title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: After a week of heavy fighting, rebels both inside and outside Aleppo advanced into the Ramouseh neighborhood, linked up and captured it, while also seizing the Al-Ramousah Military Academy. With these advances, the rebels managed to cut the government's supply line into the government-held part of west Aleppo and announced the Army's siege of rebel-held east Aleppo had been broken. However, the new rebel supply line was still under Army artillery fire and being hit by air-strikes, making both sides essentially under siege. Since the rebel offensive started, at least 130 civilians had been killed, most by rebel shelling of government-held districts. 500 fighters on both sides also died, mostly rebels. However, on 4 September, the Syrian Armed forces recaptured the Technical College, Armament college and artillery college, thus imposing the siege on Aleppo once again. Later that week they recaptured the Ramouseh district and reversed almost all rebel gains made since 30 July. The Syrian Government forces then started an offensive to capture eastern Aleppo on 22 September, taking 15–20% of the rebel-held part of Aleppo.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Rebels started an attack on western Aleppo in late October, which failed, with government forces retaking areas in the south-west that they had lost to the rebel's late July offensive. The Syrian Army then launched an offensive, aimed at finishing rebel-held Aleppo once and for all, during which they captured the Hanano district, Sakhour district, Jabal Badro district, Bustan al-Basha district, Hellok district, Sheikh Kheder district, Sheikh Fares district Haydariyah district, Ayn al-Tal industrial district and reportedly the research housing south of Jabal Badro. They also captured the Ard' Al Hamra district, reportedly cutting rebel-held territory in Aleppo by 40–45%.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: By 13 December 2016, only 5% of the original territory of the city remained in rebel hands. A ceasefire was announced and the fighting stopped in order to allow the evacuation of civilians and rebels. The buses were prepared for the evacuation. However, the deal fell apart the next day, when the Syrian Government resumed their intense bombing of eastern Aleppo, with both sides blaming the other for the resumed fighting.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The deal was revived on 15 December with first convoy of evacuees leaving. The evacuation was however suspended on the next day. Another deal was reached on 18 December and evacuation resumed later in the day. The evacuation again stalled on 20 December, but resumed on the following day. On 22 December, the evacuation was completed while the Syrian Army declared it had taken complete control of the city. Red Cross later confirmed that the evacuation of all civilians and rebels was complete.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: On 22 February 2018, it was reported that the YPG had agreed to hand over eastern districts of Aleppo city to the Syrian government. According to Syrian state television, this decision was made to reinforce positions around the region of Afrin, and to halt Turkey's offensive. This came days after pro-Syrian government fighters agreed to bolster the Kurdish forces in the northwest.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: SOHR and a witness later said that Syrian government forces had entered the areas controlled by the Kurdish fighters. YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud however denied this claim. A YPG commander later stated that Kurdish fighters had shifted to Afrin to help repel a Turkish assault. As a result, he said the pro-Syrian government forces had regained control of the districts previously controlled by them.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Throughout the start of 2020, the SAA made advances in the Idlib and Aleppo countryside. On the 17th of February, they had regained control of the last rebel-held suburbs in Aleppo city, gaining full control for the first time since 2012.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Rebel forces expanded into the countryside south of Aleppo to control sections of the M4 and M5 highways, effectively blocking ground reinforcements for the Syrian Army. Before the end of 2012, the Syrian Army in Aleppo was receiving sporadic supplies and ammunition replenishment by air or via backroads. The fall of Base 46, a large complex that reinforced and supplied government troops, was seen by experts as "a tactical turning point that may lead to a strategic shift" in the battle for Aleppo. In a November 2012, intelligence report, American publisher Strategic Forecasting, Inc. described the strategic position of government forces in Aleppo as "dire", and said the Free Syrian Army had them "essentially surrounded".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: On 26 November 2012, rebels captured Tishrin Dam, further isolating government forces in Aleppo and leaving only one route into Aleppo. By late January 2013 Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said all supply routes to Aleppo had been cut off by opposition forces, comparing the situation to the Siege of Leningrad. By late February 2013, Aleppo International Airport was almost surrounded by rebel forces. Later, the Syrian Army regained control of the strategic town Tel Sheigeb, allowing them to approach the airport. In November 2013, the Syrian Army retook the town of al-Safira. This opened a road for the government to support the besieged Kuweires Military Airbase and Aleppo Power Plant.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In February 2014, it was reported that the army planned to encircle Aleppo and impose blockades and truces. It would also try to recapture Sheikh Najjar Industrial City to rebuild the economy and provide jobs. By October 2014, the army had seized Sheikh Najjar, reinforced Aleppo Central Prison and captured Handaraat, almost besieging rebel-held Aleppo. Tensions peaked in early April 2014, when a Syrian Republican Guard officer allegedly killed a Hezbollah commander during an argument over the opposition advance in al-Rashadin, and other pro-government militia groups sent as reinforcements, such as the National Defence Force, proved to be unreliable in combat. Effectively cutting off access was more difficult in Aleppo because rebels controlled more terrain there than in other cities. Rebels also have a strong presence in the countryside and around the border crossings with Turkey. In April 2014 government commanders inside the city were saying that contrary to implementing such a strategy, "the best [they] can do in Aleppo is just secure ... positions".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The attempted encirclement involved the SAA's attacks on Bustan Al-Pasha, Khalidiyyeh, the farms of Mazra'a Halabi, Al-Amariyya and Bustan Al-Qaseer. The rebels' strategic victory at the Siege of Wadi Deif resulted in threats to several main government supply lines. This cast doubt on government forces' ambitions to control the road from Hama to Aleppo and the Damascus-Aleppo international road, and has been seen as a personal defeat for Syrian Arab Army Col. Suheil Al Hassan.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria, proposed a pause in fighting, but opinions about implementation were divided. The European Union warned that "cases of forced surrender imposed by the Assad regime through starvation sieges were labelled fallaciously as local cease-fires in the past." The Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army, which was gaining ground in Deraa province south of Damascus, warned that a freeze in fighting in Aleppo could hamper their advance, as pro-Assad forces could be redirected from Aleppo.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The Syrian government's defeat at the Second Battle of Idlib in late March 2015, which helped expand the influence of the al-Nusra Front, forced the Islamic State (IS) to expand its attacks in central Syria after it failed to block the Raqqa highway that branches out to the Syrian army's main supply route to Aleppo along the Khanasir-Athriya road. IS's aim would potentially be to establish the necessary conditions to attack Idlib and al-Nusra. The March–April IS offensive in central Syria led some volunteers defending the Homs-Aleppo highway to consider deserting to defend their hometowns.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: According to Jane's Information Group, a possible offensive on Homs by both al-Nusra Front and IS working independently might force the government to move critical forces away from Aleppo to defend key supply routes. There were additional opposition gains during the 2015 Jisr al-Shughur offensive. Syrian government minister Faisal Mekdad stated in June 2015, "All our strategic planning now is to keep the way open to Aleppo to allow our forces to defend it". Media outlets have noted that powerful online campaigns are being conducted in a war of information regarding Aleppo.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Turkey had sponsored rebel forces in Aleppo to a degree that eastern Aleppo was called "a Turkish card guarded by jihadis." However, Turkish policy changed in August 2016, moving thousands of rebel fighters away from the area west of Aleppo to counter the secular federalist Syrian Democratic Forces to the north ("see Turkish military intervention in Syria"). This reduced the forces available to try to lift the siege of Aleppo, ensuring its fall.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: With over four years of fighting, the battle of Aleppo represents one of the longest sieges in modern warfare, which left an estimated 31,183 people dead, almost a tenth of the overall Syrian war casualties at the time. The Violations Documentation Center in Syria assessed the death toll. According to its records, between 19 July 2012 and 15 December 2016 there were 22,633 adult male deaths (73%), 2,849 adult female deaths (9.2%), 3,773 child male deaths (12.2%) and 1,775 child female deaths (5.7%). 23,604 or 76% of all fatalities were civilians, while only 7,406 or 24% were military deaths. Causes of death were explosions (910 deaths), shelling (6,384 deaths), field execution (1,549 deaths), shooting (9,438 deaths), warplane bombardment (11,233 deaths), chemical and toxic gas attacks (46 deaths) and others.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The pro-opposition monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) gave a similar number: it registered that 1,612 days of fighting for Aleppo left 21,452 civilians dead. Among them were 5,261 children under the age of 18 and 2,777 women over the age of 18.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a pro-opposition non-governmental organization, reported that the Russian bombardments killed at least 1,640 civilians in the Aleppo area: 1,178 civilians died between 30 September 2015 and 1 August 2016, while additional 462 civilians were killed from 19 September 2016 until 30 November 2016.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described the fighting as one of the most devastating conflicts in modern times. It appealed: "The human cost of the fighting in Aleppo is simply too high. We urge all parties to stop the destruction and indiscriminate attacks, and stop the killing".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The ICRC also said that hundreds of civilians perished through the "indiscriminate shelling of residential areas across Aleppo". Several infectious diseases broke out in Aleppo and other areas in Syria during the civil war, including poliomyelitis, measles and cutaneous leishmaniasis. Food prices also grew astronomically during the war. A kilogram (two pounds) of sugar cost $21 at one point.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Aleppo suffered catastrophic damage during the four-year siege and battle. According to an Amnesty International report, government forces have been responsible for the majority of violations in the conflict in Syria. Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a statement in November 2016 which said that "strikes against hospitals, schools, marketplaces, water facilities and bakeries are now commonplace, and may amount to war crimes". During that phase of the offensive, about 250,000 civilians were left in the city. In November 2016, UNICEF estimated that nearly 100,000 children were living under siege in Aleppo. The 2016 offensive cut off the city from food supplies, and last time eastern Aleppo was reached with significant humanitarian supplies before the Syrian re-capture was the beginning of July in 2016. The Syrian government, aided by Russian army, used war planes to systematically bombard hospitals in the rebel-held areas of the city. By the end of November 2016, no functional hospitals were left, and over 20,000 people were displaced by the fighting. Human Rights Watch issued a statement reporting that the Syrian and Russian military campaign killed more than 440 civilians, including more than 90 children, between September and October 2016. It also deplored that airstrikes often appeared to be "recklessly indiscriminate".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Between 29 January and 14 March 2013, opposition activists reported about 230 bodies were found on the banks and in the Queiq River in Aleppo. They accused government forces of being the ones who executed the men since the bodies came down the river from the direction of government-held areas of the city. Human Rights Watch was able to identify at least 147 victims, all male and aged between 11 and 64. Human Rights Watch reported that family members of many of the victims testified that they were last seen in a government-controlled area or after they set out to cross into the area through two checkpoints, one manned by opposition forces and the other by government forces.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In May 2014, the UN Security Council voted for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate war crimes in the Syrian Civil War, but the resolution was vetoed by Russia and China.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In 2014, the United Nations adopted Resolution 2139 which ordered the end of using barrel bombs in the battle. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights stated that the Syrian army dropped 7,000 barrel bombs in the first five months of 2015, claiming the lives of 3,000 people. Amnesty International reported that barrel bombs killed 3,000 people in 2014. "Channel4" reported that videos have emerged online showing the Syrian army using barrel bombs.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The government denied using barrel bombs. In an interview to BBC, President Bashar al-Assad denied using "indiscriminate weapons" like barrel bombs in the rebel held territories. Assad said, "I know about the army. They use bullets, missiles and bombs. I haven't heard of the army using barrels, or maybe cooking pots."


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Amnesty International issued a detailed report about Aleppo in 2015. It warned about the Syrian government use of imprecise explosive weapons on densely populated civilian areas, illustrating it with the example that eight barrel bomb attacks between January 2014 to March 2015 killed at least 188 civilians—while only one rebel was recorded among the fatalities. It concluded that the government forces in Aleppo deliberately targeted civilians and civilian objects, implemented "forced disappearances", used torture and other ill-treatment among the prisoners—and that this constitutes a crime against humanity.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Chemical attacks by the Syrian government on opposition-held areas in Aleppo were reported on 10 August and 6 September 2016. After these attacks, the victims reported they were suffering from a shortage of breath, coughing, reddened skin and eyes, and excessive tearing, and sought medical treatment in hospitals. Five people, including three children, died as a result. A UN report found that the Syrian government used the prohibited chlorine bombs in Aleppo, causing "hundreds of civilian casualties". Human Rights Watch also condemned the Russian army for using incendiary weapons in Aleppo, in violation of international law. Cluster bombs were also used both by the Russian aviation and the Syrian government. Russia was directly accused of war crimes several times for its part in the battle at the UN Security Council by the ambassadors of the United Kingdom, the United States and France, due to its use of bunker buster and incendiary bombs on urban residential areas.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: On 19 September 2016, a UN/Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) aid convoy was attacked at night, as well as a SARC warehouse and health clinic in Urum al-Kubra, a rebel-held town 12 km west of Aleppo. 20 civilians and one SARC staff member were killed, while food and medical aid, intended to reach Aleppo, was destroyed. Some witnesses on the ground at the time of the attack said they had heard helicopters during the attack. The United States accused Russian or Syrian government warplanes of perpetrating the attack, while Russia rejected the accusation. The UN said it was not in a position to determine how the attacked unfolded. The UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) said it believed the convoy was attack by airstrikes. United Nations investigators later concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack in a "meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out" air strike. The investigators stated in a report that the Syrian Air Force used barrel bombs and rockets to attack the convoy and that, after the initial attack, Syrian government jets strafed the survivors. According to the investigators, since these actions were carried out deliberately they constituted a war crime.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Following the re-capture of parts of Aleppo by the Syrian government, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that a pro-government Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary group killed at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, in the Bustan al-Qasr, al-Ferdous, al-Kallaseh, and al-Saleheen neighbourhoods on 12 and 13 December 2016.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In January 2017, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) submitted evidence of alleged war crimes committed by militias backed by Russia and Iran to the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria. According to the head of the SNHR, "sometimes the Russians exceed the regime in some kinds of violations" and he noted the similarities between the kinds of war crimes and violations committed by Russian forces and those of the Assad regime.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In February 2017, "Breaking Aleppo", a report by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, utilized open source and digital forensic research to reveal both the Syrian government's atrocities and those of its supporters in the final months of the siege of Aleppo. In March 2017, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic documented violations including chemical attacks and civilian executions perpetrated between 21 July and 22 December 2016.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: A UN envoy warned that rebels may have been committing war crimes due to their indiscriminate rocket warfare targeting civilians in Aleppo, while trying to lift the siege in October and November 2016. The Aleppo rebels used improvised artillery, including "hell cannons", makeshift mortar firing gas cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel. UN High Commissioner For Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein stated that their use was "totally unacceptable" and constituted indiscriminate attacks as they were very difficult to aim correctly, frequently killing and maiming civilians in government-held areas. According to Zeid, their inaccuracy means they had no military purpose so he concluded their use was primarily to "terrorize the inhabitants of western Aleppo". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in December 2014 that between July and December 2014 the rebels killed 204 civilians using hell cannons. Professor of Law Mark A. Summers of Barry University School of Law, a legal expert previous assigned to the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, wrote that both the uses of barrel bombs and hell cannons is inaccurate and so randomly destructive that their use is illegal, and thus constitutes either the direct or indiscriminate targeting of civilians and civilian objects.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: There have been reports that rebels have on multiple occasions indiscriminately shelled the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood. In mid-June 2016 Russia accused the rebels of causing the death of over 40 civilians in the month. A spokesman for the US-supported SDF also accused the rebels of causing 1,000 civilian deaths and injuries, through shelling of Sheikh Maqsood. There were allegations that the Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam) group may have used chemical weapons in Sheikh Maqsood on 7 and 8 April 2016, based on reports of eight treated patients. In May 2016, Amnesty International's regional director suggested that the attacks on Sheikh Maqsood constitute war crimes.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Rebel groups such as the al-Nusra Front, the Levant Front and the Ahrar al-Sham established Sharia law in areas they controlled, imposing torture or other ill-treatment as punishment. The al-Nusra Front maintained a prison at the "fetid, trash-strewn basement" of the Aleppo Eye Hospital where the group was headquartered. At this prison, some people were held for years and subjected to repeated torture. Human rights activists, lawyers and journalists have been subjected to kidnappings. In 2015, Amnesty International warned that "non-state armed groups have engaged in abductions and hostage-taking, as well as the arbitrary detention, torture, and other mistreatment of prisoners in Aleppo". According to a 2016 Amnesty International report, some of the rebel groups in the city engaged in summary executions, in some cases in public, on the basis of "quasi-judicial institutions". The victims were captured soldiers, government officials, rival group members, as well as civilians. Russian General Staff Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir claimed that the Syrian government discovered several prisons in East Aleppo on 15 December 2016 used by the opposition to detain, torture and in some cases murder their opponents, including civilians that refused to fight. At the conclusion of the battle, Syrian state media claimed the Army had found the bodies of 21 executed civilians in rebel prisons, citing the head of Aleppo's forensic unit. The Russian defence ministry also claimed the execution of dozens of people by the rebels, some showing signs of torture. The pro-opposition activist group the SOHR confirmed bodies had been found in the streets but could not verify how they were killed.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Denial of water and sanitation is considered a war crime. Water supplies in the city for tens of thousands of people were deliberately cut by the Jabhat al-Nusra group for several days in May 2014. Jaysh al-Islam also reportedly prohibited civilians from receiving food and supplies in one neighbourhood they controlled in December 2016. The rebel groups also hoarded food during the siege, allowing civilians to starve while they remained well-fed.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: During the December 2016 evacuation, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham rebels burnt buses meant to evacuate sick and elderly civilians from two rebel-besieged Shiite villages in Idlib province, concurrently with the Aleppo evacuations.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Amnesty reported that, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, "at least 23 civilians were killed by YPG shelling and sniper attacks" in opposition-held areas in the city between February and April 2016.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: ...the ongoing devastation inflicted on the country's stunning archaeological sites—bullet holes lodged in walls of its ancient Roman cities, the debris of Byzantine churches, early mosques and crusader fortresses—rob Syria of its best chance for a post-conflict economic boom based on tourism, which, until the conflict started 18 months ago, contributed 12% to the national income.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The Al-Madina Souq, a major souq (market) in Aleppo, was affected by a fire in September 2012. The "Irish Times" reported that around 700 to 1000 shops were destroyed by the fire, which had been caused by firing and shelling. The following month, there were reports of the Great Mosque of Aleppo being damaged by rocket-propelled grenades. Fighting with mortars and machine guns caused damage to the main gate and the prayer hall. The attack continued in the mosque till it was repelled by the army. The Citadel of Aleppo was damaged during Syrian army shelling.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: On 2 October, Irena Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, expressed her "grave concern about possible damage to precious sites" and requested the combatants to "ensure the protection of the outstanding cultural legacy that Syria hosts on its soil". She cited the Hague Convention for protecting the heritage sites.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: A 2014 report by UNITAR found, using satellite images, that 22 out of the 210 examined key structures had been completely destroyed. 48 others had sustained severe damage, 33 moderate damage and 32 possible damage. The destroyed sites included the Carlton Citadel Hotel, destroyed to its foundations in a bombing in 2014, the madrasas of al-Sharafiyya and Khusruwiyah. Damage to the Great Mosque of Aleppo, whose minaret had been destroyed, was confirmed. According to official estimates, 1500 out of the 1600 shops in the souqs had been damaged or destroyed.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: "The Washington Post" wrote that the scale of devastation of Aleppo "evoked comparisons with cities like Grozny and Dresden". It noted, however, that the destruction was mostly concentrated in the rebel-held part of the city: about 70 to 80 percent of the destruction was in the east. UN satellite images determined more than 33,500 damaged residential buildings in the city, most of them multi-apartment blocks. The costs of reconstruction were estimated at between $35–40 billion. Al-Hakam Shaar and Robert Templer proposed that the deliberate destruction of Aleppo was a form of "urbicide".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The coverage of the siege of Aleppo in the Western media emphasised the suffering of civilians and often contained graphic pictures of injured and dying children. As there were almost no international journalists there, the reporting was outsourced to local activists linked to the rebels who held the city. This was significantly different from the news coverage of the sieges of Raqqa and Mosul carried out by the Coalition forces, where the civilian losses were downplayed.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: The Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, said on the occasion of the 67th Anniversary of the Syrian Arab Army in August 2012, "the army is engaged in a crucial and heroic battle ... on which the destiny of the nation and its people rests ..." After gaining nearly complete control of eastern Aleppo, Assad referred to this success as an "important point in history of Syria". He also called upon remaining rebel factions to surrender in exchange for amnesty.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: A series of victory celebrations were held in Aleppo following the government forces' victory, attended by government supporters, including Aleppo's Christian community which has increasingly sided with the government. Large-scale outdoor Christmas celebrations were held publicly for the first time in years, with a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the Al-Aziziyah neighborhood. Participants waved Syrian and Russian flags and held portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. A Mass was held in Saint Elias Cathedral by Aleppo's Christian community for the first time in four years. According to Syrian TV, the Christmas celebration, however, was disrupted with a bomb that exploded at the event. The celebration, however, resumed several minutes after the bomb was detonated.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: A May 2017 "New York Times Magazine" report from "Aleppo after the Fall" described the public experience in formerly rebel controlled East Aleppo as "a chaotic wasteland full of feuding militias—some of them radical Islamists—who hoarded food and weapons while the people starved" and quoted local sources as "no one is 100 percent with the regime, but mostly these people are unified by their resistance to the opposition" and people having experienced "a rebellion that is corrupt, brutal and compromised by foreign sponsors".


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Jan Egeland, Special Advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, stated in November 2016: "I have not seen a place where there has been so much politicization, manipulation of aid, as we have seen in Syria in recent months. It has to stop!". He also called the bombardment and destruction of the city a "dark chapter" in modern history:


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: In his last press conference as the United Nations Secretary-General on 16 December 2016, Ban Ki-moon declared: "Aleppo is now a synonym for hell". The UN High Commissioner for Refugees delivered a statement on 17 December 2016, calling for an immediate end to the war in Syria: "With the situation in Aleppo, Syria's war has reached an historic low... Aleppo has become a metaphor for the disastrous situation that Syria is in today, with half the population having been forced from their homes." "The Washington Post" compared the destruction of Aleppo to the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: On 20 December 2016, the United Nations Security Council approved "adequate, neutral UN monitoring and direct observation on evacuations from the eastern districts" in Aleppo.


title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)

text: Rallies and demonstrations intended to show solidarity with Aleppo's besieged civilians, as well as protests against the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies, were held in several cities across the world, organized by numerous groups. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark on 14 December 2016, as a symbol of solidarity, and thousands protested in Paris' Stravinsky Square against Russia's role in the destruction of the city. Qatar cancelled its national day of celebration on 18 December 2016 in solidarity with Aleppo. German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said that "the cries for help of the people caught up in the fighting for the beleaguered city of Aleppo are a harrowing reminder to the world". He also urged: "There must be an end to the killing and dying in Aleppo." Protests were also held in London, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Gaza City, and Amman, with some protesters burning pictures of Vladimir Putin because of Russia's role in the siege.


title: New Imperialism

text: In historical contexts, New Imperialism characterizes a period of colonial expansion by European powers, the United States, and Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: New Imperialism

text: The period featured an unprecedented pursuit of overseas territorial acquisitions. At the time, states focused on building their empires with new technological advances and developments, expanding their territory through conquest, and exploiting the resources of the subjugated countries.


title: New Imperialism

text: During the era of New Imperialism, the Western powers (and Japan) individually conquered almost all of Africa and parts of Asia. The new wave of imperialism reflected ongoing rivalries among the great powers, the economic desire for new resources and markets, and a "civilizing mission" ethos. Many of the colonies established during this era gained independence during the era of decolonization that followed World War II.


title: New Imperialism

text: The qualifier "new" is used to differentiate modern imperialism from earlier imperial activity, such as the formation of ancient empires and the first wave of European colonization.


title: New Imperialism

text: The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America in the 1820s ended the first era of European imperialism. Especially in Great Britain these revolutions helped show the deficiencies of mercantilism, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. In 1846, the Corn Laws were repealed and manufacturers grew, as the regulations enforced by the Corn Laws had slowed their businesses. With the repeal in place, the manufacturers were able to trade more freely. Thus, Britain began to adopt the concept of free trade.


title: New Imperialism

text: During this period, between the 1815 Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleonic France and Imperial Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Great Britain reaped the benefits of being Europe's dominant military and economic power. As the "workshop of the world", Britain could produce finished goods so efficiently that they could usually undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in foreign markets, supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as the German states, France, Belgium, and the United States.


title: New Imperialism

text: The erosion of British hegemony after the Franco-Prussian War, in which a coalition of German states led by Prussia soundly defeated the Second French Empire, was occasioned by changes in the European and world economies and in the continental balance of power following the breakdown of the Concert of Europe, established by the Congress of Vienna. The establishment of nation-states in Germany and Italy resolved territorial issues that had kept potential rivals embroiled in internal affairs at the heart of Europe to Britain's advantage. The years from 1871 to 1914 would be marked by an extremely unstable peace. France's determination to recover Alsace-Lorraine, annexed by Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany's mounting imperialist ambitions would keep the two nations constantly poised for conflict.


title: New Imperialism

text: This competition was sharpened by the Long Depression of 1873–1896, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns, which put pressure on governments to promote home industry, leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers (in Germany from 1879 and in France from 1881).


title: New Imperialism

text: The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 sought to destroy the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of a territory claim, specifically in Africa. The imposition of direct rule in terms of "effective occupation" necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples. Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly, most brutally in the Herero Wars in German South-West Africa from 1904 to 1907 and the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa from 1905 to 1907. One of the goals of the conference was to reach agreements over trade, navigation, and boundaries of Central Africa. However, of all of the 15 nations in attendance of the Berlin Conference, none of the countries represented were African.


title: New Imperialism

text: The main dominating powers of the conference were France, Germany, Great Britain and Portugal. They remapped Africa without considering the cultural and linguistic borders that were already established. At the end of the conference, Africa was divided into 50 different colonies. The attendants established who was in control of each of these newly divided colonies. They also planned, noncommittally, to end the slave trade in Africa.


title: New Imperialism

text: In Britain, the age of new imperialism marked a time for significant economic changes. Because the country was the first to industrialize, Britain was technologically ahead of many other countries throughout the majority of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, other countries, chiefly Germany and the United States, began to challenge Britain's technological and economic power. After several decades of monopoly, the country was battling to maintain a dominant economic position while other powers became more involved in international markets. In 1870, Britain contained 31.8% of the world's manufacturing capacity while the United States contained 23.3% and Germany contained 13.2%. By 1910, Britain's manufacturing capacity had dropped to 14.7%, while that of the United States had risen to 35.3% and that of Germany to 15.9%. As countries like Germany and America became more economically successful, they began to become more involved with imperialism, resulting in the British struggling to maintain the volume of British trade and investment overseas.


title: New Imperialism

text: Britain further faced strained international relations with three expansionist powers (Japan, Germany, and Italy) during the early twentieth century. Before 1939, these three powers never directly threatened Britain itself, but the dangers to the Empire were clear. By the 1930s, Britain was worried that Japan would threaten its holdings in the Far East as well as territories in India, Australia and New Zealand. Italy held an interest in North Africa, which threatened British Egypt, and German dominance of the European continent held some danger for Britain's security. Britain worried that the expansionist powers would cause the breakdown of international stability; as such, British foreign policy attempted to protect the stability in a rapidly changing world. With its stability and holdings threatened, Britain decided to adopt a policy of concession rather than resistance, a policy that became known as appeasement.


title: New Imperialism

text: In Britain, the era of new imperialism affected public attitudes toward the idea of imperialism itself. Most of the public believed that if imperialism was going to exist, it was best if Britain was the driving force behind it. The same people further thought that British imperialism was a force for good in the world. In 1940, the Fabian Colonial Research Bureau argued that Africa could be developed both economically and socially, but until this development could happen, Africa was best off remaining with the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling's 1891 poem, "The English Flag," contains the stanza:


title: New Imperialism

text: These lines show Kipling's belief that the British who actively took part in imperialism knew more about British national identity than the ones whose entire lives were spent solely in the imperial metropolis. While there were pockets of anti-imperialist opposition in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resistance to imperialism was nearly nonexistent in the country as a whole. In many ways, this new form of imperialism formed a part of the British identity until the end of the era of new imperialism with the Second World War.


title: New Imperialism

text: New Imperialism gave rise to new social views of colonialism. Rudyard Kipling, for instance, urged the United States to "Take up the White Man's burden" of bringing European civilization to the other peoples of the world, regardless of whether these "other peoples" wanted this civilization or not. This part of "The White Man's Burden" exemplifies Britain's perceived attitude towards the colonization of other countries:


title: New Imperialism

text: While Social Darwinism became popular throughout Western Europe and the United States, the paternalistic French and Portuguese "civilizing mission" (in French: '; in Portuguese: ') appealed to many European statesmen both in and outside France. Despite apparent benevolence existing in the notion of the "White Man's Burden", the unintended consequences of imperialism might have greatly outweighed the potential benefits. Governments became increasingly paternalistic at home and neglected the individual liberties of their citizens. Military spending expanded, usually leading to an "imperial overreach", and imperialism created clients of ruling elites abroad that were brutal and corrupt, consolidating power through imperial rents and impeding social change and economic development that ran against their ambitions. Furthermore, "nation building" oftentimes created cultural sentiments of racism and xenophobia.


title: New Imperialism

text: Many of Europe's major elites also found advantages in formal, overseas expansion: large financial and industrial monopolies wanted imperial support to protect their overseas investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad, bureaucrats sought government offices, military officers desired promotion, and the traditional but waning landed gentries sought increased profits for their investments, formal titles, and high office. Such special interests have perpetuated empire building throughout history.


title: New Imperialism

text: Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism, and other protest movements during an era of mass society both in Europe and later in North America, elites sought to use imperial jingoism to co-opt the support of part of the industrial working class. The new mass media promoted jingoism in the Spanish–American War (1898), the Second Boer War (1899–1902), and the Boxer Rebellion (1900). The left-wing German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler has defined social imperialism as "the diversions outwards of internal tensions and forces of change in order to preserve the social and political status quo", and as a "defensive ideology" to counter the "disruptive effects of industrialization on the social and economic structure of Germany". In Wehler's opinion, social imperialism was a device that allowed the German government to distract public attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order. The dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the social "status quo". According to Wehler, German colonial policy in the 1880s was the first example of social imperialism in action, and was followed up by the 1897 Tirpitz Plan for expanding the German Navy. In this point of view, groups such as the Colonial Society and the Navy League are seen as instruments for the government to mobilize public support. The demands for annexing most of Europe and Africa in World War I are seen by Wehler as the pinnacle of social imperialism.


title: New Imperialism

text: The notion of rule over foreign lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations, even among those who associated imperial colonization with oppression and exploitation. For example, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand by future European socialist governments and led by them into eventual independence.


title: New Imperialism

text: In the 17th century, the British businessmen arrived in India and, after taking a small portion of land, formed the East India Company. The British East India Company annexed most of the subcontinent of India, starting with Bengal in 1757 and ending with Punjab in 1849. Many princely states remained independent. This was aided by a power vacuum formed by the collapse of the Mughal Empire in India and the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and increased British forces in India because of colonial conflicts with France. The invention of clipper ships in the early 1800s cut the trip to India from Europe in half from 6 months to 3 months; the British also laid cables on the floor of the ocean allowing telegrams to be sent from India and China. In 1818, the British controlled most of the Indian subcontinent and began imposing their ideas and ways on its residents, including different succession laws that allowed the British to take over a state with no successor and gain its land and armies, new taxes, and monopolistic control of industry. The British also collaborated with Indian officials to increase their influence in the region.


title: New Imperialism

text: Some Hindu and Muslim sepoys rebelled in 1857, resulting in the Indian Rebellion. After this revolt was suppressed by the British, India came under the direct control of the British crown. After the British had gained more control over India, they began changing around the financial state of India. Previously, Europe had to pay for Indian textiles and spices in bullion; with political control, Britain directed farmers to grow cash crops for the company for exports to Europe while India became a market for textiles from Britain. In addition, the British collected huge revenues from land rent and taxes on its acquired monopoly on salt production. Indian weavers were replaced by new spinning and weaving machines and Indian food crops were replaced by cash crops like cotton and tea.


title: New Imperialism

text: The British also began connecting Indian cities by railroad and telegraph to make travel and communication easier as well as building an irrigation system for increasing agricultural production. When Western education was introduced in India, Indians were quite influenced by it, but the inequalities between the British ideals of governance and their treatment of Indians became clear. In response to this discriminatory treatment, a group of educated Indians established the Indian National Congress, demanding equal treatment and self-governance.


title: New Imperialism

text: John Robert Seeley, a Cambridge Professor of History, said, "Our acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing great that has ever been done by Englishmen was done so unintentionally or accidentally as the conquest of India". According to him, the political control of India was not a conquest in the usual sense because it was not an act of a state.


title: New Imperialism

text: The new administrative arrangement, crowned with Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress of India in 1876, effectively replaced the rule of a monopolistic enterprise with that of a trained civil service headed by graduates of Britain's top universities. The administration retained and increased the monopolies held by the company. The India Salt Act of 1882 included regulations enforcing a government monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt; in 1923 a bill was passed doubling the salt tax.


title: New Imperialism

text: After taking control of much of India, the British expanded further into Burma, Malaya, Singapore and Borneo, with these colonies becoming further sources of trade and raw materials for British goods. The United States laid claim to the Philippines, and after the Philippine–American War, took control of the country as one of its overseas possessions.


title: New Imperialism

text: Formal colonization of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) commenced at the dawn of the 19th century when the Dutch state took possession of all Dutch East India Company (VOC) assets. Before that time the VOC merchants were in principle just another trading power among many, establishing trading posts and settlements (colonies) in strategic places around the archipelago. The Dutch gradually extended their sovereignty over most of the islands in the East Indies. Dutch expansion paused for several years during an interregnum of British rule between 1806 and 1816, when the Dutch Republic was occupied by the French forces of Napoleon. The Dutch government-in-exile in England ceded rule of all its colonies to Great Britain. However, Jan Willem Janssens, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies at the time, fought the British before surrendering the colony; he was eventually replaced by Stamford Raffles.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Dutch East Indies became the prize possession of the Dutch Empire. It was not the typical settler colony founded through massive emigration from the mother countries (such as the USA or Australia) and hardly involved displacement of the indigenous islanders, with a notable and dramatic exception in the island of Banda during the VOC era. Neither was it a plantation colony built on the import of slaves (such as Haiti or Jamaica) or a pure trade post colony (such as Singapore or Macau). It was more of an expansion of the existing chain of VOC trading posts. Instead of mass emigration from the homeland, the sizeable indigenous populations were controlled through effective political manipulation supported by military force. The servitude of the indigenous masses was enabled through a structure of indirect governance, keeping existing indigenous rulers in place. This strategy was already established by the VOC, which independently acted as a semi-sovereign state within the Dutch state, using the Indo Eurasian population as an intermediary buffer.


title: New Imperialism

text: In 1869 British anthropologist Alfred Russel Wallace described the colonial governing structure in his book "The Malay Archipelago":


title: New Imperialism

text: "The mode of government now adopted in Java is to retain the whole series of native rulers, from the village chief up to princes, who, under the name of Regents, are the heads of districts about the size of a small English county. With each Regent is placed a Dutch Resident, or Assistant Resident, who is considered to be his "elder brother," and whose "orders" take the form of "recommendations," which are, however, implicitly obeyed. Along with each Assistant, Resident is a Controller, a kind of inspector of all the lower native rulers, who periodically visits every village in the district, examines the proceedings of the native courts, hears complaints against the head-men or other native chiefs, and superintends the Government plantations."


title: New Imperialism

text: France annexed all of Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1880s; in the following decade, France completed its Indochinese empire with the annexation of Laos, leaving the kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) with an uneasy independence as a neutral buffer between British and French-ruled lands.


title: New Imperialism

text: In 1839, China found itself fighting the First Opium War with Great Britain after the Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei, Lin Zexu, seized the illegally traded opium. China was defeated, and in 1842 agreed to the provisions of the Treaty of Nanking. Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain, and certain ports, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, were opened to British trade and residence. In 1856, the Second Opium War broke out; the Chinese were again defeated and forced to the terms of the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin and the 1860 Convention of Peking. The treaty opened new ports to trade and allowed foreigners to travel in the interior. Missionaries gained the right to propagate Christianity, another means of Western penetration. The United States and Russia obtained the same prerogatives in separate treaties.


title: New Imperialism

text: Towards the end of the 19th century, China appeared on the way to territorial dismemberment and economic vassalage, the fate of India's rulers that had played out much earlier. Several provisions of these treaties caused long-standing bitterness and humiliation among the Chinese: extraterritoriality (meaning that in a dispute with a Chinese person, a Westerner had the right to be tried in a court under the laws of his own country), customs regulation, and the right to station foreign warships in Chinese waters.


title: New Imperialism

text: In 1904, the British invaded Lhasa, a pre-emptive strike against Russian intrigues and secret meetings between the 13th Dalai Lama's envoy and Tsar Nicholas II. The Dalai Lama fled into exile to China and Mongolia. The British were greatly concerned at the prospect of a Russian invasion of the Crown colony of India, though Russia – badly defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War and weakened by internal rebellion – could not realistically afford a military conflict against Britain. China under the Qing dynasty, however, was another matter.


title: New Imperialism

text: Natural disasters, famine and internal rebellions had enfeebled China in the late Qing. In the late 19th century, Japan and the Great Powers easily carved out trade and territorial concessions. These were humiliating submissions for the once-powerful China. Still, the central lesson of the war with Japan was not lost on the Russian General Staff: an Asian country using Western technology and industrial production methods could defeat a great European power. Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic, noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, buying weapons from Western countries and manufacturing their own at arsenals, such as the Hanyang Arsenal during the Boxer Rebellion. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (90% of the population at that time) living outside the concessions continued about their daily lives, uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".


title: New Imperialism

text: The British observer Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger suggested a British-Chinese alliance to check Russian expansion in Central Asia.


title: New Imperialism

text: During the Ili crisis when Qing China threatened to go to war against Russia over the Russian occupation of Ili, the British officer Charles George Gordon was sent to China by Britain to advise China on military options against Russia should a potential war break out between China and Russia.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Russians observed the Chinese building up their arsenal of modern weapons during the Ili crisis, the Chinese bought thousands of rifles from Germany. In 1880 massive amounts of military equipment and rifles were shipped via boats to China from Antwerp as China purchased torpedoes, artillery, and 260,260 modern rifles from Europe.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Russian military observer D. V. Putiatia visited China in 1888 and found that in Northeastern China (Manchuria) along the Chinese-Russian border, the Chinese soldiers were potentially able to become adept at "European tactics" under certain circumstances, and the Chinese soldiers were armed with modern weapons like Krupp artillery, Winchester carbines, and Mauser rifles.


title: New Imperialism

text: Compared to Russian controlled areas, more benefits were given to the Muslim Kirghiz on the Chinese controlled areas. Russian settlers fought against the Muslim nomadic Kirghiz, which led the Russians to believe that the Kirghiz would be a liability in any conflict against China. The Muslim Kirghiz were sure that in an upcoming war, that China would defeat Russia.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Qing dynasty forced Russia to hand over disputed territory in Ili in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881), in what was widely seen by the west as a diplomatic victory for the Qing. Russia acknowledged that Qing China potentially posed a serious military threat. Mass media in the west during this era portrayed China as a rising military power due to its modernization programs and as major threat to the western world, invoking fears that China would successfully conquer western colonies like Australia.


title: New Imperialism

text: Russian sinologists, the Russian media, threat of internal rebellion, the pariah status inflicted by the Congress of Berlin, and the negative state of the Russian economy all led Russia to concede and negotiate with China in St Petersburg, and return most of Ili to China.


title: New Imperialism

text: Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "China’s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go. ... In the Arrow War (1856–60), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884–85). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."


title: New Imperialism

text: In 1906, Tsar Nicholas II sent a secret agent to China to collect intelligence on the reform and modernization of the Qing dynasty. The task was given to Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, at the time a colonel in the Russian army, who travelled to China with French Sinologist Paul Pelliot. Mannerheim was disguised as an ethnographic collector, using a Finnish passport. Finland was, at the time, a Grand Duchy. For two years, Mannerheim proceeded through Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Henan, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia to Beijing. At the sacred Buddhist mountain of Wutai Shan he even met the 13th Dalai Lama. However, while Mannerheim was in China in 1907, Russia and Britain brokered the Anglo-Russian Agreement, ending the classical period of the Great Game.


title: New Imperialism

text: The correspondent Douglas Story observed Chinese troops in 1907 and praised their abilities and military skill.


title: New Imperialism

text: The rise of Japan as an imperial power after the Meiji Restoration led to further subjugation of China. In a dispute over regional suzerainty, war broke out between China and Japan, resulting in another humiliating defeat for the Chinese. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, China was forced to recognize Korea's exit from the Imperial Chinese tributary system, leading to the proclamation of the Korean Empire, and the island of Taiwan was ceded to Japan.


title: New Imperialism

text: In 1897, taking advantage of the murder of two missionaries, Germany demanded and was given a set of mining and railroad rights around Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong province. In 1898, Russia obtained access to Dairen and Port Arthur and the right to build a railroad across Manchuria, thereby achieving complete domination over a large portion of northeast China. The United Kingdom, France, and Japan also received a number of concessions later that year.


title: New Imperialism

text: The erosion of Chinese sovereignty contributed to a spectacular anti-foreign outbreak in June 1900, when the "Boxers" (properly the society of the "righteous and harmonious fists") attacked foreign legations in Beijing. This Boxer Rebellion provoked a rare display of unity among the colonial powers, who formed the Eight-Nation Alliance. Troops landed at Tianjin and marched on the capital, which they took on 14 August; the foreign soldiers then looted and occupied Beijing for several months. German forces were particularly severe in exacting revenge for the killing of their ambassador, while Russia tightened its hold on Manchuria in the northeast until its crushing defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.


title: New Imperialism

text: Although extraterritorial jurisdiction was abandoned by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1943, foreign political control of parts of China only finally ended with the incorporation of Hong Kong and the small Portuguese territory of Macau into the People's Republic of China in 1997 and 1999 respectively.


title: New Imperialism

text: "The Great Game" (Also called the "Tournament of Shadows" (, "Turniry Teney") in Russia) was the strategic, economic and political rivalry, emanating to conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia at the expense of Afghanistan, Persia and the Central Asian Khanates/Emirates. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, in which nations like Emirate of Bukhara fell. A less intensive phase followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, causing some trouble with Persia and Afghanistan until the mid 1920s.


title: New Imperialism

text: In the post-Second World War post-colonial period, the term has informally continued in its usage to describe the geopolitical machinations of the great powers and regional powers as they vie for geopolitical power as well as influence in the area, especially in Afghanistan and Iran/Persia.


title: New Imperialism

text: Between 1850 and 1914, Britain brought nearly 30% of Africa's population under its control, to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects to Britain, more than in the whole of French West Africa, or the entire German colonial empire. The only nations that were not under European control by 1914 were Liberia and Ethiopia.


title: New Imperialism

text: Britain's formal occupation of Egypt in 1882, triggered by concern over the Suez Canal, contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of the Nile River, leading to the conquest of neighboring Sudan in 1896–1898, which in turn led to confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda in September 1898. In 1899, Britain set out to complete its takeover of the future South Africa, which it had begun in 1814 with the annexation of the Cape Colony, by invading the gold-rich Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the neighboring Orange Free State. The chartered British South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north, renamed Rhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoon Cecil Rhodes.


title: New Imperialism

text: British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Milner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" empire: linked by rail, the strategically important Canal would be firmly connected to the mineral-rich South, though Belgian control of the Congo Free State and German control of German East Africa prevented such an outcome until the end of World War I, when Great Britain acquired the latter territory.


title: New Imperialism

text: Britain's quest for southern Africa and its diamonds led to social complications and fallouts that lasted for years. To work for their prosperous company, British businessmen hired both white and black South Africans. But when it came to jobs, the white South Africans received the higher paid and less dangerous ones, leaving the black South Africans to risk their lives in the mines for limited pay. This process of separating the two groups of South Africans, whites and blacks, was the beginning of segregation between the two that lasted until 1990.


title: New Imperialism

text: Paradoxically, the United Kingdom, a staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire, thanks to its long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the conquest of Africa, reflecting its advantageous position at its inception.


title: New Imperialism

text: Until 1876, Belgium had no colonial presence in Africa. It was then that its king, Leopold II created the International African Society. Operating under the pretense of an international scientific and philanthropic association, it was actually a private holding company owned by Leopold. Henry Morton Stanley was employed to explore and colonize the Congo River basin area of equatorial Africa in order to capitalize on the plentiful resources such as ivory, rubber, diamonds, and metals. Up until this point, Africa was known as "the Dark Continent" because of the difficulties Europeans had with exploration. Over the next few years, Stanley overpowered and made treaties with over 450 native tribes, acquiring him over of land, nearly 67 times the size of Belgium.


title: New Imperialism

text: Neither the Belgian government nor the Belgian people had any interest in imperialism at the time, and the land came to be personally owned by King Leopold II. At the Berlin Conference in 1884, he was allowed to have land named the Congo Free State. The other European countries at the conference allowed this to happen on the conditions that he suppress the East African slave trade, promote humanitarian policies, guarantee free trade, and encourage missions to Christianize the people of the Congo. However, Leopold II's primary focus was to make a large profit on the natural resources, particularly ivory and rubber. In order to make this profit, he passed several cruel decrees that can be considered to be genocide. He forced the natives to supply him with rubber and ivory without any sort of payment in return. Their wives and children were held hostage until the workers returned with enough rubber or ivory to fill their quota, and if they could not, their family would be killed. When villages refused, they were burned down; the children of the village were murdered and the men had their hands cut off. These policies led to uprisings, but they were feeble compared to European military and technological might, and were consequently crushed. The forced labor was opposed in other ways: fleeing into the forests to seek refuge or setting the rubber forests on fire, preventing the Europeans from harvesting the rubber.


title: New Imperialism

text: No population figures exist from before or after the period, but it is estimated that as many as 10 million people died from violence, famine and disease. However, some sources point to a total population of 16 million people.


title: New Imperialism

text: King Leopold II profited from the enterprise with a 700% profit ratio for the rubber he took from Congo and exported. He used propaganda to keep the other European nations at bay, for he broke almost all of the parts of the agreement he made at the Berlin Conference. For example, he had some Congolese pygmies sing and dance at the 1897 World Fair in Belgium, showing how he was supposedly civilizing and educating the natives of the Congo. Under significant international pressure, the Belgian government annexed the territory in 1908 and renamed it the Belgian Congo, removing it from the personal power of the king. Of all the colonies that were conquered during the wave of New Imperialism, the human rights abuses of the Congo Free State were considered the worst.


title: New Imperialism

text: France gained a leading position as an imperial power in the Pacific after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. Tahiti was later annexed entirely into the French colonial empire in 1880, along with the rest of the Society Islands.


title: New Imperialism

text: The United States made several territorial gains during this period, particularly with the annexation of Hawaii and acquisition of most of Spain's colonial outposts following the 1898 Spanish–American War, as well as the partition of the Samoan Islands into American Samoa and German Samoa.


title: New Imperialism

text: By 1900, nearly all islands in the Pacific Ocean were under the control of Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile.


title: New Imperialism

text: Chile's interest in expanding into the islands of the Pacific Ocean dates to the presidency of José Joaquín Prieto (1831-1841) and the ideology of Diego Portales, who considered that Chile's expansion into Polynesia was a natural consequence of its maritime destiny. Nonetheless, the first stage of the country's expansionism into the Pacific began only a decade later, in 1851, when—in response to an American incursion into the Juan Fernández Islands—Chile's government formally organized the islands into a subdelegation of Valparaíso. That same year, Chile's economic interest in the Pacific were renewed after its merchant fleet briefly succeeded in creating an agricultural goods exchange market that connected the Californian port of San Francisco with Australia. By 1861, Chile had established a lucrative enterprise across the Pacific, its national currency abundantly circulating throughout Polynesia and its merchants trading in the markets of Tahiti, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Shanghai; negotiations were also made with the Spanish Philippines, and altercations reportedly occurred between Chilean and American whalers in the Sea of Japan. This period ended as a result of the Chilean merchant fleet's destruction by Spanish forces in 1866, during the Chincha Islands War.


title: New Imperialism

text: Chile's Polynesian aspirations would again be awakened in the aftermath of the country's decisive victory against Peru in the War of the Pacific, which left the Chilean fleet as the dominant maritime force in the Pacific coast of the Americas. Valparaíso had also become the most important port in the Pacific coast of South America, providing Chilean merchants with the capacity to find markets in the Pacific for its new mineral wealth acquired from the Atacama. During this period, the Chilean intellectual and politician Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna (who served as senator in the National Congress from 1876 to 1885) was an influential voice in favor of Chilean expansionism into the Pacific—he considered that Spain's discoveries in the Pacific had been stolen by the British, and envisioned that Chile's duty was to create an empire in the Pacific that would reach Asia. In the context of this imperialist fervor is that, in 1886, Captain Policarpo Toro of the Chilean Navy proposed to his superiors the annexation of Easter Island; a proposal which was supported by President José Manuel Balmaceda because of the island's apparent strategic location and economic value. After Toro transferred the rights to the island's sheep ranching operations from Tahiti-based businesses to the Chilean-based Williamson-Balfour Company in 1887, Easter Island's annexation process was culminated with the signing of the "Agreement of Wills" between Rapa Nui chieftains and Toro, in name of the Chilean government, in 1888. By occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations.


title: New Imperialism

text: The extension of European control over Africa and Asia added a further dimension to the rivalry and mutual suspicion which characterized international diplomacy in the decades preceding World War I. France's seizure of Tunisia in 1881 initiated fifteen years of tension with Italy, which had hoped to take the country, retaliating by allying with Germany and waging a decade-long tariff war with France. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked cooling of its relations with France.


title: New Imperialism

text: The most striking conflicts of the era were the Spanish–American War of 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, each signaling the advent of a new imperial great power; the United States and Japan, respectively. The Fashoda incident of 1898 represented the worst Anglo-French crisis in decades, but France's buckling in the face of British demands foreshadowed improved relations as the two countries set about resolving their overseas claims.


title: New Imperialism

text: British policy in South Africa and German actions in the Far East contributed to dramatic policy shifts, which in the 1900s, aligned hitherto isolationist Britain first with Japan as an ally, and then with France and Russia in the looser Triple Entente. German efforts to break the Entente by challenging French hegemony in Morocco resulted in the Tangier Crisis of 1905 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911, adding to tension and anti-German sentiment in the years preceding World War I. In the Pacific, conflicts between Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom contributed to the First and Second Samoan Civil War.


title: New Imperialism

text: Another crisis occurred in 1902–03, when there was a stand-off between Venezuela backed by Argentina, the United States (see Drago Doctrine and Monroe Doctrine) and a coalition of European countries.


title: New Imperialism

text: One of the biggest motivations behind New Imperialism was the idea of humanitarianism and "civilizing" the "lower" class people in Africa and in other undeveloped places. This was a religious motive for many Christian missionaries, in an attempt to save the souls of the "uncivilized" people, and based on the idea that Christians and the people of the United Kingdom were morally superior. Most of the missionaries that supported imperialism did so because they felt the only true religion was their own. Similarly, Roman Catholic missionaries opposed British missionaries because the British missionaries were Protestant. At times, however, imperialism did help the people of the colonies because the missionaries ended up stopping some of the slavery in some areas. Therefore, Europeans claimed that they were only there because they wanted to protect the weaker tribal groups they conquered. The missionaries and other leaders suggested that they should stop such practices as cannibalism, child marriage, and other "savage things". This humanitarian ideal was described in poems such as the "White Man's Burden" and other literature. Often, the humanitarianism was sincere, but with misguided choices. Although some imperialists were trying to be sincere with the notion of humanitarianism, at times their choices might not have been best for the areas they were conquering and the natives living there.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Dutch Ethical Policy was the dominant reformist and liberal political character of colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies during the 20th century. In 1901, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina announced that the Netherlands accepted an ethical responsibility for the welfare of their colonial subjects. This announcement was a sharp contrast with the former official doctrine that Indonesia was mainly a "wingewest" (region for making profit). It marked the start of modern development policy, implemented and practised by Alexander Willem Frederik Idenburg, whereas other colonial powers usually talked of a civilizing mission, which mainly involved spreading their culture to colonized peoples.


title: New Imperialism

text: The Dutch Ethical Policy (Dutch: "") emphasised improvement in material living conditions. The policy suffered, however, from serious underfunding, inflated expectations and lack of acceptance in the Dutch colonial establishment, and it had largely ceased to exist by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. It did however create an educated indigenous elite able to articulate and eventually establish independence from the Netherlands.


title: New Imperialism

text: The "accumulation theory" adopted by Karl Kautsky, John A. Hobson and popularized by Vladimir Lenin centered on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after the Industrial Revolution: restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labor costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition. Hobson's analysis fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialized nations with little surplus capital, such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century—the United States and Russia—which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital. Also, military and bureaucratic costs of occupation frequently exceeded financial returns. In Africa (exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909) the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence.


title: New Imperialism

text: The "World-Systems theory" approach of Immanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the "core" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery." Protectionism and formal empire were the major tools of "semi-peripheral," newly industrialized states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system.


title: New Imperialism

text: Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historian Bernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organization, [Britain] now felt the less favorable effects of being the first to modernize."


title: William Herschel

text: Frederick William Herschel (; ; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750–1848). Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the Messier catalogue were actually clusters of stars. On 13 March 1781 while making observations he made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. This would, after several weeks of verification and consultation with other astronomers, be confirmed to be a new planet, eventually given the name of Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity, and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry, using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra. In the course of these investigations, Herschel discovered infrared radiation.


title: William Herschel

text: Other work included an improved determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally, the discovery of Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus) and Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn). Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816. He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820. He died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel was born in the Electorate of Hanover in Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, one of ten children of Issak Herschel and his wife, Anna Ilse Moritzen, of German Lutheran ancestry. His forefathers came from Pirna, in Saxony. Theories that they were Protestants from Bohemia have been questioned by Hamel as the surname Herschel already occurs a century earlier in the very same area that the family lived in.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel's father was an oboist in the Hanover Military Band. In 1755 the Hanoverian Guards regiment, in whose band Wilhelm and his brother Jakob were engaged as oboists, was ordered to England. At the time the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover were united under King George II. As the threat of war with France loomed, the Hanoverian Guards were recalled from England to defend Hanover.


title: William Herschel

text: After they were defeated at the Battle of Hastenbeck, Herschel's father Isaak sent his two sons to seek refuge in England in late 1757. Although his older brother Jakob had received his dismissal from the Hanoverian Guards, Wilhelm was accused of desertion (for which he was pardoned by George III in 1782).


title: William Herschel

text: Wilhelm, nineteen years old at this time, was a quick student of the English language. In England he went by the English rendition of his name, Frederick William Herschel.


title: William Herschel

text: In addition to the oboe, he played the violin and harpsichord and later the organ. He composed numerous musical works, including 24 symphonies and many concertos, as well as some church music.


title: William Herschel

text: Six of his symphonies were recorded in April 2002 by the London Mozart Players, conducted by Matthias Bamert (Chandos 10048).


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel moved to Sunderland in 1761 when Charles Avison engaged him as first violin and soloist for his Newcastle orchestra, where he played for one season. In "Sunderland in the County of Durh: apprill 20th 1761" he wrote his "Symphony No. 8 in C Minor." He was head of the Durham Militia band from 1760 to 1761. He visited the home of Sir Ralph Milbanke at Halnaby Hall near Darlington in 1760, where he wrote two symphonies, as well as giving performances himself.


title: William Herschel

text: After Newcastle, he moved to Leeds and Halifax where he was the first organist at St John the Baptist church (now Halifax Minster).


title: William Herschel

text: In 1766, Herschel became organist of the Octagon Chapel, Bath, a fashionable chapel in a well-known spa, in which city he was also Director of Public Concerts. He was appointed as the organist in 1766 and gave his introductory concert on 1 January 1767. As the organ was still incomplete, he showed off his versatility by performing his own compositions including a violin concerto, an oboe concerto and a harpsichord sonata.


title: William Herschel

text: His sister Caroline arrived in England on 24 August 1772 to live with William in New King Street, Bath. The house they shared is now the location of the Herschel Museum of Astronomy. Herschel's brothers Dietrich, Alexander and Jakob (1734–1792) also appeared as musicians of Bath. In 1780, Herschel was appointed director of the Bath orchestra, with his sister often appearing as soprano soloist.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel's reading in natural philosophy during the 1770s indicates his personal interests but also suggests an intention to be upwardly mobile socially and professionally. He was well-positioned to engage with eighteenth-century "philosophical Gentleman" or philomaths, of wide-ranging logical and practical tastes.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel's intellectual curiosity and interest in music eventually led him to astronomy. After reading Robert Smith's "Harmonics, or the Philosophy of Musical Sounds" (1749), he took up Smith's "A Compleat System of Opticks" (1738), which described techniques of telescope construction. He also read James Ferguson's "Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's principles and made easy to those who have not studied mathematics" (1756) and William Emerson's "The elements of trigonometry" (1749), "The elements of optics" (1768) and "The principles of mechanics" (1754).


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel took lessons from a local mirror-builder and having obtained both tools and a level of expertise, started building his own reflecting telescopes. He would spend up to 16 hours a day grinding and polishing the speculum metal primary mirrors. He relied on the assistance of other family members, particularly his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, a skilled mechanical craftsperson.


title: William Herschel

text: He "began to look at the planets and the stars" in May 1773 and on 1 March 1774 began an astronomical journal by noting his observations of Saturn's rings and the Great Orion Nebula (M42).


title: William Herschel

text: The English Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne visited the Herschels while they were at Walcot (which they left on 29 September 1777).


title: William Herschel

text: By 1779, Herschel had also made the acquaintance of Sir William Watson, who invited him to join the Bath Philosophical Society. Herschel became an active member, and through Watson would greatly enlarge his circle of contacts. A few years later, in 1785, Herschel was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel's early observational work soon focused on the search for pairs of stars that were very close together visually. Astronomers of the era expected that changes over time in the apparent separation and relative location of these stars would provide evidence for both the proper motion of stars and, by means of parallax shifts in their separation, for the distance of stars from the Earth. The latter was a method first suggested by Galileo Galilei.


title: William Herschel

text: From the back garden of his house in New King Street, Bath, and using a , (f/13) Newtonian telescope "with a most capital speculum" of his own manufacture, in October 1779, Herschel began a systematic search for such stars among "every star in the Heavens", with new discoveries listed through 1792. He soon discovered many more binary and multiple stars than expected, and compiled them with careful measurements of their relative positions in two catalogues presented to the Royal Society in London in 1782 (269 double or multiple systems) and 1784 (434 systems). A third catalogue of discoveries made after 1783 was published in 1821 (145 systems).


title: William Herschel

text: The Rev. John Michell of Thornhill published work in 1767 on the distribution of double stars, and in 1783 on "dark stars", that may have influenced Herschel. After Michell's death in 1793, Herschel bought a ten-foot-long, 30-inch reflecting telescope from Michell's estate.


title: William Herschel

text: In 1797, Herschel measured many of the systems again, and discovered changes in their relative positions that could not be attributed to the parallax caused by the Earth's orbit. He waited until 1802 (in "Catalogue of 500 new Nebulae, nebulous Stars, planetary Nebulae, and Clusters of Stars; with Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens") to announce the hypothesis that the two stars might be "binary sidereal systems" orbiting under mutual gravitational attraction, a hypothesis he confirmed in 1803 in his "Account of the Changes that have happened, during the last Twenty-five Years, in the relative Situation of Double-stars; with an Investigation of the Cause to which they are owing". In all, Herschel discovered over 800 confirmed double or multiple star systems, almost all of them physical rather than optical pairs. His theoretical and observational work provided the foundation for modern binary star astronomy; new catalogues adding to his work were not published until after 1820 by Friedrich Wilhelm Struve, James South and John Herschel.


title: William Herschel

text: In March 1781, during his search for double stars, Herschel noticed an object appearing as a disk. Herschel originally thought it was a comet or a stellar disc, which he believed he might actually resolve. He reported the sighting to Nevil Maskelyne the Astronomer Royal. He made many more observations of it, and afterwards Russian Academician Anders Lexell computed the orbit and found it to be probably planetary.


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel agreed, determining that it must be a planet beyond the orbit of Saturn. He called the new planet the "Georgian star" (Georgium sidus) after King George III, which also brought him favour; the name did not stick. In France, where reference to the British king was to be avoided if possible, the planet was known as "Herschel" until the name "Uranus" was universally adopted. The same year, Herschel was awarded the Copley Medal and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1782, he was appointed "The King's Astronomer" (not to be confused with the Astronomer Royal).


title: William Herschel

text: On 1 August 1782 Herschel and his sister Caroline moved to Datchet (then in Buckinghamshire but now in Berkshire). There, he continued his work as an astronomer and telescope maker. He achieved an international reputation for their manufacture, profitably selling over 60 completed reflectors to British and Continental astronomers.


title: William Herschel

text: From 1782 to 1802, and most intensively from 1783 to 1790, Herschel conducted systematic surveys in search of "deep-sky" or non-stellar objects with two , and telescopes (in combination with his favoured 6-inch-aperture instrument). Excluding duplicated and "lost" entries, Herschel ultimately discovered over 2,400 objects defined by him as nebulae. (At that time, nebula was the generic term for any visually diffuse astronomical object, including galaxies beyond the Milky Way, until galaxies were confirmed as extragalactic systems by Edwin Hubble in 1924.)


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel published his discoveries as three catalogues: "Catalogue of One Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars" (1786), "Catalogue of a Second Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars" (1789) and the previously cited "Catalogue of 500 New Nebulae ..." (1802). He arranged his discoveries under eight "classes": (I) bright nebulae, (II) faint nebulae, (III) very faint nebulae, (IV) planetary nebulae, (V) very large nebulae, (VI) very compressed and rich clusters of stars, (VII) compressed clusters of small and large [faint and bright] stars, and (VIII) coarsely scattered clusters of stars. Herschel's discoveries were supplemented by those of Caroline Herschel (11 objects) and his son John Herschel (1754 objects) and published by him as "General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters" in 1864. This catalogue was later edited by John Dreyer, supplemented with discoveries by many other 19th-century astronomers, and published in 1888 as the "New General Catalogue" (abbreviated NGC) of 7,840 deep-sky objects. The NGC numbering is still the most commonly used identifying label for these celestial landmarks.


title: William Herschel

text: Following the death of their father, William suggested that Caroline join him in Bath, England. In 1772, Caroline was first introduced to astronomy by her brother.


title: William Herschel

text: Caroline spent many hours polishing the mirrors of high performance telescopes so that the amount of light captured was maximized. She also copied astronomical catalogues and other publications for William. After William accepted the office of King's Astronomer to George III, Caroline became his constant assistant.


title: William Herschel

text: In October 1783, a new 20-foot telescope came into service for William. During this time, William was attempting to observe and then record all of the observations. He had to run inside and let his eyes readjust to the artificial light before he could record anything, and then he would have to wait until his eyes were adjusted to the dark before he could observe again. Caroline became his recorder by sitting at a desk near an open window. William would shout out his observations and she would write them down along with any information he needed from a reference book.


title: William Herschel

text: Caroline began to make astronomical discoveries in her own right, particularly comets. In 1783, William built her a small Newtonian reflector telescope, with a handle to make a vertical sweep of the sky. Between 1783 and 1787, she made an independent discovery of M110 (NGC 205), which is the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. During the years 1786–1797, she discovered or observed eight comets.


title: William Herschel

text: She found fourteen new nebulae and, at her brother's suggestion, updated and corrected Flamsteed's work detailing the position of stars. She also rediscovered Comet Encke in 1795.


title: William Herschel

text: Caroline Herschel's eight comets were published between 28 August 1782 to 5 February 1787. Five of her comets were published in "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society". William was even summoned to Windsor Castle to demonstrate Caroline's comet to the royal family. William recorded this phenomenon himself, terming it "My Sister's Comet." She wrote letters to the Astronomer Royal to announce the discovery of her second comet, and wrote to Joseph Banks upon the discovery of her third and fourth comets.


title: William Herschel

text: The "Catalogue of stars taken from Mr Flamsteed's observations" contained an index of more than 560 stars that had not been previously included. Caroline Herschel was honoured by the Royal Astronomical Society for this work in 1828.


title: William Herschel

text: Caroline also continued to serve as William Herschel's assistant, often taking notes while he observed at the telescope.


title: William Herschel

text: For her work as William's assistant, she was granted an annual salary of £50 by George III. Her appointment made her the first female in England to be honoured with a government position. It also made her the first woman to be given a salary as an astronomer.


title: William Herschel

text: In June 1785, owing to damp conditions, William and Caroline moved to Clay Hall in Old Windsor. On 3 April 1786, the Herschels moved to a new residence on Windsor Road in Slough. Herschel lived the rest of his life in this residence, which came to be known as Observatory House. It was demolished in 1963.


title: William Herschel

text: William Herschel's marriage in 1788 caused a lot of tension in the brother-sister relationship. Caroline has been referred to as a bitter, jealous woman who worshipped her brother and resented her sister-in-law for invading her domestic life. With the arrival of Mary, Caroline lost her managerial and social responsibilities in the household, and with them much of her status. Caroline destroyed her journals between the years 1788 to 1798, so her feelings during this period are not entirely known. According to her memoir, Caroline then moved to separate lodgings, but continued to work as her brother's assistant. When her brother and his family were away from their home, she would often return to take care of it for them. In later life, Caroline and Lady Herschel exchanged affectionate letters.


title: William Herschel

text: Caroline continued her astronomical work after William's death in 1822. She worked to verify and confirm his findings as well as putting together catalogues of nebulae. Towards the end of her life, she arranged two-and-a-half thousand nebulae and star clusters into zones of similar polar distances. She did this so that her nephew, John, could re-examine them systematically. Eventually, this list was enlarged and renamed the "New General Catalogue". In 1828, she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for her work.


title: William Herschel

text: The most common type of telescope at that time was the refracting telescope, which involved the refraction of light through a tube using a convex glass lens.


title: William Herschel

text: This design was subject to chromatic aberration, a distortion of an image due to the failure of light of different component wavelengths to converge. Optician John Dollond (1706–1761) tried to correct for this distortion by combining two separate lenses, but it was still difficult to achieve good resolution for far distant light sources.


title: William Herschel

text: Reflector telescopes, invented by Isaac Newton in 1668, used a single concave mirror rather than a convex lens. This avoids chromatic aberration. The concave mirror gathered more light than a lens, reflecting it onto a flat mirror at the end of the telescope for viewing. A smaller mirror could provide greater magnification and a larger field of view than a convex lens. Newton's first mirror was 1.3 inches in diameter; such mirrors were rarely more than 3 inches in diameter.


title: William Herschel

text: Because of the poor reflectivity of mirrors made of speculum metal, Herschel eliminated the small diagonal mirror of a standard newtonian reflector from his design and tilted his primary mirror so he could view the formed image directly. This "front view" design has come to be called the Herschelian telescope.


title: William Herschel

text: The creation of larger, symmetrical mirrors was extremely difficult. Any flaw would result in a blurred image. Because no one else was making mirrors of the size and magnification desired by Herschel, he determined to make his own. This was no small undertaking. He was assisted by his sister Caroline and other family members. Caroline Herschel described the pouring of a 30-foot-focal-length mirror:


title: William Herschel

text: Herschel is reported to have cast, ground, and polished more than four hundred mirrors for telescopes, varying in size from 6 to 48 inches in diameter. Herschel and his assistants built and sold at least sixty complete telescopes of various sizes.


title: William Herschel

text: Commissions for the making and selling of mirrors and telescopes provided Herschel with an additional source of income. The King of Spain reportedly paid £3,150 for a telescope.


title: William Herschel

text: An essential part of constructing and maintaining telescopes was the grinding and polishing of their mirrors. This had to be done repeatedly, whenever the mirrors deformed or tarnished during use.


title: William Herschel

text: The largest and most famous of Herschel's telescopes was a reflecting telescope with a 49-inch-diameter (1.26 m) primary mirror and a focal length. The 40-foot telescope was, at that time, the largest scientific instrument that had been built. It was hailed as a triumph of "human perseverance and zeal for the sublimest science".


title: William Herschel

text: In 1785 Herschel approached King George for money to cover the cost of building the 40-foot telescope. He received £4,000. Without royal patronage, the telescope could not have been created. As it was, it took five years, and went over budget.