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manhefnawi

In the Blood - The Secret History of the Habsburgs | History Today - 0 views

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Maria Theresa

shared by manhefnawi on 16 May 18 - No Cached
  • 18th-century succession crisis unlocks a tale of dynastic obsession and myth-history in Austria's first family
  • Charles had devoted his whole adult life to maintaining the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne. From 1705 when he first arrived in Barcelona he saw himself as the only rightful king of Spain. He never accepted the accession of the Bourbon claimant, Philip V, under the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, and thereafter anything that smacked of a French influence was guaranteed to rouse him to fury
  • his brother Joseph I
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  • his father Leopold I
  • With his death, that pre-eminence of the House was challenged
  • So, even if the last Habsburg's death had no sinister implications, it was potentially a catastrophe for the dynasty. Charles had no male heir, and his daughters could not succeed him to the Imperial throne. The laws of the Empire permitted only a male to sit on the throne of Charlemagne
  • Among the Habsburgs, gender was less important than blood
  • among the Habsburgs, as opposed, to say, the Valois or the Bourbons, the reality of female power and authority was accepted. Thus Charles' daughters could succeed to his titles and lands but they could not become Holy Roman Emperor
  • Since Frederick III had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1452, the Imperial title had become almost synonymous with the Habsburgs. They had been elected since 1438 in an unbroken succession to the most dignified and honourable office in Christian Europe. Sometimes there had been other challengers and, on occasion, it had seemed likely that the title would pass to another claimant. But the Habsburgs had always succeeded in persuading sufficient electors to favour their candidate
  • it obscured the real power that a Holy Roman Emperor could exercise
  • While the power and effectiveness of the Reich was undoubtedly waning, especially after the peace settlement at Westphalia in 1648, it was, paradoxically, becoming a more effective instrument of Habsburg power
  • its sanctions still carried weight
  • The Emperor Leopold I, in 1687 and 1705, had moved away from the notion of the equal claim towards establishing the precedence of the senior line, with males inheriting first and then females.
  • deprived the daughters of Joseph I, and established that the new primogeniture would begin with his own children. When Charles presented this edict he was initiating a constitutional revolution
  • It is worthwhile noting that Charles' concerns were for the future. In 1715, despite ten years of marriage, he had no heir
  • the lands ruled by the Habsburgs should never be divided, and he was mindful of the wrangles over the Spanish inheritance of his cousin Carlos II, which ultimately deprived him (he believed) of the throne of Spain
  • However, there was a strong body of legal opinion that suggested that so powerful were these claims ‘of blood' that no prior agreement could abrogate them, and certainly nothing could prevent their rights being transmitted to the future children of a female Habsburg
  • The Pragmatic Sanction assumed that males would come before females in order of inheritance, but if there were no male heirs, then a female could inherit all the powers and rights due to the head of the house of Habsburg
  • it was accepted that a female Habsburg could wear the Crown of St Stephen. Constitutional lawyers would insist that, technically speaking, Maria Theresa should become ‘King of Hungary’, although she was always referred to as Queen of Hungary
  • The sudden death of Charles produced a crisis for the Habsburgs, firstly in the political domain, but secondly, in the area of dynastic ideology
  • set apart from ordinary humanity, the chosen vessels of God's will
  • The Habsburgs had made so much of their long ancestry, of the male descent through the generations, since the time of the first Rudolf
  • To describe Charles VI as the ‘last of the Habsburgs’ plays to a widely-held legend of the enfeeblement of the Habsburg line
  • it marked their ancient heritage
  • his descendent Carlos II of Spain
  • This grotesque appearance lay behind the assumption that the Habsburgs had died out in the male line for genetic reasons, as a consequence of their deliberate policy of marrying within the family which they had followed since the middle of the sixteenth century
  • In fact the failure of the Habsburg line had much more to do with epidemic disease and poor standards of infant care in the Habsburg palaces than with any genetic taint
  • The lack of a male heir may have had a hereditary element, because there were many more female than male births in the House of Habsburg, but the disappearance of the male line was more an accident than a sign of waning procreative powers.
  • or this reason he never accepted that it was his elder daughter Maria Theresa who would succeed him, and had done nothing to introduce her to the complexities of government
  • The rules and taboos which constrained other ruling houses were transmuted by the Habsburgs' notion of their own unique collective identity
  • The Habsburgs, from the founder of the family's fortune, Emperor Rudolf I in the thirteenth century, had sedulously constructed a myth of their origins which set them apart from ordinary humanity
  • And most Habsburg rulers year by year, right up until the death of the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916, played a solemn part in the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Vienna
  • It was for this reason that the Darks of Habsburg identity, like the jutting jaw, were a mark of honour not a disfigurement
  • It had been the grimly practical Wallenstein and not the Virgin Mary who had rescued the Habsburg cause in the 1630s. In the 1740s Maria Theresa saved her inheritance with a steely will and an unswerving determination to succeed
  • Her response, conditioned both by her character and the exigencies of the circumstances, was very different from her fussy and pedantic father, obsessed with the lost throne of Spain
  • A young woman inherited the crowns and possessions of her father, but also an empty treasury and an army commanded by dotards. The process by which she stiffened the resolve of her generals, won the nobility and gentry of Hungary to her cause, and organised the resistance to the Prussian, Bavarian and French armies has itself achieved the quality of myth
  • Maria Theresa was as involved with the identity of the house of Habsburgs as he had been. She followed her father in his obsessive concern for the safe keeping of the bones of their ancestors
  • Maria Theresa's son Joseph II has been nicknamed ‘The Revolutionary Emperor' by one of his biographers
  • The transformation which she inspired and then enforced on her territories was less dramatic (and less publicised) than Joseph’s: it was also a lot more successful and longer lasting. The crisis of Maria Theresa's first years and the subsequent revival of Habsburg power is most often looked upon in external terms, both political and economic
  • She moved away from the reliance on the Imperial title as a principle source of Habsburg legitimacy
  • However, even then, she refused to be crowned as Empress, preferring the titles she held in her own right to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia
  • Mother of the Country
  • who ruled briefly as Leopold II, knew better than either of them how to play the twin chords of coercion and free expression
  • But the Habsburgs, from Maria Theresa onwards, turned their backs on the tradition of grandeur and portrayed themselves as the first servants of the nation
  • he believed as ardently as any of his predecessors in the unique role and mission of his clan
  • Historians have come to regard Maria Theresa as one of the most significant and innovative of the long line of Habsburg rulers
  • The potential catastrophe of the 1740s was that the Habsburg lands, like Poland a generation later, might have been dismembered or at best much reduced in scale and power
manhefnawi

Austria - Early reign of Joseph II, 1780-85 | Britannica.com - 0 views

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Maria Theresa Habsburgs Reforms Religion

shared by manhefnawi on 18 May 18 - No Cached
  • Maria Theresa died in 1780 and was followed by Joseph II. The problem of succession had caused Maria Theresa considerable grief in her early years, and she had vowed to create not only governmental institutions to protect her lands but familial ones as well, most notably by making certain that there would never again be a shortage of Habsburgs to rule the monarchy (after her marriage, the official name of the family changed from Habsburg to Habsburg-Lorraine
  • Maria Theresa kept most of the authority in her hands
  • frequent clashes between the strong-willed mother and the strong-willed son
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • While Maria Theresa regarded Protestants as heretics and Jews as the embodiment of the Antichrist
  • Joseph’s most radical measures in church matters were the Edict of Toleration (1781) and his monastic reforms.
  • When Joseph became sole ruler, he was determined to implement his own policies
  • Another of Joseph’s famous reforms was the abolition of serfdom, which was not quite a total abolition but certainly changed considerably the status of the peasants.
  • Toward the end of Joseph’s reign, there was indeed increasing dissatisfaction. Religious elements were unhappy with many of his reforms
  • To add to the Hungarians’ horror, Joseph refused to submit to a coronation in Hungary lest he have to swear to uphold laws that he did not wish to, and then he had the sacred crown of the kingdom moved to Vienna.
  • By 1787 resistance to Joseph and his government was intensifying. One Habsburg possession that had escaped reforms during the reign of Maria Theresa and Joseph was the Austrian Netherlands,
  • Joseph’s reforms might not have generated as much opposition had it not been for his foreign policy.
  • Kaunitz firmly believed that Austria could check Prussia only with the help of Russia. Consequently, in 1781 he and Joseph negotiated with Catherine the Great a pact that provided for Russian help for Austria in case of war with Prussia
  • In exchange, Austria promised to help Russia in case of war with the Ottoman Empire.
  • Catherine then engaged in a series of provocations toward the Turks that resulted in 1787 in a declaration of war by the sultan. Although Joseph had no real desire to participate in this war, his treaty obligations with Russia required him to do so
  • In 1788 the Austrians waited for the Russians to take the offensive in Romanian lands—which they failed to do—only to be themselves attacked by the Turks and sent scurrying north from the Danube in an effort to reconsolidate their lines
  • Faced with these difficulties, Joseph revoked many of the reforms that he had enacted earlier
  • he consented to return the crown to Hungary and to his own coronation as that country’s king. The crowning never came to pass, however, for Joseph died the following month.
manhefnawi

War of the Austrian Succession | Europe [1740-1748] | Britannica.com - 0 views

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Silesian-War Frederick-II Maria-Theresa

shared by manhefnawi on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • with the overall aim of crippling or destroying Austria, France’s long-standing continental enemy
  • Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, one of the richest Habsburg provinces. His army defeated the Austrians at Mollwitz in April 1741 and overran Silesia
  • an alliance with Bavaria and Spain and, later, with Saxony and Prussia against Austria
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  • The Austrian ruler Maria Theresa (daughter of Charles VI) derived her main foreign support from Britain, which feared that, if the French achieved hegemony in Europe, the British commercial and colonial empire would be untenable. Thus, the War of the Austrian Succession was, in part, one phase of the struggle between France and Britain that lasted from 1689 to 1815
  • Austria temporarily neutralized Prussia by allowing it to retain Silesia in July 1742, drove the French and Bavarians out of Bohemia (1742), and overran Bavaria. Austria’s allies—the British, Hanoverians, and Hessians—defeated the French
  • the emperor Charles VII (Charles Albert of Bavaria), who was also chief claimant to the Austrian succession, died. His son Maximilian III Joseph gave up these claims and pledged to support Francis Stephen at the imperial election in return for Austria’s restoration of its conquests to Bavaria
  • The British had withdrawn their army to England to oppose the French-supported efforts of the young pretender, Charles Edward, to win the thrones of Scotland and England for the Stuarts
  • The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (see Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of) in October 1748 preserved the bulk of the Austrian inheritance for Maria Theresa. Prussia remained in possession of Silesia
manhefnawi

House of Habsburg | European dynasty | Britannica.com - 0 views

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Europe's Most Formidable Dynasty the Habsburg Habsburg-Lorraine

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  • royal German family
  • of Europe from the 15th to the 20th century
  • The name Habsburg is derived from the castle of Habsburg
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • built in 1020 by Werner
  • in the Aargau
  • in what is now Switzerland
  • rebelled against the German king Otto I in 950
  • Rudolf II of Habsburg (died 1232)
  • Rudolf III’s descendants, however, sold their portion, including Laufenburg, to Albert IV’s descendants before dying out in 1408
  • Albert IV’s son Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273. It was he who, in 1282, bestowed Austria and Styria on his two sons Albert (the future German king Albert I) and Rudolf (reckoned as Rudolf II of Austria). From that date the agelong identification of the Habsburgs with Austria begins
  • the most formidable dynasty was no longer the Habsburg but the Bourbon. In the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) the rising powers that 100 years earlier had been Habsburg Spain’s principal enemies and feeble France’s most fluent encouragers
  • Apart from the Bourbon ascendancy
  • The physical debility of Charles II of Spain was such that no male heir could be expected to be born to him
  • his crowns would pass to the electoral prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, son of his niece Maria Antonia, daughter of the emperor Leopold I.
  • Charles II’s next natural heirs were the descendants (1) of his half-sister, who had married Louis XIV of France, and (2) of his father’s two sisters, of whom one had been Louis XIV’s mother and the other the emperor Leopold I’s
  • Critical tension developed: on the one hand neither the imperial Habsburgs nor their British and Dutch friends could consent to their Bourbon enemy’s acquiring the whole Spanish inheritance
  • Charles II in the meantime regarded any partition of his inheritance as a humiliation to Spain: dying in 1700, he named as his sole heir a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, the second of Louis XIV’s grandsons. The War of the Spanish Succession ensued
  • To allay British and Dutch misgivings, Leopold I and his elder son, the future emperor Joseph I, in 1703 renounced their own claims to Spain in favour of Joseph’s brother Charles, so that he might found a second line of Spanish Habsburgs distinct from the imperial
  • Sardinia, however, was exchanged by him in 1717 for Sicily, which the peacemakers of Utrecht had assigned to the House of Savoy.
  • Charles remained technically at war with Bourbon Spain until 1720
  • Meanwhile the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs’ male line and the death of his brother Joseph left Charles, in 1711, as the last male Habsburg. He had therefore to consider what should happen after his death. No woman could rule the Holy Roman Empire, and furthermore the Habsburg succession in some of the hereditary lands was assured only to the male line
  • he issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction of April 19, 1713, prescribing that, in the event of his dying sonless, the whole inheritance should pass (1) to a daughter of his, according to the rule of primogeniture, and thence to her descendants; next (2) if he himself left no daughter, to his late brother’s daughters, under the same conditions; and finally (3) if his nieces’ line was extinct, to the heirs of his paternal aunts
  • The attempt to win general recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction was Charles VI’s main concern from 1716 onward
  • By 1738, at the end of the War of the Polish Succession (in which he lost both Naples and Sicily to a Spanish Bourbon but got Parma and Piacenza
  • acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. His hopes were illusory: less than two months after his death, in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa had to face a Prussian invasion of Silesia, which unleashed the War of the Austrian Succession
  • Bavaria then promptly challenged the Habsburg position in Germany; and France’s support of Bavaria encouraged Saxony to follow suit and Spain to try to oust the Habsburgs from Lombardy
  • The War of the Austrian Succession cost Maria Theresa most of Silesia, part of Lombardy, and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza (Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748) but left her in possession of the rest of her father’s hereditary lands
  • her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who in 1737 had become hereditary grand duke of Tuscany, was finally recognized as Holy Roman emperor, with the title of Francis I. He and his descendants, of the House of Habsburg–Lorraine, are the dynastic continuators of the original Habsburgs
  • An Austro-French entente was subsequently maintained until 1792: the marriage of the archduchess Marie-Antoinette to the future Louis XVI of France (1770) was intended to confirm it
  • the Habsburgs exerted themselves to consolidate and to expand their central European bloc of territory
  • when the emperor Francis I died (1765), his eldest son, the emperor Joseph II, became coregent with his mother of the Austrian dominions, but Joseph’s brother Leopold became grand duke of Tuscany
  • The northeastward expansion of Habsburg central Europe, which came about in Joseph II’s time, was a result not so much of Joseph’s initiative as of external events: the First Partition of Poland (1772)
  • The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought a kaleidoscopic series of changes
  • On Napoleon’s downfall the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) inaugurated the Restoration, from which the battered House of Habsburg naturally benefitted
  • a brother of the Holy Roman emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, had in 1771 married the heiress of the House of Este; and Napoleon’s Habsburg consort, Marie Louise
  • The history of the House of Habsburg for the century following the Congress of Vienna is inseparable from that of the Austrian Empire
  • German, Italian, Hungarian, Slav, and Romanian—gradually eroded. The first territorial losses came in 1859, when Austria had to cede Lombardy to Sardinia–Piedmont, nucleus of the emergent kingdom of Italy
  • Next, the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, in which Prussia, exploiting German nationalism, was in alliance with Italy, forced Austria both to renounce its hopes of reviving its ancient hegemony in Germany and to cede Venetia.
  • Franz Joseph took a step intended to consolidate his “multinational empire”
  • he granted to that kingdom equal status with the Austrian Empire in what was henceforth to be the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary.
  • The ardent German nationalists of the Austrian Empire, as opposed to the Germans who were simply loyal to the Habsburgs, took the same attitude as did the Magyars
  • Remote from Austria’s national concerns but still wounding to the House of Habsburg was the fate of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian: set up by the French as emperor of Mexico in 1864
  • In 1878 Austro-Hungarian forces had “occupied” Bosnia and Herzegovina, which belonged to declining Turkey
  • World War I led to the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire. While Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Italians were all claiming their share of the spoil, nothing remained to Charles, the last emperor and king, but “German” Austria and Hungary proper
manhefnawi

Louis-Philippe | Facts, Reign, & Legacy | Britannica.com - 0 views

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France Exile and Return of Louis-Philippe duc d'Orléans

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  • Louis-Philippe was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe Joseph de Bourbon-Orléans, duc de Chartres, and Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. At first styled duc de Valois, he became duc de Chartres when his father inherited the title duc d’Orléans in 1785.
  • Despite the fact that he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the elder Louis-Philippe was arrested in Paris after his son’s desertion.
  • The execution of Philippe Égalité in November 1793 made Louis-Philippe the duc d’Orléans, and he became the centre of the Orleanist intrigues. He refused to countenance any plan to set himself up as king in France, however, possibly because he was negotiating with the revolutionaries for the release of his two brothers,
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  • the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen
  • On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.
  • Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.
  • Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition
  • when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.
  • In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a rebellion (July 27–30) that gave Louis-Philippe his long-awaited opportunity to gain power.
  • The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France. He consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing extreme monarchists (the Legitimists) on the one side and the socialists and other republicans (including the Bonapartists) on the other. The July Monarchy, with its “Citizen King,” could never command the support of all the factions, however. Its opponents resorted to political intrigue, insurrection, and even assassination plots. In July 1835 an attempt on the king’s life by Giuseppe Fieschi resulted in the deaths of 18 people and the wounding of many more, but the royal family escaped injury. Throughout Louis-Philippe’s reign, it was said that “for shooting kings there is no close[d] season.”
  • before abdicating in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, comte de Chambord. On August 7 the provisional government of deputies and peers present in Paris declared the throne vacant. Following the terminology of the Constitution of 1791, Louis-Philippe was on August 9 proclaimed “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people.” A modified version of the Charter of 1814 was issued, which the new king was obliged to accept.
  • The death of the popular duc d’Orléans in a carriage accident in July 1842 not only grieved Louis-Philippe very deeply but also seriously weakened the dynasty. The new heir to the throne, the duke’s son Philippe d’Orléans, comte de Paris, was an infant for whom a regency had to be prearranged.
  • The marriage (August 1832) of his daughter Marie-Louise to Queen Victoria’s uncle Leopold I, king of the Belgians, established an excellent relationship between Paris and London, almost foreshadowing the Entente Cordiale.
  • The British were finally alienated by Louis-Philippe’s policy on the “Spanish marriages.” In an attempt to revive the traditional family alliance between the French and Spanish Bourbons, he had at first wanted his sons Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and Antoine, duc de Montpensier, to marry Spanish Queen Isabella II and her sister and heiress presumptive, the infanta Luisa Fernanda, respectively. The British objected to this obvious threat of French predominance in Spain, and in 1843 Louis-Philippe agreed that Isabella should marry neither Henri nor the British nominee, Prince Albert’s cousin Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but rather some Spanish Bourbon instead.
  • French opposition to the regime had become much more embittered. The industrial and agricultural depression of 1846 aroused widespread popular discontent, and Louis-Philippe’s constant refusal of any electoral reform meant that many members of the lower middle class—from whom he might still have drawn support—remained without the vote. Finally, his narrow-minded conservatism and his unwillingness to seek any solution for pressing political and social problems drove many divergent interests into union against him.
  • The July Monarchy was but one casualty of the great revolutionary movement that swept through Europe in 1848. In any case, a change had come to seem unavoidable in France.
  • The July Monarchy was really an anachronism. To the French people—for whom, whether or not they favoured the institution, monarchy meant the splendours and absolutism of the ancien régime
  • In power Louis-Philippe strove to implement his desire to rule as well as to reign. The political difficulties with which he was faced revealed in him the weaknesses of an obstinate man; increasingly, his only response to crises was words and theories, and ultimately inaction lost him his crown.
malonema1

Puerto Ricans Are Struggling To Flee The Island With Their Pets | HuffPost - 0 views

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PuertoRico Crisis

shared by malonema1 on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Thousands of people are fleeing Puerto Rico as the island remains without power and the death toll continues to climb more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Even for those who can afford plane tickets and get to the airport, there’s another hurdle: evacuating with pets.  Leaving the island with animals in tow has become a huge challenge, said Sarah Barnett of the Humane Society of the United States, which has workers on the ground in Puerto Rico. The pet owners Barnett has spoken with have been “hysterical” with worry, she said.
  • Some pet owners stayed, remaining in dire conditions to care for animals. Others had to make gut-wrenching decisions. Claudia, a single mother who left for North Carolina with her baby and two dogs, left her other three dogs with a friend. She’s now desperately trying to bring those dogs to the mainland, too.
  • “They’re inundated with people wanting to fly their animals out in cargo,” Barnett said. American Airlines is accepting a limited number of pets per flight as checked baggage, and United is transporting animals through its PetSafe program.  Delta did not reply to a query about whether it is flying pets in cargo, though it previously waived fees for pets flying in the cabin from Puerto Rico. JetBlue and Southwest never transport pets in the cargo hold, though they both fly a limited number of small pets in the main cabin. A JetBlue spokesperson told HuffPost the airline has waived all in-cabin pet fees for flights out of Puerto Rico through Nov. 15, and doubled the number of pets per flight from four to eight.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Mostly, animal transport efforts are focused on bringing Puerto Rico shelter animals to mainland cities where they can be adopted. The Humane Society of the United States, in some cases working with volunteer pilots from the nonprofit Wings of Rescue, has evacuated more than 1,500 cats and dogs, as well as a few pigs.
manhefnawi

Compassionate Kings and Rebellious Princes | History Today - 0 views

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Prince of Asturias Carlos Ferdinand Charles Godoy Spain

shared by manhefnawi on 15 May 18 - No Cached
  • History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities
  • When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously
  • In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later
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  • while casting aspersions on his uncle’s illegitimate birth, often to his face, Carlos must at times have envied Don Juan’s bastard lineage and sound health
  • Don Juan of Austria
  • Another promising candidate was the widowed Mary Stuart, who escaped only to marry the despicable Darnley
  • Due to the possibility of armed insurrection in the north, Philip decided to visit his rebellious provinces in person
  • He now became openly vindictive, unstable and sullen, given to insults and unprovoked attacks on imaginary enemies
  • The threat of a divided royal house, with a maleficent Carlos rallying rebel support to his cause, was totally unacceptable to Philip
  • his father obviously had every intention of supplanting his rancorous heir-apparent should God give him another son
  • he intended to leave for Germany and the Netherlands, with or without his father’s permission
  • he stumbled down a decrepit flight of stairs in the dark, fracturing his skull
  • The strained relationship between Philip and his only son continued to deteriorate, but despite disturbing signs of the young man’s mental instability, the King remained phlegmatic
  • The King’s extended absences gave Carlos considerable latitude to prepare his escape
  • His inability to hold his tongue proved to be Philip’s salvation though at dreadful cost
  • Carlos rashly confided to Don Juan of Austria that he intended to leave Spain within the next few days. After some initial hesitation, Don Juan rode out to the Escorial on Christmas Day and informed Philip of the Prince’s decision
  • Meanwhile, Philip had returned to Madrid and was kept fully informed of his son’s designs; incredibly, he still hesitated to act
  • King Philip and five members of the Council of State made their way to the Prince’s bedchamber. The ingenious system of bolts and locks, which could be operated from his bed, had secretly been dismantled; and the startled Carlos was quickly disarmed. He guiltily assumed they had come to assassinate him, especially when his father seized a document listing the Prince’s enemies, with the King’s name at the head
  • The King was soon inured to suffering and private tragedies, and came to regard the unfounded attacks of his enemies as part of the burden he had been called upon to bear
  • Carlos’ mental equilibrium had always been precarious; and now he began to experience hallucinations. No visitors were allowed, and the Prince was kept under close surveillance, though the conditions of his detention were not too onerous
  • His fragile health was unable to withstand such sustained abuse, and an early death soon became inevitable. Philip resigned himself to his loss, and found spiritual comfort in blessing his dying
  • The death of the successor to the throne under such mysterious circumstances naturally gave rise to the wildest conjecture
  • Reasons of state were hinted at, which were assumed to involve a far-flung conspiracy of the son against his obdurate father
  • Ferdinand’s upbringing was similar to that of the ill-fated Carlos. Born on October 14th, 1784 at the Escorial, the young prince received scant affection from his parents, Charles IV and Maria Luisa, who finally ascended the throne in 1788 after a frustrating wait of twenty-three years
  • his suspicious nature and resentment towards his parents being evident from an early age
  • did not deter the calculating priest from further poisoning his charge’s distrustful mind. Ferdinand’s hatred was especially directed against his mother, Queen Maria Luisa
  • Ferdinand’s fears were not imaginary. In 1795, at the conclusion of an unsuccessful war against revolutionary France, Godoy - the monarchs’ ‘querido Manuel’ - had incredibly been granted the vainglorious title of ‘Prince of the Peace’
  • Ferdinand justifiably suspected that some machination on the part of his mother and Godoy might prevent his succession to the throne. By late 1807 his situation had become desperate
  • If the men who surround (Charles IV) here would let him know the character of Your Majesty as I know it, with what desire would not my father seek to tighten the bonds which should unite our two nations
  • Having already removed Charles’ brother from the throne of Naples, the French Emperor watched the unseemly squabbling among the Spanish Bourbons with a calculating eye to the future
  • unilateral commitment to refuse to marry ‘whoever she may be, without the consent of Your Majesty from whom alone I await the selection of my bride
  • Ferdinand’s enthusiasm at being related to the French Emperor was such that Beauharnais suggested that the Prince approach Napoleon directly in writing. Not only is it incredible that the heir-apparent would dare to discuss marriage plans with a foreign head of state; but equally so is the abject tone of the letter
  • The state in which I have found myself for some time, and which could not be hidden from the great penetration of Your Majesty
  • But full of hope in finding in Your Majesty’s magnanimity the most powerful protection
  • persistent rumours that he might appoint himself Regent on the King’s death, spurred the Prince of Asturias to frantic measures
  • august
  • The subsequent crisis, though outwardly similar to the events of 1568, was wider in scope and more tragic in its consequences. King Philip, criticized by many for his dispassionate attitude, never forfeited the esteem or the sympathy of the nation. In 1807 the position was the exact reverse; Charles IV at best was pitied as a dupe, while Maria Luisa and her paramour were held responsible for reducing Spain to the role of Napoleon’s subservient ally
  • Did Napoleon instigate the scheme to sow further dissension within the Spanish royal family, or did Beauharnais initiate it on his own account
  • Napoleon was delighted to receive Ferdinand’s letter and immediately grasped its mischief-making potential
  • Charles IV discovered his son’s treasonous correspondence
  • Godoy whose spies were everywhere
  • The ensuing scenes are reminiscent of those of 1568. The King angrily entered his son’s room, and was soon in possession not only of the damaging correspondence - apparently the Prince’s terrified gaze betrayed its hiding place - but also of the cipher needed to transcribe the coded letters
  • The Queen was distraught that Godoy was ill with a fever in Madrid at such a critical moment
  • The following day Ferdinand was formally placed under arrest with a guard of twenty-four elite soldiers
  • warning him of Godoy’s boundless ambitions and greed, enumerating his supposed crimes, his abuse of power and the royal confidence, his corruption and immorality
  • The most damning assertion was that Godoy had besmirched the King’s name and delivered Spain to her enemies
  • patriots anxious to ensure the orderly succession to the throne in the event of the King’s death
  • who imagined they had come to deliver their beloved prince from the pernicious influence of the royal favourite
  • Godoy pointed out to the King that a family reconciliation was imperative to prevent Napoleon from dividing the Spanish royal family. The King stubbornly refused to pardon his son, but finally agreed to let Godoy act as intermediary
  • Godoy saw his opportunity, and easily prevailed upon the terrified Prince to pen contrite letters to his parents, fully admitting his guilt
  • The King, moved by paternal compassion, granted his son a royal pardon, but insisted nevertheless that the other ‘conspirators’ be brought to trial and a full enquiry be convened
  • As Godoy had foreseen, Ferdinand’s immense popularity throughout the nation and the patriotic motives of the accused could only work to the detriment of the Santa Trinidad, as the reigning monarchs and the favourite were caustically referred to by the common people
  • On January 25th, 1808, to the acclaim of the public and the barely contained fury of the royal couple, the defendants were declared innocent
  • From the outset Godoy had been opposed to the trial; but this was one of the rare occasions on which both monarchs disregarded his counsel. To compound the initial error
  • Ferdinand’s defence, based on his right of legitimate succession to the throne, is persuasive as offered by Escoiquiz and the others at their trial. But whatever the provocation and dangers -real or imagined-one cannot forgive Ferdinand’s clandestine appeal to the French Emperor at such a critical moment, when Spain was threatened from outside
  • Being a King, you know how sacred are the rights of the throne; any approach of an heir apparent to a foreign sovereign is criminal
  • Napoleon assumed that the conduct and moral fibre of the Spanish royal family was representative of the entire nation
Javier E

Ben Rhodes: We Have Reached a Hinge of History - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...627049

history crisis wwII

shared by Javier E on 14 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Europe’s largest invasion since World War II is a logical outcome of Vladimir Putin’s dominance of Russian politics in the 21st century, a reminder that grievance-based ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism lead inexorably to conflict.
  • Perhaps it is no coincidence that at precisely the time when living memory of World War II is fading away, humanity has failed to heed the lessons of our worst history.
  • The corruption that enriched kleptocrats isolated them from accountability, engendering cynicism and apathy within societies.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The backlash to globalization, consumerism, and cultural homogeneity sent strongmen in search of an updated brand of identity politics.
  • After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Maria told me, “Russia had become a country that has forgotten what it means to have a history, a country that has fallen out of history.” It had become a country with a history filled with ghosts—the enormous suffering of the Soviet years, along with the sense of loss that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • New technologies facilitated the dissemination of propaganda and disinformation on a mass scale, so that it’s hard to tell where Putin’s invented pretexts end and his own motivations begin.
  • We have reached a hinge of history. At issue is not just the future of Ukraine but that of the world that will emerge on the other side of this war. If we heed the lessons of this moment, we can rebuild from the rubble a renewed international order that once again places democratic values over the more transitory impulses of profit and immediate gratification.
  • If we don’t, things could get much worse.
  • The creation of national-security states veiled the machinations of governments while providing endless justifications for defensive aggression.
  • With his attacks on Ukraine in 2014, Putin rejoined history—the history that has dominated most of humanity’s time on the planet, when nations fought wars over territory and reconquered places that had been taken away. Blood and soil
  • while his single-minded focus on corruption represented a needed change, she did not think it was sufficient
  • Instead, she said, a more radical shift had to take place. To her, this was the other side of the coin from Navalny’s interest in upending a corrupt cabal: the simple notion that politics and government had to be rooted in truth. “People are yearning for a sense of truth, for a certain sense of reality that is always being distorted. People are asking for something that is based on an ethical frame.”
  • The history that Putin had reentered was the older kind, which inevitably leads nations down rivers to the heart of darkness, borne on the currents that gave rise to fascism and communism
  • When history appeared to come to an end at the conclusion of the Cold War, the specter of another world war was lifted, and with it some of the sense of drama that Putin had tapped into.
  • As a Russian, Maria knew how this kind of history could hurt people, in ways that Americans, too often, do not. Every Russian had been touched by World War II. Every Russian family had suffered in some way through the Soviet times.
  • This was the main thing she had to tell us Americans, I realized—this warning. She felt the return of history. “I am afraid of some catastrophe that is going to happen,” she said to me in 2020, referring to her state of mind the past few years. “I feel it in my bones. I am sharing this with my compatriots: There is going to be a new war, World War III, or the gulags, or the trials.”
rachelramirez

Chapter Two: She's the face of a $200 million scam - but does she exist? - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

US economic Maria Duval scam

shared by rachelramirez on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Chapter Two: She's the face of a $200 million scam - but does she exist?
  • Her operation has raked in all this money -- more than $200 million in the United States and Canada alone, according to the U.S. government -- through a pretty simple scheme: sending heartfelt, personalized letters selling psychic readings, lucky numbers and trinkets that she promises will change people's lives.
  • One victim, whose letter is included as evidence in a U.S. government lawsuit, sent Duval more than $1,000 -- hoping her psychic abilities could help them win much-needed money.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Despite repeated investigations and plenty of evidence that her psychic claims are pure fiction, we have not been able to find a single government agency -- in the U.S. or abroad -- that has ever been able to corner Duval for questioning
  • She signed a settlement with the U.S. Postal Service in 2007 in which she denied any wrongdoing, but no one associated with the case would tell us where the signature came from.
  • One of the last recorded sightings of this same woman was a high-profile appearance in Russia in 2008. It was there that she predicted that an African-American would become president of the United States (just a few weeks before the election took place).
malonema1

Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley - TODAY.com - 0 views

www.today.com/...ting-nikki-haley-1212661827918

trump politics US

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley
  • President Trump is walking back plans to impose new economic sanctions against Russia announced Sunday by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. 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  • Amid the historic developments formally ending the Korean War, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to close down a nuclear test site in May. 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  • ...1 more annotation...
  • North Korea to close down nuclear test site in May
manhefnawi

War of the Polish Succession | European history | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...War-of-the-Polish-Succession

Augustus II Charles III Poland Leszczyński

shared by manhefnawi on 16 May 18 - No Cached
  • War of the Polish Succession, (1733–38), general European conflict waged ostensibly to determine the successor of the king of Poland, Augustus II the Strong
  • The war resulted mainly in a redistribution of Italian territory and an increase in Russian influence over Polish affairs
  • After Augustus died (Feb. 1, 1733), Austria and Russia supported the election of his son Frederick Augustus II of Saxony as king of Poland
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • who had been their king (1704–09) when the Swedes had temporarily forced Augustus II to be deposed and who also had become connected to France via the marriage of his daughter Marie to King Louis XV
  • Lombardy, which remained a Habsburg possession
  • But when a Russian army of 30,000 approached Warsaw, Leszczyński fled to Gdańsk, and another sejm of 3,000 delegates named Frederick Augustus as Poland’s new king, Augustus III (Oct. 5, 1733). France consequently formed anti-Habsburg alliances with Sardinia-Savoy (September 26) and Spain (November 7) and declared war on Austria (October 10)
  • It provided for Augustus to remain king of Poland. In addition, Don Carlos was to retain Naples-Sicily but had to give Austria both Parma and Piacenza, which he had inherited in 1731,
  • Don Carlos, the Spanish infante, led a Spanish army of 40,000 across Tuscany and the Papal States to Naples, defeated the Austrians at Bitonto (May 25, 1734), conquered Sicily, and was crowned king of Naples and Sicily as Charles III.
  • Leszczyński renounced the crown
  • On Nov. 18, 1738, France and Austria signed the final Treaty of Vienna, in which the provisions of the preliminary agreement were confirmed and in which France also conditionally guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, by which Holy Roman emperor Charles VI named his daughter, the Austrian archduchess Maria Theresa, as the heiress to his Habsburg lands
manhefnawi

Poland - Augustus II | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...Augustus-II

Saxony Russia Peter I Catherine Battle of Poltava Poland Charles XII Sweden

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  • A personal union with Saxony, where Augustus II was a strong ruler, seemed at first to offer some advantages to Poland. A king with a power base of his own might reform the Commonwealth, which was still a huge state and potentially a great power. But such hopes proved vain. Pursuing schemes of dynastic greatness, Augustus II involved unwilling Poland in a coalition war against Charles XII of Sweden that proved disastrous. In 1702 Charles invaded the country, forced Augustus out, and staged an election of the youthful Stanisław I Leszczyński as king.
  • The country, split between two rival monarchs, plunged into chaos. The slowly proceeding demographic and economic recovery was reversed as the looting armies and an outbreak of bubonic plague decimated the people. A crushing defeat of Sweden by Peter I (the Great) of Russia at the Battle of Poltava (Ukraine, Russian Empire) in 1709 eventually restored Augustus to the throne but made him dependent on the tsar.
  • He was even suspected of plotting partitions of the Commonwealth. During the remaining years of his reign, Augustus’s main preoccupation was to ensure the succession of his son.
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  • Upon Augustus’s death in 1733, Stanisław I, seen this time as a symbol of Poland’s independence and supported by France (his daughter, Marie Leszczyńska, married Louis XV), was elected once again. The counterelection of Augustus III followed, and Russian troops drove Stanisław out of the country. He abdicated, receiving as compensation (after the so-called War of the Polish Succession) the duchy of Lorraine.
  • The reign of Augustus III (1733–63)—during which 5 out of 15 Sejms were dissolved while the remainder took no decisions—witnessed the nadir of Polish statehood. The Commonwealth no longer could be counted as an independent participant in international relations; the king’s diplomacy was conducted from Dresden in Saxony. Poland passively watched the once-Polish territory of Silesia pass from the Habsburgs to Prussia as a result of the War of the Austrian Succession. Prussia, under Frederick II (the Great), whose grandfather had already been recognized in 1701 as “king in Prussia” by Augustus II, was becoming a great power. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Austrian and Russian troops marched through Poland, and Frederick flooded the country with counterfeit money. The Commonwealth was being treated as a wayside inn.
  • Rising from the middle nobility (though his mother was a Czartoryska), the candidate was handpicked by Catherine II (the Great) of Russia not only because he had been her lover but because she felt that he would be completely dependent on her.
  • The king’s adroitness and personal charm allowed him in time to win over some of his adversaries, but he lacked a strong will and showed none of the military inclination so cherished by the Poles.
  • The king’s policies, however, were constantly undermined by neighbouring powers. Frederick II’s view that Poland ought to be kept in lethargy was shared by St. Petersburg, which sought to isolate Stanisław by encouraging both religious dissenters (i.e., non-Catholics) and the conservative circles to form confederations. The presence of Russian troops terrorized the Sejm, and Russia formally guaranteed as immutable such principles of Polish politics as liberum veto, elective monarchy, and dominance of the szlachta.
  • Austria, which had opposed the scheme (Maria Theresa had found it immoral), unwittingly created a precedent by annexing some Polish border areas.
manhefnawi

Portugal - The house of Aviz, 1383-1580 | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...The-house-of-Aviz-1383-1580

Iberian Peninsula Philip III Edward Ferdinand Isabela France Louis XI John II Manuel Spain Sebastian

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  • The legitimate male line of Henry of Burgundy ended at Ferdinand’s death,
  • Although much outnumbered, the Portuguese won the great Battle of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), in which the Castilian chivalry was dispersed and John of Castile himself barely escaped.
  • The Treaty of Windsor, concluded on May 9, 1386, raised the Anglo-Portuguese connection to the status of a firm, binding, and permanent alliance between the two crowns. John of Gaunt duly went to the Iberian Peninsula in July 1386 and attempted an invasion of Castile in conjunction with John I.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The victory of John I may be regarded as a triumph of the national spirit over the feudal attachment to established order. Because much of the older nobility sided with Castile, John rewarded his followers at their expense and the crown’s. Meanwhile, commerce prospered, and the marriage of John’s daughter Isabella to Philip III (the Good) of Burgundy was to be followed by the growth of close trading relations between Portugal and Philip’s county of Flanders.
  • In 1437, during the short reign of John’s eldest son, Edward (Duarte; 1433–38), an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Tangier was made by John’s third son, Prince Henry the Navigator, and his younger brother Ferdinand (who was captured by the Moors and died, still unransomed, in 1443). Edward’s son Afonso V (1438–81) was still a child when Edward died, and Edward’s brother Pedro, duke of Coimbra (Dom Pedro), had himself made regent (1440) instead of the widow, Leonor of Aragon.
  • Having married Joan, daughter of Henry IV of Castile, Afonso laid claim to the Castilian throne and became involved in a lengthy struggle with Ferdinand and Isabella in the region of Zamora and Toro, where he was defeated in 1476. He then sailed to France in a failed attempt to enlist the support of Louis XI, and on his return he concluded with Castile the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), abandoning the claims of his wife. Afonso never recovered from his reverse, and during his last years his son John administered the kingdom.
  • John II (1481–95) was as cautious, firm, and jealous of royal power as his father had been openhanded and negligent.
  • his forces departed in June 1578 and on August 4 were utterly destroyed by the Moors in the Battle of the Three Kings near Alcazarquivir (Ksar el-Kebir). Sebastian and some 8,000 of his forces were killed, some 15,000 were captured, and only a handful escaped.
  • As a condition of his marriage to Isabella, Manuel was required to “purify” Portugal of Jews. After Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, John II had admitted many Jewish refugees; he had taxed the Jews heavily but was also to supply ships for them to leave Portugal.
  • If Manuel failed to realize his dream of ruling Spain, his son John III (1521–57) lacked the power to resist Castilian influence.
  • In 1529 the settlement by the Treaty of Zaragoza (Saragossa) of a dispute over the possession of the Moluccas (an island group part of present-day Indonesia) removed an obstacle to Portuguese-Spanish understanding, and the line dividing Portuguese and Spanish interests in the New World (established by the Treaty of Tordesillas) was matched by a similar line in the Pacific.
  • John III was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian (1557–78), then only three years old. As a child Sebastian became obsessed with the idea of a Crusade against Morocco.
  • Predeceased by his legitimate son, John II was succeeded by his cousin the duke of Beja, as Manuel I (1495–1521), known as “the Fortunate.” Manuel, who assumed the title of “Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of India, Ethiopia, Arabia, and Persia,” inherited, because of the work of John II, a firmly established autocratic monarchy and a rapidly expanding overseas empire. Drawn toward Spain by the common need to defend their overseas interests as defined by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Manuel nourished the hope that the whole peninsula could be united under the house of Aviz; to that end he married Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. However, she died in 1498 while giving birth to a son, Miguel da Paz. This child, recognized as heir to Portugal, Castile, and Aragon, died in infancy. Manuel then married Isabella’s sister Maria (died 1517) and eventually Eleanor, sister of the emperor Charles V.
  • Sebastian was succeeded by his great-uncle, Cardinal Henry (1578–80), a brother of John III. His age and celibacy made it certain that the Portuguese throne would soon pass from the direct line of Aviz. Philip II of Spain, nephew of John III and husband (by his first marriage) of John’s daughter Maria
davisem

Trump attacks San Juan mayor over hurricane response - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by davisem on 30 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack Saturday morning on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz for "poor leadership ability," saying she and others in Puerto Rico "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort."
  • "This is the time to show our 'true colors,'" she wrote. "We cannot be distracted by anything else."
  • The President again praised the federal government's response on the island, which is grappling with the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria, saying the 10,000 federal workers there were doing a "fantastic job."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Trump administration has repeatedly lauded the federal government's response to Maria, despite criticism from some that the administration has not been as engaged in the recovery efforts to this storm as he was for the recent hurricanes that battered Texas and Florida.
  • "Fake News CNN and NBC are going out of their way to disparage our great First Responders as a way to 'get Trump,'" he tweeted. "Not fair to FR or effort!"
g-dragon

Zheng He's Treasure Ships of the Ming Dynasty - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/heng-hes-treasure-ships-195235

Zheng He treasure ships

shared by g-dragon on 24 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Between 1405 and 1433, Ming China under the rule of Zhu Di, sent out enormous armadas of ships into the Indian Ocean commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He.
  • dwarfed European ships of that century — even Christopher Columbus's flagship, the "Santa Maria," was between 1/4 and 1/5 the size of Zheng He's.
  • Along with dozens of baoshan, each armada included hundreds of smaller ships.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Drastically changing the face of Indian Ocean trade and power, these fleets embarked on seven epic voyages under Zheng He's guidance, resulting in a rapid expansion of Ming China's control in the region, but also of their struggle to maintain it in years to come due to the financial burden of such endeavors.
  • The eight-masted ships, called "machuan" or "horse ships
  • Seven-masted "liangchuan" or grain ships carried rice and other food for the crew and soldiers in the fleet.
  • Finally, the small, five-masted warships or "zhanchuan," each about 165 feet long, were designed to be maneuverable in battle. Though tiny compared with the baochuan, the zhanchuan were more than twice as long as Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria.
  • Why did Zheng He need so many huge ships? One reason, of course, was "shock and awe." The sight of these enormous ships appearing on the horizon one by one must have been truly incredible for the people all along the Indian Ocean's rim and would have enhanced Ming China's prestige immeasurably.
  • The other reason was that Zheng He traveled with an estimated 27,000 to 28,000 sailors, marines, translators and other crew members. Along with their horses, rice, drinking water and trade goods, that number of people required a staggering amount of room aboard ship. In addition, they had to make space for the emissaries, tribute goods and wild animals that went back to China.
  • g-dragon on 24 Oct 17
     
    A history of Zheng He's fleet. It is intresting to see how enormus these ships were compared to Columbus' and how the Ming Dynasty used their massive navel power mainly to trade instead of colonize like the Europeans. It brings up the question, 'what if the Colombian exchange occurred by Zheng He instead of Columbus?'
Javier E

Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It's time to take the fight to the Murdochs. Her... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html

fox news democracy corporations influence murdoch crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 24 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Apparently, at a network that specializes in spreading lies, there was a price to pay for getting it right.
  • In recent days, Fox has taken a sharp turn toward a more extreme approach as it confronts a post-Trump ratings dip — the result of some of its farthest-right viewers moving to outlets such as Newsmax and One America News and some middle-of-the-roaders apparently finding CNN or MSNBC more to their liking.
  • the network has decided to add an hour of opinion programming to its prime-time offerings. The 7 p.m. hour will no longer be nominally news but straight-up outrage production.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • And in a move that should be shocking but isn’t, one of those who will rotate through the tryouts for that coveted spot will be Maria Bartiromo, whose Trump sycophancy during the campaign may well have been unparalleled
  • At the same time, Sean Hannity, who likes to blast Biden as “cognitively struggling,” and Tucker Carlson, who tries to sow doubt about the prevalence of White supremacy, have become even more outlandish as they try to gin up anti-Biden rage within their audiences.
  • How to get the Fox News monster under control? I do not believe the government should have any role in regulating what can and can’t be said on the air, although I often hear that proposed. That would be a cure worse than the disease
  • No, the only answer is to speak the language that the bigwigs at Fox will understand: Ratings. Advertising dollars. Profit.
  • Corporations that advertise on Fox News should walk away, and citizens who care about the truth should demand that they do so
  • The Post reported last week that the 147 Republican lawmakers who opposed certification of the presidential election have lost the support of many of their largest corporate backers. General Electric, AT&T, Comcast, Honeywell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Verizon all said they would suspend donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden as president.
  • This shows, at the very least, that there is a growing understanding that lying to the public matters, that it’s harmful
niicho

Renaissance Nun's 'Last Supper' Painting Makes Public Debut After 450 Years in Hiding |... - 0 views

www.smithsonianmag.com/...e-goes-view-florence-180973374

history art news public foreign

shared by niicho on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • round 1568, Florentine nun Plautilla Nelli—a self-taught painter who ran an all-woman artists’ workshop out of her convent—embarked on her most ambitious project yet: a monumental Last Supper scene featuring life-size depictions of Jesus and the 12 Apostles.
  • The Florentine monastery of Santa Maria Novella acquired the painting in 1817, housing it in the refectory before moving it to a new location around 1865. In 1911, scholar Giovanna Pierattini reported, the portable panel was “removed from its stretcher, rolled up and moved to a warehouse, where it remained neglected for almost three decades.”
  • Plautilla’s Last Supper remained in storage until 1939, when it underwent significant restoration. Returned to the refectory, the painting sustained slight damage during the momentous flooding of Florence in
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • but escaped largely unscathed. Upon the refectory’s reclassification as the Santa Maria Novella Museum in 1982, the work was transferred to the friars’ private rooms, where it was kept until scholars intervened in the 1990s.
kennyn-77

Power Outages Plague Puerto Rico Despite LUMA Takeover - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-rico-electricity-protest.html

puerto rico new york times electricity crisis blackout

shared by kennyn-77 on 29 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • our years after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico’s electrical grid a shambles and the entire island in the dark, residents had expected their fragile power system to be stronger now. Instead, unreliable electricity remains frustratingly common, hindering economic development and daily life.
  • Surging demand in August and September led to rolling blackouts affecting a majority of the island’s 1.5 million electrical customers.
  • Last week, several thousand people marched along a main highway in San Juan, the capital, blocking traffic with the latest in a series of protests over the seemingly unending electricity problems plaguing the island.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • aging equipment, lack of maintenance and past mismanagement and corruption of an inefficient system.
  • We’re in 2021. We have internet on our TV. Why don’t we have electricity?”
  • Many Puerto Ricans are diabetic and need refrigerated insulin to survive. The coronavirus pandemic has also put some people on respiratory therapies requiring electrical power at home for oxygen machines. Some Puerto Ricans are still studying or working at home.
  • The system is so frail that a power plant recently went offline because sargassum — seaweed — blocked its filters.
  • Crews patched Puerto Rico’s grid with $3.2 billion in emergency repairs after Hurricane Maria, which shredded the island’s power lines as a Category 4 storm in September 2017. Congress earmarked about $10 billion through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuild the system. Those projects will be contracted out by the new consortium, with the aim of restoring the grid to how it was before the storm, with some modernization.
  • LUMA took over in June, with its top officials saying they were prepared to handle a Category 2 hurricane. (None have hit the island this year.) Almost immediately, huge outages began.
  • “The Puerto Rico electric system is arguably the worst in the United States and has been for a very long time, even prior to the devastating hurricanes in 2017,” Mr. Stensby said.
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