title: History of Africa

text: The Niger Delta comprised numerous city-states with numerous forms of government. These city-states were protected by the waterways and thick vegetation of the delta. The region was transformed by trade in the 17th century. The delta's city-states were comparable to those of the Swahili people in East Africa. Some, like Bonny, Kalabari, and Warri, had kings. Others, like Brass, were republics with small senates, and those at Cross River and Old Calabar were ruled by merchants of the "ekpe" society. The "ekpe" society regulated trade and made rules for members known as house systems. Some of these houses, like the Pepples of Bonny, were well known in the Americas and Europe.


title: History of Africa

text: The Igbo lived east of the delta (but with the Anioma on the west of the Niger River). The Kingdom of Nri rose in the 9th century, with the "Eze" Nri being its leader. It was a political entity composed of villages, and each village was autonomous and independent with its own territory and name, each recognized by its neighbors. Villages were democratic with all males and sometimes females a part of the decision-making process. Graves at Igbo-Ukwu (800 AD) contained brass artifacts of local manufacture and glass beads from Egypt or India, indicative of extraregional trade.


title: History of Africa

text: By the 1850s, British and German missionaries and traders had penetrated present-day Namibia. The Herero and Nama peoples competed for guns and ammunition, providing cattle, ivory, and ostrich feathers. The Germans were more firmly established than the British in the region. By 1884, the Germans declared the coastal region from the Orange River to the Kunene River a German protectorate, part of German South West Africa. They pursued an aggressive policy of land expansion for white settlements. They exploited rivalry between the Nama and Herero.


title: History of Africa

text: The Herero entered into an alliance with the Germans, thinking they could get an upper hand on the Nama. The Germans set up a garrison at the Herero capital and started allocating Herero land for white settlements, including the best grazing land in the central plateau, and made tax and labor demands. The Herero and Ovambanderu rebelled, but the rebellion was crushed and leaders were executed. Between 1896 and 1897, rinderpest impaired the Herero and Nama economy and slowed white expansion. The Germans continued the policy of making Namibia a white settlement by seizing land and cattle, and even trying to export Herero labor to South Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1904, the Herero rebelled again. German General Lothar von Trotha implemented an extermination policy at the Battle of Waterberg, which drove the Herero west of the Kalahari Desert. At the end of 1905, only 16,000 Herero were alive, out of a previous population of 80,000. Nama resistance was crushed in 1907. All Nama and Herero cattle and land were confiscated from the very diminished population, with remaining Nama and Herero assuming a subordinate position. Labor had to be imported from among the Ovambo.


title: History of Africa

text: A moment of great disorder in southern Africa was the "Mfecane", "the crushing." It was started by the northern Nguni kingdoms of Mthethwa, Ndwandwe, and Swaziland over scarce resource and famine. When Dingiswayo of Mthethwa died, Shaka of the Zulu people took over. He established the Zulu Kingdom, asserting authority over the Ndwandwe and pushing the Swazi north. The scattering Ndwandwe and Swazi caused the Mfecane to spread. During the 1820s, Shaka expanded the empire all along the Drakensberg foothills, with tribute being paid as far south as the Tugela and Umzimkulu rivers. He replaced the chiefs of conquered polities with "indunas", responsible to him. He introduced a centralized, dedicated, and disciplined military force not seen in the region, with a new weapon in the short stabbing-spear.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1828, Shaka was assassinated by his half brother Dingane, who lacked the military genius and leadership skills of Shaka. Voortrekkers tried to occupy Zulu land in 1838. In the early months they were defeated, but the survivors regrouped at the Ncome River and soundly defeated the Zulu. However, the Voortrekkers dared not settle Zulu land. Dingane was killed in 1840 during a civil war. His brother Mpande took over and strengthened Zulu territories to the north. In 1879 the Zulu Kingdom was invaded by Britain in a quest to control all of South Africa. The Zulu Kingdom was victorious at the Battle of Isandlwana but was defeated at the Battle of Ulundi.


title: History of Africa

text: One of the major states to emerge from the Mfecane was the Sotho Kingdom founded at Thaba Bosiu by Moshoeshoe I around 1821 to 1822. It was a confederation of different polities that accepted the absolute authority of Moshoeshoe. During the 1830s, the kingdom invited missionaries as a strategic means of acquiring guns and horses from the Cape. The Orange Free State slowly diminished the kingdom but never completely defeated it. In 1868, Moshoeshoe asked that the Sotho Kingdom be annexed by Britain, to save the remnant. It became the British protectorate of Basutoland.


title: History of Africa

text: The arrival of the ancestors of the Tswana-speakers who came to control the region (from the Vaal River to Botswana) has yet to be dated precisely although AD 600 seems to be a consensus estimate. This massive cattle-raising complex prospered until 1300 AD or so. All these various peoples were connected to trade routes that ran via the Limpopo River to the Indian Ocean, and trade goods from Asia such as beads made their way to Botswana most likely in exchange for ivory, gold, and rhinoceros horn. The first written records relating to modern-day Botswana appear in 1824. What these records show is that the Bangwaketse had become the predominant power in the region. Under the rule of Makaba II, the Bangwaketse kept vast herds of cattle in well-protected desert areas, and used their military prowess to raid their neighbours. Other chiefdoms in the area, by this time, had capitals of 10,000 or so and were fairly prosperous. This equilibrium came to end during the Mfecane period, 1823–1843, when a succession of invading peoples from South Africa entered the country. Although the Bangwaketse were able to defeat the invading Bakololo in 1826, over time all the major chiefdoms in Botswana were attacked, weakened, and impoverished. The Bakololo and Amandebele raided repeatedly, and took large numbers of cattle, women, and children from the Batswana—most of whom were driven into the desert or sanctuary areas such as hilltops and caves. Only after 1843, when the Amandebele moved into western Zimbabwe, did this threat subside. During the 1840s and 1850s trade with Cape Colony-based merchants opened up and enabled the Batswana chiefdoms to rebuild. The Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Bangwato and Batawana cooperated to control the lucrative ivory trade, and then used the proceeds to import horses and guns, which in turn enabled them to establish control over what is now Botswana. This process was largely complete by 1880, and thus the Bushmen, the Bakalanga, the Bakgalagadi, the Batswapong and other current minorities were subjugated by the Batswana. Following the Great Trek, Afrikaners from the Cape Colony established themselves on the borders of Botswana in the Transvaal. In 1852 a coalition of Tswana chiefdoms led by Sechele I resisted Afrikaner incursions, and after about eight years of intermittent tensions and hostilities, eventually came to a peace agreement in Potchefstroom in 1860. From that point on, the modern-day border between South Africa and Botswana was agreed on, and the Afrikaners and Batswana traded and worked together peacefully. In the 1820s, refugees from the Zulu expansion under Shaka came into contact with the Basotho people residing on the highveld. In 1823, those pressures caused one group of Basotho, the Kololo, to migrate north, past the Okavango Swamp and across the Zambezi into Barotseland, now part of Zambia. In 1845, the Kololo conquered Barotseland.


title: History of Africa

text: At about the same time, the Boers began to encroach upon Basotho territory. After the Cape Colony had been ceded to Britain at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the "voortrekkers" ("pioneers") were farmers who opted to leave the former Dutch colony and moved inland where they eventually established independent polities.


title: History of Africa

text: At the time of these developments, Moshoeshoe I gained control of the Basotho kingdoms of the southern Highveld. Universally praised as a skilled diplomat and strategist, he was able to wield the disparate refugee groups escaping the Difaqane into a cohesive nation. His inspired leadership helped his small nation to survive the dangers and pitfalls (the Zulu hegemony, the inward expansion of the voortrekkers and the designs of imperial Britain) that destroyed other indigenous South African kingdoms during the 19th century.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1822, Moshoeshoe established his capital at Butha-Buthe, an easily defensible mountain in the northern Drakensberg mountains, laying the foundations of the eventual Kingdom of Lesotho. His capital was later moved to Thaba Bosiu.


title: History of Africa

text: To deal with the encroaching voortrekker groups, Moshoeshoe encouraged French missionary activity in his kingdom. Missionaries sent by the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society provided the King with foreign affairs counsel and helped to facilitate the purchase of modern weapons.


title: History of Africa

text: Aside from acting as state ministers, missionaries (primarily Casalis and Arbousset) played a vital role in delineating Sesotho orthography and printing Sesotho language materials between 1837 and 1855. The first Sesotho translation of the Bible appeared in 1878.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1868, after losing the western lowlands to the Boers during the Free State–Basotho Wars; Moshoeshoe successfully appealed to Queen Victoria to proclaim Lesotho (then known as Basutoland) a protectorate of Britain and the British administration was placed in Maseru, the site of Lesotho's current capital. Local chieftains retained power over internal affairs while Britain was responsible for foreign affairs and the defence of the protectorate. In 1869, the British sponsored a process by which the borders of Basutoland were finally demarcated. While many clans had territory within Basutoland, large numbers of Sesotho speakers resided in areas allocated to the Orange Free State, the sovereign voortrekker republic that bordered the Basotho kingdom.


title: History of Africa

text: By the 19th century, most Khoikhoi territory was under Boer control. The Khoikhoi had lost economic and political independence and had been absorbed into Boer society. The Boers spoke Afrikaans, a language or dialect derived from Dutch, and no longer called themselves Boers but Afrikaners. Some Khoikhoi were used as commandos in raids against other Khoikhoi and later Xhosa. A mixed Khoi, slave, and European population called the Cape Coloureds, who were outcasts within colonial society, also arose. Khoikhoi who lived far on the frontier included the Kora, Oorlams, and Griqua. In 1795, the British took over the cape colony from the Dutch.


title: History of Africa

text: In the 1830s, Boers embarked on a journey of expansion, east of the Great Fish River into the Zuurveld. They were referred to as "Voortrekkers". They founded republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, mostly in areas of sparse population that had been diminished by the "Mfecane/Difaqane". Unlike the Khoisan, the Bantu states were not conquered by the Afrikaners, because of population density and greater unity. Additionally, they began to arm themselves with guns acquired through trade at the cape. In some cases, as in the Xhosa/Boer Wars, Boers were removed from Xhosa lands. It required a dedicated imperial military force to subdue the Bantu-speaking states. In 1901, the Boer republics were defeated by Britain in the Second Boer War. The defeat however consummated many Afrikaners' ambition: South Africa would be under white rule. The British placed all power—legislative, executive, administrative—in English and Afrikaner hands.


title: History of Africa

text: Between 1878 and 1898, European states partitioned and conquered most of Africa. For 400 years, European nations had mainly limited their involvement to trading stations on the African coast. Few dared venture inland from the coast; those that did, like the Portuguese, often met defeats and had to retreat to the coast. Several technological innovations helped to overcome this 400-year pattern. One was the development of repeating rifles, which were easier and quicker to load than muskets. Artillery was being used increasingly. In 1885, Hiram S. Maxim developed the maxim gun, the model of the modern-day machine gun. European states kept these weapons largely among themselves by refusing to sell these weapons to African leaders.


title: History of Africa

text: African germs took numerous European lives and deterred permanent settlements. Diseases such as yellow fever, sleeping sickness, yaws, and leprosy made Africa a very inhospitable place for Europeans. The deadliest disease was malaria, endemic throughout Tropical Africa. In 1854, the discovery of quinine and other medical innovations helped to make conquest and colonization in Africa possible.


title: History of Africa

text: Strong motives for conquest of Africa were at play. Raw materials were needed for European factories. Europe in the early part of the 19th century was undergoing its Industrial Revolution. Nationalist rivalries and prestige were at play. Acquiring African colonies would show rivals that a nation was powerful and significant. These factors culminated in the Scramble for Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: Knowledge of Africa increased. Numerous European explorers began to explore the continent. Mungo Park traversed the Niger River. James Bruce travelled through Ethiopia and located the source of the Blue Nile. Richard Francis Burton was the first European at Lake Tanganyika. Samuel White Baker explored the Upper Nile. John Hanning Speke located a source of the Nile at Lake Victoria. Other significant European explorers included Heinrich Barth, Henry Morton Stanley (coiner of the term "Dark Continent" for Africa in an 1878 book), Silva Porto, Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, Rene Caille, Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs, Gustav Nachtigal, George Schweinfurth, and Joseph Thomson. The most famous of the explorers was David Livingstone, who explored southern Africa and traversed the continent from the Atlantic at Luanda to the Indian Ocean at Quelimane. European explorers made use of African guides and servants, and established long-distance trading routes.


title: History of Africa

text: Missionaries attempting to spread Christianity also increased European knowledge of Africa. Between 1884 and 1885, European nations met at the Berlin West Africa Conference to discuss the partitioning of Africa. It was agreed that European claims to parts of Africa would only be recognised if Europeans provided effective occupation. In a series of treaties in 1890–1891, colonial boundaries were completely drawn. All of Sub-Saharan Africa was claimed by European powers, except for Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and Liberia.


title: History of Africa

text: The European powers set up a variety of different administrations in Africa, reflecting different ambitions and degrees of power. In some areas, such as parts of British West Africa, colonial control was tenuous and intended for simple economic extraction, strategic power, or as part of a long-term development plan. In other areas, Europeans were encouraged to settle, creating settler states in which a European minority dominated. Settlers only came to a few colonies in sufficient numbers to have a strong impact. British settler colonies included British East Africa (now Kenya), Northern and Southern Rhodesia, (Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively), and South Africa, which already had a significant population of European settlers, the Boers. France planned to settle Algeria and eventually incorporate it into the French state on an equal basis with the European provinces. Algeria's proximity across the Mediterranean allowed plans of this scale.


title: History of Africa

text: In most areas colonial administrations did not have the manpower or resources to fully administer the territory and had to rely on local power structures to help them. Various factions and groups within the societies exploited this European requirement for their own purposes, attempting to gain positions of power within their own communities by cooperating with Europeans. One aspect of this struggle included what Terence Ranger has termed the "invention of tradition." In order to legitimize their own claims to power in the eyes of both the colonial administrators and their own people, native elites would essentially manufacture "traditional" claims to power, or ceremonies. As a result, many societies were thrown into disarray by the new order.


title: History of Africa

text: Following the Scramble for Africa, an early but secondary focus for most colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. By the end of the colonial period they were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: As a part of the Scramble for Africa, France had the establishment of a continuous west–east axis of the continent as an objective, in contrast with the British north–south axis. Tensions between Britain and France reached tinder stage in Africa. At several points war was possible, but never happened. The most serious episode was the Fashoda Incident of 1898. French troops tried to claim an area in the Southern Sudan, and a much more powerful British force purporting to be acting in the interests of the Khedive of Egypt arrived to confront them. Under heavy pressure the French withdrew securing British control over the area. The status quo was recognised by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco, but France suffered a humiliating defeat overall.


title: History of Africa

text: In the 1880s the European powers had divided up almost all of Africa (only Ethiopia and Liberia were independent). They ruled until after World War II when forces of nationalism grew much stronger. In the 1950s and 1960s the colonial holdings became independent states. The process was usually peaceful but there were several long bitter bloody civil wars, as in Algeria, Kenya and elsewhere. Across Africa the powerful new force of nationalism drew upon the organizational skills that natives learned in the British and French and other armies in the world wars. It led to organizations that were not controlled by or endorsed by either the colonial powers not the traditional local power structures that were collaborating with the colonial powers. Nationalistic organizations began to challenge both the traditional and the new colonial structures and finally displaced them. Leaders of nationalist movements took control when the European authorities exited; many ruled for decades or until they died off. These structures included political, educational, religious, and other social organizations. In recent decades, many African countries have undergone the triumph and defeat of nationalistic fervor, changing in the process the loci of the centralizing state power and patrimonial state.


title: History of Africa

text: With the vast majority of the continent under the colonial control of European governments, the World Wars were significant events in the geopolitical history of Africa. Africa was a theater of war and saw fighting in both wars. More important in most regions, the total war footing of colonial powers impacted the governance of African colonies, through resource allocation, conscription, and taxation. In World War I there were several campaigns in Africa, including the Togoland Campaign, the Kamerun Campaign, the South West Africa campaign, and the East African campaign. In each, Allied forces, primarily British, but also French, Belgian, South African, and Portuguese, sought to force the Germans out of their African colonies. In each, German forces were badly outnumbered and, due to Allied naval superiority, were cut off from reinforcement or resupply. The Allies eventually conquered all German colonies; German forces in East Africa managed to avoid surrender throughout the war, though they could not hold any territory after 1917. After World War I, former German colonies in Africa were taken over by France, Belgium, and the British Empire.


title: History of Africa

text: After World War I, colonial powers continued to consolidate their control over their African territories. In some areas, particularly in Southern and East Africa, large settler populations were successful in pressing for additional devolution of administration, so-called "home rule" by the white settlers. In many cases, settler regimes were harsher on African populations, tending to see them more as a threat to political power, as opposed to colonial regimes which had generally endeavored to co-opt local populations into economic production. The Great Depression strongly affected Africa's non-subsistence economy, much of which was based on commodity production for Western markets. As demand increased in the late 1930s, Africa's economy rebounded as well.


title: History of Africa

text: Africa was the site of one of the first instances of fascist territorial expansions in the 1930s. Italy had attempted to conquer Ethiopia in the 1890s but had been rebuffed in the First Italo-Ethiopian War. Ethiopia lay between two Italian colonies, Italian Somaliland and Eritrea and was invaded in October 1935. With an overwhelming advantage in armor and aircraft, by May 1936, Italian forces had occupied the capital of Addis Ababa and effectively declared victory. Ethiopia and their other colonies were consolidated into Italian East Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: Africa was a large continent whose geography gave it strategic importance during the war. North Africa was the scene of major British and American campaigns against Italy and Germany; East Africa was the scene of a major British campaign against Italy. The vast geography provided major transportation routes linking the United States to the Middle East and Mediterranean regions. The sea route around South Africa was heavily used even though it added 40 days to voyages that had to avoid the dangerous Suez region. Lend Lease supplies to Russia often came this way. Internally, long-distance road and railroad connections facilitated the British war effort. The Union of South Africa had dominion status and was largely self-governing, the other British possessions were ruled by the colonial office, usually with close ties to local chiefs and kings. Italian holdings were the target of successful British military campaigns. The Belgian Congo, and two other Belgian colonies, were major exporters. In terms of numbers and wealth, the British -controlled the richest portions of Africa, and made extensive use not only of the geography, but the manpower, and the natural resources. Civilian colonial officials made a special effort to upgrade the African infrastructure, promote agriculture, integrate colonial Africa with the world economy, and recruit over a half million soldiers.


title: History of Africa

text: Before the war, Britain had made few plans for the utilization of Africa, but it quickly set up command structures. The Army set up the West Africa Command, which recruited 200,000 soldiers. The East Africa Command was created in September 1941 to support the overstretched Middle East Command. It provided the largest number of men, over 320,000, chiefly from Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda. The Southern Command was the domain of South Africa. The Royal Navy set up the South Atlantic Command based in Sierra Leone, that became one of the main convoy assembly points. The RAF Coastal Command had major submarine-hunting operations based in West Africa, while a smaller RAF command Dealt with submarines in the Indian Ocean. Ferrying aircraft from North America and Britain was the major mission of the Western Desert Air Force. In addition smaller more localized commands were set up throughout the war.


title: History of Africa

text: Before 1939, the military establishments were very small throughout British Africa, and largely consisted of whites, who comprised under two percent of the population outside South Africa. As soon as the war began, newly created African units were set up, primarily by the Army. The new recruits were almost always volunteers, usually provided in close cooperation with local tribal leaders. During the war, military pay scales far exceeded what civilians natives could earn, especially when food, housing and clothing allowances are included. The largest numbers were in construction units, called Pioneer units, with over 82,000 soldiers. The RAF and Navy also did some recruiting. The volunteers did some fighting, a great deal of guard duty, and construction work. 80,000 served in the Middle East. A special effort was made not to challenge white supremacy, certainly before the war, and to a large extent during the war itself. Nevertheless, the soldiers were drilled and train to European standards, given strong doses of propaganda, and learn leadership and organizational skills that proved essential to the formation of nationalistic and independence movements after 1945. There were minor episodes of discontent, but nothing serious, among the natives. Afrikaner nationalism was a factor in South Africa, But the pro-German Afrikaner prime minister was replaced in 1939 by Jan Smuts, an Afrikaner who was an enthusiastic supporter of the British Empire. His government closely cooperated with London and raised 340,000 volunteers (190,000 were white, or about one-third of the eligible white men).


title: History of Africa

text: As early as 1857, the French established volunteer units of black soldiers in sub- Sahara Africa, termed the "tirailleurs senegalais." They served in military operations throughout the Empire, including 171,000 soldiers in World War I and 160,000 in World War II. About 90,000 became POWs in Germany. The veterans played a central role in the postwar independence movement in French Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: Authorities in West Africa declared allegiance to the Vichy regime, as did the colony of French Gabon Vichy forces defeated a Free French Forces invasion of French West Africa in the two battles of Dakar in July and September 1940. Gabon fell to Free France after the Battle of Gabon in November 1940, but West Africa remained under Vichy control until November 1942. Vichy forces tried to resist the overwhelming Allied landings in North Africa (operation "Torch") in November 1942. Vichy Admiral François Darlan suddenly switched sides and the fighting ended. The Allies gave Darlan control of North African French forces in exchange for support from both French North Africa as well as French West Africa. Vichy was now eliminated as a factor in Africa. Darlan was assassinated in December, and the two factions of Free French, led by Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud, jockeyed for power. De Gaulle finally won out.


title: History of Africa

text: Since Germany had lost its African colonies following World War I, World War II did not reach Africa until Italy joined the war on June 10, 1940, controlling Libya and Italian East Africa. With the fall of France on June 25, most of France's colonies in North and West Africa were controlled by the Vichy government, though much of Central Africa fell under Free French control after some fighting between Vichy and Free French forces at the Battle of Dakar and the Battle of Gabon. After the fall of France, Africa was the only active theater for ground combat until the Italian invasion of Greece in October. In the Western Desert campaign Italian forces from Libya sought to overrun Egypt, controlled by the British. Simultaneously, in the East African campaign, Italian East African forces overran British Somaliland and some British outposts in Kenya and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. When Italy's efforts to conquer Egypt (including the crucial Suez Canal) and Sudan fell short, they were unable to reestablish supply to Italian East Africa. Without the ability to reinforce or resupply and surrounded by Allied possessions, Italian East Africa was conquered by mainly British and South African forces in 1941. In North Africa, the Italians soon requested help from the Germans who sent a substantial force under General Rommel. With German help, the Axis forces regained the upper hand but were unable to break through British defenses in two tries at El Alamein. In late 1942, Allied forces, mainly Americans and Canadians, invaded French North Africa in Operation Torch, where Vichy French forces initially surprised them with their resistance but were convinced to stop fighting after three days. The second front relieved pressure on the British in Egypt who began pushing west to meet up with the Torch forces, eventually pinning German and Italian forces in Tunisia, which was conquered by May 1943 in the Tunisia campaign, ending the war in Africa. The only other significant operations occurred in the French colony of Madagascar, which was invaded by the British in May 1942 to deny its ports to the Axis (potentially the Japanese who had reached the eastern Indian Ocean). The French garrisons in Madagascar surrendered in November 1942.


title: History of Africa

text: The decolonization of Africa started with Libya in 1951, although Liberia, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. Many countries followed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in 1960 with the Year of Africa, which saw 17 African nations declare independence, including a large part of French West Africa. Most of the remaining countries gained independence throughout the 1960s, although some colonizers (Portugal in particular) were reluctant to relinquish sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence which lasted for a decade or more. The last African countries to gain formal independence were Guinea-Bissau (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Angola (1975) from Portugal; Djibouti from France in 1977; Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980; and Namibia from South Africa in 1990. Eritrea later split off from Ethiopia in 1993.


title: History of Africa

text: The Mau Mau Uprising took place in Kenya from 1952 until 1956 but was put down by British and local forces. A state of emergency remained in place until 1960. Kenya became independent in 1963, and Jomo Kenyatta served as its first president.


title: History of Africa

text: The early 1960s also signaled the start of major clashes between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi. In 1994 this culminated in the Rwandan genocide, a conflict in which over 800,000 people were murdered.


title: History of Africa

text: Moroccan nationalism developed during the 1930s; the Istiqlal Party was formed, pushing for independence. In 1953 sultan Mohammed V of Morocco called for independence. On March 2, 1956, Morocco became independent of France. Mohammed V became ruler of independent Morocco.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1954, Algeria formed the National Liberation Front (FLN) as it split from France. This resulted in the Algerian War, which lasted until independence negotiations in 1962. Muhammad Ahmed Ben Bella was elected President of Algeria. Over a million French nationals, predominantly Pied-Noirs, left the country, crippling the economy.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1934, the "Neo Destour" (New Constitution) party was founded by Habib Bourguiba pushing for independence in Tunisia. Tunisia became independent in 1955. Its "bey" was deposed and Habib Bourguiba elected as President of Tunisia.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser deposed the monarchy of Egypt in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and came to power as Prime Minister of Egypt. Muammar Gaddafi led the 1969 Libyan coup d'état which deposed Idris of Libya. Gaddafi remained in power until his death in the Libyan Civil War of 2011.


title: History of Africa

text: Egypt was involved in several wars against Israel and was allied with other Arab countries. The first was the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, right after the state of Israel was founded. Egypt went to war again in the Six-Day War of 1967 and lost the Sinai Peninsula to Israel. They went to war yet again in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In 1979, President of Egypt Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords, which gave back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for the recognition of Israel. The accords are still in effect today. In 1981, Sadat was assassinated by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Khalid Islambouli. The assassins were Islamists who targeted Sadat for his signing of the Accords.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1948 the apartheid laws were started in South Africa by the dominant National Party. These were largely a continuation of existing policies; the difference was the policy of "separate development" (Apartheid). Where previous policies had only been disparate efforts to economically exploit the African majority, Apartheid represented an entire philosophy of separate racial goals, leading to both the divisive laws of 'petty apartheid,' and the grander scheme of African homelands.


title: History of Africa

text: In 1994, Apartheid ended, and Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress was elected president after the South African general election, 1994, the country's first non-racial election.


title: History of Africa

text: The central regions of Africa were traditionally regarded to be the regions between Kilwa and the mouth of the Zambesi river. Due to its isolated position from the coasts, this area has received minimal attention from historian pertaining to Africa. It also had one of the most varied sources of European colonial imperialists including Germany in Cameroon, Britain in Northern Cameroons, Belgium in Congo, and France in CAF. Due to its territory, among the main trope s regarding Central Africa is traversing its lands and the nature of its tropicals. Since 1982, one of the main protracted issues within central Africa has been the ongoing secession movement of the secessionist entity of Ambazonia. The impasse between Cameroon and Ambazonia gained steam in 1992 when Fon Gorji-Dinka filed an international lawsuit against Cameroon claiming that Ambazonian territories are held illegally by the latter and describing Cameroonian claims on Ambazonian territories as illegal. Fifteen years later, this stalemate would escalate when Abmazonia formally declared itself as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.


title: History of Africa

text: Following World War II, nationalist movements arose across West Africa, most notably in Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah. In 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve its independence, followed the next year by France's colonies; by 1974, West Africa's nations were entirely autonomous. Since independence, many West African nations have been plagued by corruption and instability, with notable civil wars in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, and a succession of military coups in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Many states have failed to develop their economies despite enviable natural resources, and political instability is often accompanied by undemocratic government.


title: History of Africa

text: The first historical studies in English appeared in the 1890s, and followed one of four approaches. 1) The territorial narrative was typically written by a veteran soldier or civil servant who gave heavy emphasis to what he had seen. 2) The "apologia" were essays designed to justify British policies. 3) Popularizers tried to reach a large audience. 4) Compendia appeared designed to combine academic and official credentials. Professional scholarship appeared around 1900, and began with the study of business operations, typically using government documents and unpublished archives.


title: History of Africa

text: The economic approach was widely practiced in the 1930s, primarily to provide descriptions of the changes underway in the previous half-century. In 1935, American historian William L. Langer published "The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890–1902", a book that is still widely cited. In 1939, Oxford professor Reginald Coupland published "The Exploitation of East Africa, 1856–1890: The Slave Trade and the Scramble", another popular treatment.


title: History of Africa

text: World War II diverted most scholars to wartime projects and accounted for a pause in scholarship during the 1940s.


title: History of Africa

text: By the 1950s many African students were studying in British universities, and they produced a demand for new scholarship, and started themselves to supply it as well. Oxford University became the main center for African studies, with activity as well at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. The perspective of British government policymakers or international business operations slowly gave way to a new interest in the activities of the natives, especially nationalistic movements and the growing demand for independence. The major breakthrough came from Ronald Robinson and John Andrew Gallagher, especially with their studies of the impact of free trade on Africa. In 1985 "The Oxford History of South Africa" (2 vols.) was published, attempting to synthesize the available materials. In 2013, "The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History" was published, bringing the scholarship up to date.


title: History of Africa

text: The current major problem in African studies that Mohamed (2010/2012) identified is the inherited religious, Orientalist, colonial paradigm that European Africanists have preserved in present-day secularist, post-colonial, Anglophone African historiography. African and African-American scholars also bear some responsibility in perpetuating this European Africanist preserved paradigm.


title: History of Africa

text: Following conceptualizations of Africa developed by Leo Africanus and Hegel, European Africanists conceptually separated continental Africa into two racialized regions – Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa, as a racist geographic construction, serves as an objectified, compartmentalized region of "Africa proper", "Africa noire," or "Black Africa." The African diaspora is also considered to be a part of the same racialized construction as Sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa serves as a racialized region of "European Africa", which is conceptually disconnected from Sub-Saharan Africa, and conceptually connected to the Middle East, Asia, and the Islamic world.


title: History of Africa

text: As a result of these racialized constructions and the conceptual separation of Africa, darker skinned North Africans, such as the so-called Haratin, who have long resided in the Maghreb, and do not reside south of Saharan Africa, have become analogically alienated from their indigeneity and historic reality in North Africa. While the origin of the term "Haratin" remains speculative, the term may not date much earlier than the 18th century CE and has been involuntarily assigned to darker skinned Maghrebians. Prior to the modern use of the term Haratin as an identifier, and used in contrast to bidan or bayd (white), sumr/asmar, suud/aswad, or Sudan/sudani (black/brown) were Arabic terms used as identifiers for darker skinned Maghrebians before the modern period. "Haratin" is considered to be an offensive term by the darker skinned Maghrebians it is intended to identify; for example, people in the southern region (e.g., Wad Noun, Draa) of Morocco consider it to be an offensive term. Despite its historicity and etymology being questionable, European colonialists and European Africanists have used the term Haratin as identifiers for groups of "black" and apparently "mixed" people found in Algeria, Mauritania, and Morocco.


title: History of Africa

text: The Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire serves as the precursor to later narratives that grouped darker skinned Maghrebians together and identified their origins as being Sub-Saharan West Africa. With gold serving as a motivation behind the Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire, this made way for changes in latter behaviors toward dark-skinned Africans. As a result of changing behaviors toward dark-skinned Africans, darker skinned Maghrebians were forcibly recruited into the army of Ismail Ibn Sharif as the Black Guard, based on the claim of them having descended from enslaved peoples from the times of the Saadian invasion. Shurafa historians of the modern period would later use these events in narratives about the manumission of enslaved "Hartani" (a vague term, which, by merit of it needing further definition, is implicit evidence for its historicity being questionable). The narratives derived from Shurafa historians would later become analogically incorporated into the Americanized narratives (e.g., the trans-Saharan slave trade, imported enslaved Sub-Saharan West Africans, darker skinned Magrebian freedmen) of the present-day European Africanist paradigm.


title: History of Africa

text: As opposed to having been developed through field research, the analogy in the present-day European Africanist paradigm, which conceptually alienates, dehistoricizes, and denaturalizes darker skinned North Africans in North Africa and darker skinned Africans throughout the Islamic world at-large, is primarily rooted in an Americanized textual tradition inherited from 19th century European Christian abolitionists. Consequently, reliable history, as opposed to an antiquated analogy-based history, for darker skinned North Africans and darker skinned Africans in the Islamic world are limited. Part of the textual tradition generally associates an inherited status of servant with dark skin (e.g., Negro labor, Negro cultivators, Negroid slaves, freedman). The European Africanist paradigm uses this as the primary reference point for its construction of origins narratives for darker skinned North Africans (e.g., imported slaves from Sub-Saharan West Africa). With darker skinned North Africans or darker skinned Africans in the Islamic world treated as an allegory of alterity, another part of the textual tradition is the trans-Saharan slave trade and their presence in these regions are treated as that of an African diaspora in North Africa and the Islamic world. Altogether, darker skinned North Africans (e.g., "black" and apparently "mixed" Maghrebians), darker skinned Africans in the Islamic world, the inherited status of servant associated with dark skin, and the trans-Saharan slave trade are conflated and modeled in analogy with African-Americans and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.


title: History of Africa

text: The trans-Saharan slave trade has been used as a literary device in narratives that analogically explain the origins of darker skinned North Africans in North Africa and the Islamic world. Caravans have been equated with slave ships, and the amount of forcibly enslaved Africans transported across the Sahara are alleged to be numerically comparable to the considerably large amount of forcibly enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic Ocean. The simulated narrative of comparable numbers is contradicted by the limited presence of darker skinned North Africans in the present-day Maghreb. As part of this simulated narrative, post-classical Egypt has also been characterized as having plantations. Another part of this simulated narrative is an Orientalist construction of hypersexualized Moors, concubines, and eunuchs. Concubines in harems have been used as an explanatory bridge between the allegation of comparable numbers of forcibly enslaved Africans and the limited amount of present-day darker skinned Maghrebians who have been characterized as their diasporic descendants. Eunuchs were characterized as sentinels who guarded these harems. The simulated narrative is also based on the major assumption that the indigenous peoples of the Maghreb were once purely white Berbers, who then became biracialized through miscegenation with black concubines (existing within a geographic racial binary of pale-skinned Moors residing further north, closer to the Mediterranean region, and dark-skinned Moors residing further south, closer to the Sahara). The religious polemical narrative involving the suffering of enslaved European Christians of the Barbary slave trade has also been adapted to fit the simulated narrative of a comparable number of enslaved Africans being transported by Muslim slaver caravans, from the south of Saharan Africa, into North Africa and the Islamic world.


title: History of Africa

text: Despite being an inherited part of the 19th century religious polemical narratives, the use of race in the secularist narrative of the present-day European Africanist paradigm has given the paradigm an appearance of possessing scientific quality. The religious polemical narrative (e.g., holy cause, hostile neologisms) of 19th century European abolitionists about Africa and Africans are silenced, but still preserved, in the secularist narratives of the present-day European Africanist paradigm. The Orientalist stereotyped hypersexuality of the Moors were viewed by 19th century European abolitionists as deriving from the Quran. The reference to times prior, often used in concert with biblical references, by 19th century European abolitionists, may indicate that realities described of Moors may have been literary fabrications. The purpose of these apparent literary fabrications may have been to affirm their view of the Bible as being greater than the Quran and to affirm the viewpoints held by the readers of their composed works. The adoption of 19th century European abolitionists' religious polemical narrative into the present-day European Africanist paradigm may have been due to its correspondence with the established textual tradition. The use of stereotyped hypersexuality for Moors are what 19th century European abolitionists and the present-day European Africanist paradigm have in common.


title: History of Africa

text: Due to a lack of considerable development in field research regarding enslavement in Islamic societies, this has resulted in the present-day European Africanist paradigm relying on unreliable estimates for the trans-Saharan slave trade. However, insufficient data has also used as a justification for continued use of the faulty present-day European Africanist paradigm. Darker skinned Maghrebians, particularly in Morocco, have grown weary of the lack of discretion foreign academics have shown toward them, bear resentment toward the way they have been depicted by foreign academics, and consequently, find the intended activities of foreign academics to be predictable. Rather than continuing to rely on the faulty present-day European Africanist paradigm, Mohamed (2012) recommends revising and improving the current Africanist paradigm (e.g., critical inspection of the origins and introduction of the present characterization of the Saharan caravan; reconsideration of what makes the trans-Saharan slave trade, within its own context in Africa, distinct from the trans-Atlantic slave trade; realistic consideration of the experiences of darker-skinned Maghrebians within their own regional context).


title: History of Africa

text: Merolla (2017) has indicated that the academic study of Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa by Europeans developed with North Africa being conceptually subsumed within the Middle East and Arab world, whereas, the study of Sub-Saharan Africa was viewed as conceptually distinct from North Africa, and as its own region, viewed as inherently the same. The common pattern of conceptual separation of continental Africa into two regions and the view of conceptual sameness within the region of Sub-Saharan Africa has continued until present-day. Yet, with increasing exposure of this problem, discussion about the conceptual separation of Africa has begun to develop.


title: History of Africa

text: The Sahara has served as a trans-regional zone for peoples in Africa. Authors from various countries (e.g., Algeria, Cameroon, Sudan) in Africa have critiqued the conceptualization of the Sahara as a regional barrier, and provided counter-arguments supporting the interconnectedness of continental Africa; there are historic and cultural connections as well as trade between West Africa, North Africa, and East Africa (e.g., North Africa with Niger and Mali, North Africa with Tanzania and Sudan, major hubs of Islamic learning in Niger and Mali). Africa has been conceptually compartmentalized into meaning "Black Africa", "Africa South of the Sahara", and "Sub-Saharan Africa." North Africa has been conceptually "Orientalized" and separated from Sub-Saharan Africa. While its historic development has occurred within a longer time frame, the epistemic development (e.g., form, content) of the present-day racialized conceptual separation of Africa came as a result of the Berlin Conference and the Scramble for Africa.


title: History of Africa

text: In African and Berber literary studies, scholarship has remained largely separate from one another. The conceptual separation of Africa in these studies may be due to how editing policies of studies in the Anglophone and Francophone world are affected by the international politics of the Anglophone and Francophone world. While studies in the Anglophone world have more clearly followed the trend of the conceptual separation of Africa, the Francophone world has been more nuanced, which may stem from imperial policies relating to French colonialism in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. As the study of North Africa has largely been initiated by the Arabophone and Francophone world, denial of the Arabic language having become Africanized throughout the centuries it has been present in Africa has shown that the conceptual separation of Africa remains pervasive in the Francophone world; this denial may stem from historic development of the characterization of an Islamic Arabia existing as a diametric binary to Europe. Among studies in the Francophone world, ties between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa have been denied or downplayed, while the ties (e.g., religious, cultural) between the regions and peoples (e.g., Arab language and literature with Berber language and literature) of the Middle East and North Africa have been established by diminishing the differences between the two and selectively focusing on the similarities between the two. In the Francophone world, construction of racialized regions, such as Black Africa (Sub-Saharan Africans) and White Africa (North Africans, e.g., Berbers and Arabs), has also developed.


title: History of Africa

text: Despite having invoked and used identities in reference to the racialized conceptualizations of Africa (e.g., North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa) to oppose imposed identities, Berbers have invoked North African identity to oppose Arabized and Islamicized identities, and Sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Negritude, Black Consciousness) and the African diaspora (e.g., Black is Beautiful) have invoked and used black identity to oppose colonialism and racism. While Berber studies has largely sought to be establish ties between Berbers and North Africa with Arabs and the Middle East, Merolla (2017) indicated that efforts to establish ties between Berbers and North Africa with Sub-Saharan Africans and Sub-Saharan Africa have recently started to being undertaken.


title: Thetis

text: Thetis (; ), is a figure from Greek mythology with varying mythological roles. She mainly appears as a sea nymph, a goddess of water, or one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus.


title: Thetis

text: When described as a Nereid in Classical myths, Thetis was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, and a granddaughter of Tethys with whom she sometimes shares characteristics. Often she seems to lead the Nereids as they attend to her tasks. Sometimes she also is identified with Metis.


title: Thetis

text: Some sources argue that she was one of the earliest of deities worshipped in Archaic Greece, the oral traditions and records of which are lost. Only one written record, a fragment, exists attesting to her worship and an early Alcman hymn exists that identifies Thetis as the creator of the universe. Worship of Thetis as the goddess is documented to have persisted in some regions by historical writers such as Pausanias.


title: Thetis

text: In the Trojan War cycle of myth, the wedding of Thetis and the Greek hero Peleus is one of the precipitating events in the war which also led to the birth of their child Achilles.


title: Thetis

text: Most extant material about Thetis concerns her role as mother of Achilles, but there is some evidence that as the sea-goddess she played a more central role in the religious beliefs and practices of Archaic Greece. The pre-modern etymology of her name, from "tithemi" (τίθημι), "to set up, establish," suggests a perception among Classical Greeks of an early political role. Walter Burkert considers her name a transformed doublet of Tethys.


title: Thetis

text: In "Iliad" I, Achilles recalls to his mother her role in defending, and thus legitimizing, the reign of Zeus against an incipient rebellion by three Olympians, each of whom has pre-Olympian roots:


title: Thetis

text: You alone of all the gods saved Zeus the Darkener of the Skies from an inglorious fate, when some of the other Olympians – Hera, Poseidon, and Pallas Athene – had plotted to throw him into chains ... You, goddess, went and saved him from that indignity. You quickly summoned to high Olympus the monster of the hundred arms whom the gods call Briareus, but mankind Aegaeon, a giant more powerful even than his father. He squatted by the Son of Cronos with such a show of force that the blessed gods slunk off in terror, leaving Zeus free


title: Thetis

text: Quintus of Smyrna, recalling this passage, does write that Thetis once released Zeus from chains; but there is no other reference to this rebellion among the Olympians, and some readers, such as M. M. Willcock, have understood the episode as an "ad hoc" invention of Homer's to support Achilles' request that his mother intervene with Zeus. Laura Slatkin explores the apparent contradiction, in that the immediate presentation of Thetis in the "Iliad" is as a helpless minor goddess overcome by grief and lamenting to her Nereid sisters, and links the goddess's present and past through her grief. She draws comparisons with Eos' role in another work of the epic Cycle concerning Troy, the lost "Aethiopis", which presents a strikingly similar relationship – that of the divine Dawn, Eos, with her slain son Memnon; she supplements the parallels with images from the repertory of archaic vase-painters, where Eos and Thetis flank the symmetrically opposed heroes, Achilles and Memnon, with a theme that may have been derived from traditional epic songs.


title: Thetis

text: Thetis does not need to appeal to Zeus for immortality for her son, but snatches him away to the White Island "Leuke" in the Black Sea, an alternate Elysium where he has transcended death, and where an Achilles cult lingered into historic times.


title: Thetis

text: Pseudo-Apollodorus' "Bibliotheke" asserts that Thetis was courted by both Zeus and Poseidon, but she was married off to the mortal Peleus because of their fears about the prophecy by Themis (or Prometheus, or Calchas, according to others) that her son would become greater than his father. Thus, she is revealed as a figure of cosmic capacity, quite capable of unsettling the divine order. (Slatkin 1986:12)


title: Thetis

text: When Hephaestus was thrown from Olympus, whether cast out by Hera for his lameness or evicted by Zeus for taking Hera's side, the Oceanid Eurynome and the Nereid Thetis caught him and cared for him on the volcanic isle of Lemnos, while he labored for them as a smith, "working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of Okeanos around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur" ("Iliad" 18.369).


title: Thetis

text: Thetis is not successful in her role protecting and nurturing a hero (the theme of "kourotrophos"), but her role in succoring deities is emphatically repeated by Homer, in three "Iliad" episodes: as well as her rescue of Zeus (1.396ff) and Hephaestus (18.369), Diomedes recalls that when Dionysus was expelled by Lycurgus with the Olympians' aid, he took refuge in the Erythraean Sea with Thetis in a bed of seaweed (6.123ff). These accounts associate Thetis with "a divine past—uninvolved with human events—with a level of divine invulnerability extraordinary by Olympian standards. Where within the framework of the "Iliad" the ultimate recourse is to Zeus for protection, here the poem seems to point to an alternative structure of cosmic relations."


title: Thetis

text: Once, Thetis and Medea argued in Thessaly over which was the most beautiful; they appointed the Cretan Idomeneus as the judge, who gave the victory to Thetis. In her anger, Medea called all Cretans liars, and cursed them to never say the truth.


title: Thetis

text: Zeus had received a prophecy that Thetis's son would become greater than his father, as Zeus had dethroned his father to lead the succeeding pantheon. In order to ensure a mortal father for her eventual offspring, Zeus and his brother Poseidon made arrangements for her to marry a human, Peleus, son of Aeacus, but she refused him.


title: Thetis

text: Proteus, an early sea-god, advised Peleus to find the sea nymph when she was asleep and bind her tightly to keep her from escaping by changing forms. She did shapeshift, becoming flame, water, a raging lioness, and a serpent. Peleus held fast. Subdued, she then consented to marry him. Thetis is the mother of Achilles by Peleus, who became king of the Myrmidons.


title: Thetis

text: According to classical mythology, the wedding of Thetis and Peleus was celebrated on Mount Pelion, outside the cave of Chiron, and attended by the deities: there they celebrated the marriage with feasting. Apollo played the lyre and the Muses sang, Pindar claimed. At the wedding Chiron gave Peleus an ashen spear that had been polished by Athena and had a blade forged by Hephaestus. While the Olympian goddesses brought him gifts: from Aphrodite, a bowl with an embossed Eros, from Hera a chlamys while from Athena a flute. His father-in-law Nereus endowed him a basket of the salt called 'divine', which has an irresistible virtue for overeating, appetite and digestion, explaining the expression "'...she poured the divine salt"'. Zeus then bestowed the wings of Arce to the newly-wed couple which was later given by Thetis to her son, Achilles. Furthermore, the god of the sea, Poseidon gave Peleus the immortal horses, Balius and Xanthus. Eris, the goddess of discord, had not been invited, however, and in spite, she threw a golden apple into the midst of the goddesses that was to be awarded only "to the fairest." In most interpretations, the award was made during the Judgement of Paris and eventually occasioned the Trojan War.


title: Thetis

text: As is recounted in the "Argonautica", written by the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes, Thetis, in an attempt to make her son Achilles immortal, would burn away his mortality in a fire at night and during the day, she would anoint the child with ambrosia. When Peleus caught her searing the baby, he let out a cry.


title: Thetis

text: Thetis heard him, and catching up the child threw him screaming to the ground, and she like a breath of wind passed swiftly from the hall as a dream and leapt into the sea, exceeding angry, and thereafter returned never again.


title: Thetis

text: In a variant of the myth first recounted in the "Achilleid", an unfinished epic written between 94–95 AD by the Roman poet Statius, Thetis tried to make Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the River Styx (one of the five rivers that run through Hades, the realm of the dead). However, the heel by which she held him was not touched by the Styx's waters and failed to be protected. (A similar myth of immortalizing a child in fire is seen in the case of Demeter and the infant Demophoon). Some myths relate that because she had been interrupted by Peleus, Thetis had not made her son physically invulnerable. His heel, which she was about to burn away when her husband stopped her, had not been protected.


title: Thetis

text: Peleus gave the boy to Chiron to raise. Prophecy said that the son of Thetis would have either a long but dull life, or a glorious but brief one. When the Trojan War broke out, Thetis was anxious and concealed Achilles, disguised as a girl, at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. Achilles was already famed for his speed and skill in battle. Calchas, a priest of Agamemnon, prophesied the need for the great soldier within their ranks. Odysseus was subsequently sent by Agamemnon to try and find Achilles. Skyros was relatively close to Achilles’ home and Lycomedes was also a known friend of Thetis, so it was one of the first places that Odysseus looked. When Odysseus found that one of the girls at court was not a girl, he came up with a plan. Raising an alarm that they were under attack, Odysseus knew that the young Achilles would instinctively run for his weapons and armour, thereby revealing himself. Seeing that she could no longer prevent her son from realizing his destiny, Thetis then had Hephaestus make a shield and armor.


title: Thetis

text: Thetis played a key part in the events of the Trojan War. Beyond the fact that the Judgement of Paris, which essentially kicked off the war, occurred at her wedding, Thetis influenced the actions of the Olympians and her son, Achilles.Nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War, Homer's "Iliad" starts with Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the commander of the Achaeans, and Achilles, son of Thetis, arguing over Briseis, a war prize of Achilles. After initially refusing, Achilles relents and gives Briseis to Agamemnon. However, Achilles feels disrespect for having to give up Briseis and prays to Thetis, his mother, for restitution of his lost honor. She urges Achilles to wait until she speaks with Zeus to rejoin the fighting, and Achilles listens. When she finally speaks to Zeus, Thetis convinces him to do as she bids, and he seals his agreement with her by bowing his head, the strongest oath that he can make.


title: Thetis

text: Following the death of Patroclus, who wore Achilles' armor in the fighting, Thetis comes to Achilles to console him in his grief. She vows to return to him with armor forged by Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods, and tells him not to arm himself for battle until he sees her coming back. While Thetis is gone, Achilles is visited by Iris, the messenger of the gods, sent by Hera, who tells him to rejoin the fighting. He refuses, however, citing his mother's words and his promise to her to wait for her return. Thetis, meanwhile, speaks with Hephaestus and begs him to make Achilles armor, which he does. First, he makes for Achilles a splendid shield, and having finished it, makes a breastplate, a helmet, and greaves. When Thetis goes back to Achilles to deliver his new armor, she finds him still upset over Patroclus. Achilles fears that while he is off fighting the Trojans, Patroclus' body will decay and rot. Thetis, however, reassures him and places ambrosia and nectar in Patroclus' nose in order to protect his body against decay.


title: Thetis

text: After Achilles uses his new armor to defeat Hector in battle, he keeps Hector's body to mutilate and humiliate. However, after nine days, the gods call Thetis to Olympus and tell her that she must go to Achilles and pass him a message, that the gods are angry that Hector's body has not been returned. She does as she is bid, and convinces Achilles to return the body for ransom, thus avoiding the wrath of the gods.


title: Thetis

text: A noted exception to the general observation resulting from the existing historical records, that Thetis was not venerated as a goddess by cult, was in conservative Laconia, where Pausanias was informed that there had been priestesses of Thetis in archaic times, when a cult that was centered on a wooden cult image of Thetis (a "xoanon"), which preceded the building of the oldest temple; by the intervention of a highly placed woman, her cult had been re-founded with a temple; and in the second century AD she still was being worshipped with utmost reverence. The Lacedaemonians were at war with the Messenians, who had revolted, and their king Anaxander, having invaded Messenia, took as prisoners certain women, and among them Cleo, priestess of Thetis. The wife of Anaxander asked for this Cleo from her husband, and discovering that she had the wooden image of Thetis, she set up the woman Cleo in a temple for the goddess. This Leandris did because of a vision in a dream, but the wooden image of Thetis is guarded in secret.


title: Thetis

text: In one fragmentary hymn by the seventh century Spartan poet, Alcman, Thetis appears as a demiurge, beginning her creation with "poros" (πόρος) "path, track" and "tekmor" (τέκμωρ) "marker, end-post". Third was "skotos" (σκότος) "darkness", and then the sun and moon. A close connection has been argued between Thetis and Metis, another shape-shifting sea-power later beloved by Zeus but prophesied bound to produce a son greater than his father because of her great strength.


title: Thetis

text: Herodotus noted that the Persians sacrificed to "Thetis" at Cape Sepias. By the process of "interpretatio graeca", Herodotus identifies a sea-goddess of another culture (probably Anahita) as the familiar Hellenic "Thetis".


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Charles Edward Daniels (October 28, 1936 – July 6, 2020) was an American singer, musician, and songwriter. His music fused rock, country, blues and jazz, pioneering Southern rock. He was best known for his number-one country hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Much of his output, including all but one of his eight "Billboard" Hot 100 charting singles, was credited to the Charlie Daniels Band.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels was active as a singer and musician from the 1950s until his death. He was inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame in 2002, the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Charles Edward Daniels was born October 28, 1936, in Wilmington, North Carolina to teenage parents William and LaRue Daniel. The "s" in Daniels' name was added by mistake when his birth certificate was filled out. Two weeks after Daniels had begun to attend elementary school, his family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, commuting between that city and Elizabethtown, North Carolina, before moving back to Wilmington. After enduring measles, Daniels would require eyeglasses to see for most of his life afterward, which led to him being bullied by other children at his school. Influenced by Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass music groups and rhythm and blues artists that he heard on the radio, as well as Western films, Daniels began writing and performing songs.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Already skilled on guitar, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin, Daniels began his music career as a member of the bluegrass band Misty Mountain Boys in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Daniels was performing rock and roll. Daniels formed his own band, the Rockets, who later changed their name to the Jaguars after scoring a hit single with the instrumental recording "Jaguar". After discovering jazz, the Jaguars began performing jazz music, before reverting back to rock and country music by 1964. During his career as a rock and roll sideman, Daniels also wrote songs for other performers. In July 1963, soul singer Jerry Jackson recorded Daniels' song "It Hurts Me"; the following year, on January 12, 1964, Elvis Presley recorded the better known recording of Daniels' song. The songwriting credits list Charles E. Daniels and Joy Byers as the songwriters, although Byers’ husband, songwriter and producer Bob Johnston, was the actual co-writer with Daniels. Johnston encouraged Daniels to move to Nashville in order to get work as a session player, which led to Daniels recording with Bob Dylan on his 1969 album "Nashville Skyline", and Ringo Starr on his 1970 album "Beaucoups of Blues", as well as further sessions with Dylan. Dylan and Daniels found each other creatively invigorating during their recordings together, with Dylan saying that "when Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions", and Daniels describing the recording sessions with Dylan as "loose, free and, most of all, fun". Daniels also produced albums for the Youngbloods, including their 1969 album "Elephant Mountain".


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels released his self-titled debut album in 1970, which helped lay the foundations for Southern rock. Two years later, Daniels formed the Charlie Daniels Band. Daniels scored a Top 10 hit on the "Billboard" Pop charts with "Uneasy Rider", a talking bluegrass song, in 1973. The following year, Daniels organized the first Volunteer Jam concert. The same year, the Charlie Daniels Band released the gold selling "Fire on the Mountain", followed by the even more successful "Nightrider", whose success was spurred by the Top 40 hit single "Texas". "Saddle Tramp" was also a gold seller, and was the first release by the band to reach the top 10 of the "Billboard" Country charts.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: In 1977, the Charlie Daniels Band released their most commercially successful album, "Million Mile Reflections", which reached number five and was certified triple-platinum. It featured the single "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", which reached No. 3 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in September 1979, and won Daniels the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance. The band also attracted a high profile fan in President Jimmy Carter, who invited the band to perform at his 1977 inauguration. In 1980, Daniels played himself in the film "Urban Cowboy", starring John Travolta, and as a result became closely identified with the revival of country music generated by the film's success. Subsequently, the combination of the success of the more country-oriented song and the decline in popularity of Southern rock led Daniels to shift focus in his sound from rock to country music. After the platinum certified "Full Moon" (1980) and the gold certified "Windows" (1982), Daniels would not have another hit album until the 1989 release "Simple Man", which earned Daniels another gold album, although the title track sparked controversy, as it was interpreted by some as advocating vigilantism, due to lyrics such as "Just take them rascals [rapists, killers, child abusers] out in the swamp/Put 'em on their knees and tie 'em to a stump/Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest," which garnered Daniels considerable media attention and talk show visits.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: In the 1990s, Daniels' albums failed to chart, although he continued to draw audiences as a concert performer well into the 21st century. In 1999, Daniels was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: The 21st century saw Daniels, who had previously recorded for major labels, predominantly recording for independent record labels. In 2003, Daniels received considerable headlines for his pro-Iraq War anthem "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag," which Daniels followed with a book entitled "Ain't No Rag". Two years later, Daniels began releasing a series of albums through Koch Records, which ranged in style from bluegrass to bluesy country-rock; these releases included holiday albums, live albums and theme compilations such as "The Land That I Love" (2010), which collected Daniels' patriotic songs.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: On October 18, 2005, Daniels was honored as a BMI Icon at the 53rd annual BMI Country Awards. The following year, Daniels played in the backup band for Hank Williams Jr.'s opening sequence to "Monday Night Football". In November 2007, Daniels was invited to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. He was inducted during the January 19, 2008, edition of the Opry. In 2009, Daniels was featured playing fiddle in a commercial for GEICO.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: In 2016, Daniels released "Night Hawks", an album of Western swing music. In October of that year, Daniels became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. In March 2017, HarperCollins announced that Daniels's memoir, "Never Look at the Empty Seats", would be released on October 24, 2017. In the late 2010s, Daniels, drummer James Stroud, guitarist Billy Crain and bassist Charlie Hayward formed a new band, Beau Weevils, which debuted on the 2018 album "Songs in the Key of E", which Daniels described as being in a "down-home, swampy rock meets funk with a little taste of Delta-type of style." On November 6, 2018, Daniels released a book of daily inspirational quotes and stories titled "Let's All Make the Day Count: The Everyday Wisdom of Charlie Daniels" through HarperCollins's Thomas Nelson imprint.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that Charlie Daniels' self-titled debut album, released in 1970, was a pivotal recording in the development of the Southern rock genre, "because it points the way to how the genre could and would sound, and how country music could retain its hillbilly spirit and rock like a mother." Erlewine described Daniels as "a redneck rebel, not fitting into either the country or the rock & roll [...] but, in retrospect, he sounds like a visionary, pointing the way to the future when southern rockers saw no dividing lines between rock, country, and blues, and only saw it all as sons of the south." The Charlie Daniels Band fused rock, country, blues, and jazz; Erlewine described the band's sound as "a distinctly Southern blend" which emphasized improvisation in their instrumentation, which was aided by the band utilizing two lead guitarists and two drummers. "The Federalist" said that Daniels' music channeled jazz fusion, funk, gospel, and blues. "The New York Times" said that Daniels' music incorporated elements of country, blues, bluegrass, rock and Western swing.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: After the success of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", a single which Erlewine described as a "a roaring country-disco fusion", Daniels shifted his sound from rock to country music. In both Daniels' rock and country recordings, Daniels "helped shape the sound of country-rock". Regarding his musical style, Daniels said "I never claimed to be country"; Daniels described his style instead as "American music", saying that the Charlie Daniels Band played "some of all the music that’s come across in America", particularly country, bluegrass, rock, gospel and jazz. Daniels also said "I refuse to be categorized because I think that puts blinders on you." Daniels' guitar playing was defined as having a "thick, buttery sound" which he achieved by stringing his Les Paul guitars with .10 gauge Gibson strings, and amplifying them through a Marshall cabinet.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels did not endorse any political candidates, and refused to express political views in his concerts. Regarding his views, Daniels said, "I do not consider myself political. I can understand why people would say what I write is political. It's not. It's just my feelings. It's common sense to me as an American citizen, which is not only our right, but our duty, really, to express our opinion, if no other way than at least in the voting booth. I don't do that on stage. I don't pay good money to go hear somebody talk about their political beliefs. It's just not part of my show. That is confined to the private part of my life, which I consider my writings on Twitter and [interviews]". However, in 1976, Daniels performed at campaign fundraisers for Jimmy Carter's presidential bid, and at his inauguration in January the following year; Daniels also initially supported the legalization of marijuana. In the following decade, however, Daniels expressed views that many considered to be right-wing and conservative. According to "Forbes" writer Seth Cohen, Daniels "frequently captured the pent-up frustrations of many Americans who felt that a “coastal elite” cadre of politicians and activists were moving the country farther away from some of its core values". According to "Rolling Stone", Daniels had "plenty in common with moderates and liberals who supported Bernie Sanders, expressing disgust at Washington gridlock and a fervent belief in term limits for people in Congress so that fresh ideas keep coming." Daniels also supported "the idea that someone can criticize the president’s decision making and not be called anti-American."


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels was an outspoken Christian. Regarding the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials, Daniels said, "If tearing them down did any good, I’d be all for it. But I don’t see where it does any good." Daniels also said that "when we pay attention to political correctness and things that don’t really mean anything, we’re wasting time, energy and political capital by not getting something meaningful done. We spend time chasing rainbows." In 2013, following chemical weapons attacks by Bashar al-Assad, and United States military response, Daniels wrote, "These and other questions need to be answered before any kind of action, bilateral or unilateral is taken. Otherwise, we will be right back in the same old Middle Eastern boiling pot again and I think everybody, doves and hawks alike, have had enough of that." After President Donald Trump's April 7, 2017 military strike against targets in Syria in retaliation for additional chemical weapon deployment, Daniels tweeted: "The world changed yesterday, America will no longer be viewed as a cowering toothless tiger." In 2019, Daniels lambasted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for signing the Reproductive Health Act, which legalized abortion until birth under some circumstances, tweeting "Watch the wrinkles on Cuomo's face lengthen as the ramifications of the thousands of murders he has sanctioned come to bear on him. The NY legislature has created a new Auschwitz dedicated to the execution of a whole segment of defenseless citizens. Satan is smiling."


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels married Hazel Juanita Alexander on September 20, 1964. They had one child, a son, Charles Edward Daniels Jr. An avid University of Tennessee sports fan, Daniels enjoyed hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and other outdoor activities. He was a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and performed on their videos.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels suffered a major arm injury on January 30, 1980, while digging fence post holes on his farm near Mount Juliet. He suffered three complete breaks in his right arm and two broken fingers when his shirtsleeve caught on a spinning power auger. The injury required surgery and sidelined him for four months.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels was successfully treated for prostate cancer in 2001. On January 15, 2010, Daniels was rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke while snowmobiling in Colorado. He was released two days later. During a doctor visit on March 25, 2013, Daniels was diagnosed with a mild case of pneumonia and admitted to a Nashville hospital for a series of routine tests. The tests revealed that a pacemaker was needed to regulate his heart rate. One was put in on March 28, and Daniels was released from the hospital within days.


title: Charlie Daniels

text: Daniels died on July 6, 2020, at the age of 83 of a hemorrhagic stroke at Summit Medical Center in Hermitage, Tennessee.


title: Lindt

text: Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG, doing business as Lindt, is a Swiss chocolatier and confectionery company founded in 1845 and known for its chocolate truffles and chocolate bars, among other sweets. It is based in Kilchberg, where its main factory and museum are located.


title: Lindt

text: The origins of the company date back to 1836, when David Sprüngli-Schwarz (1776–1862) and his son Rudolf Sprüngli-Ammann (1816–1897) bought a small confectionery shop in the old town of Zürich, producing chocolates under the name David Sprüngli & Son. Before they moved to Paradeplatz in 1845, they established a small factory where they produced their chocolate in solidified form in 1838.


title: Lindt

text: When Rudolf Sprüngli-Ammann retired in 1892, he gave two equal parts of the business to his sons. The younger brother David Robert received two confectionery stores that became known under the name Confiserie Sprüngli. The elder brother Johann Rudolf received the chocolate factory. To raise the necessary finances for his expansion plans, Johann Rudolf then converted his private company into "Chocolat Sprüngli AG" in 1899. In that same year, he acquired the chocolate factory of Rodolphe Lindt (1855–1909) in Bern, and the company changed its name to "Aktiengesellschaft Vereinigte Berner und Zürcher Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli" (United Bern and Zurich Lindt and Sprungli Chocolate Factory Ltd.).


title: Lindt

text: In 1994, Lindt & Sprüngli acquired the Austrian chocolatier Hofbauer Österreich and integrated it, along with its Küfferle brand, into the company. In 1997 and 1998, respectively, the company acquired the Italian chocolatier Caffarel and the American chocolatier Ghirardelli, and integrated both of them into the company as wholly-owned subsidiaries. Since then, Lindt & Sprüngli has expanded the once-regional Ghirardelli to the international market.


title: Lindt

text: On 17 March 2009, Lindt announced the closure of 50 of its 80 retail boutiques in the United States because of weaker demand in the wake of the late-2000s recession.


title: Lindt

text: On 14 July 2014, Lindt bought Russell Stover Candies, maker of Whitman's Chocolate, for about $1 billion, the company's largest acquisition to date.


title: Lindt

text: In November 2018, Lindt opened its first American travel retail store in JFK Airport's Terminal 1 and its flagship Canadian shop in Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto.


title: Lindt

text: In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Lindt announced that it would halt commercial operations in Russia on a temporary basis.


title: Lindt

text: Lindt & Sprüngli has 12 factories: Kilchberg, Switzerland; Aachen, Germany; Oloron-Sainte-Marie, France; Induno Olona, Italy; Gloggnitz, Austria; and Stratham, New Hampshire, in the United States. The factory in Gloggnitz, Austria, manufactures products under the Hofbauer & Küfferle brand in addition to the Lindt brand. Caffarel's factory is located in Luserna San Giovanni, Italy, and Ghirardelli's factory is located in San Leandro, California, in the United States. Furthermore, there are four more factories of Russell Stover in the United States including locations in Corsicana, Texas, Abilene, Kansas, and Iola, Kansas.


title: Lindt

text: Since 2020, the main factory of Kilchberg includes a visitor centre and museum, referred to as "Lindt Home of Chocolate". The museum notably displays the world's largest chocolate fountain, measuring over nine metres tall and containing 1,500 litres of chocolate, flowing from a giant whisk.


title: Lindt

text: Lindt has opened over 410 chocolate cafés and shops all over the world. The cafés' menu mostly focuses on chocolate and desserts. Lindt chocolate cafés also sell handmade chocolates, macaroons, cakes, and ice cream.


title: Lindt

text: On 15 December 2014, 18 people, including eight staff, were held hostage at a Lindt cafe in Sydney. Three people, including the gunman, died in the incident.


title: Lindt

text: "Lindor" is a Lindt's brand introduced as a chocolate bar in 1949 and later in 1967 in the form of a chocolate truffle. It is now characterized by a hard chocolate shell and a smooth chocolate filling. The ball or bar are available in an array of flavors, each with a distinctive color wrapper:


title: Lindt

text: In 2009, Swiss tennis star Roger Federer was named as Lindt's "global brand ambassador", and began appearing in a series of commercials endorsing Lindor.


title: Lindt

text: The Lindt group also produces the "Gold Bunny", a hollow milk chocolate rabbit in a variety of sizes available every Easter since 1952. Each bunny wears a small colored ribbon bow around its neck identifying the type of chocolate contained within. The milk chocolate bunny wears a red ribbon, the dark chocolate bunny wears a dark brown ribbon, the hazelnut bunny wears a green ribbon, and the white chocolate bunny wears a white ribbon. Other chocolates are wrapped to look like carrots, chicks, or lambs. The lambs are packaged with four white lambs and one black lamb.


title: Lindt

text: During the Christmas season, Lindt produces a variety of items, including chocolate reindeer (which somewhat resemble the classic bunny), Santa, snowmen figures of various sizes, bears, bells, advent calendars, and chocolate ornaments. Various tins and boxes are available in the Lindt stores, the most popular colour schemes being the red and blue. Other seasonal items include Lindt chocolate novelty golf balls.


title: Lindt

text: For St. Valentine's Day, Lindt sells a boxed version of the Gold Bunny, which comes as a set of two kissing bunnies. Other Valentine's Day seasonal items include a selection of heart-shaped boxes of Lindt chocolate truffles.


title: Lindt

text: Due to the 3rd UK lockdown and with all chocolate shops shut, Lindt has begun offering virtual tasting sessions (Feb 2021) with LINDT EXCELLENCE chocolatiers. The experiences can be bought online from their website and include a box of chocolates which are delivered, along with details of how to book the one-hour tasting.


title: Lindt

text: Lindt "Petits Desserts" range embodies famous European desserts in a small cube of chocolate. Flavors include: Tarte au Chocolat, Crème Brûlée, Tiramisu, Creme Caramel, Tarte Citron, Meringue, and Noir Orange.


title: Lindt

text: Lindt makes a "Creation" range of chocolate-filled cubes: Milk Mousse, Dark Milk Mousse, White Milk Mousse, Chocolate Mousse, Orange Mousse, Pistachio and Cherry/Chili.


title: Lindt

text: In September 2017, an investigation conducted by NGO Mighty Earth found that a large amount of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Lindt and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's two largest cocoa producers. Mighty Earth's 2019 annual "Easter Chocolate Shopping Guide" awarded The Good Egg Award to Lindt "for greatest improvement in sustainable policies". However, in terms of agroforestry, Lindt scored only a yellow rating, the second highest of 4, for Agroforestry and a red ('needs to catch up with the industry) for Agrochemical Management on the 2022 Chocolate Scorecard which since 2020 is a collaboration between Mighty Earth, Be Slavery Free and other NGOs.


title: Lindt

text: In August 2020, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) opened up an antitrust case against Lindt after a failed response from the company a year earlier. The regulators have found quality differences for the same Lindt products in Russia over what is being sold in Western Markets without informing Russian consumers. According to the FAS, such behavior of foreign producers can lead to a redistribution of demand in the market and lead to unjustified benefits over other competitors, as companies like Lindt can still garner Russian demand for their products through brand recognition alone without delivering the same quality as in Western Europe. Lindt responded and denied that there are differences for its products sold in Russia and the EU, except for labeling.


title: Femininity

text: Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.


title: Femininity

text: Traits traditionally cited as feminine include gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity, though traits associated with femininity vary across societies and individuals, and are influenced by a variety of social and cultural factors.


title: Femininity

text: Despite the terms "femininity" and "masculinity" being in common usage, there is little scientific agreement about what femininity and masculinity are. Among scholars, the concept of femininity has varying meanings.


title: Femininity

text: Professor of English Tara Williams has suggested that modern notions of femininity in English-speaking society began during the medieval period at the time of the bubonic plague in the 1300s. Women in the Early Middle Ages were referred to simply within their traditional roles of maiden, wife, or widow. After the Black Death in England wiped out approximately half the population, traditional gender roles of wife and mother changed, and opportunities opened up for women in society. The words "femininity" and "womanhood" are first recorded in Chaucer around 1380.


title: Femininity

text: In 1949, French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "no biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society" and "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". The idea was picked up in 1959 by Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman and in 1990 by American philosopher Judith Butler, who theorized that gender is not fixed or inherent but is rather a socially defined set of practices and traits that have, over time, grown to become labelled as feminine or masculine. Goffman argued that women are socialized to present themselves as "precious, ornamental and fragile, uninstructed in and ill-suited for anything requiring muscular exertion" and to project "shyness, reserve and a display of frailty, fear and incompetence".


title: Femininity

text: Scientific efforts to measure femininity and masculinity were pioneered by psychologists Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles in the 1930s. Their "M–F model" was adopted by other researchers and psychologists. The model posited that femininity and masculinity were innate and enduring qualities, not easily measured, opposite to one another, and that imbalances between them led to mental disorders.


title: Femininity

text: Alongside the women's movement of the 1970s, researchers began to move away from the M–F model, developing an interest in androgyny. The Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire were developed to measure femininity and masculinity on separate scales. Using such tests, researchers found that the two dimensions varied independently of one another, casting doubt on the earlier view of femininity and masculinity as opposing qualities.


title: Femininity

text: Second-wave feminists, influenced by de Beauvoir, believed that although biological differences between females and males were innate, the concepts of femininity and masculinity had been culturally constructed, with traits such as passivity and tenderness assigned to women and aggression and intelligence assigned to men. Girls, second-wave feminists said, were then socialized with toys, games, television, and school into conforming to feminine values and behaviors. In her significant 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique", American feminist Betty Friedan wrote that the key to women's subjugation lay in the social construction of femininity as childlike, passive, and dependent, and called for a "drastic reshaping of the cultural image of femininity."


title: Femininity

text: The relationship between feminine socialization and heterosexual relationships has been studied by scholars, as femininity is related to women's and girls' sexual appeal to men and boys. Femininity is sometimes linked with sexual objectification. Sexual passiveness, or sexual receptivity, is sometimes considered feminine while sexual assertiveness and sexual desire are sometimes considered masculine.


title: Femininity

text: Scholars have debated the extent to which gender identity and gender-specific behaviors are due to socialization versus biological factors. Social and biological influences are thought to be mutually interacting during development. Studies of prenatal androgen exposure have provided some evidence that femininity and masculinity are partly biologically determined. Other possible biological influences include evolution, genetics, epigenetics, and hormones (both during development and in adulthood).


title: Femininity

text: In 1959, researchers such as John Money and Anke Ehrhardt proposed the prenatal hormone theory. Their research argues that sexual organs bathe the embryo with hormones in the womb, resulting in the birth of an individual with a distinctively male or female brain; this was suggested by some to "predict future behavioral development in a masculine or feminine direction". This theory, however, has been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds and remains controversial. In 2005, scientific research investigating sex differences in psychology showed that gender expectations and stereotype threat affect behavior, and a person's gender identity can develop as early as three years of age. Money also argued that gender identity is formed during a child's first three years.


title: Femininity

text: People who exhibit a combination of both masculine and feminine characteristics are considered androgynous, and feminist philosophers have argued that gender ambiguity may blur gender classification. Modern conceptualizations of femininity also rely not just upon social constructions, but upon the individualized choices made by women.


title: Femininity

text: Philosopher Mary Vetterling-Braggin argues that all characteristics associated with femininity arose from early human sexual encounters which were mainly male-forced and female-unwilling, because of male and female anatomical differences. Others, such as Carole Pateman, Ria Kloppenborg, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, argue that the definition of femininity is the result of how females must behave in order to maintain a patriarchal social system.


title: Femininity

text: In his 1998 book "Masculinity and Femininity: the Taboo Dimension of National Cultures", Dutch psychologist and researcher Geert Hofstede wrote that only behaviors directly connected with procreation can, strictly speaking, be described as feminine or masculine, and yet every society worldwide recognizes many additional behaviors as more suitable to females than males, and vice versa. He describes these as relatively arbitrary choices mediated by cultural norms and traditions, identifying "masculinity versus femininity" as one of five basic dimensions in his theory of cultural dimensions. Hofstede describes as feminine behaviors including service, permissiveness, and benevolence, and describes as feminine those countries stressing equality, solidarity, quality of work-life, and the resolution of conflicts by compromise and negotiation.


title: Femininity

text: In Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, the anima and animus are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind. The anima and animus are described by Jung as elements of his theory of the collective unconscious, a domain of the unconscious that transcends the personal psyche. In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female, it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus.


title: Femininity

text: In Western cultures, the ideal of feminine appearance has traditionally included long, flowing hair, clear skin, a narrow waist, and little or no body hair or facial hair. In other cultures, however, some expectations are different. For example, in many parts of the world, underarm hair is not considered unfeminine. Today, the color pink is strongly associated with femininity, whereas in the early 1900s pink was associated with boys and blue with girls.


title: Femininity

text: These feminine ideals of beauty have been criticized as restrictive, unhealthy, and even racist. In particular, the prevalence of anorexia and other eating disorders in Western countries has frequently been blamed on the modern feminine ideal of thinness.


title: Femininity

text: In many Muslim countries, women are required to cover their heads with a "hijab" (veil). It is considered a symbol of feminine modesty and morality. Some, however, see it as a symbol of objectification and oppression.


title: Femininity

text: Cultural standards vary on what is considered feminine. For example, in 16th century France, high heels were considered a distinctly masculine type of shoe, though they are currently considered feminine.


title: Femininity

text: In Ancient Egypt, sheath and beaded net dresses were considered female clothing, while wraparound dresses, perfumes, cosmetics, and elaborate jewelry were worn by both men and women. In Ancient Persia, clothing was generally unisex, though women wore veils and headscarves. Women in Ancient Greece wore himations; and in Ancient Rome women wore the palla, a rectangular mantle, and the maphorion.


title: Femininity

text: The typical feminine outfit of aristocratic women of the Renaissance was an undershirt with a gown and a high-waisted overgown, and a plucked forehead and beehive or turban-style hairdo.


title: Femininity

text: Body alteration is the deliberate altering of the human body for aesthetic or non-medical purpose. One such purpose has been to induce perceived feminine characteristics in women.


title: Femininity

text: For centuries in Imperial China, smaller feet were considered to be a more aristocratic characteristic in women. The practice of foot binding was intended to enhance this characteristic, though it made walking difficult and painful.