Millenarianism

Millenarianism

Millenarianism inwards the U.S. of A. of America has oftentimes been associated with a conspiratorial outlook. Narrowly defined, millenarianism is the belief inwards the thousand-year reign of the Messiah forecast past times the Hebrew prophets inwards the Hebrew Scriptures, or Christian Old Testament. The millennial dominion of Jesus Christ, believed past times Christians to hold upwardly the Messiah, is every bit good mentioned inwards the Book of Revelation inwards the New Testament.

More recently, the application of the term “millenarianism” has been expanded to include a diverseness of other groups who attempt to establish, or if inwards the hereafter to forecast together with promote, an ideal or utopian community. These include some Eastern together with Near Eastern religious movements, such every bit the Aum Shinrikyo, a derivative of Japanese Buddhism, together with apocalyptic sects inside Islam.

The term has every bit good been applied to certainly secular political movements, such every bit National Socialism together with communism, merely inside the U.S. of A. of America most millenarians accept traditionally been Christians, together with they oftentimes subscribe to a host of conspiracy theories.


Christian Millenarianism inwards American History

As early on every bit the colonial era, Puritans inwards the Massachusetts Bay Colony interpreted the perceived spiritual apathy, or “declension,” inside their envisioned millennial community every bit the number of dark, unseen forces, a perspective exemplified past times the notorious Salem Witch Trials inwards the seventeenth century.

Colonial religious leaders such every bit Cotton Mather together with the revivalist Jonathan Edwards saw world events every bit marching toward the institution of the Kingdom of God. In particular, Mather, who viewed the pope every bit the Antichrist inwards league with the French armies inwards Canada, saw the commencement of the French together with Indian War inwards 1754 every bit an lawsuit of apocalyptic proportions.

During the years leading upwardly to together with including the American Revolution, many colonists saw the British, together with King George III inwards particular, every bit emissaries of the devil, together with they interpreted British actions every bit purpose of a corking conspiracy that would fulfill the prophecies of the Book of Revelation.

Millenarian belief thrived inwards the early on commonwealth together with throughout the nineteenth century, together with it seemed to increase after the political together with social turmoil of the Civil War. During the 1840s, the revivalist William Miller together with his supporters eagerly awaited Christ’s furnish to works life a millennial kingdom, entirely to accept their hopes crushed when their expectations failed.

Yet the widely publicized Millerite debacle failed to dissuade farther converts to millenarianism. In fact, the intellectual pedigree of many contemporary Christian millenarians is rooted inwards the run of John Nelson Darby, a nineteenth-century Irish Gaelic government minister who developed a prophetic outline for interpreting events prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

Darby’s prophetic theories, which began to hold upwardly widely circulated inwards the U.S. of A. of America inwards the 1870s, became known every bit “premillennial dispensationalism.” Darby’s interpretations were afterward farther popularized past times Cyrus Scofield inwards his Scofield Reference Bible.

This work, which was foremost published inwards 1909, continues to hold upwardly influential at the get-go of the twenty-first century. Central to Darby’s scenario was the belief inwards the literal thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth, an lawsuit that would hold upwardly presaged past times an escalating moral spend upwardly around the world.

Both Darby together with Scofield every bit good emphasized such End Time events every bit the release of Jerusalem from Gentile control, an lawsuit that Scofield suggested had been fulfilled with the British capture of the metropolis inwards 1917, together with the eventual ascent of an evil representative of the devil, the Antichrist, who would terrorize the world inwards the days before Christ’s return.

Christian millenarians who back upwardly this interpretation that social, political, economic, together with cultural atmospheric condition inwards the world volition worsen before the Second Coming of Christ are to a greater extent than oftentimes than non classified every bit “premillenarian.” They hold that Jesus volition intervene inwards world affairs together with works life the millennial reign.

Conversely, millenarians who believe that Jesus Christ does non accept to furnish for the millennium to begin, or that humanity is capable of bringing it close through social together with political reform, are known every bit “postmillenarian.”

Premillenarianism together with Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy theories are to a greater extent than oftentimes than non found alongside advocates of premillenarian beliefs. Some premillennialists are what certainly scholars accept termed “apocalyptic millenarians” and/or “revolutionary millenarians.” Apocalyptic millenarians believe that the millennium is imminent together with that they volition play an active purpose inwards bringing it about.

Revolutionary millenarians are currently actively involved inwards over-turning the structures of monastic say inwards an endeavor to convey the millennium to fruition. Many apocalyptic millenarians, together with most revolutionary millenarians, promote conspiracy theories.

These oftentimes include belief inwards a New World Order, the thought that the U.S. of A. of America authorities is bent on removing private freedoms, a belief inwards the sinister dimensions of modern technology such every bit computers or credit cards, or an interpretation that considers the planned economical together with possible political unification of Europe dangerous.

These conspiracy theories are oftentimes good publicized. For instance, when quondam U.S. of A. of America President George Bush proclaimed a New World Order inwards the post–cold state of war world, many conservative evangelical Christians interpreted his words every bit a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

These included Pat Robertson, the primary host of the 700 Club, a goggle box programme pop inwards conservative Christian circles. Robertson is the boy of a quondam U.S. of A. of America senator, together with was himself a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination inwards 1988.

In his mass The New World Order, Robertson suggested that a conspiratorial New World Order was a concerted excogitation past times specific groups together with organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, together with the Federal Reserve Board, to works life a one-world government.

Robertson attributed many of these machinations to a supposed “invisible hand” that engineered U.S. domestic together with unusual policies. Robertson left niggling dubiousness close the supposed wicked nature of these plans together with warned Christians to hold upwardly both aware together with wary.

Robertson’s high-profile status notwithstanding, the most recognized distributor of Christian millenarianism inwards the concluding few decades has been Hal Lindsey, the writer of a number of books, most notably The Late Great Planet basis (1970), which was the best-selling nonfiction run of the 1970s.

Only sales of the Bible outdistanced Lindsey’s sensational work concern human relationship of End Time prophecy, which was reissued inwards subsequent editions. Lindsey emphasized the ascent of a European dictator who would dominate the world before the furnish of Christ. In developing his assertions, Lindsey relied heavily upon the formulations before devised past times both Darby together with Scofield.

Recently, however, Tim LaHaye together with Jerry Jenkins accept popularized millenarian conspiracy theories inwards their best-selling Left Behind series. LaHaye together with Jenkins outline a fictional scenario for End Time events, supposedly based on prophecies inwards the Book of Revelation, inwards which a conspiratorial world-ruling dictator, a villain capable of enormous evil, reward state of war on all truthful Christians together with seeks to exterminate them from the earth.

The consistent popularity of the volumes inwards this series—these books accept regularly been on the New York Times bestseller list—underscores the marking to which millenarian belief together with its attendant conspiratorial fascination accept invaded pop culture.

The Future of Millenarian Belief

It is unlikely that millenarian belief, together with the conspiracy theories that arise from it, volition recede. Although specific millenarian interpretations, such every bit the thought of William Miller together with his followers that Christ would furnish inwards 1843, tin hold upwardly disproved, the millenarian model for agreement the world cannot hold upwardly together with so easily undermined.

Millenarian beliefs are persistent together with tin hold upwardly made to rhetorically jibe almost whatever social together with cultural context. Contemporary advocates of millenarianism, premillenarians inwards particular, are unlikely to hold upwardly convinced that their portrayal of the conspiratorial nature of electrical flow events is inaccurate.

In fact, the belief that 1 is instrumental inwards bringing the millennium to fruition, or at to the lowest degree that 1 is witnessing or close to witness the cataclysmic events that volition Pb to the destination of the world, is seductive. Millenarians are oftentimes drawn into a fantasy realm to which their lives seem integral.

Although critics may struggle that such belief is delusional, advocates of millenarianism are probable to sense a psychological sense of relief, together with fifty-fifty a sense of eager anticipation, occasioned past times their thought that the course of didactics of world events is predetermined together with that political, social, together with cultural alter is imminent. They volition therefore stay on the sentinel for “signs” of the end, signs that are oftentimes found inwards the night corners of U.S. conspiracy theories.

Nigeria

Map of Nigeria

Nigeria is located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea between Benin and Cameroon. It occupies 923,768 square kilometers (356,667 square miles), making it one-third larger than the U.S. state of Texas. Nigeria stretches 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from north to south, and is 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) wide from the Atlantic coast to its eastern border.

Nigeria’s population has grown extremely rapidly from 35 million to over 137 million in 2004. It is home to one out of every six Africans. The population is extremely diverse and contains as many as 250 separate ethnic groups and a reported 500 languages.

The major population divisions include the Hausa (29 percent), who live in the north; the Yoruba (21 percent), who occupy the southwest; the Igbo or Ibo (18 percent), who are in the southeast; and the Ijaw (10 percent), who reside in the east.


The Fulani (9 percent), found primarily in the north, along with a large number of smaller groups, complete the essential Nigerian ethnic matrix. This societal complexity makes for enormous governing difficulties.

There is also the divide of religion, with the north heavily Muslim and the south largely Christian. One attempt to foster better unity was the adoption of English as the nation’s official language. Fifty percent of the population now has a basic command, although there are many more who speak a smattering of broken or “pidgin” English.

Administratively the nation is currently divided into 36 states and one capital territory. Abuja, located in the center of the country, became the nation’s capital in 1991, replacing in this capacity the large port city of Lagos with its over 13 million people.

National Mosque in the capital Abuja

Modern Nigeria is a product of the late 19th-century British Empire builders. Before this time it was part of a wide-ranging section of West Africa made up of many peoples and territories, all occupying much smaller tribal areas. Lagos became a full British colony in 1861.

The country’s name is taken from the river Niger. The actual official designation of Nigeria is often attributed to the wife of a colonial official who in 1898 merged Niger with “ia” to create today’s identity, which means literally “black area.”

All of West Africa, including Nigeria, was the subject of even earlier European interest. The Portuguese came to the area in the late 15th century, attracted by the lucrative slave trade with local tribes.

The profits were such that the Portuguese slave trading monopoly was broken in the 16th century as other Europeans, including the British, wanted a share of the riches. Lagos and Badagry became important markets for the exchange of a variety of products, particularly gin and firearms.

Although the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire and in the United States after 1807, British commercial interest in the area didn’t decline, and the penetration of the interior rivers by steamships began in earnest after the 1840s.

Lagos became a key base and, in 1886, the National African Company, later the Royal Niger Company, received a royal charter to oversee trade in the Niger Delta, which included governing rights. The company’s interests also expanded northward.

These operations became too expensive and, in 1897, the company’s governing provisions were removed, and the British government asserted its authority, creating in 1900 a North Nigeria Protectorate. By 1902 after a time of armed resistance, the Sokoto Caliphate and Kano submitted to British authority.

Frederick Lugard, Governor-General of Nigeria (1914–1919)

Lugard, who had become governor-general, now combined all the protectorates with Lagos to form, in January 1914, the Federation of Nigeria. A policy of indirect rule followed during which local tribal leaders, emirs, and sultans administered their areas in conjunction with the colonial civil service.

As late as the 1930s only a few hundred British officers were in country. Infrastructure was improved, including railroad construction to the north, but education in the Muslim areas lagged behind Christian-led efforts in the south. The north remained essentially a distinct enclave.

Nationalism became an increasing factor during the 1930s and was essentially motivated by the notion of Pan-Africanism. Yet a Nigerian sense of nationalism was made more difficult by the area’s many regional and tribal divides.

The end of World War II left Britain weary of the demands and costs of empire, and moves toward change occurred as early as 1946. At this time a constitutional reform was introduced that created in the first instance three regional legislatures. A fourth midwest regional legislature was added in 1963. Full self-government came to these regions in the 1950s.

The desired goal was the formation of a federal legislative structure for all of Nigeria, a system that the north finally agreed to join in 1959. Direct elections occurred in 1959, and a federal government was founded. This new government, meeting for the first time in 1960, declared Nigeria’s independence on October 1.

Princess Alexandra opens the newly independent Nigerian Federal Parliament
in Lagos on 3 October 1960

This sense of national hope proved short-lived. Old antagonisms emerged and threatened any idea of lasting unity. The conflicts came quickly with the Yoruba opposing western regional reorganizations.

This lack of stability undermined the national government, creating a pattern for the future that would include ethnic fighting and massive corruption. In 1963 Nigeria became a federal republic with an elected president in an effort to strengthen central authority. The elections in 1964 produced more arguments and rioting over suspected electoral fraud.

The Nigerian National Alliance took control of parliament, and the United Progressive Grand Alliance of eastern and western groups became their main opposition. This unsettled situation led eastern Igbo-dominated army officers to stage a coup in January 1966.

Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi took command and instituted bloody purges of the political establishment. Fighting broke out within the army itself. After only four months in charge General Ironsi was dead, and Yakubu Gowon, a lieutenant colonel soon to be general, had taken over as leader of the military government.

The situation failed to settle, particularly after the Hausa murdered approximately 20,000 Igbo who lived in the north. Retaliations led to more discord, motivating the eastern region’s military governor, Lieutenant Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu, to declare on May 30, 1967, the eastern region an independent entity called the Republic of Biafra.

Lieutenant Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu

This situation led to a bloody civil war, perhaps the worst in modern African history. The war lasted three years and cost numerous lives. At war’s end the victorious Federal side declared a period of reconciliation and launched a campaign to reconstruct the devastated area.

Nigeria was now firmly in the hands of Gowon’s Supreme Military Council, which did promise a return to civilian rule in 1976. Efforts were made to transform the economy from its agricultural base to a more modern mixed economy. There were serious attacks on corruption and moves to control the government’s role in the expanding oil industry, which from the late 1960s saw Nigeria become one of the world’s largest exporters.

Criticism of Gowon’s rule was steadily mounting. While attending a 1975 Organization of African Unity conference, Gowan found himself the victim of another coup led by the Sandhurst-trained brigadier general Murtala Mohammed.

General Mohammed consolidated his authority, purged government offices, created more administrative states, and put military governors in control of the media. He also imported new Soviet aircraft for the military. His time in office, though, proved short-lived.

He was assassinated by fellow officers in 1976. His replacement was General Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, who would years later become Nigeria’s president. In 1979 Obasanjo produced a new constitution based on the U.S. model and prepared for elections to return the country to civilian rule.

The fall in oil prices in 1981 brought problems for the new government as debts mounted. The result was a poor business climate. Blame was projected onto many quarters, violence was frequent, and foreign workers were expelled. The unrest also brought an end to the Shehu Shagari presidency, which again saw a disgruntled military react, cancelling Shagari’s 1983 election.

Mohammed Buhari, the chief of the army, took over the government with the standard promises to end corruption and reverse the fortunes of the state. However, Buhari didn’t last long, and in August 1985 he was overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida. General Sani Abacha gave his support to this coup, and in 1990 he positioned himself for later rule when he became minister of defense.

General Sani Abacha, 10th President of Nigeria

Army control did not reverse the economic crisis, which was now dire. Currency devaluation was demanded as a term for continued International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank financial support in the form of loans. Again a return to civilian rule was planned, and state elections were scheduled for 1991, with a presidential election to follow in 1993.

To the military’s surprise, Moshood Abiola won. The military, however, rejected the result, Babangida imprisoned Abiola, and in the midst of continuing confusion General Sani Abacha took over as military president.

Industrial Workers Of The World

Industrial Workers of the World

In the history of U.S. labor, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) has no equal inward its revolutionary spirit, its vibrant proletarian together with egalitarian culture, together with its commitment to fighting the shape struggle. Between its founding yesteryear working-class militants inward 1905 together with its majority persecution after World War I, the IWW engaged inward hundreds of spectacular strikes from the timberlands of the Pacific Northwest to the cloth mills of New England.

For over a decade, the IWW was the most feared project spousal human relationship inward the country, making it the target of an extraordinary bird of repression from Pinkertons, vigilantes, police, together with militias, or what the Wobblies exactly called the “Iron Heel.” “There tin sack last no peace,” states the IWW’s founding document, “so long equally hunger together with desire are constitute with millions of working people together with the few, who brand upward the employing class, bring all the skilful things of life” (Kornbluh).

Attacked yesteryear employers, demonized yesteryear political leaders, together with depicted inward the capitalist press equally bomb-throwing together with un-American aliens, the IWW may bring been the most conspired against together with conspiratorially minded U.S. social displace of the early on twentieth century.

There are many reasons why the U.S. ruling classes saw the IWW equally such a threat. Broadly syndicalist together with socialist inward ideology, the IWW was dedicated to edifice “One Big Union” of all working people who would occupation the revolutionary “General Strike” to overthrow capitalism together with abolish the wage system. The IWW built its membership out of workers that most unions believed were unorganizable, including itinerant workers, tramps together with hoboes, lumberjacks, miners, harvest workers, together with mill women.


Unique with U.S. unions at the time, the IWW proudly organized men, women, together with fifty-fifty children of every race, nation, together with linguistic communication without prejudice. The IWW imagined itself equally the “fighting scheme of the working class,” together with resolutely refused to construct permanent spousal human relationship structures that could move coopted or bureaucratic together with thereby lose its revolutionary spirit.

Instead, the Wobblies offered their organizational talents during strikes together with taught workers how to organize, brand demands, together with win concessions for themselves. The Wobblies wrote songs together with poems of agitation, including the project classic “Solidarity Forever.” Their many newspapers were filled with political cartoons together with published inward dozens of languages.

IWW printing houses were famous for producing inflammatory pamphlets on sabotage together with revolutionary strategy, equally good equally thousands of stickers together with buttons known equally “silent agitators” emblazoned with slogans similar “Joint the IWW together with Fire Your Boss,” “Labor Is Entitled to All it Creates,” “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,” together with “Bum Work for Bum Pay.”

The Wobblies also produced roughly of the most charismatic together with committed leaders inward the history of the U.S. Left, including the giant, one-eyed William “Big Bill” Haywood, the “Rebel Girl” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Eugene V. Debs, together with Ralph Chaplin.

In short, the IWW inculcated the fiercest radicalism inward sectors of the industrial working shape that were 1 time the most exploited together with degraded inward the country, thereby posing a straight threat to the profits of roughly of the country’s richest together with most corrupt corporations.

Choosing to brand its stand upward alone on the economical front, the IWW to a greater extent than oftentimes than non saw elections equally futile together with political institutions equally coconspirators with capitalism. Wobbly leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn argued that the province was exactly “the slugging commission of the ruling class” together with non a existent republic (Dubofsky).

“No Socialist tin sack last a law abiding citizen,” proclaimed “Big Bill” Haywood, commenting on the capitalist nature of the United States; “when nosotros come upward together together with are of a mutual mind, together with the occupation of our minds is to overthrow the capitalist system, nosotros move conspirators together with thus against the U.S. government” (Preston).

Though Haywood was beingness critical of the biases of province ability with this statement, most political together with industrial elites did regard the IWW equally a subversive “conspiracy” that was out to undermine property, decency, together with law together with order.

Where the government, business, together with press used violence to eradicate the Wobbly “conspiracy,” the IWW defended itself with accusations of a “frameup,” sparking an ongoing rhetorical, legal, together with political shape struggle over the pregnant of “conspiracy.” Committed to nonviolent direct-action protest, Wobbly civil-disobedience oftentimes generated violence inward return.

During major strikes together with confrontations, Wobbly leaders were repeatedly arrested together with charged with the law-breaking of “conspiracy.” The showtime major case began inward 1906 when Big Bill Haywood together with 2 others leaders of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) were tried inward Idaho for conspiracy inward the murder of the quondam governor.

Under the administration of infamous Pinkerton James McParlain, Big Bill together with his comrades were kidnapped inward Colorado together with illegally extradited to Idaho to stand upward case for their lives. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 massive publicity sweat eventually “broke the conspiracy” together with Haywood was acquitted.

During the IWW’s “free-speech campaigns” inward Spokane, Fresno, San Diego, together with elsewhere, Wobbly activists were met with majority arrests, police line brutality, together with vigilante violence to preclude their constitutional correct to concord open-air meetings. During the Lawrence, Massachusetts, “Bread together with Roses” boom of 1912, cloth mill owners were position on case for planting a bomb that they intended to blame on the IWW.

In 1915, Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill was executed inward Utah inward what many believe was a conspiracy to frame a poetic vocalism of proletarian revolution. More thus than whatever other spousal human relationship inward the United States, Wobbly history is amount of such examples.

When the U.S. began to “prepare” for its entry into World War I, the repression of the IWW intensified. Teddy Roosevelt attacked the IWW equally disloyal together with pro-German, claiming that “every district where the IWW starts rioting should last placed nether martial law together with cleaned upward yesteryear military machine methods” (Dubofsky). Congressmen together with concern leaders denounced the IWW equally “Imperial William’s Warriors” or the “I Won’t Work” together with passed novel antisedition laws to quash dissent during wartime.

Although the IWW membership was separate over back upward for the war, its newspapers together with magazines were banned from the post service together with hundreds of Wobblies were persecuted for leading strikes, making speeches, or carrying membership cards. Frank Little, a militant Wobbly leader together with opponent of U.S. interest inward World War I, was lynched during a boom inward Butte, Montana, yesteryear a gang of masked vigilantes who were most probable hired yesteryear the copper-mine owners.

Beginning inward 1917, the Justice Department unleashed its newly constituted federal police line powers against the national leadership of the IWW, leading to the arrests of over 2,000 Wobblies on charges of conspiring to obstruct the state of war effort. Most were convicted of violating wartime antisedition laws (well after the state of war was over), together with sentenced to long prison theatre terms.

Many years later, 1 of the indicted Wobbly leaders from Chicago had this to say close the trial: “After nosotros had heard the instance for the prosecution nosotros became certainly that a existent accuse of conspiracy had been proven—but non against us. We were certainly that the existent conspirators were the ones who were trying the alleged conspirators. The authorities itself had planned the conspiracy, together with nosotros were its victims” (Brazier).

During the postwar carmine scare, 1 incident inward detail marked the violent destination of the IWW. On Armistice Day 1919, inward the lumber town of Centralia, Washington, several community leaders together with members of the American Legion carried out a bloody onslaught on the local IWW hall. Determined to defend themselves against the mob’s assault, the Wobblies engaged the Legionnaires inward a violent gun battle that left several men on both sides dead.

One Wobbly, Wesley Everest, who was captured inward his World War I soldier’s uniform, was after dragged from his prison theatre jail cellular telephone nether embrace of nighttime together with lynched yesteryear a mob. This outcome is widely known inward Wobbly literature equally the “Centralia Conspiracy.”

Abbasid Dynasty

Abbasid caliphate greatest extent

The Abbasids defeated the Umayyads to claim the caliphate and leadership of the Muslim world in 750. The Abbasids based their legitimacy as rulers on their descent from the prophet Muhammad’s extended family, not as with some Shi’i directly through the line of Ali and his sons.

The Abbasids attempted to reunify Muslims under the banner of the Prophet’s family. Many Abbasid supporters came from Khurasan in eastern Iran. Following the Arab conquest of the Sassanid Empire, a large number of Arab settlers had moved into Khurasan and had integrated with the local population. Consequently, many Abbasids spoke Persian but were of Arab ethnicity.

The New Capital of Baghdad

The first Abbasid caliph, Abu al-Abbas (r. 749–754), took the title of al-Saffah. His brother and successor, Abu Jafar, adopted the name al-Mansur (Rendered Victorious) and moved the caliphate to his new capital, Baghdad, on the Tigris River. Under the Abbasids the center of power for the Muslim world shifted eastward with an increase of Persian and, subsequently, Turkish influences.


Persian influences were especially notable in new social customs and the lifestyle of the court, but Arabic remained the language of government and religion. Thus, while non-Arabs became more prominent in government, the Arabization, especially in language, of the empire increased.

Mansur’s new capital, built between 762 and 766, was originally a circular fortress, and it became the center of Arab-Islamic civilization during what has been called the golden age of Islam (763–809). With its easy access to major trade routes, river transport, and agricultural goods (especially grains and dates) from the Fertile Crescent, Baghdad prospered. Agricultural productivity was expanded with an efficient canal system in Iraq.

Commerce flourished with trade along well-established routes from India to Spain and trans-Saharan routes. A banking and bookkeeping system with letters of credit facilitated trade. The production of textiles, papermaking, metalwork, ceramics, armaments, soap, and inlaid wood goods was encouraged. An extensive postal system and network of government spies were also established.

Harun Al-Rashid and the Abbasid Zenith

Harun Al-Rashid

The zenith of Abbasid power came under the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809). Harun al-Rashid, his wife Zubaida, and mother Khaizuran were powerful political figures. Zubaida and Khaizuran were wealthy and influential women and both controlled vast estates. They also played key roles in determining succession to the caliphate.

Like the Umayyads, the Abbasids never solved the dilema of succession, and their government was weakened and ultimately, in part, destroyed because of rivalries over succession. Under Harun al-Rashid the Barmakid family exerted considerable political power as viziers (ministers to the ruler).

The Barmakids were originally from Khurasan and had begun serving the court as tutors to Harun al-Rashid. The Barmakids served as competent and powerful officials until their fall from favor in 803, by which time a number of bureaucrats and court officials had achieved positions of considerable authority.

The wealth of the Abbasid court attracted foreign envoys and visitors who marveled over the lavish lifestyles of court officials and the magnificence of Baghdad. Timurlane destroyed most of the greatest Abbasid monuments in the capital, and Baghdad never really recovered from the destruction inflicted by him.

Under the Abbasids, provinces initially enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy; however, a more centralized system of finances and judiciary were implemented. Local governors were appointed for Khurasan and soldiers from Khurasan made up a large part of the court bodyguard and army.

In spite of their power and wealth the Abbasids twice failed to take Constantinople. The Abbasids also had to grapple with ongoing struggles between those who wanted a government based on religion, and those who favored secular government.

Civil War Over Accession and the End of the Abbasids

Harun al-Rashid’s death incited a civil war over accession that lasted from 809 to 833. During the war, Baghdad was besieged for one year and was fought for by the common people, not the elite, in the city. Their exploits were commemorated in a body of poetry that survives until the present day.

The attackers finally won and the new Caliph Mutasim (r. 833–842) moved the capital to Samarra north of Baghdad in 833. During the ninth century the Abbasid army came to rely more and more on Turkish soldiers, some of whom were slaves while others were free men. A military caste separate from the rest of the population gradually developed.

In Khurasan, the Tahirids did not establish an independent dynasty but moved the province in the direction of a separate Iranian government. As various members of the Abbasid family fought one another over the caliphate, rulers in Egypt (the Tulunids), provincial governors, and tribal leaders took advantage of the growing disarray and sometimes anarchy within the central government at Samarra to extend heir own power.

The Zanj rebellion around Basra in southern Iraq in 869 was a major threat to Abbasid authority. The Zanj were African slaves who had been used as plantation workers in southern Iraq, the only instance of largescale slave labor for agriculture in the Islamic world.

Other non-slave workers joined the rebellion led by Ali ibn Muhammad. Ali ibn Muhammad was killed fighting in 883 and the able Abbasid military commander, Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq, whose brother served as caliph, finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion.

Under Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908–932) the capital was returned to Baghdad where it remained until the collapse of the Abbasid dynasty. By the 10th century any aspirant to the caliphate needed the assistance of the military to obtain the throne. The army became the arbiters of power and the caliphs were mere ciphers. A series of inept rulers led to widespread rebellions and declining revenues while the costs of maintaining the increasingly Turkish army remained high.

By the time the dynasty finally collapsed, it was virtually bankrupt. In 945 a Shi’i Persian, Ahmad ibn Buya, took Baghdad and established the Buyid dynasty that was a federation of political units ruled by various family members. A remnant of the Abbasid family, carrying the title of caliph, moved to Cairo where it was welcomed as an exile with no authority over either religious or political life.

Africa and the Slave Trade

enslaved africans

The discovery of the Americas created new economic opportunities with agriculture the foundation of these opportunities. In 1493, only a year after his first voyage, Christopher Columbus introduced sugarcane into the Caribbean, the crop on which Europeans built the first plantations in the New World.

Sugarcane demanded a large labor force, particularly at harvest. Europeans sought to meet the demand for labor by using criminals, orphans, indentured servants, and Native Americans.

But there was still a need for laborers. Native Americans succumbed to Old World diseases, and the supply of European laborers met only a fraction of the demand. In the mid-15th century, the Portuguese addressed the duduk perkara of labor by enslaving Africans to grow sugarcane on the Madeira Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.


The Spanish used slavery in their New World colony Hispaniola (now the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), importing the first slaves in 1502. The institutionalization of slavery in the New World spurred trade in slaves. The fact that demand for slaves outpaced the growth in supply by natural increase nearly everywhere in the Americas perpetuated the slave trade over four centuries.

Portugal Leads Slave Trade

Portugal monopolized the trade at the outset. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 granted Portugal access to Africa and with it, slaves. After 1528, Portuguese shipping companies supplied Spain with slaves through a series of asientos, or contracts.

An asiento specified the delivery of slaves in piezas de India, which quantified labor rather than slaves. Men tallied more piezas than women because of the expectation that men would yield more labor than women. For the same reason, the young were worth more than the old.

Shipping slaves

A cargo of 100 piezas constituted the smallest number of slaves if all were young males and the largest if all were elderly females. Of course slave traders rarely got the “ideal” of all young men fit for the rigors of the plantation.

Market conditions yielded a mix, with a majority being young men with some women also included, particularly those of childbearing age in hopes of perpetuating the slave population by reproduction. A cargo might also contain the prepubescent and elderly because of their low prices. Their purchase, however, entailed risk because they were susceptible to disease and early death.

The value of labor and therefore of slaves fluctuated over time. In 1693, the records of the Portuguese Cacheau Company reveal that one pieza was worth 1.6 slaves. In 1715, however, records of the South Sea Company of Great Britain reveal that the value of one pieza had declined to 1.04 slaves. These figures imply an increase in the demand for slaves over time. Supply rose to meet demand.

Slaves sale

Between 1521 and 1550, Spain imported into its colonies 15,000 slaves, 500 per year on average, and between 1551 and 1595, they brought in 36,300 slaves, amounting to 810 per year on average. The largest importer of slaves, Brazil, imported more than 200,000 during these years.

In total Portugal had shipped 264,000 slaves to the New World by 1600. Portugal so dominated trade that by 1600, its maritime rival Britain had shipped only 2,000 slaves to the Americas. No other nation participated in the trade until after 1600.

Portugal’s trade in slaves benefited from political instability in Africa. War engulfed the empire of Jolof, spanning modern Senegal and Gambia, in the middle of the 16th century. Warlords enslaved prisoners, trading them with Portugal for guns.

At the same time, the deterioration of the central government of Kongo, modern Angola, Cabinda, and the Republic of the Congo permitted the Portuguese access to the interior of the kingdom and to a larger number of slaves than had been possible when Kongo confined Portugal to the coast.

In 1614, Portugal allied with the Jaga, a group hostile to the Ndongo rulers of Angola. The resulting war won Portugal captives it sold as slaves. New alliances after 1640 gave Portugal access to slaves in Luanda, the modern capital of Angola.

Political instability gave Europeans more slaves than they might otherwise have expected, for Africa was impenetrable to Europeans into the 19th century. Tropical diseases made it hazardous for Europeans to roam the interior of the continent in search of slaves. Where African tribes remained united, they kept Europeans at arm’s length.

Instead, Europeans established fortresses along the western coast of Africa, the first at Elmina, a town in Ghana, in 1482, and awaited the delivery of slaves from African merchants and chieftains. Once at the coast, slaves waited in dungeons, pens, or stockades until the arrival of a ship. Both Africans and Europeans, intermingling for the first time, were at risk of disease. Confinement in tight quarters on the coast and aboard ship exacerbated the danger to Africans of an epidemic.

Slave Ship Conditions

Once onboard the ships, slaves endured lengthy waits until the captain had enough slaves and the right force and direction of wind to sail. Seldom less than a month, the wait on the coast sometimes stretched to half a year. All the while slaves, packed 100–1,000 per ship, depending on its size, occupied little more than six square feet of space with two or three feet of headroom. Slavers separated men from women, shackling the men in pairs to reduce the danger of rebellion.

Long chains tethered groups of slaves, kept below deck most of the time, for movement to the deck for fresh air and meals. The duration of the wait on the coast and the voyage to the Americas tempted the all-male crews to rape female slaves.

Once a ship set sail, slaves were vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather and wind. Rain prevented them from getting fresh air on deck and increased the incidence and spread of diseases. Storms imperiled even the most promising crossing.

In 1738, a storm assailed the Dutch ship Leusdan only days from its destination. When it began to leak, the crew, fearing a fight over the lifeboats, locked some 660 slaves below deck, leaving them to drown. Only the crew and 14 slaves on deck survived. The absence of wind brought ships to a standstill and strained the food supply. Ship captains rarely had more than three months of food at the start of a voyage and reduced slave rations on long trips.

The crossing from the Guinea Coast was especially perilous because ships had to traverse the doldrums twice and thereby risk a lengthy calm. One study estimated the mortality rate for ocean crossings of fewer than 20 days at 8 percent, though the death rate increased to nearly one-quarter for voyages longer than two months. Malaria, yellow fever, and intestinal ailments accounted for two-thirds of deaths, and smallpox, scurvy, and suicide the remaining third.

Once a ship reached its destination, an inspector boarded to check slaves for disease, quarantining all slaves if he found one with a communicable disease and prolonging their stay aboard ship until contagion had passed. On land, slaves at last had fresh food and water.

Traders amassed slaves for sale once ashore, selling the young and old first and holding men and women of childbearing age for sale until last in the expectation that prices would rise with the eagerness of buyers to close the deal.

The fact that ovulating women fetched a higher price than pre- and postmenopausal women contradicts the assertion of slave traders that they did not sell slaves for the purpose of breeding. Traders sold most slaves by auction, though an alternative was to fix the price for a group of slaves of similar age and physical condition and allow buyers to choose from among this group.

Other Nations Enter the Slave Trade

Portugal’s hold on the slave trade began to weaken in the 17th century, as the Netherlands entered the fray. After 1630, the Dutch imported into northern Brazil slaves they wrested from Portugal. Taking Curaçao in 1634, the Dutch used it to funnel slaves to their colonies and to those of Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France.

In 1637, the Netherlands captured the Portuguese fortress at Elmina, making it the point of origin of the Dutch slave trade. After 1667, the Netherlands imported slaves into Suriname. In total the Netherlands brought 39,900 slaves to the New World between 1601 and 1650 with the number rising to 76,400 between 1726 and 1770. Thereafter the Netherlands’s share of the slave trade decreased rapidly.

Britain also contested Portuguese dominance. The spread of tobacco in Virginia after 1617 opened British North America to the slave trade. In 1619, the Dutch landed 20 slaves, the first shipment of its kind, in Jamestown. During much of the 17th century, the slave trade in the thirteen colonies was more trickle than deluge.

In 1640, Virginia had only 150 slaves and in 1670, fewer than 1,000. In contrast to Latin America and the Caribbean, slaves in the thirteen colonies increased their numbers through reproduction, diminishing the need to import slaves.

The slave trade in British North America was strongest after the decline of indentured servitude around 1670 and the rise of rice plantations along the Carolina coast about 1700. The thirteen colonies, according to one estimate, imported between 1619 and 1750, roughly 201,500 slaves, an average of 1,550 per year. By comparison the French imported 1,690 slaves per year on average into the island of Martinique between 1664 and 1735 and the Spanish 3,880 per year on average into its colonies between 1640 and 1750.

Following the pattern of British North America, the colonization of the Caribbean opened it to the slave trade. Settling Barbados in 1624, Britain imported the first slaves in 1627. Thereafter the slave trade grew with the spread of sugar cultivation as the trade had in the thirteen colonies with the tobacco boom.

Barbadian imports increased from 6,500 slaves between 1640 and 1644 (an average of 1,300 per year) to 36,400 between 1698 and 1707 (an average of 3,640 per year). In Jamaica sugar and the slave trade took hold in the middle of the 17th century.

Between 1651 and 1675, planters imported 8,000 slaves, an average of roughly 330 per year, roughly one-sixth the number imported into Barbados. By the turn of the century, however, Jamaica had eclipsed Barbados, importing between 1676 and 1700 77,100 slaves, an average of roughly 3,210 per year.

Extrapolating the number of imports from the Royal African Company, a slave trading firm granted a monopoly by King Charles II, to all traders throughout Jamaica, planters imported into the island roughly 7,800 slaves between 1708 and 1711, an average of 2,600 per year.

Between 1655 and 1674, Barbados supplied Jamaica with one-third of its slaves though the proportion fell by the turn of the 18th century to 5 percent. By then most imports came from Africa though the voyage to Jamaica was 1,000 miles farther west than Barbados. The Leeward Islands were the last of Britain’s Caribbean holdings to enter the slave trade. By 1670, island planters had imported only 7,000 slaves.

The numbers grew to 44,800 between 1672 and 1706, an average of 1,280 per year, with another 43,100 between 1707 and 1733, an average of 1,600 per year. In total the British imported 250,000 slaves into the Caribbean by 1700, and throughout the Americas, traders of all nations bought and sold 266,100 slaves between 1519 and 1600.

This represents an average of 3,300 per year, with the number rising to roughly 1.3 million between 1726 and 1750, an astonishing average of 52,000 per year. In all the New World absorbed more than 1.5 million slaves between 1519 and 1750.

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (Arabic for "the base") is a worldwide Sunni Islamist militant insurgent group. Founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is now dedicated to driving the United States out of the Middle East specifically and out of Muslim countries generally, to destroying Israel, and to toppling pro-Western governments in Islamic countries and replacing them with Islamic fundamentalist governments.

These three goals lead to the organization’s ultimate goal, which is the reestablishment of the caliphate, a nation uniting Muslims and spanning the Islamic world.

The organization is believed to be highly redundant, both financially and operationally. While the various cells that make up the organization are accountable to higher-level leadership, operations appear to be left to the individual cells, while higher levels provide material and logistical support.


Ideas and targets coming from the upper echelons filter down to the individual cells responsible for coordinating and executing the attacks. This redundancy increases the organization’s resiliency; when cells are destroyed or captured, the losses can be contained more effectively than if al-Qaeda were a more linear organization.

Al-Qaeda’s training camps are likewise well organized. The extent of the training and organization is best seen in the group’s multivolume Encyclopedia of Jihad. Several thousand pages in length, the encyclopedia details the bureaucratic workings of the group.

Covered topics include guerrilla warfare, assembling booby traps, tactics for fighting against armored or aerial combat units, urban warfare, intelligence security, data gathering, and chemical weapons tactics.

The group has been linked to or accused of taking part in terrorist acts across the globe beginning in the early 1990s. A list of the attacks against U.S. interests attributed to al-Qaeda includes the 1992 hotel bombings in Aden, Yemen; the February 6, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; attacks carried out on U.S. military forces in Somalia in 1993 and 1994; the June 25, 1996, truck bombing of the Khobar Towers residential compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998; the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen on October 12, 2000; and the September 11, 2001, airline hijackings and attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The United States is not the group’s only target, however. Al-Qaeda also is linked to the April 2002 bombing of the El Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia; the October 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia; the November 2003 bombings of synagogues and a British bank in Istanbul, Turkey; the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, Spain; and the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings.

Al-Qaeda is most often represented and understood in regard to its founder, Osama bin Laden (aka Abu Abdallah). Bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 10, 1957. When he was six months old, his father, Muhammad bin Laden, the Yemeni immigrant who established the Saudi Binladin Group, relocated to Jeddah, where Osama grew up.

The Soviet Union’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan galvanized the Muslim world in defense of Afghanistan and provided the West with a proxy war through which to combat the Soviet Union. Bin Laden, who had studied economics at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, was one of many spurred to action in defense of Afghanistan.

He made his first trip to neighboring Pakistan in 1980, where he sought ways to contribute to the jihad. Bin Laden made several monetary contributions to the mujahideen, but quickly began looking for other ways to contribute.

Bin Laden joined with Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam to found the Services Bureau (Makhtab al-Khidimat, or MAK) in Pakistan in 1984. Azzam, who had taught at King Abdul Aziz University while bin Laden studied there, was indispensable in recruiting.

In addition to providing relief to war victims in Afghanistan, the MAK organized and coordinated the volunteers, donations, and weapons coming into Pakistan and Afghanistan in support of the jihad.

Azzam believed that the young Arab men streaming to Pakistan to participate in the jihad should be scattered among the Afghan functions. Azzam felt that such a mixing of Arabs among the local forces would reap benefits both in Afghanistan and abroad.

Bin Laden saw the situation differently and sought to create his own separate Arab fighting force. He believed that such a force would be a superior fighting unit compared to local Afghan forces. Bin Laden broke with Azzam and established training camps for his Arab force near Jaji, in eastern Afghanistan.

From this base, which they dubbed al-Masadah (the Lion’s Den), bin Laden’s "Arab Afghans" engaged the Soviets in the battle of Jaji in the spring of 1987. It was at this time that bin Laden grew closer to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and one of its most prominent members, Ayman al Zawahiri, who would become bin Laden’s deputy in al-Qaeda.

When the Soviets announced their planned withdrawal in April 1988, bin Laden began preparations to perpetuate and expand his forces. He began by moving his unit to the area around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which became known as al-Qaeda; bin Laden would later say that the name remained with the group by accident. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, bin Laden, who had consistently expressed his contempt for the "atheist" Hussein and his Ba’athist government, approached the Saudi king with a plan to use his Arab Afghans to drive Hussein’s forces from Kuwait.

The Saudi government sought to restrict his movements within the kingdom. Bin Laden obtained permission in early 1991 to travel to Pakistan on the pretext of checking in on some business interests and never returned to Saudi Arabia.

In early 1992 bin Laden and al-Qaeda moved to Sudan, where they remained until 1996. Al-Qaeda and the National Islamic Front (NIF), the ruling party in Sudan, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship.

The NIF granted al-Qaeda a safe haven and freedom of movement, while bin Laden made substantial investments in Sudanese industry and agriculture and undertook several large-scale construction projects to develop the infrastructure and agricultural and industrial production capacity of Sudan.

While in the Sudan, bin Laden directed his forces in actions against the communist government of South Yemen. The Arab Afghans also were sent to Bosnia, where they had a substantial impact on that conflict. Bin Laden dispatched al-Qaeda forces into Somalia in response to the buildup of U.S. forces.

In December 1992 President George H. W. Bush sent 28,000 U.S. troops into Somalia on a humanitarian mission in support of United Nations (UN) relief efforts. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda dismissed all humanitarian claims and interpreted the U.S. presence as a way of putting pressure on Islamic regimes and as an effort to establish another base from which to attack Muslim nations.

Al-Qaeda regarded Yemen as a major victory. First, even though the hotels bombed in Yemen did not house U.S. personnel, the transfer of U.S. troops out of Yemen shortly after the hotel bombings indicated to al-Qaeda that they had been successful in driving the Americans from Yemen.

Bin Laden also claimed that the militarily superior U.S. forces were driven from Somalia by a poor, ill-armed people whose only strength was their faith. In his 1996 aliran declaring war against the United States, bin Laden claimed that the most important lesson to be learned from Somalia was that the United States would flee at the first sign of resistance.

The year 1994 was a watershed for bin Laden. He survived two assassination attempts and in April was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in response to the growing threat he represented to the regime.

A jawaban step in his radicalization came in August, when the Saudi government imprisoned clerics Salman al Awdah and Safar al Hawali, who were among the first and most prominent of the clerics circulating cassettes of their sermons against the continued U.S. presence in the Arabian Peninsula, and whose imprisonment bin Laden would later mention in his 1996 fatwa.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda left Sudan in 1996 and returned to Afghanistan, a move prompted by several factors. In addition to the assassination attempts, bin Laden faced international pressure on the NIF and its de facto leader, Hassan al-Turabi.

The United States and Saudi Arabia sought to have bin Laden silenced and his activities curtailed, and al-Turabi found it increasingly difficult to maneuver and protect bin Laden.

When Sudan started pressuring bin Laden, he returned to Jalalabad. There bin Laden and al-Qaeda entered into a symbiotic relationship with the Taliban ("the students"), who were in the process of consolidating their control over much of the country.

This relationship was similar to that with the NIF in Sudan; bin Laden and his organization gained considerable freedom of movement and protection, while his benefactors benefited from agricultural, infrastructural, and industrial investment and development.

It was during the period between bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan and the 1998 aliran that civilians became targets. Both the 1996 aliran and bin Laden’s 1997 CNN interview spoke of civilians as collateral damage, not as legitimate targets in and of themselves.

By 1998 this had changed, and the aliran issued February 22, 1998, explicitly stated that Americans and their allies, civilians and military alike, were now al-Qaeda targets anywhere they could be found.

Communications from al-Qaeda repeatedly stress their belief that Western governments oppress Muslims and Muslim nations and are engaged in a war against Islam. Bin Laden describes the presence of U.S. forces in "the Land of the Two Holy Places" (Saudi Arabia) as the greatest insult and threat faced by the Islamic world since Muhammad’s lifetime.

In addition to decrying U.S. support for Israel, the group condemns U.S. support for what it considers "apostate regimes", particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden also points to the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War as one reason to reject any human rights arguments coming from the West.

Al-Qaeda’s idea of the ummah (community of believers; the Islamic world) in opposition to the world derives from the teachings of two prominent Islamic scholars.

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) was a 14th-century Islamic scholar who taught that jihad is the duty of each individual Muslim when Islam is attacked, that the Qu’ran should be interpreted literally, and that all Muslims should read the Qu’ran and Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet) for themselves and not rely on a learned clergy. A second influence on al-Qaeda was Sayyid Qutb (1906–66), an Islamist associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Describing the world as existing between states of belief (Islam) and unbelief (jahiliyya), Qutb condemned Western and Christian civilization. Urging jihad against all enemies of Islam, Qutb believed that there is no middle ground and that all Muslims must take to jihad when Islam is threatened.

These influences are apparent in al-Qaeda’s activities and rhetoric. Bin Laden believes that since the Christians, Jews, and Hindus have nuclear weapons, it is only fitting that Muslims obtain them as well.

Bin Laden also echoes Ibn Taymiyyah in his assertions that the Saudi government is aiding the "crusaders" in plundering the wealth of the ummah, the vast Middle Eastern oil reserves, and by acting to keep oil prices below fair-market value.

Al-Qaeda’s leadership cadre is well educated. Bin Laden has a university degree in economics, and his inner circle contains doctors; agricultural, civil, and electrical engineers; and computer scientists, but no religious scholars.

Rahman’s aliran echoed the call to attack the United States and its allies—civilian and military, anywhere in the world—and contained exhortations to sink ships, shoot down airplanes, and burn corporations and businesses.

Two separate attacks on U.S. warships were made in subsequent years, with the USS Cole attack following an unsuccessful attack on the USS The Sullivans one year earlier. On September 11, 2001, the plot masterminded by Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003, respectively, proceeded along the lines of Rahman’s fatwa.

Hungarian Revolt (1956 )

In 1956, Hungary was a nation of 9 million. Allied to Germany during World War II, it was occupied by Soviet troops in 1944–45. Hungarian Communists began the process that by the late 1940s would give them control over the government.

Hungarian Revolt (1956)

By that time, Hungary’s government had undergone changes that ensured that the leadership strictly followed directives from the Soviet Union. The first Communist leader, from 1949 to the early 1950s, was the hard-liner Laszlo Rajk. He, in turn, was replaced on Moscow’s orders by an equally harsh leader, Mátyás Rákosi.

While the imposition of Communist rule in Hungary was particularly repressive, it was applied with force throughout Eastern Europe into the early 1950s. At that time, a series of events took place that indicated restrictions from the Soviet Union and internal restrictions might be loosening. The first event was the death of Stalin in 1953.

A slight thaw and liberalization followed in both the Soviet Union and the satellite states. There were changes in the internal policies in the East European states. Hard-liners died mysteriously, and in countries where rebellions against the Soviets had been put down, there seemed to be a certain degree of liberalization.

Closer to home, there seemed to be a change in Hungary’s direction. Rákosi was pushed aside and a moderate, Imre Nagy, was brought in to take his place. Nagy left this position in 1955 and his predecessor, Rákosi, returned. In July 1956 Nikita Khrushchev suggested to Rákosi that he should visit Moscow. Nagy was back in, but left the government after a very short while. This is when the troubles began.

On October 23, 1956, students demanded that Nagy return to the government. The students were fired on by the police, and on the following day martial law was declared. Soviet troops in Hungary put down the increasing number of riots and demonstrations. The violence escalated until October 28, when Nagy returned to the government, a cease-fire was signed, and the Soviet troops withdrew from Budapest.

In the next week Nagy and the newly formed government began making changes that alarmed not only hard-line Hungarian Communists but the leadership in Moscow as well. Political prisoners were released and the one-party system was ended.

Most serious, however, was the statement made that Hungary would begin withdrawing from the WarSaw Pact. Khrushchev ordered the Soviet army to commence Operation Whirlwind, a strong military response to the rebellion.

Soviet tank in Budapest

Whirlwind commenced on November 4 and lasted until November 12. It was a Soviet-only operation, as the 120,000-man Hungarian army was not trusted politically. Most of the fighting took place in the streets of Budapest.

There was a political movement as well. János Kádár arrived in Budapest on November 7. He was a long-time Communist operative with a history of being in and out of power.

When the revolt began, Kádár left Budapest and went to the Soviets, formally asking them to intervene in ending the disorder. Coming from a member of the Hungarian government, this request reinforced the impression of the legitimacy of the Soviet intervention.

In the end, the Soviet army saw 700 men killed and approximately 1,500 wounded. Three thousand Hungarians died, most in Budapest. Many thousands of Hungarians left the country, first to Austria, where refugee camps were set up, and then later to the United States, Canada, France, and Britain.

Political Order

As the Soviet Army put an end to the rebellion, Kádár, assisted by the Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov, restored political order. Nagy was taken by the Soviets and executed in 1958. Kádár’s rule was, at first, characterized by harshness and reprisals against anyone who participated.

In the following years, however, Kádár liberalized the regime, instituting what Khrushchev and others contemptuously referred to as “Goulash Communism.” Kádár did not look for loyalty so much as conformity.

Hungary, in relation with other members of the Warsaw Pact in the 1960s–1980s, was very liberal. By 1989 it had the most advanced economy in eastern Europe. Authors did not have to submit their works to a censor prior to publication, but those who crossed the unstated line could still find themselves in trouble.

The United States government, which many considered to have instigated the rebellion through Radio Free Europe broadcasts, had decided that the potential for a nuclear war outweighed the benefits of assisting the Hungarians. From 1956 on, American diplomatic talk of rolling back communism was replaced with the phrase “containment.”

Although Khrushchev succeeded in reestablishing the Communist government, his indecisiveness and actions prior to the rebellion damaged his credibility. It took the prodding of many within the Soviet government to make him act, and the fact that he had had to fly to Yugoslavia to get Marshal Tito’s approval before intervening led many to question his leadership. In 1957 an attempt was made to replace him, which failed. His continued problems in foreign policy, however, finally led to his ouster in 1964.

By 1989 there were significant changes. In April the Hungarian government tore down the barbed wire fences on its frontier with Austria. In June that same year, 200,000 Hungarians attended the reburial of Imre Nagy from a common grave to a place of honor.

Society Of The Cincinnati

Society of the Cincinnati

The Society of the Cincinnati was founded inwards May 1783 every bit an association of veteran Revolutionary War officers; it apace became the focus of a conspiracy theory inwards which the social club was defendant of trying to constitute a hereditary aristocracy inwards the United States.

In trammel 1783, the concluding months of the being of the Continental Army, a grouping of officers surrounding Major General Henry Knox in addition to Major General Friedrich von Steuben planned a means to move along the friendship in addition to solidarity of Revolutionary War commanders inwards peacetime.

The aim was twofold: foremost of all, Knox in addition to the others envisioned a mutual assistance in addition to produce goodness association, which could aid impoverished members every bit good every bit the widows in addition to orphans of deceased comrades.


Second, the officeholder corps had of import political interests inwards common: Congress had promised to convert officers’ pensions into a lump total equal to v years’ pay, a policy known every bit commutation. However, the precarious fiscal province of affairs of the the States made the payment of substitution dubious, a work that had already figured prominently inwards the so-called Newburgh conspiracy.

Many officers supported the formation of a stronger national authorities that was to a greater extent than probable to hold upward able to honour its obligations. As a result, the planned association of veteran officers could also business office every bit a political pressure level group.

Knox in addition to the others chose every bit their patron Cincinnatus, a Roman full general who had briefly assumed dictatorial ability entirely to provide to his plough every bit apace every bit possible. They planned a Society of the Cincinnati on the federal bird every bit good every bit the world societies, annual meetings, a badge of honor, the possibility of admitting unusual in addition to honorary members, in addition to the continuation of membership through the oldest manful someone descendant.

In its early on months, the social club was virtually unknown to the full general populace, only officers joined inwards large numbers in addition to the world societies were founded, including a French society. George Washington, although uninvolved amongst the organisation of the society, was elected its president.

On the the world level, typically the highest-ranking officeholder from the the world business became the society’s leader. On the whole, the Cincinnati were quite successful at organizing veteran officers from the diverse states, making the social club 1 of the real few associations existing inwards the entire United States.

Both the political in addition to the organizational aspects of the social club came nether assail throughout the 1780s. American tradition, particularly inwards the wake of the Revolution, included a deep distrust of standing armies, special privilege, in addition to aristocracy; the Cincinnati seemed to include elements of all three. In New England, extralegal conventions protested substitution every bit a policy designed to privilege a specific bird of citizens over others; the social club became the focal betoken of these accusations.

In South Carolina, Judge Aedanus Burke published a widely read pamphlet that described the social club every bit a nascent nobility. While Burke acknowledged the heroism of the veteran officers, he feared that their descendants would hold upward less virtuous in addition to eventually constitute an aristocracy that would doom republican government.

H5N1 conspiracy theory emerged that saw the Cincinnati every bit a grouping bent on gaining special fiscal privileges through commutation; forming an aristocracy through the dominion of descent, connected to the nobility of Europe through the membership of unusual officers similar Steuben in addition to the French society; coming together annually to brand political decisions, in addition to therefore enforcing those decisions through political influence in addition to implicit armed services power. In short, the Cincinnati were seen every bit the nucleus of a hugger-mugger government, operating exterior republican rules, to the produce goodness of the few in addition to the detriment of the many.

The Cincinnati in addition to the Constitution

To fighting these allegations, Washington—spurred on past times criticism from Thomas Jefferson in addition to John Adams—convinced the social club to drib the hereditary clause in addition to honorary memberships, in addition to pose their funds nether the command of the the world legislatures inwards 1784.

This mensurate temporarily quieted criticism, only the theme shortly flared upward again. In 1787, the Cincinnati were suspected of fomenting Shays’ Rebellion entirely to pose it down, inwards monastic enjoin to print upon the world the involve for a stronger national government.

That same year, the annual coming together of the social club took house inwards Philadelphia, at the same fourth dimension in addition to metropolis every bit the Federal Convention that drafted the Constitution. Given Washington’s seat every bit president of the Cincinnati in addition to chairman of the Federal Convention, in addition to the fact that several delegates were also members of the society, in that place was ample room for suspicions.

During the debates nearly the ratification of the Constitution, radical Anti-Federalists repeatedly charged that the novel political scheme was the run of the Cincinnati, a novel campaign to constitute an aristocracy inwards the United States, amongst the presidency every bit a transitional establishment that would eventually atomic number 82 to monarchy.

Similar accusations were voiced when members of the social club became involved inwards settling the Ohio territory (and the subsequent founding of the small town Cincinnati); critics saw this every bit the genesis of a novel nation ruled past times the society.

On the whole, the accusations against the Cincinnati were largely unfounded. During the tempestuous 1780s, radical members mightiness good convey wished for a monarchy, mayhap amongst Washington every bit king, to impose political order.

However, the social club never pursued whatever such policies, particularly every bit Washington himself was adamantly opposed to anything that mightiness threaten civilian, republican government. While most Cincinnati strongly supported the novel Constitution, in that place were also members amidst AntiFederalist leaders, most notably governor George Clinton of New York.

Similarly, during the foremost political party system, most Cincinnati tended toward the Federalists, only in that place were also many amidst the Jeffersonian Republicans. If the social club furnished the largest component division of the novel national army’s officeholder corps, this was entirely to hold upward expected in addition to had piffling political effect.

Even when Congress debated the fate of substitution certificates inwards 1790, the social club did non brand a rigid lobbying campaign on behalf of its members. Consequently, the accusations against the social club largely faded away at the start of the nineteenth century, fifty-fifty though past times that fourth dimension most the world societies had reverted to the formerly controversial succession past times heredity.

The Society of the Cincinnati nearly faded during the foremost one-half of the nineteenth century, only experienced a revival subsequently 1854 in addition to exists to the present. The conspiracy theory tin turn over the sack yet hold upward encountered, only unremarkably every bit a chip of conspiracy trivia rather than a full-fledged theory.