboxes, which were erected in 1940 to help defend the nation against invasion, can be found throughout the area at strategic points.
East Anglia is bordered to the north and east by the North Sea, to the south by the estuary of the River Thames and shares an undefined land border to the west with the rest of England. Much of northern East Anglia is flat, low-lying and marshy, although the extensive drainage projects of the past centuries make this one of the driest areas in the UK. Inland much of the rest of Suffolk and Norfolk is undulating, with glacial moraine ridges providing some areas of steeper areas relief; the supposed flatness of the Norfolk landscape is noted in literature, such as Noël Coward's Private Lives – "Very flat, Norfolk". On the north-west corner East Anglia is bordered by a bay known as The Wash, where owing to deposits of sediment and land reclamation, the coastline has altered markedly within historical times. Conversely, over to the east on the coast exposed to the North Sea the coastline is subject to rapid erosion and has shifted inland since historic times. Major rivers include Suffolk's Stour, running through country beloved of the painter John Const
Poland
Poland the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With a population of 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin. Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania to the north and Ukraine to the east and Czech Republic, to the south, Germany to the west; the establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to AD 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin; this union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
More than a century after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, followed by the Soviet Union invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. More than six million Polish citizens, including 90% of the country's Jews, perished in the war. In 1947, the Polish People's Republic was established as a satellite state under Soviet influence. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, most notably through the emergence of the Solidarity movement, Poland reestablished itself as a presidential democratic republic. Poland is regional power, it has the fifth largest economy by GDP in the European Union and one of the most dynamic economies in the world achieving a high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed country, which maintains a high-income economy along with high standards of living, life quality, safety and economic freedom.
Having a developed school educational system, the country provides free university education, state-funded social security, a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Poland is a member state of the European Union, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, the OECD, the Three Seas Initiative, the Visegrád Group; the origin of the name "Poland" derives from the West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta river basin of the historic Greater Poland region starting in the 6th century. The origin of the name "Polanie" itself derives from the early Slavic word "pole". In some languages, such as Hungarian, Lithuanian and Turkish, the exonym for Poland is Lechites, which derives from the name of a semi-legendary ruler of Polans, Lech I. Early Bronze Age in Poland begun around 2400 BC, while the Iron Age commenced in 750 BC. During this time, the Lusatian culture, spanning both the Bronze and Iron Ages, became prominent; the most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BC.
Throughout the Antiquity period, many distinct ancient ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland in an era that dates from about 400 BC to 500 AD. These groups are identified as Celtic, Slavic and Germanic tribes. Recent archeological findings in the Kujawy region, confirmed the presence of the Roman Legions on the territory of Poland; these were most expeditionary missions sent out to protect the amber trade. The exact time and routes of the original migration and settlement of Slavic peoples lacks written records and can only be defined as fragmented; the Slavic tribes who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. Up until the creation of Mieszko's state and his subsequent conversion to Christianity in 966 AD, the main religion of Slavic tribes that inhabited the geographical area of present-day Poland was Slavic paganism. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the religious authority of the Roman Church.
However, the transition from paganism was not a smooth and instantaneous process for the rest of the population as evident from the pagan reaction of the 1030s. Poland began to form into a recognizable unitary and territorial entity around the middle of the 10th century under the Piast dynasty. Poland's first documented ruler, Mieszko I, accepted Christianity with the Baptism of Poland in 966, as the new official religion of his subjects; the bulk of the population converted in the course of the next few centuries. In 1000, Boleslaw the Brave, continuing the policy of his father Mieszko, held a Congress of Gniezno and created the metropolis of Gniezno and the dioceses of Kraków, Kołobrzeg, Wrocław. However, the pagan unrest led to the transfer of the capital to Kraków in 1038 by Casimir I the Restorer. In 1109, Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the Ge
Central Europe
Central Europe is the region comprising the central part of Europe. It is said to occupy continuous territory that are otherwise conventionally Western Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe; the concept of Central Europe is based on a common historical and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of "strategic awakening", with initiatives such as the CEI, Centrope and the Visegrád Four. While the region's economy shows high disparities with regard to income, all Central European countries are listed by the Human Development Index as highly developed. Elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Latin; however Eastern Europe, which remained Eastern Orthodox, was the area of Graeco-Byzantine cultural influence. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in close connection with Western European development, he explained that between the 11th and 15th centuries not only Christianization and its cultural consequences were implemented, but well-defined social features emerged in Central Europe based on Western characteristics.
The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe. These phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns and parliaments. In 1335, under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland and Hungary, they agreed to cooperate in the field of politics and commerce, inspiring their post-Cold War successors to launch a successful Central European initiative. In the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world. In Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural, its autocratic rulers kept the peasants in serfdom.
The concept of Central Europe was known at the beginning of the 19th century, but its real life began in the 20th century and became an object of intensive interest. However, the first concept mixed science and economy – it was connected with intensively growing German economy and its aspirations to dominate a part of European continent called Mitteleuropa; the German term denoting Central Europe was so fashionable that other languages started referring to it when indicating territories from Rhine to Vistula, or Dnieper, from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. An example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch's book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany and Austria–Hungary as its main aim. Another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political and cultural domination; the "bible" of the concept was Friedrich Naumann's book Mitteleuropa in which he called for an economic federation to be established after the war.
Naumann's idea was that the federation would have at its centre Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire but would include all European nations outside the Anglo-French alliance, on one side, Russia, on the other. The concept failed after the German defeat in the dissolution of Austria -- Hungary; the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included: Austria, Germany, Poland and Switzerland; the author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, but he doesn't care about the legal development, the social, economic, infrastructural developments in these countries. The interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, the concept of Central Europe took a different character; the centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe: Czechoslovakia and Poland. Central Europe ceased to be the area of German aspiration to lead or dominate and became a territory of various integration movements aiming at resolving political and national problems of "new" states, being a way to face German and Soviet pressures.
However, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe. Before World War I, it embraced German states, non-German territories being an area of intended German penetration and domination – German leadership position was to be the natural result of economic dominance. After the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept. At that time the scientists took an interest in the idea: the International Historical Congress in Brussels in 1923 was committed to Central Europe, the 1933 Congress continued the discussions. Hungarian scholar Magda Adam wrote in her study Versailles System and Central Europe: "Today we know that the bane of Central Europe was the Little Entente, military alliance of Czechoslovakia and Kingdom of Serbs and Slovenes (later Yu
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Schlesinger, Kathleen (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
