Luba-Lunda

Luba-Lunda

The Luba-Lunda states, in what is now the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, were a network of kingdoms that lasted from the 15th to the 19th centuries c.e.

The Luba culture had emerged a millennium earlier, a civilization that soon began working in iron and dam construction. The local conditions—marshy wetlands that required drainage and provided a surplus of fish—encouraged large, stable communities and communal labor over individual self-sufficiency.

In time, trade relations and intermarriages between smaller communities led to a unified Luba state around the end of the 15th century c.e., by which time the Luba people were widely respected for the sophistication of their art and the quality of their ironwork, especially their axes and spears.

Luba kings ruled by right of descent from Kalala Ilunga, a mythic cultural pendekar who had invented much of Luba culture. The Luba king was the head of a large hierarchy of officials at the state and local levels, who paid him tribute he redistributed as rewards for loyalty.


Prominent in this hierarchy were the Bambudye, the “memory men” (though women were included) who maintained oral histories of the Luba kings and their deeds. As the Egyptian pharaohs and rulers in much of the ancient and antique world, Luba kings were revered as deities upon death, and these oral histories are comparable to Christian “saints’ lives” and other religious biographies.

The Luba system of divine kingship spread to other nearby cultures, notably including the Lunda, a strong military force in the region who increased their power by intermarrying their royal family with the Luba’s and colonizing large parts of central Africa before European colonization arrested their expansion.

The Luba kingdom itself extended its power and resources to include not only the copper mines of communities who had once been only trade partners, but New World goods from the Portuguese colonists (in exchange for ivory and slaves, among other commodities), leading to a centuries-long period of growth. The Lunda continued to self-govern, though were closely aligned with the Luba; they soon controlled much of the copper trade.

By the end of the 19th century, the Luba and Lunda states were in decline. Prosperity and intermarriage had encouraged infighting in periods when royal succession was not clear-cut; neighboring tribes had acquired firearms, a significant military advantage to which neither the Luba nor the militarily superior Lunda had any recourse except to acquire guns of their own, which they did by devoting more efforts to the slave trade.

But the slave trade itself was dwindling, and this proved not only disruptive to the economy and political balance, but also ultimately ineffective. Belgian colonists took control over the region, which King Leopold II called the Congo Free State.

The Luba rebelled several times, but fruitlessly, and many were sent into forced labor in the copper mines. The Luba and Lunda (and their other client tribes) persist today as ethnic groups, but their culture has been absorbed into that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

British North America

British North America

Italian merchant John Cabot’s 1497 voyage from England west to what is now Newfoundland, Canada, was Europe’s first contact with North America since the Vikings. Cabot’s feat intensified English attention to the New World, yet for more than a hundred years, England would trail Spain and other European nations in exploring and exploiting the hemisphere. By 1750, however, Britain, having overcome a multitude of political, religious, and economic crises, was poised to dominate North America.

Early Undertakings

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, two efforts to establish English colonies in America ended in failure and death. In 1582, Sir Humphrey Gilbert personally led a large crew across the Atlantic to reclaim Cabot’s Newfoundland for the queen. Its unfavorable climate and competition from Spanish and Portuguese fishermen dampened Gilbert’s hopes. On the voyage home less than a year later, Gilbert perished in an Azores storm.

Somewhat more successful was Sir Walter Raleigh, Gilbert’s half brother, and, for a time, a court favorite. Raleigh mounted a new colonial project in 1585, sending five ships bearing a hundred colonists to Roanoke Island, off the North Carolina coast.


When these settlers abandoned their mission in 1586, a second group was shipped to Roanoke, including the parents of Virginia Dare, who was, in 1587, the first English child born in North America. By 1590, a series of reprovisioning and rescue missions were reporting that the colony had disappeared, leaving generations of historians to argue whether Indian warfare, internal clashes, famine, disease, or some combination of these had wiped out Raleigh’s colonial ambitions.

As the 17th century dawned, England, despite its 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada, followed by other triumphs over Spain, was still scarcely a presence in North America. At home, rapid population growth and policies that forced subsistence farmers off the land, combined with Reformation-fueled religious conflicts, were creating both crisis and opportunity.

British colonization in America emerged as a patchwork process that sent royal courtiers, London investors, religious dissident families, and the desperately poor across the Atlantic in search of profits and new hope.

Colonial “Plantation” Before 1660

Britain’s eventual dominion in eastern North America started unpromisingly in 1607 when Jamestown was founded in the region Raleigh had earlier named “Virginia” for Elizabeth I, the presumed “Virgin Queen.”

Disciplinary measures imposed by soldier-adventurer John Smith, followed by John Rolfe’s 1614 introduction of tobacco cultivation, eventually saved Jamestown, although major crises continued. Finding capable colonists in this wild and dangerous land remained difficult; Virginians turned to indentured servitude and eventually slavery for their labor needs.

As religious conflict deepened in the mother country, British dissidents of varying faiths sought refuge, influence, and livelihoods in North America. In 1632, Maryland was founded near Virginia by George Calvert, the first baron Baltimore, a recent convert to Catholicism.

He was granted a proprietary charter by King Charles I, who wife was Catholic. Together, Virginia and Maryland composed the Chesapeake region and survived with similar economies based on tobacco and coerced labor.

Meanwhile, in the Massachusetts Bay region other dissenting Englishmen deliberately sought exile from what they saw as a religiously and politically corrupt homeland. The Pilgrims, who made their way to Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans, who began arriving in large numbers in 1630, sought to create a religious commonwealth that would serve as a “light to the world” and end the reign of the hated Stuart monarchy.

Shrewd Puritan investors managed to assemble a joint-stock company that won Crown authorization to claim New England land. By the 1640s, more than 20,000 English men and women were living there.

Although more socially stable and economically diversified than the Chesapeake, the growing Puritan religious state experienced problems that fractured Massachusetts Bay. John Winthrop’s leadership soon sparked internal religious dissent, led by Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, resulting their 1635–36 banishment to Rhode Island. Religious differences and a desire for more land led Thomas Hooker and others to relocate in 1636 to what became Connecticut.

With the end of the Cromwell Commonwealth and the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, Britain hit its imperial stride in the New World. Between 1660 and 1732, all the colonies that would eventually break away in the American Revolution came into existence or were wrenched from European rivals. Additionally, the British made significant inroads in the Canadian Maritime regions east of New France.

In 1664, as part of a consolidation of royal power, Charles II sent a fleet of ships to seize lands along the Hudson River that had been claimed in 1609 by the Dutch West Indian Company and settled by Dutch colonists.

New Netherland, soon renamed New York, was the king’s gift to his brother James, duke of York, who became King James II in 1687. As sole proprietor of a territory that also included New Jersey and Delaware, the duke ruled autocratically, parceling out some of his holdings to favored friends.

Although he was also the duke’s personal friend, William Penn in 1681 became a very different kind of proprietor when, in payment of debts owed Penn’s late father, the king granted him an extensive holding named Pennsylvania.

To the dismay of family and his royal connections, Penn had become a member of the Society of Friends, known scornfully as “Quakers,” and his “Holy Experiment” made Pennsylvania a refuge for Friends and others fleeing religious persecution.

In 1663, Charles II rewarded eight men who had supported his return to the British throne by granting them a proprietorship that they promptly named Carolina, Latin for Charles. By 1670, Carolina was peopled mainly by Virginians, moving south for better or more expansive lands, and Englishmen from West Indian sugar plantations.

This territory became the first in North America to depend heavily on slave labor from its inception. Within 20 years, the colony was profiting from such warm-weather commodities as cotton, indigo, timber, cattle, and rice. By the early 1700s, African slaves outnumbered white settlers in this “Rice Kingdom.”

At its founding in 1732, Georgia was quite unlike other British colonies. Located between Carolina and Spanish-controlled Florida, it had a royal charter from King George II that allowed English general James Oglethorpe to fulfill his philanthropic dream of resettling poor British immigrants.

To assure the virtue of these worthy poor, this new colony’s overseers forbade alcoholic beverages and banned slavery. By 1750, however, Georgia had become a slaveholding society, much like neighboring Carolina.

Mix of Religion and Governance

Britain’s North American colonies began as a hodgepodge of religions, forms of governance, and economic systems. Clinging mainly to the continent’s eastern seaboard, colonists of different regions and settlement histories had little to do with one another.

As Britain began to consolidate its imperial power and goals in the period of political stability that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688, its colonies experienced enormous population growth and new social and political challenges both within colonial society and in dealings with the “Mother Country.”

In 1651, during Cromwell’s regime, Parliament passed its first Navigation Act, designed to assure that growing colonial holdings, including those in North America, would produce wealth only for Britain’s benefit and not for its European rivals. Many more navigation acts would follow.

These mercantilist laws attempted to control both agricultural and manufactured goods. Many colonists, including plantation owners and New England shipbuilders, were enriched, but these laws also restricted colonial growth and trade initiatives.

As part of its aggressive commercial policy, Britain, by the 18th century, had become the world’s major trader in African slaves, surpassing the Dutch. Although the majority of slaves were destined for the sugar islands of the Caribbean, almost three hundred thousand slaves were “delivered” to the North American colonies between 1700 and the outbreak of the American Revolution.

Slave importation outstripped robust immigration of whites. No longer suffering a manpower glut, England discouraged emigration by its own people (with the exception of convicted criminals) but wooed colonists from many countries, including France, the Netherlands, and German principalities, often offering religious freedom and British citizenship.

As colonial populations increased and competed, issues of governance and home rule emerged. Many colonies had set up assemblies—Virginia’s House of Burgesses of 1619 was the first—to deal with local political problems.

These were by no means representative elected bodies, but were dominated by large landowners and other men of importance. Colonies that traced their origins to proprietors (like Calvert and the duke of York) tended to have more autocratic governments. The New England colonies generally allowed broader participation in political decision making.

Quaker Proprietor William Penn’s policies allowed more than half of Pennsylvania’s male population to have some political say. Royal governors, chosen by the king or Parliament, would often override local assemblies’ intentions. As colonial populations grew in the 1700s, so too did their thirst for effective political power.

Between the Glorious Revolution and the French and Indian War, assemblies in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, South Carolina, and Massachusetts often contested royal prerogatives and frequently had their way. Colonial legislators asserted their rights as British citizens to participate in lawmaking.

Britain’s imperial dominance in the 18th century was closely connected to its relationships with Native American tribal groups and its use of diplomacy, or more often war, to keep Spain and France from gaining ground in the Western Hemisphere.

Colonial policies were crafted with an eye to outflanking perceived threats from the these two powerful nations, and their native allies. Fearing that an alliance between Spain and France would imperil its colonial interests, Britain entered the 1701 War of the Spanish Succession.

In the subsequent Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, Britain gained control of much of eastern Canada and wrested from Spain its remaining colonial slave trade. More conflicts flared up in succeeding years as the three powers competed for trade preferences and territorial control. Flare-ups occurred regularly between British Carolina and Georgia, and neighboring Spanish Florida.

The “War of Jenkins’ Ear” began in 1739 when Spanish customs officials stopped suspected British smugglers and perhaps cut off the English captain’s ear. By 1744, Britain was fighting both Spain and France for North American and West Indian dominance in the War of the Austrian Succession.

Wars with Indian tribes were a constant from the earliest years of British incursion in North America. In 1622, Opechancanough, the chief who succeeded his brother, Powhatan, became convinced that whites had no intention of leaving.

He and his men attacked Jamestown, killing 300 settlers. In 1675, Wampanoag chief Metacom, known to New Englanders as King Philip, launched a major but ultimately unsuccessful effort to drive out the rapidly growing white population.

Twelve towns in Massachusetts were destroyed; a thousand whites and three thousand natives perished. At almost the same time, Virginians desperate for land were killing local Indians in an uprising known as Bacon’s Rebellion.

But European powers also made alliances with tribes, hoping to recruit their military aid against other tribes allied with their rivals. The powerful Iroquois Confederacy, centered in New York and Pennsylvania, had once helped the Dutch, but later became an important British ally during King Philip’s War. The Iroquois would help British and colonial forces attack the French and their set of Indian allies in the run-up to the 1754 French and Indian War.

By 1750, although not unchallenged, Britain’s North American empire was near its zenith. Britain’s mastery of the continent would soon be enhanced by its smashing victory in the coming war with France. Yet from that victory grew the seeds of colonial rebellion that would, before the end of the century, lose Britain a major portion of North America.

Benin

kingdom of Benin

Extending at its peak from the Niger River in the east to the port of Lagos on the western coast, Benin was a dynastic kingdom in what is now southern Nigeria, in the West African forested region. Present-day Benin City (called Ibinu; it was founded in 1180) was once where the kingdom was centered, and the modern Benin kings trace their lineage to its original dynasties.

Early southern Nigeria had been inhabited since 9000 b.c.e., with the Iron Age beginning around the second century b.c.e. Ironworking appears to have displaced Neolithic techniques without an intermediate bronze period, suggesting that iron smelting was probably introduced by outsiders, perhaps the Berbers of early antiquity.

There is little information about the first millennium c.e. in the area, other than the prosperity and subsequent disappearance from the historical record of the Nok people in what is now northeastern Nigeria. The founders of the Benin kingdom were the Bini (an ethnic subgroup of the Edo language group to which many modern inhabitants belong), but they or their ruling dynasties had a significant relationship to the Yoruba people of Ife.


According to one version of the founding of Benin, people called for the Ife prince Oranmiyan to come to their aid and displace the tyrannical rule of the Ogisos dynasty, which founded the city of Ibinu and had ruled the area for the previous few centuries or more (36 Ogiso dynastic rulers are known). Another version omits the plea for help, painting Oranmiyan as a simple invader.

At the time of the Ife incursion—whether it was invited or not—most of the power in Benin rested in the hands of the council of chiefs, the uzama. Beginning with Oranmiyan’s son Eweka (1180–1246), the uzama was presided over by the oba, a war leader who over time became a more powerful monarch with religious significance. As the oba became paramount, the kingdom became an empire.

Beginning with Ewuare (1440–73), the title of oba became a hereditary one, while Ibinu was rebuilt with military fortifications in order to protect the Benin center of power, as Ewuare’s forces expanded to conquer the lands surrounding them. The port of Lagos was established around this time, and diplomatic and trade relations began with Europe, beginning with the Portuguese. Early trade was primarily in ivory, pepper, and palm oil, before the slave trade became prominent.

The kingdom of Benin is not related to the modern day Republic of Benin, except insofar as that nation took its name in 1975 from the Bight of Benin, the bay along which both entities are or were situated.

Suleiman I the Magnificent - Ottoman Sultan

Suleiman I the Magnificent

Suleiman (r. 1520–66) ruled the Ottoman Empire when it was the most powerful empire on earth. He came to the throne after his father, Selim I (the Grim), had expanded Ottoman territories to the east and west. Although he was only in his 20s when he became the sultan, Suleiman already had experience in the field as a military commander and as an able direktur in Balkan and Crimean territories.

Suleiman was known as “the Magnificent” in Europe, and among his subjects as Kanuni (the lawgiver) for his codification of Ottoman laws. Known for his fairness and honesty, Suleiman granted extensive local autonomy to his far-flung provinces, maintaining close regulation only over taxes and the regulation of trade.

Victory Over European Rivals

In 1527, Suleiman had over 80,000 trained men in military service and with better guns and horsemen than his European rivals, the Ottomans quickly seized Belgrade after the Battle of Mohács and moved on to lay siege to Vienna in 1529.


But Suleiman failed to defeat his main rival Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, or to take Vienna. As the Ottoman troops retreated from the city they were reputed to have left sacks of coffee, already popular among the Ottoman urban elite and a commodity that would soon enjoy widespread favor in the west as well.

Although Suleiman also failed in the attempt to take Malta, he ruled all of the Balkans and Hungary, as well as most of the territory around the Black Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, and much of North Africa. He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, parts of which still stand.

Suleiman I the Magnificent in the Battle of Mohács

The Austrian diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq described in lavish detail the grandeur of the Ottoman court under Suleiman. Europeans praised Suleiman’s serious demeanor and culture, as well as his ability to discuss literature and philosophy in several languages.

A contemporary of the other great monarchs of the age, Charles V of Spain, Francis I of France, and Henry VIII of England, Suleiman made practical alliances with Francis I to counter the power of Charles V and was a major participant in European diplomacy.

Marriage

Suleiman married a favorite slave from Russia, Hurrem Haseki (The Joyous One), known in Europe as Roxelana. Suleiman was deeply in love with Hurrem, and he wrote her moving love poems under the penname of muhibbi (beloved).

However, Hurrem, as well as her mother-in-law and a rival wife, became powerful political forces in their own right and plotted ruthlessly for their particular favorites to become Suleiman’s successor. Hurrem outmaneuvered her rivals so that her favorite son, Selim II, would become sultan. Believing Hurrem’s allegations about intrigues by his more capable sons, particularly Mustapha, Suleiman ordered their murders.

Suleiman was devastated when Hurrem died and had the famed Ottoman architect Abdul-Menan Sinan build a magnificent mausoleum in her memory. Sinan also designed the massive Suleimaniya complex in Istanbul as a lasting monument to the great sultan.

Hurrem Haseki

Although already in his 70s, Suleiman again led his troops into battle in what became another failed attempt to take Vienna in 1566. After the ailing Suleiman died on the battlefield, his commander kept the death a secret from the troops, who kept on fighting, until Suleiman’s son, Selim II, had been safely installed as the new sultan. Selim inherited an empire at its zenith of power but failed to equal his father’s distinction as either an direktur or military leader.

Ghaznavids

Ghaznavids

The Ghaznavid dynasty ruled eastern Afghanistan and parts of Iran and Pakistan from 977 to 1186. Sebuk Tigin (r. 977–997), a former slave, founded the empire, ruling from the city of Ghazna, from which the dynasty obtained its name. Sebuk-Tigin had been a slave of the Turks and the military force that he led to supplant the previously ruling Samanid dynasty was also Turkish in origin.

The Samanids were Iranian Muslims and the Ghaznavid Empire was also Muslim dominated, especially under subsequent rulers who were keen to Islamize the pagan-leaning Turks. The founder expanded his territory to the borders of India, with his son Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030). Eventually the Ghaznavids in the west and the Qara-Khanids to the east replaced the Samanids, with the Oxus River marking the border between them.

It was during Mahmud’s reign that the Ghaznavid Empire reached its greatest extent, spanning from the Oxus to the Indian Ocean. However the death of Mahmud and the succession of Masud (r. 1031–41), ousting the short-term ruler Mehmed, proved the turning point of Ghaznavid fortunes as increasing pressure by the Seljuk Turks resulted in the Battle of Dandanqan in 1040, a disastrous defeat for Masud.


Despite the much larger numbers of Ghaznavid troops, the more mobile cavalry of the Seljuk dynasty denied them access to water and other supplies and destroyed their morale. The battle caused the loss of the gained Iranian and Central Asia territory. The Ghaznavid Empire persisted until 1186, but its influence was greatly reduced and it is remembered largely by its artistic and cultural achievements rather than its temporal power.

One of the most famous of Persian or Iranian poets was Firdawsi, whose masterpiece the Shahnamah (The epic of kings) was completed under the patronage of Mahmud. The epic tells the history and traditions of Persia and the stories of its rulers.

It is considered a central part of Iranian culture and one of the world’s great works of literature. Mahmud’s patronage enabled him to recreate the Ghaznavid Empire as an Islamic state, which strengthened faith across the region the Ghaznavids controlled.

The resulting artistic influence can be seen in the cultural production created within the Seljuk world. This included architectural forms and figurative painting styles. Ghurids captured Ghazna in 1149 and the last remaining outpost of Lahore in 1187. The city of Lahore was greatly increased by this and subsequently become a significant urban and cultural center.

Dutch in South Africa

Dutch in South Africa

The year 1652 marks the beginning of the Cape Colony, which started with the founding of Cape Town by Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck, who worked for the Dutch East India Company, known in Dutch as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). The colony was situated halfway between the so-called Dutch East Indies and the Dutch West Indies.

The early 16th century saw the start of many European nations, such as Spain and Portugal, pursuing the sea route rather than the land route to India and establishing a colonial global empire outside continental Europe. From the late 16th century, the Netherlands was a preeminent naval power. The Dutch founded the VOC trading company as early as 1602.

They reigned supreme at sea, and dominated global commerce by the second half of the 17th century. This epoch coincides with the cultural flowering known as the Dutch golden age with such figures as the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza, the mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens, and the painter Johannes Vermeer.


In 1647, while exploring a route to India, a ship named Nieuwe Haerlem ran aground in Table Bay. The survivors, including possibly the captain, Leendert Janszen, with some crew remained onshore for about a year to look after the shipment.

Only 12 months later, a Dutch ship returned Janszen and his crew to Europe. Upon disembarking in Holland, Janszen wrote a feasibility report called Remonstrantie to the Council of Seventeen of the Dutch East India Company, in which he recommends the founding of a station where ships can resupply before sailing onto India.

Jan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck was later appointed by the VOC to establish the station and eventually founded Cape Town in 1652, which soon opened South Africa to white settlement. The town’s purpose was “to provide fresh water, fruit, vegetables, and meat for passing ships en route to India as well as build a hospital for ill sailors.”

The development of Cape Town was slow at first, owing to crop failures and organizational chaos. Van Riebeeck advocated the introduction of more workers to save the colony and encouraged importation of slaves. Though the VOC did not send slaves for five years, captains on passing ships gave Van Riebeeck some in the meantime.

In 1654, the first Cape-based slave expedition was sent to Madagascar and Mozambique and three years later the first group of slaves was brought to the Cape from Angola and West Africa to meet the needs of the construction of a solid station.

Starting in 1655, Van Riebeeck’s exploration outside Cape Town eventually led to a war between the small colony and the local Khoikhoi (named Hottentots by the whites). The Khoikhoi were a pastoral people, inhabiting the coast of the Cape of Good Hope until the arrival of European colonizers. When Van Riebeeck left the Cape in 1662, the settlement had more than 100 colonists.

The Netherlands lost many of its colonial possessions to the British when the motherland surrendered to French conquest led by Napoleon, and more territory annexation to the French from 1795 to 1814. Subsequently Great Britain seized the colony in 1797 during the Fifth Anglo-Dutch War, and annexed it in 1805.

The Dutch colonists who remained after the British took over are now known as Afrikaners. Their language, Afrikaans, is derived from a creolized variety of a colonial dialect of Cape Dutch, influenced by both indigenous Khoikhoi peoples who speak the Khoisan language and the imported slave population.

Paranoia

Paranoia

The psychiatric concept of paranoia is unremarkably traced to ancient Greece, where Hippocrates inaugurated it alongside several other mental maladies, coining the term from the Greek para (meaning “beside,” or “changed”) too nous (signifying “mind,” or “reason”).

Its etymology tin flame also last traced dorsum to Plato’s too Aretaeus’s identifications of “religious madness” too “divine mania,” or citations inward the piece of work of Francois Boissier de Sauvages (Pathologie Methodica, 1759) to transformative delusions inward which patients believed they were beingness transformed into either animals or the reverse sex.

It was non until Etienne Esquirol’s Mental Maladies: Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Treatise on Insanity (1845) and, later, Emil Kraepelin’s Textbook of Psychiatry (1883–1915) that the concept of paranoia, every bit it is understood today, began to direct keep shape.


Esquirol’s descriptivist business concern human relationship catalogued, alongside others, erotic, reasoning, theomaniacal, incendiary, too homicidal monomanias. Paranoia was identified every bit a délire partiel (monomania), a folie raisonante (a reasoning madness).

Kraepelin’s influential Definition of dementia praecox (early-onset dementia, straight off classed nether the broad category of schizophrenia) most deeply informs the contemporary agreement of the concept every bit a delusional disorder that builds a highly organized, grandiose organization that is held with swell conviction.

From this tradition too that which followed, paranoia has come upwardly to last characterized past times symptoms such every bit projective thinking, hostility, suspicion, centrality, delusions, fright of the loss of autonomy, too grandiosity. Even though paranoids are oftentimes able to make a high grade of occupational functioning, different other psychoses, at that spot is no pharmaceutical or therapeutic “cure” for paranoia.

The most famous instance of paranoia, which has served every bit the footing for most of the major contributions on the report of the plain of report every bit good every bit beingness a remarkable autobiography of paranoia, is Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken [1903]).

Schreber, a high-ranking High German judge, describes the tedious too torturous procedure of beingness transformed into a adult woman past times God inward fellowship to select forth a novel race of men; beingness made into God’s sexual slave; too beingness the victim of a “soul murder” at the hands of physician Paul Emil Flechsig, the managing director of the psychiatric infirmary inward which he offset stayed.

Sigmund Freud’s influential report of the instance read paranoia every bit a defence against (unconscious) homosexuality, or homosexual attack. Although this theory has largely been cast aside, it is notable for Freud’s offset theorization of projection.

Freud also argued that paranoia is a recuperative process, i inward which the paranoid attempts to rebuild his or her the world after a psychotic interruption through delusion. Interestingly, “paranoia” every bit a discrete medicalpsychiatric Definition no longer exists. The electrical flow Diagnostic too Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) instead classifies it every bit an appear of other psychoses, such every bit schizophrenia.

The category of paranoia gradually moved beyond the psychiatric domain too began to last used past times philosophers too social theorists to explicate literary texts, social formations, too historical epochs.

The discourse of heroic “enlightenment”—which seeks to uncover, reveal, too discover knowledges that are otherwise concealed, shrouded, too hidden—is firmly entrenched inward Western philosophical traditions. The notion of “suspicion” every bit an interpretive strategy tin flame last traced from academic too Pyrrhonian skepticism through to the piece of work of Machiavelli, Rousseau, too Hobbes.

Paul Ricouer identifies Nietzsche, Marx, too Freud every bit the key proponents of a tradition that sought to redirect its Cartesian uncertainty from a regard of things, to uncertainty consciousness itself. In Crowds too Power (1962), Elias Canetti describes paranoia every bit an “illness of power” that tin flame assistance to explicate the nature of political ability inward general.

Canetti establishes an equivalence betwixt paranoids similar Schreber too despots too rulers such every bit Adolph Hitler too Genghis Khan. Richard Hofstadter’s famous 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style inward American Politics,” continues this genealogy past times theorizing paranoia every bit a political style, rather than a pathological category.

Conducted nether the banner of “Studies on the American Right,” it charted the paranoid agency inward U.S. political life since independence, through the key feature of persecution too its systematization inward conspiracy theory.

Hofstadter sought to pull a by too large right-wing agency of mind, too chose to refer to it every bit “paranoid” because “no other give-and-take evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, too conspiratorial fantasy” that characterizes this mindset.

The concept of paranoia has dispersed into pop civilization inward a vast array of forms including films such every bit JFK (dir. Oliver Stone 1991) too Conspiracy Theory (dir. Richard Donner 1997), television set programs such every bit The X-Files too Nowhere Man, pamphlets, rants, too tracts of every political color, magazines such every bit Paranoia, too books such every bit Jim Keith’s Secret too Suppressed: Banned Ideas too Hidden History (1993).

Rhetorics of paranoia tin flame last identified inward pop music, from Black Sabbath’s classic anthem “Paranoid” to Radiohead’s Paranoid Android, too Garbage’s “I Think I’m Paranoid.” The paranoid ethic of hypervigilance fifty-fifty extends to managerial advice books such every bit Andrew S. Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company too Career (1999).

The cultural sensibility expressed inward these works, i that has wholly digested Delmore Schwartz’s adage that “even paranoids direct keep existent enemies,” suggests that at that spot is less danger inward beingness paranoid than inward non beingness paranoid enough.

Like the term “conspiracy theorist,” “paranoid” represents a heavily loaded political too epistemological description, i that is used at for sure times every bit an ironic cast of self-identification, too at others, every bit a condemnatory indictment.

In a fashion similar to the agency “conspiracy theory” is used every bit a description of simulated history, the accusation of paranoia has travel a powerful tactic inward the marginalization of one’s ideological opponents.

Cultural critics too pop psychologists direct keep inward recent years taken upwardly the psychiatric history of paranoia, too (consciously or not) Freud’s contribution to it, inward their attempts to delegitimize those they consider conspiracy theorists.

The conspiracy theorist (or paranoid), it is argued, takes an object or figure that was i time revered too transforms it into the focus of persecutory anxiety, too thence that their conspiracy theories tell us to a greater extent than nigh the subject’s ain wish too fright than they produce nigh anything inward the world.

Paranoia, too thence the floor goes, is a affliction of disaffection: the WASP patriot, the militant feminist, too the Islamic fundamentalist are united past times their marginality, i which organizes their thinking inward a paranoid or conspiratorial fashion.

Other critics direct keep argued that such theories cast appropriate responses to actual circumstances: for example, the widespread belief inward the African American community of the early on 1990s that the authorities was spreading drugs such every bit cleft cocaine inward wretched dark communities should non last read merely every bit “paranoid,” but every bit a dramatization of really existent fears of an institutionally sponsored programme of genocidal neglect, i that is based on the historical revelation of actual conspiracies such every bit COINTELPRO too the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

Delhi Sultanate

Delhi Sultanate under various dynasties

The influx of Muslim Turks into the Indian subcontinent began in the 11th and 12th centuries. It was spearheaded by a series of military dynasties, including the Ghaznavids, who ruled parts of Persia and invaded northern India, and the Ghurids, who started off as allies of the great Ghazanavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni, but broke away after his death in 1030 and conquered much of northern India for themselves.

Aibak, a Turk born in Central Asia and taken to Nishapur as a slave of the Ghurid ruling house, served as a Ghurid direktur from 1192 until 1206, when he was freed and named sultan, or ruler, of a new dynasty based in the city of Delhi by his former masters.

While in the service of the Ghurids, he led a series of military campaigns in India, expanding the empire’s territory significantly and subjugating most of the land between the Indus and Ganges Rivers. Aibak’s reign, during which he spent the majority of his time trying to establish political institutions and geographic boundaries, was relatively short and he died in 1210.


Aibak was succeeded by his son, Aram in Lahore, who had little experience in politics and was overthrown and killed in 1211 by Aibak’s son-in-law, Shams ud-Din Iltutmish, who was favored by the army. Immediately upon assuming control of the sultanate, Iltutmish was faced with military challenges from both the neighboring Ghaznavids and the Muslim state in Sind. In a series of wars against them, Iltutmish reasserted his authority and by 1228 had conquered all of Sind.

According to the Muslim historian Ibn Batuta, Iltutmish was the first ruler of Delhi to reign independently of a larger state and in 1228–29 he received emissaries from the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, the premier Muslim state, at least in name, of this period. Under his leadership, the Delhi Sultanate escaped destruction when the Mongol leader Genghis Khan swept westward through Central Asia.

Iltutmish died in 1236 and was succeeded by a series of weak rulers and the Turkish nobility, nicknamed “the Forty,” who controlled the sultanate’s most important provinces. His son Rukn ad-Din Firuz Shah ruled for seven months before being deposed by his sister, Raziyya, whom their father had initially chosen as the new ruler before his death.

Qutb Minar, minaret near New Delhi, India.
It was erected (c.1230) by Iltutmish of the Delhi Sultanate

The sultana had been trained in political administration during periods when her father went off on military campaigns and left her in charge of maintaining the government. Raziyya encountered stiff opposition from many of the sultanate’s officials, and she was overthrown in 1240. Iltutmish’s youngest son, Mu‘izz ad-Din Bahram Shah, ascended the throne and worked to strengthen the northern frontier against the Mongols.

He stopped an attempt by his sister to regain control of the sultanate. However he too was overthrown in 1242 by senior government officials and was subsequently executed. The new sultan, Nasir ud-Din Mahmud, was a recluse and granted political authority to Ghiyath ad-Din Balban, his slave and future son-in-law.

Under Balban, the sultanate continued to ward off Mongol raiding parties and stopped revolts by rebellious Hindu rulers. When Sultan Nasir ud-Din, who had no children, died in 1265, Balban formally assumed the title of sultan, ruling for two decades until 1286.

The sultanate’s army was reorganized and improved under Balban and he ordered the construction of forts in and around Lahore in order to present a defensive line against the Mongol leader Hulagu Khan, who had invaded Iran in 1256 and was actively campaigning throughout Persia and the Arab Middle East during the second half of the 1250s. Between 1280 and 1283 one of the sultanate’s governors, Tughril, rebelled against Balban and the sultan led a military campaign against him, which resulted in the governor’s death during a raid by Balban’s forces on his camp.

The early period of the Delhi Sultanate came to an end in 1290 when Balban’s son, Bughra Khan, refused the throne and Malik Firuz Khalji overthrew Balban’s teenage grandson, Kaiqubad. The Turk Khaljids adopted Afghan customs after occupying Afghanistan and oversaw the rapid expansion of the sultanate, conquering Gujarat and Deccan during their reign from 1290 to 1320.

Sultan Ala ud-Din Khalji (r. 1296–1316) enlarged the army and introduced economic and tax reforms. Upon his death, he was succeeded by a series of inept rulers and internal strife led to the downfall of the Khaljids soon after his death.

The Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1412) rose to power and Sultan Muhammad Ibn Tughlaq (r. 1325–51) founded a second capital city at Deogir in order to control an increasingly vast empire. By moving the active capital south, the sultan could oversee the continued military campaigns in Deccan.

Under Muhammad a system of currency was introduced and taxes were increased to meet the sultan’s military expenditures. Much of the later years of his reign was spent dealing with revolts, trying to head off dissension from the clergy (ulama), and handling external threats, which resulted in the reduction of the empire’s territory.

Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–88) was not as militarily successful as his predecessors, but was perhaps the dynasty’s greatest administrator-ruler. He reintroduced the jagir system, which paid army officers in grants of land rather than cash salaries, and introduced a justice system that rigorously enforced the laws.

Firuz Shah also focused on improving social services and opened up a large hospital, Dar us-Shafa, in Delhi and founded bureaus of employment and marriage. During his reign the state financed the expansion of existing cities, the construction of new ones, and the building of mosques, bathhouses, and canals. The religious policy of the sultanate under Firuz Shah was strictly Sunni and non-Muslims were required to pay the jizya tax and Shi’ite Muslims were placed under restrictions.

Upon Firuz Shah’s death in 1388, a succession crisis led to the downfall of the Tughlaq dynasty. In the midst of this crisis, Timurlane (Tamerlane) the ruler of Samarkand who was forging an empire in Central Asia, invaded India and captured and sacked Delhi in 1398.

Famine and the spread of disease followed the Timurid invasion, with thousands of slaves and much of the city’s wealth being taken back to Central Asia. The Tughlaq dynasty was no longer a single entity and several competing states were left to squabble over Muslim India. With the fall of the Tughlaqs, the Turkish sultanate of Delhi began its steady decline.

Despite periods of revival under the Sayyid dynasty (1414–1451) and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526), the centralized sultanate no longer existed and both dynasties were faced with opposition from India’s Hindu population and rival Indian Muslim states. The sultanate was formally ended in 1526 when Zahir ud-Din Muhammad Babur, a Chaghatai Turk who ruled in Kabul, ushered in the period of the great Mughal Empire.

Witchcraft

Witchcraft

Few episodes from America’s colonial past times are as good known or as notorious as the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. For many, the Salem trials cause got represented the defining 2d inward the history of Puritan conspiracy-minded intolerance as well as superstition; however, belief inward magic as well as witchcraft was an inextricable business office of the seventeenth-century worldview.

Witches were prosecuted inward Europe as well as inward all of the American colonies, non simply inward Puritan New England. While historians cause got produced competing explanations for colonial witchcraft belief, as well as though peradventure no ultimate explanation is possible, they cause got described many of the social, cultural, as well as religious weather inward which witches could live identified as well as witch-hunts could gain momentum.

Briefly stated, a witch was understood to live a soul who had made a pact with Satan to price neighbors, the community, or the terra firma through supernatural means. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 witch, inward other words, was a devil-worshipper, someone whose actions constituted a criminal as well as heretical conspiracy to destroy orderly Christian society.


A World of Wonders

Colonial Americans lived inward an enchanted universe, a “world of wonders,” as historian David D. Hall has phrased it. Their the world was 1 where the supernatural infused the natural, where God as well as Satan were active agents inward daily events, as well as where storms, disasters, illness, as well as crop failure were “special providences” demonstrating God’s volition or displeasure.

Existence as well as livelihood were oft precarious inward early on America, as well as from a rich fund of pop religious beliefs people chose the practices or rituals that mightiness offering simply about sort of added protection from catastrophe. Magic as well as countermagic, spells, astrology, divination, palmistry, as well as witch lore were employed to predict the future, or heal the ill, to price enemies, or to defend against occult attack.

In the seventeenth century, local folk magic practitioners called “cunning folk,” “conjurors,” “white witches,” or “wizards” were omnipresent—though oft suspicious—members of English linguistic communication as well as American social club to whom people could plough for assistance.

Witches were a malevolent business office of this the world of wonders. While the do of magic was an accepted element of folk belief, witchcraft had to a greater extent than sinister connotations. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 witch was someone who had acquired superhuman powers through a covenant with Satan; principal amid these powers was the powerfulness to perform maleficium, or to drive price through supernatural means.

The types of maleficium varied. Witches were oft defendant of causing disease or death, or causing miscarriages, or spoiling beer or butter. They were believed to torment their enemies inward other ways, past times invisibly entering the rooms of sleeping people as well as choking them, or turning themselves into animals to conduct out their evil deeds.

They were also said to live able to tempt others to bring together inward their satanic pact past times a hold back or glance, or past times sending out their specters to haunt their enemies. People nether this sort of satanic influence were believed to live “possessed,” a status that oft manifested itself inward inexplicable physical contortions or illnesses.

And spell belief inward magic as well as witchcraft was feature of pop as well as elite layers of early on American society, for clergymen specially the existent or imagined presence of witches was profoundly troubling. In making a covenant with Satan, the witch was rejecting God as well as godly society.

This import of heresy had deep resonance amid the Puritans, who believed themselves to live a covenant land of God as well as a terminal bastion of Protestantism. Witches inward New England represented aught less than a satanic conspiracy against God’s “city on a hill.”

Identifying these witches was a social process, a agency past times which people controlled social club as well as punished “antisocial” elements. Most accusations of witchcraft were of a face-to-face diversity as well as reflected local tensions betwixt neighbors.

What is oft surprising close these cases is the apparent banality of their origins. Testimony inward the 1651 trials against Mary as well as Hugh Parsons of Springfield, Massachusetts, shows that untidy describe concern transactions lay at the root of the accusations.

Hugh Parsons, a brick maker, exchanged threatening words with neighbors who after argued that he had bewitched them: their children had fallen unaccountably ill, their cow’s milk had curdled—all prove of “bewitchment.”

Other witchcraft trials cause got like quotidian origins. Unexplained illness, crop failures, missing farm implements, or abrupt deaths could easily live attributed to a suspicious neighbor’s demonic intervention.

Many of these cases never came to trial since the defendant would oft countersue for defamation. Yet the confluence of personal or communal misfortune as well as the demand for explanation as well as retribution oft meant that individuals who exhibited “antisocial” demeanour or who existed on the margins of social club were identified as witches.

Most of the individuals identified as witches inward colonial America were women. Historians dispute the numbers as well as gender proportions of witchcraft accusations, but 1 scholar, Carol F. Karlsen, has argued that of the 344 known people defendant of witchcraft inward New England betwixt 1620 as well as 1725, 267 (78 percent) were women.

Most of these were women who, purposefully or not, refused to convey their house inward society. For example, most defendant witches inward New England were middle-aged or older women who were eligible for inheritances; they interfered with the traditional patriarchal patterns of succession.

Women defendant of witchcraft inward New England commonly faced a familiar litany of sins that defined their deviance: excessive pride, sexual promiscuity, lying, discontent, or anger. They stuck out, inward other words, inward a social club that prized them chiefly as submissive Christian wives.

If witchcraft was defined as a rebellion against God, rebellion against the gender norms as well as hierarchy of early on American social club was every bit threatening to godly order. In times of problem or misfortune, marginalized or deviant women were hence amid the most vulnerable to live social scapegoats as well as defendant of beingness “handmaidens of the devil”.

The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692

These patterns tin give notice live seen writ large inward the Salem outbreaks, which lasted from belatedly 1691 to May 1693. This was non the initiative of all major witch-hunt inward colonial America; in that place had been a pregnant 1 inward Hartford, Connecticut, inward 1662–1665, during which at to the lowest degree 3 people were executed.

And the Salem trials, during which 19 people (fourteen women as well as v men) were hung as “witches” as well as hundreds were imprisoned, were dwarfed inward scale past times the massive witch-hunts that had swept Europe during the sixteenth as well as seventeenth centuries, which reputedly led to the executions of tens of thousands of women.

Salem inward the 1680s was a troubled town. Flooded with refugees from frontier wars with the Native American tribes allied with France, facing a failing economy, as well as separate past times deep shape as well as factional fissures, the town was a tinderbox of the kinds of social antagonisms where witchcraft accusations could thrive.

The outbreak itself began inward belatedly 1691. Several immature women began to experiment with magic as well as spells, as well as simply about of them, including the immature lady as well as niece of Samuel Parris, a local clergyman, began to exhibit the signs of “possession.”

When consulted, physicians as well as clergy could solely conclude that the fits as well as trances that afflicted these women were prove that they were nether the influence of an “Evil Hand.” When interrogated, the girls at initiative of all would non cite their “tormenters” but eventually gave out 3 names, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, as well as Tituba.

These “witches” were arrested as well as presumed guilty. Good as well as Osborne denied the charges, but Tituba, a Carib Indian adult woman who was also Parris’s slave, confessed. She implicated Good as well as Osborne as accomplices as well as claimed that in that place were many other witches at large as well as conspiring against the community.

This confession initiated a bicycle of accusations as well as trials that extended far exterior of Salem; fifty-fifty the married adult woman of Governor William Phips inward Boston was accused. Some people chop-chop came to the decision that the scale as well as achieve of the accusations meant that the outbreak was all a delusion, if peradventure a satanically inspired one.

Others were non as well as then moderate inward their opinions. Samuel Parris, for one, argued that Salem witchcraft was aught less than a “War the Devil has raised with us.” Judicial moderation was non an option, according to Parris, for “If e'er in that place were Witches, Men & Women inward Covenant with the Devil, hither are Multitudes inward New-England”. Other members of the clergy were to a greater extent than ambiguous inward their assessment of the situation.

When the judges inward Salem asked New England’s clergy for advice, Boston pastor Cotton Mather prepared on behalf of his colleagues a document entitled “Return of Several Ministers” (15 June 1692) that gave mixed directives. On the 1 hand, the document declared, the judges must live scrupulous as well as exacting as they weighed the evidence.

On the other hand, if witchcraft was afoot, the prosecution against it must live speedy as well as vigorous. The hunt raged on until Governor Phips suspended the proceedings inward belatedly 1692; inward the leap of 1693 he pardoned everyone soundless inward custody.

From Magic to Metaphor

The Salem trials were non the terminal witch prosecutions inward the American colonies; a instance emerged inward Colchester, Connecticut, inward 1724. In general, however, witchcraft was no longer treated as a crime.

Many scholars cause got argued that the increment of scientific rationalism, get-go with the Enlightenment inward the eighteenth century, made belief inward magic as well as the supernatural increasingly ludicrous. While this explanation has simply about credence, many people continued to believe inward witchcraft after 1692, as well as soundless do.

The aftermath of the trials brought no immediate resolution as well as healing to Salem or New England, as well as the witch-hunt remained a source of contention as people looked for scapegoats. Among those most visibly selected for censure were the Puritan ministers, specially Samuel Parris as well as Cotton Mather, whose actions many believed were catalysts for the trials.

In Mather’s case, these accusations were largely unfair, since other than his published describe concern human relationship of the trials, Wonders of the Invisible World (1692), his dealings with the trials were relatively indirect.

Nevertheless, inward 1700 a Boston merchant named Robert Calef published a book, More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700), which claimed that the Puritan clergy, as well as Cotton Mather inward particular, had conspired to encourage the witch hysteria inward monastic tell to eliminate heterodox belief as well as to bolster their sagging religious as well as cultural potency inward New England.

The volume was instantly labeled libelous past times the Puritan authorities, as well as Increase as well as Cotton Mather were as well as then angered past times Calef’s accusations that they had copies of the volume publicly burned inward Harvard’s college yard.

Whatever the immediate effect of the suppression of Calef’s book, the long-term consequences to Cotton Mather’s reputation were catastrophic. No unmarried figure is as closely identified with the trials as Mather, as well as his retentiveness remains as the archetypal intolerant Puritan as well as superstitious witch-hunter.

In the twentieth century witchcraft as well as witch-hunting remained live as a powerful metaphor for repression of many kinds: state-sponsored religious or political persecution, or for the oppression of women inward a patriarchal society.

Many contemporary believers inward witchcraft or paganism, called Wicca, vogue themselves as the religious descendents of the victims of the Salem trials, as well as terra firma a continuity of utilisation betwixt their ain struggles for liberty of religious human face as well as the lives of those who died inward 1692. Probably the most famous utilisation of the witchcraft metaphor came with the production of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1952).

Declaring that the “witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which laid inward amid all classes when the remainder began to plough toward greater private freedom,” Miller used the Salem trials as an analogy for the political repression of McCarthy-era America.

In his view, the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy as well as the House Un-American Activities Committee represented a conspiracy against liberty of conscience akin to the Puritan backlash against witchcraft.

Radical feminists inward the 1960s, meanwhile, also employed the witchcraft metaphor. In 1968, the “action wing” of New York Radical Women was formed, as well as they chose the cite WITCH, an acronym for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.

The grouping attacked institutions that were seen as emblems of patriarchal power; they hexed the Chase Manhattan bank, for example, as well as disrupted a bride fair at Madison Square Gardens dressed as witches (Purkiss, 8–9). For these women, a witch was an emblem of woman soul empowerment, non patriarchal victimization.