The Kingdom of Sardinia, also referred to as the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont or Piedmont-Sardinia as a composite state during the Savoyard period, was a country in Southern Europe from the late 13th until the mid 19th century.

The kingdom was a member of the Council of Aragon and initially consisted of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, sovereignty over both of which was claimed by the papacy, which granted them as a fief, the  ("kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica"), to King James II of Aragon in 1297. Beginning in 1324, James and his successors conquered the island of Sardinia and established de facto their de jure authority. In 1420, after the Sardinian–Aragonese war, the last competing claim to the island was bought out. After the union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, Sardinia became a part of the burgeoning Spanish Empire.

In 1720, the island and its kingdom were ceded by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the Spanish throne to the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II. The Savoyards united it with their historical possessions on the Italian mainland, and the kingdom came to be progressively identified with the Mainland states, which included, besides Savoy and Aosta, dynastic possessions like the Principality of Piedmont and the County of Nice, over both of which the Savoyards had been exercising their control since the 13th century and 1388, respectively. The formal name of this composite state was the "States of His Majesty the King of Sardinia", and it was and is referred to as either Sardinia-Piedmont, Piedmont-Sardinia, or erroneously the Kingdom of Piedmont, since the island of Sardinia had always been of secondary importance to the monarchy. Under Savoyard rule, the kingdom's government, ruling class, cultural models and center of population were entirely situated in the mainland. Therefore, while the capital of the island of Sardinia and the seat of its viceroys had always been de jure Cagliari, it was the Piedmontese city of Turin, the capital of Savoy since the mid 16th century, which was the de facto seat of power. This situation would be conferred official status with the Perfect Fusion of 1847, when all the kingdom's governmental institutions would be centralized in Turin.

When the mainland domains of the House of Savoy were occupied and eventually annexed by Napoleonic France, the king of Sardinia temporarily resided on the island for the first time in Sardinia's history under Savoyard rule. The Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which restructured Europe after Napoleon's defeat, returned to Savoy its mainland possessions and augmented them with Liguria, taken from the Republic of Genoa. Following Geneva's accession to Switzerland, the Treaty of Turin (1816) transferred Carouge and adjacent areas to the newly-created Swiss Canton of Geneva. In 1847–48, through an act of Union analogous to the one between Great Britain and Ireland, the various Savoyard states were unified under one legal system with their capital in Turin, and granted a constitution, the Statuto Albertino.

By the time of the Crimean War in 1853, the Savoyards had built the kingdom into a strong power. There followed the annexation of Lombardy (1859), the central Italian states and the Two Sicilies (1860), Venetia (1866), and the Papal States (1870). On 17 March 1861, to more accurately reflect its new geographic, cultural and political extent, the Kingdom of Sardinia changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy, and its capital was eventually moved first to Florence and then to Rome. The Savoy-led Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was thus the legal predecessor of the Kingdom of Italy, which in turn is the predecessor of the present-day Italian Republic.

Early history

In 238 BC Sardinia became, along with Corsica, a province of the Roman Empire. The Romans ruled the island until the middle of the 5th century when it was occupied by the Vandals, who had also settled in north Africa. In 534 AD it was reconquered by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. It remained a Byzantine province until the Arab conquest of Sicily in the 9th century. After that, communications with Constantinople became very difficult, and powerful families of the island assumed control of the land.

Facing Arab attempts to sack and conquer, while having almost no outside help, Sardinia used the principle of translatio imperii ("transfer of rule") and continued to organize itself along the ancient Roman and Byzantine model. The island was not the personal property of the ruler and of his family, as was then the dominant practice in western Europe, but rather a separate entity and during the Byzantine Empire, a monarchical republic, as it had been since Roman times.

Starting from 705 to 706, Saracens from north Africa (recently conquered by Arab armies) harassed the population of the coastal cities. Information about the Sardinian political situation in the following centuries is scarce. Due to Saracen attacks, in the 9th century Tharros was abandoned in favor of Oristano, after more than 1800 years of occupation; Caralis, Porto Torres and numerous other coastal centres suffered the same fate. There is a record of another massive Saracen sea attack in 1015–16 from the Balearics, commanded by Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī (Latinized as Museto). The Saracen attempt to invade the island was stopped by the Judicates with the support of the fleets of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa. Pope Benedict VIII also requested aid from the two maritime republics in the struggle against the Arabs.

After the Great Schism, Rome made many efforts to restore Latinity to the Sardinian church, politics and society, and to finally reunify the island under one Catholic ruler, as it had been for all of southern Italy, when the Byzantines had been driven away by Catholic Normans. Even the title of "Judge" was a Byzantine reminder of the Greek church and state, in times of harsh relations between eastern and western churches (Massacre of the Latins, 1182, Siege of Constantinople (1204), Recapture of Constantinople, 1261).

Before the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, the Archons (ἄρχοντες) or, in Latin, judices, who reigned in the island from the 9th or 10th century until the beginning of the 11th century, can be considered real kings of all Sardinia (Κύριε βοήθε ιοῦ δού λού σου Tουρκοτουρίου ἅρχωντοσ Σαρδινίας καί τής δού ληςσου Γετιτ), even though nominal vassals of the Byzantine emperors. Of these sovereigns, only two names are known: Turcoturiu and Salusiu (Tουρκοτουριου βασιλικου προτοσπαθαριου  και Σαλουσιου των ευγενεστατων άρχωντων), who probably ruled in the 10th century. The Archons still wrote in Greek or Latin, but one of the oldest documents left of the Judicate of Cagliari (the so-called Carta Volgare), issued by Torchitorio I de Lacon-Gunale in 1070, was already written in the Romance Sardinian language, albeit with the Greek alphabet.

The realm was divided into four small kingdoms, the Judicates of Cagliari, Arborea, Gallura and Logudoro, perfectly organized as was the previous realm, but was now under the influence of the papacy, which claimed sovereignty over the entire island, and in particular of the Italian states of Genoa and Pisa, that through alliances with the "judges" (the local rulers), secured their political and economic zones of influence. While Genoa was mostly, but not always, in the north and west regions of Sardinia, that is, in the Judicates of Gallura and Logudoro; Pisa was mostly, but not always, in the south and east, in the Judicates of Cagliari and Arborea. That was the cause of conflicts leading to a long war between the Judges, who regarded themselves as kings fighting against rebellious nobles.

Later, the title of King of Sardinia was granted by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to Barisone II of Arborea and Enzio of Sardinia. The first could not reunify the island under his rule, despite years of war against the other Sardinian judges, and he finally concluded a peace treaty with them in 1172. The second did not have the opportunity. Invested with the title from his father, Emperor Frederick II in 1239, he was soon recalled by his parent and appointed Imperial Vicar for Italy. He died in 1272 without direct recognized heirs after a detention of 23 years in a prison in Bologna.

The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica (later, just the "Kingdom of Sardinia" from 1460) was a state whose king was the King of Aragon, who started to conquer it in 1324, gained full control in 1410, and directly ruled it until 1460. In that year it was incorporated into a sort of confederation of states, each with its own institutions, called the Crown of Aragon, and united only in the person of the king. The Crown of Aragon was made by a council of representatives of the various states and grew in importance for the main purpose of separating the legacy of Ferdinand II of Aragon from that of Isabella I of Castile when they married in 1469.

The idea of the kingdom was created in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a hypothetical entity created for James II of Aragon under a secret clause in the Treaty of Anagni. This was an inducement to join in the effort to restore Sicily, then under the rule of James's brother Frederick III of Sicily, to the Angevin dynasty over the oppositions of the Sicilians. The two islands proposed for this new kingdom were occupied by other states and fiefs at the time. In Sardinia, three of the four states that had succeeded Byzantine imperial rule in the 9th century had passed through marriage and partition under the direct or indirect control of Pisa and Genoa in the 40 years preceding the Anagni treaty. Genoa had also ruled Corsica since conquering the island nearly two centuries before (c. 1133).

There were other reasons beside this papal decision: it was the final successful result of the long fight against the Ghibelline (pro-imperial) city of Pisa and the Holy Roman Empire itself. Furthermore, Sardinia was then under the control of the very Catholic kings of Aragon, and the last result of rapprochement of the island to Rome. The Sardinian church had never been under the control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; it was an autonomous province loyal to Rome and belonging to the Latin Church, but during the Byzantine period became influenced by Byzantine liturgy and culture.

Aragonese and Spanish kingdom

Foundation of the Kingdom of Sardinia

In 1297, Pope Boniface VIII, intervening between the Houses of Anjou and Aragon, established on paper a Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae that would be a fief of the papacy. Then, ignoring the indigenous states which already existed, the Pope offered his newly created fief to James II of Aragon, promising him papal support should he wish to conquer Pisan Sardinia in exchange for Sicily.
In 1323 James II formed an alliance with Hugh II of Arborea and, following a military campaign which lasted a year or so, occupied the Pisan territories of Cagliari and Gallura along with the city of Sassari, claiming the territory as the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica.

In 1353, Arborea waged war on Aragon. The Crown of Aragon did not reduce the last of the judicates (indigenous kingdoms of Sardinia) until 1420.
The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica retained its separate character as part of the Crown of Aragon and was not merely incorporated into the Kingdom of Aragon. At the time of his struggles with Arborea, Peter IV of Aragon granted an autonomous legislature to the kingdom and its legal traditions. The kingdom was governed in the king's name by a viceroy.

In 1420, Alfonso V of Aragon, king of Sicily and heir to Aragon, bought the remaining territories for 100,000 gold florins of the Judicate of Arborea in the 1420 from the last judge, William III of Narbonne, and the "Kingdom of Sardinia" extended throughout the island, except for the city of Castelsardo (at that time called Casteldoria or Castelgenovese) that was stolen from the Doria in 1448, and renamed Castillo Aragonés (Aragonese Castle).

Corsica, which had never been conquered, was dropped from the formal title and Sardinia passed with the Crown of Aragon to a united Spain. The defeat of the local kingdoms, communes and signorie, the firm Aragonese (later Spanish) rule, the introduction of a sterile feudalism, as well as the discovery of the Americas, provoked an unstoppable decline of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A short period of uprisings occurred under the local noble Leonardo Alagon, marquess of Oristano, who defended his territories against Viceroy Nicolò Carroz and managed to defeat the viceroy's army in the 1470s, but was later crushed at the Battle of Macomer in 1478, ending any further revolts in the island. The unceasing attacks from north African pirates and a series of plagues (in 1582, 1652 and 1655) further worsened the situation.

Aragonese conquest of Sardinia

Although the "Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica" could be said to have started as a questionable and extraordinary de jure state in 1297, its de facto existence began in 1324 when, called by their allies of the Judicate of Arborea in the course of war with the Republic of Pisa, James II seized the Pisan territories in the former states of Cagliari and Gallura and asserted his papally-approved title. In 1347; Aragon made war on landlords of the Doria House and the Malaspina House, who were citizens of the Republic of Genoa, which controlled most of the lands of the former Logudoro state in north-western Sardinia, including the city of Alghero and the semiautonomous Republic of Sassari, and added them to its direct domains.

The Judicate of Arborea, the only Sardinian state that remained independent of foreign domination, proved far more difficult to subdue. Threatened by the Aragonese claims of suzerainty and consolidation of the rest of the island, in 1353 Arborea, under the leadership of Marianus IV, started the conquest of the remaining Sardinian territories, which formed the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1368 an Arborean offensive succeeded in nearly driving the Aragonese from the island, reducing the "Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica" to just the port cities of Cagliari and Alghero and incorporating everything else into their own kingdom.

A peace treaty returned the Aragonese their previous possessions in 1388, but tensions continued and, in 1382, the Arborean army led by Brancaleone Doria again swept the most of the island into Arborean rule. This situation lasted until 1409 when the army of the Judicate of Arborea suffered a heavy defeat by the Aragonese army in the Battle of Sanluri. After the sale of the remaining territories for 100,000 gold florins to the Judicate of Arborea in 1420, the "Kingdom of Sardinia" extended throughout the island, except for the city of Castelsardo (at that time called Casteldoria or Castelgenovese), which had been stolen from the Doria in 1448. The subduing of Sardinia having taken a century, Corsica, which had never been wrested from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the kingdom.

Spanish Sardinia
Under the Crown of Aragon Sardinia continued to be governed as a semi-independent kingdom, retaining its own parliament and a Viceroy governing the island on the king's behalf. This arrangement continued after the personal union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon to form Spain under the Habsburg dynasty. During this time the island became a target for Barbary pirates, due to the frequent wars between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. From the 1570s onward a series of towers, known today as the Spanish Towers, were built around the island's coast to guard against pirate raids.

Savoyard period

Exchange of Sardinia for Sicily

The Spanish domination of Sardinia ended at the beginning of the 18th century, as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession. By the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, Spain's European empire was divided: Savoy received Sicily and parts of the Duchy of Milan, while Charles VI (the Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria), received the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, and the bulk of the Duchy of Milan.

During the War of the Quadruple Alliance, Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy and King of Sicily, had to agree to yield Sicily to the Austrian Habsburgs and receive Sardinia in exchange. The exchange was formally ratified in the Treaty of The Hague of 17 February 1720. Because the Kingdom of Sardinia had existed since the 14th century, the exchange allowed Victor Amadeus to retain the title of king in spite of the loss of Sicily.

Victor Amadeus initially resisted the exchange, and until 1723 continued to style himself King of Sicily rather than King of Sardinia. The state took the official title of Kingdom of Sardinia, Cyprus and Jerusalem, as the House of Savoy still claimed the thrones of Cyprus and Jerusalem, although both had long been under Ottoman rule.

In 1767–1769, Charles Emmanuel III annexed the Maddalena archipelago in the Strait of Bonifacio from the Republic of Genoa and claimed it as part of Sardinia. Since then the archipelago has been a part of the Sardinian region.

Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna
In 1792, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the other states of the Savoy Crown joined the First Coalition against the French First Republic, but was beaten in 1796 by Napoleon and forced to conclude the disadvantageous Treaty of Paris (1796), giving the French army free passage through Piedmont. On 6 December 1798 Joubert occupied Turin and forced Charles Emmanuel IV to abdicate and leave for the island of Sardinia. The provisionary government voted to unite Piedmont with France. In 1799 the Austro-Russians briefly occupied the city, but with the Battle of Marengo (1800), the French regained control. The island of Sardinia stayed out of the reach of the French for the rest of the war and was, for the first time in centuries governed directly by its king instead of a viceroy.

In 1814, the Crown of Savoy enlarged its territories with the addition of the former Republic of Genoa, now a duchy, and it served as a buffer state against France. This was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna, which returned the region of Savoy to its borders after it had been annexed by France in 1792. By the Treaty of Stupinigi, the Kingdom of Sardinia extended its protectorate over the Principality of Monaco.

In the reaction after Napoleon, the country was ruled by conservative monarchs: Victor Emmanuel I (1802–21), Charles Felix (1821–31) and Charles Albert (1831–49), who fought at the head of a contingent of his own troops at the Battle of Trocadero, which set the reactionary Ferdinand VII on the Spanish throne. Victor Emmanuel I disbanded the entire Code Napoléon and returned the lands and power to the nobility and the Church. This reactionary policy went as far as discouraging the use of roads built by the French. These changes typified Sardinia.

The Kingdom of Sardinia industrialized from 1830 onward. A constitution, the Statuto Albertino, was enacted in the year of revolutions, 1848 under liberal pressure. In the same year the island of Sardinia, a Piedmontese dependency for more than a century, lost its own residual autonomy to the mainland through the so-called Perfect fusion issued by Charles Albert; as a result, the kingdom's fundamental institutions were deeply transformed, assuming the shape of a constitutional and centralized monarchy on the French model; under the same pressure, Charles Albert declared war on Austria. After initial success, the war took a turn for the worse and Charles Albert was defeated by Marshal Radetzky at the Battle of Custozza (1848).

Savoyard struggle for the Italian unification

Like all the various duchies and city-states on the Apennine peninsula and associated islands, the Kingdom of Sardinia was troubled with political instability under alternating governments. After a short and disastrous renewal of the war with Austria in 1849, Charles Albert abdicated on 23 March 1849 in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II.

In 1852, a liberal ministry under Count Camillo Benso di Cavour was installed and the Kingdom of Sardinia became the engine driving Italian unification. The Kingdom of Sardinia took part in the Crimean War, allied with the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France, and fighting against Russia.

In 1859, France sided with the Kingdom of Sardinia in a war against Austria, the Austro-Sardinian War. Napoleon III did not keep his promises to Cavour to fight until all of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia had been conquered. Following the bloody battles of Magenta and Solferino, both French victories, Napoleon thought the war too costly to continue and made a separate peace behind Cavour's back in which only Lombardy would be ceded.

Due to the Austrian government's refusal to cede any lands to the Kingdom of Sardinia, they agreed to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who in turn then ceded the territory to the Kingdom of Sardinia to avoid "embarrassing" the defeated Austrians. Cavour angrily resigned from office when it became clear that Victor Emmanuel would accept this arrangement.

Garibaldi and the Thousand
On 5 March 1860, Piacenza, Parma, Tuscany, Modena, and Romagna voted in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. This alarmed Napoleon III, who feared a strong Savoyard state on his south-eastern border and he insisted that if the Kingdom of Sardinia were to keep the new acquisitions they would have to cede Savoy and Nice to France. This was done through the Treaty of Turin, which also called for referendums to confirm the annexation. Subsequently, somewhat controversial referendums showed over 99.5% majorities in both areas in favour of joining France.

In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi started his campaign to conquer the southern Apennines in the name of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He quickly toppled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was the largest of the states in the region, stretching from Abruzzo and Naples on the mainland to Messina and Palermo on Sicily. He then marched to Gaeta in the central peninsula. Cavour was satisfied with the unification, while Garibaldi, who was too revolutionary for the king and his prime minister, wanted to conquer Rome as well.

Garibaldi was disappointed in this development, as well as in the loss of his home province, Nice, to France. He also failed to fulfill the promises that had gained him popular and military support by the Sicilians: that the new nation would be a republic, not a kingdom, and that the Sicilians would see great economic gains after unification. The former did not come to pass until 1946.

Towards the Kingdom of Italy
On 17 March 1861, law no. 4671 of the Sardinian Parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, so ratifying the annexations of all other Apennine states, plus Sicily, to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The institutions and laws of the kingdom were quickly extended to all of Italy, abolishing the administrations of the other regions. Piedmont became the most dominant and wealthiest region in Italy and the capital of Piedmont, Turin, remained the Italian capital until 1865, when the capital was moved to Florence. But many revolts exploded throughout the peninsula, especially in southern Italy, and on the island of Sicily, because of the perceived unfair treatment of the south by the Piedmontese ruling class. The House of Savoy ruled Italy until 1946, when Italy was declared a republic by referendum. The result was 54.3% in favor of the Republic.

Flags, royal standards and coats of arms

When the Duchy of Savoy acquired the Kingdom of Sicily in 1713 and the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1723, the flag of Savoy became the flag of a naval power. This posed the problem that the same flag was already in use by the Knights of Malta. Because of this, the Savoyards modified their flag for use as a naval ensign in various ways, adding the letters FERT in the four cantons, or adding a blue border, or using a blue flag with the Savoy cross in one canton.

Eventually, King Charles Albert of Savoy adopted the "revolutionary" Italian tricolor, surmounted by the Savoyard shield, as his flag. This flag would later become the flag of the Kingdom of Italy, and the tricolor without the Savoyard escutcheon remains the flag of Italy.

References:

Maps

Territorial evolution of Sardinia from 1324 to 1720

Territorial evolution of Italy from 1796 to 1860

See also

 List of monarchs of Sardinia
 List of viceroys of Sardinia
 Spanish Empire
 S'hymnu sardu nationale
 Kingdom of Sardinia (1700–1720)

Notes and references

Footnotes

Notes

Bibliography
 Antonicelli, Aldo. "From Galleys to Square Riggers: The modernization of the navy of the Kingdom of Sardinia." The Mariner's Mirror 102.2 (2016): 153–173 online.

 Luttwak Edward, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, The Belknap Press, 2009,

 Romani, Roberto. "The Reason of the Elites: Constitutional Moderatism in the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1849–1861." in Sensibilities of the Risorgimento (Brill, 2018) pp. 192–244.
 Romani, Roberto. "Reluctant Revolutionaries: Moderate Liberalism in the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1849–1859." Historical Journal (2012): 45–73. online
 Schena, Olivetta. "The role played by towns in parliamentary commissions in the kingdom of Sardinia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." Parliaments, Estates and Representation 39.3 (2019): 304–315.
 Smith, Denis Mack. Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento (Oxford UP, 1971) online.

  old interpretations but useful on details; vol 1 goes to 1859]; volume 2 online covers 1859–62

In Italian
 AAVV. (a cura di F. Manconi), La società sarda in età spagnola, Cagliari, Consiglio Regionale della Sardegna, 2 voll., 1992-3
 Blasco Ferrer Eduardo, Crestomazia Sarda dei primi secoli, collana Officina Linguistica, Ilisso, Nuoro, 2003,
 Boscolo Alberto, La Sardegna bizantina e alto giudicale, Edizioni Della TorreCagliari 1978
 Casula Francesco Cesare, La storia di Sardegna, Carlo Delfino Editore, Sassari, 1994,
 Coroneo Roberto, Arte in Sardegna dal IV alla metà dell'XI secolo, edizioni AV, Cagliari, 2011
 Coroneo Roberto, Scultura mediobizantina in Sardegna, Nuoro, Poliedro, 2000,
 Gallinari Luciano, Il Giudicato di Cagliari tra XI e XIII secolo. Proposte di interpretazioni istituzionali, in Rivista dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea, n°5, 2010
 Manconi Francesco, La Sardegna al tempo degli Asburgo, Il Maestrale, Nuoro, 2010,
 Manconi Francesco, Una piccola provincia di un grande impero, CUEC, Cagliari, 2012,
 Mastino Attilio, Storia della Sardegna Antica, Il Maestrale, Nuoro, 2005,
 Meloni Piero, La Sardegna Romana, Chiarella, Sassari, 1980
 Motzo Bachisio Raimondo, Studi sui bizantini in Sardegna e sull'agiografia sarda, Deputazione di Storia Patria della Sardegna, Cagliari, 1987
 Ortu Gian Giacomo, La Sardegna dei Giudici, Il Maestrale, Nuoro, 2005,
 Paulis Giulio, Lingua e cultura nella Sardegna bizantina: testimonianze linguistiche dell'influsso greco, Sassari, L'Asfodelo, 1983
 Spanu Luigi, Cagliari nel seicento, Edizioni Castello, Cagliari, 1999
 Zedda Corrado – Pinna Raimondo, La nascita dei Giudicati. Proposta per lo scioglimento di un enigma storiografico, in Archivio Storico Giuridico di Sassari, seconda serie, n° 12, 2007

Former countries in Europe

Viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire
1324 establishments in Europe
1861 disestablishments in Italy
States and territories established in 1324
States and territories disestablished in 1861
History of Sardinia
Former countries
Former monarchies of Europe
Island countries
Sardinia
Spanish Empire in Europe

Kingdom of Sardinia


Lorenzo Masi, known as Lorenzo da Firenze (Magister Laurentius de Florentia; died December 1372 or January 1373), was an Italian composer and music teacher of the Trecento. He was closely associated with Francesco Landini in Florence, and was one of the composers of the period known as the Italian ars nova.

Life and career
Little is known about his life, but some details can be inferred from the music. He was active as a teacher in Florence, probably as a teacher of Landini himself. He became a canon at the church of San Lorenzo in 1348, a post which he retained for the rest of his life.

Lorenzo is represented in the Squarcialupi Codex, the illuminated manuscript which is the most comprehensive source of Italian music of the 14th century, with 16 pieces of music, 10 madrigals, 6 ballate and one caccia.  In addition to his contribution to that collection, he wrote two mass movements which have survived (one of which is of doubtful attribution) and a pedagogical piece (the Antefana), the text of which shows that he was a teacher.

Music
His style is progressive, sometimes experimental, but curiously conservative in other ways.  While he used imitation, a relatively new musical technique, and heterophonic texture, one of the rarest textures in European music, he also still used parallel perfect intervals. Voice crossings are common, when he wrote for more than one voice (most of his music is monophonic).  In addition he used chromaticism to a degree rare in the 14th century, at least prior to the activity of the composers of the ars subtilior.

French classical music influence is evident in some of his music, for example isorhythmic passages (characteristic of Machaut, but rare in Italian music). Some of the notational quirks in his work also suggest a connection with France.

See also
 Music of the Trecento
 Ars nova
 Francesco Landini

Further reading
 Kurt von Fischer/Gianluca d'Agostino: "Lorenzo da Firenze", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed June 25, 2005), (subscription access)
 Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music.  New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978.

1370s deaths
Italian male classical composers
Trecento composers
Year of birth unknown
Medieval male composers
Medieval music theorists

Lorenzo da Firenze


Market socialism is a type of economic system involving social ownership of the means of production within the framework of a market economy. Various models for such a system exist, usually involving cooperative enterprises and sometimes a mix that includes public or private enterprises.  In contrast to the majority of historic socialist economies, which have substituted the market mechanism for some form of economic planning, market socialists wish to retain the use of supply and demand signals to guide the allocation of capital goods and the means of production. Under such a system, depending on whether socially owned firms are state-owned or operated as worker cooperatives, profits may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance, or be distributed amongst the population in a social dividend.

Market socialism can be distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because most models of market socialism propose complete and self-regulating systems, unlike the mixed economy. While social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies, and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.

Though the term "market socialism" only emerged in the 1920s during the socialist calculation debate, a number of pre-Marx socialists, including the Ricardian socialist economists and mutualist philosophers, conceived of socialism as a natural development of the market principles of classical economics, and proposed the creation of co-operative enterprises to compete in a free-market economy. The aim of such proposals was to eliminate exploitation by allowing individuals to receive the full product of their labor, while removing the market-distorting effects of concentrating ownership and wealth in the hands of a small class of private property owners.

Although sometimes described as "market socialism", the Lange model is a form of market simulated planning where a central planning board allocates investment and capital goods by simulating factor market transactions, while markets allocate labor and consumer goods. The system was devised by socialist economists who believed that a socialist economy could neither function on the basis of calculation in natural units nor through solving a system of simultaneous equations for economic coordination.

Real-world attempts to create market socialist economies have only partially implemented the measures envisioned by its theorists, but the term has sometimes been used to describe the results of various attempts at liberalization in the Eastern Bloc including Hungary's New Economic Mechanism, the economy of Yugoslavia, Perestroika, and the economic reforms of China as well as Lenin's New Economic Policy.

Theoretical history

Classical economics
The key theoretical basis for market socialism is the negation of the underlying expropriation of surplus value present in other modes of production. Socialist theories that favored the market date back to the Ricardian socialists and anarchist economists, who advocated a free market combined with public ownership or mutual ownership of the means of production.

Proponents of early market socialism include the Ricardian socialist economists, the classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill and the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. These models of socialism entailed perfecting or improving the market mechanism and free price system by removing distortions caused by exploitation, private property and alienated labor.

This form of market socialism has been termed free-market socialism because it does not involve planners.

John Stuart Mill
Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets that he moved toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes. Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit altered in the third edition of the Principles of Political Economy to reflect a concern for differentiating restrictions on unearned incomes which he favoured; and those on earned incomes, which he did not favour.

Mill's Principles, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period. As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations had during an earlier period, Mill's Principles dominated economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University, it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics.

In later editions of Principles of Political Economy, Mill would argue that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies".

Mill also promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives, writing:
The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.

Mutualism
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon developed a theoretical system called mutualism which attacks the legitimacy of existing property rights, subsidies, corporations, banking and rent. Proudhon envisioned a decentralized market where people would enter the market with equal power, negating wage slavery. Proponents believe that cooperatives, credit unions and other forms of worker ownership would become viable without being subject to the state. Market socialism has also been used to describe some individualist anarchist works which argue that free markets help workers and weaken capitalists.

Individualist anarchism in the United States
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. [...] William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.

Warren was a follower of Robert Owen and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "cost the limit of price", with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included Utopia and Modern Times. Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories.

Later, Benjamin Tucker fused the economics of Warren and Proudhon and published these ideas in Liberty calling them "Anarchistic-Socialism". Tucker said: "[T]he fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour. [...] And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege [...] every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers. [...] What Anarchistic-Socialism aims to abolish is usury [...] it wants to deprive capital of its reward". American individualist anarchists such as Tucker saw themselves as economic market socialists and political individualists while arguing that their "anarchistic socialism" or "individual anarchism" was "consistent Manchesterism". Left-wing market anarchism is a modern branch of free-market anarchism that is based on a revival of such market socialist theories.

Neoclassical economics

Early 20th century
Beginning in the early 20th century, neoclassical economic theory provided the theoretical basis for more comprehensive models of market socialism. Early neoclassical models of socialism included a role for a central planning board (CPB) in setting prices equal marginal cost to achieve Pareto efficiency. Although these early models did not rely on conventional markets, they were labeled market socialist for their utilization of financial prices and calculation. Alternative outlines for market socialism involve models where socially owned enterprises or producer co-operatives operate within free markets under the criterion of profitability. In recent models proposed by American neoclassical economists, public ownership of the means of production is achieved through public ownership of equity and social control of investment.

The earliest models of neoclassical socialism were developed by Léon Walras, Enrico Barone (1908) and Oskar R. Lange (c. 1936). Lange and Fred M. Taylor (1929) proposed that central planning boards set prices through "trial and error", making adjustments as shortages and surpluses occurred rather than relying on a free price mechanism. If there were shortages, prices would be raised; if there were surpluses, prices would be lowered. Raising the prices would encourage businesses to increase production, driven by their desire to increase their profits, and in doing so eliminate the shortage. Lowering the prices would encourage businesses to curtail production to prevent losses, which would eliminate the surplus. Therefore, it would be a simulation of the market mechanism, which Lange thought would be capable of effectively managing supply and demand.

Although the Lange–Lerner model was often labelled as market socialism, it is better described as market simulation because factor markets did not exist for the allocation of capital goods. The objective of the Lange–Lerner model was explicitly to replace markets with a non-market system of resource allocation.

H. D. Dickinson published two articles proposing a form of market socialism, namely "Price Formation in a Socialist Community" (The Economic Journal 1933) and "The Problems of a Socialist Economy" (The Economic Journal 1934). Dickinson proposed a mathematical solution whereby the problems of a socialist economy could be solved by a central planning agency. The central agency would have the necessary statistics on the economy, as well as the capability of using statistics to direct production. The economy could be represented as a system of equations. Solution values for these equations could be used to price all goods at marginal cost and direct production. Hayek (1935) argued against the proposal to simulate markets with equations. Dickinson (1939) adopted the Lange-Taylor proposal to simulate markets through trial and error.

The Lange–Dickinson version of market socialism kept capital investment out of the market. Lange (1926 p65) insisted that a central planning board would have to set capital accumulation rates arbitrarily. Lange and Dickinson saw potential problems with bureaucratization in market socialism. According to Dickinson, "the attempt to check irresponsibility will tie up managers of socialist enterprises with so much red tape and bureaucratic regulation that they will lose all initiative and independence" (Dickinson 1938, p. 214). In The Economics of Control: Principles of Welfare Economics (1944), Abba Lerner admitted that capital investment would be politicized in market socialism.

Late 20th century and early 21st century

Economists active in the former Yugoslavia, including Czech-born Jaroslav Vaněk and Croat-born Branko Horvat, promoted a model of market socialism dubbed the Illyrian model, where firms were socially owned by their employees and structured around workers' self-management, competing with each other in open and free markets.

American economists in the latter half of the 20th century developed models based such as coupon socialism (by the economist John Roemer) and economic democracy (by the philosopher David Schweickart).

Pranab Bardhan and John Roemer proposed a form of market socialism where there was a stock market that distributed shares of the capital stock equally among citizens. In this stock market, there is no buying or selling of stocks that leads to negative externalities associated with a concentration of capital ownership. The Bardhan and Roemer model satisfied the main requirements of both socialism (workers own all the factors of production, not just labour) and market economies (prices determine efficient allocation of resources). New Zealand economist Steven O'Donnell expanded on the Bardhan and Roemer model and decomposed the capital function in a general equilibrium system to take account of entrepreneurial activity in market socialist economies. O'Donnell (2003) set up a model that could be used as a blueprint for transition economies and the results suggested that although market socialist models were inherently unstable in the long term, they would provide in the short term the economic infrastructure necessary for a successful transition from planned to market economies.

In the early 21st century, the Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff refocused Marxian economics giving it a microfoundational focus. The core idea was that transition from capitalism to socialism required the reorganization of the enterprise from a top-down hierarchical capitalist model to a model where all key enterprise decisions (what, how, and where to produce and what to do with outputs) were made on a one-worker, one vote basis. Wolff called them workers self-directed enterprises (WSDEs). How they would interact with one another and with consumers was left open to democratic social decisions and could entail markets or planning, or likely mixtures of both.

Advocates of market socialism such as Jaroslav Vaněk argue that genuinely free markets are not possible under conditions of private ownership of productive property. Instead, he contends that the class differences and inequalities in income and power that result from private ownership enable the interests of the dominant class to skew the market to their favor, either in the form of monopoly and market power, or by utilizing their wealth and resources to legislate government policies that benefit their specific business interests. Additionally, Vaněk states that workers in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises have stronger incentives to maximize productivity because they would receive a share of the profits (based on the overall performance of their enterprise) in addition to receiving their fixed wage or salary. The stronger incentives to maximize productivity that he conceives as possible in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises might be accomplished in a free-market economy if employee-owned companies were the norm as envisioned by various thinkers including Louis O. Kelso and James S. Albus.

Giacomo Corneo, Professor of Public Finance and Social Policy at the Free University of Berlin, espouses an "updated version of market socialism" where large firms would be publicly owned (though by no more than 51% share), which would allow the government to distribute a social dividend, while the rest of the firms would be privately owned and subject to regulations to protect employees, consumers and environment.

Matt Bruenig advocates for a version of market socialism he calls "funds socialism," which involves sovereign wealth funds aquiring shares of private enterprises to socialize ownership and control of firms. Bruenig claims that this form of market socialism is similar to that advocated by Yanis Varoufakis, Rudolf Meidner, and John Roemer.

Anti-equilibrium economics
Another form of market socialism has been promoted by critics of central planning and generally of neoclassical general equilibrium theory. The most notable of these economists were Alec Nove and János Kornai. In particular, Alec Nove proposed what he called feasible socialism, a mixed economy consisting of state-run enterprises, autonomous publicly owned firms, cooperatives and small-scale private enterprise operating in a market economy that included a role for macroeconomic planning.

In practice
A number of market socialist elements have existed in various economies. The economy of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is widely considered to have been a form of market-based socialism, based on socially-owned cooperatives, workers' self-management, and market allocation of capital. Some of the economic reforms introduced during the Prague Spring by Alexander Dubček, the leader of Czechoslovakia, included elements of market socialism.

Likewise, Vietnam's socialist-oriented market economy is self-described as market socialist. It has an extremely high prevalence of cooperatives, especially in agriculture and retail, with the continued state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Cooperative businesses in Vietnam are also incentivized and supported by the government, receiving many benefits that private companies do not.

Peter Drucker described the United States system of regulated pension funds providing capital to financial markets as "pension fund socialism". William H. Simon characterized pension fund socialism as "a form of market socialism", concluding that it was promising but perhaps with prospects more limited than those envisioned by its enthusiasts.

The economy of Cuba under the rule of Raúl Castro has been described as attempting market socialist reforms. Similarly, the economy of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi could be described as a form of market socialism as Muammar Gaddafi's Third International Theory shared many similarities with Yugoslav self-management.

Policies similar to the market socialist proposal of a social dividend and basic income scheme have been implemented on the basis of public ownership of natural resources in Alaska (Alaska Permanent Fund) and in Norway (the Government Pension Fund of Norway).

Relation to political ideologies

Marxism–Leninism

The phrase market socialism has occasionally been used in reference to any attempt by a Soviet-type planned economy to introduce market elements into its economic system. In this sense, market socialism was first attempted during the 1920s in the Soviet Union as the New Economic Policy (NEP) before being abandoned. Later, elements of market socialism were introduced in Hungary (nicknamed goulash communism), Czechoslovakia (sloganized as socialism with a human face), Yugoslavia (known as Titoism) in the 1970s and 1980s. The contemporary Economy of Belarus has been described as a market socialist system. The Soviet Union attempted to introduce a market system with its perestroika reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev. During the later stages there was talk within top circles that the Soviet Union should move toward a market-based socialist system.

Historically, these kinds of market socialist systems attempt to retain state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy such as heavy industry, energy and infrastructure while introducing decentralised decision making and giving local managers more freedom to make decisions and respond to market demands. Market socialist systems also allow private ownership and entrepreneurship in the service and other secondary economic sectors. The market is allowed to determine prices for consumer goods and agricultural products, and farmers are allowed to sell all or some of their products on the open market and keep some or all of the profit as an incentive to increase and improve production.

Both the Eastern European and Chinese socialist approaches to market reforms assume that a "market economy" is not necessarily a capitalist market economy, and that a socialist economy is not necessarily a planned economy. This view draws support from Karl Marx's observations that markets existed under historical modes of production such as the Roman slave market economy and feudal markets.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics

The term market socialism has been used to refer to reformed economic systems in Marxist–Leninist states, most notably in reference to the contemporary economy of the People's Republic of China, where a free price system is used for the allocation of capital goods in both the state and private sectors. However, Chinese political and economic proponents of the socialist market economy do not consider it to be a form of market socialism in the neoclassical sense and many Western economists and political scientists question the degree to which this model constitutes a form of market socialism, often preferring to describe it as state capitalism.

Although similar in name, market socialism differs markedly from the socialist market economy and socialist-oriented market economy models practiced in the contemporary People's Republic of China and Socialist Republic of Vietnam, respectively. Officially these economic systems represent market economies that are in the long-term process of transition toward socialism. Key differences between models of market socialism and the Chinese and Vietnamese models include the role of private investment in enterprises, the lack of a social dividend or basic income system to equitably distribute state profits among the population and the existence and role of financial markets in the Chinese model—markets which are absent in the market socialist literature.

The Chinese experience with socialism with Chinese characteristics is frequently referred to as a socialist market economy where the commanding heights are state-owned, but a substantial portion of both the state and private sectors of economy are governed by market practices, including a stock exchange for trading equity and the utilization of indirect macroeconomic market mechanisms (i.e. fiscal, monetary and industrial policies) to influence the economy in the same manner governments affect the economy in capitalist economies. The market is the arbitrator for most economic activity, with economic planning being relegated to macro-economic government indicative planning that does not encompass the microeconomic decision-making that is left to the individual organizations and state-owned enterprises. This model includes a significant amount of privately owned firms that operate as a business for profit, but only for consumer goods and services.

In the Chinese system, directive planning based on mandatory output requirements and quotas were displaced by market mechanisms for most of the economy, including both the state and private sectors, although the government engages in indicative planning for large state enterprises. In comparison with the Soviet-type planned economy, the Chinese socialist market model is based on the corporatization of state institutions, transforming them into joint-stock companies. As of 2008, there were 150 state-owned corporations directly under the central government. These state-owned corporations have been reformed and become increasingly dynamic and a major source of revenue for the state in 2008, leading the economic recovery in 2009 during the wake of the global financial crises.

This economic model is defended from a Marxist–Leninist perspective which states that a planned socialist economy can only emerge after first developing the basis for socialism through the establishment of a market economy and commodity-exchange economy; and that socialism would only emerge after this stage has exhausted its historical necessity and gradually transforms itself into socialism. Proponents of this model argue that the economic system of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states attempted to go from a natural economy to a planned economy by decree, without passing through the necessary market economy phase of development.

Democratic socialism

Some democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism, some of which are based on self-management. Others advocate for a non-market participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.

Anarchism

The French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is the first person to call himself an anarchist and considered among its most influential theorists. Proudhon is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the French Revolution of 1848, whereon he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon's best-known assertion is that "Property is theft!", contained in his first major work What Is Property?, published in 1840. The book's publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with Proudhon. The two influenced each other and met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled The Poverty of Philosophy. The dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and Marxist wings of the International Working Men's Association. Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and market socialist economic theory that advocates a socialist society where each person possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value which holds that when labor or its product is sold it ought to receive in exchange goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".

Mutualism originated from the writings of Proudhon. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving an income through loans, investments and rent as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Although opposed this type of income, Proudhon expressed that he had never intended "to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity which I propose". Insofar as they ensure the worker's right to the full product of their labor, mutualists support markets or artificial markets and property in the product of labor. However, mutualists argue for conditional titles to land, whose ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called possession), advocating personal property in place of private property. However, some individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker started calling possession as property or private property.

Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. [...] William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". Later, the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker "was against both the state and capitalism, against both oppression and exploitation. While not against the market and property he was firmly against capitalism as it was, in his eyes, a state-supported monopoly of social capital (tools, machinery, etc.) which allows owners to exploit their employees, i.e., to avoid paying workers the full value of their labour. He thought that the "labouring classes are deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and profit". Therefore, "Liberty will abolish interest; it will abolish profit; it will abolish monopolistic rent; it will abolish taxation; it will abolish the exploitation of labour; it will abolish all means whereby any labourer can be deprived of any of his product". This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition and, unsurprisingly, Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "[a]narchistic socialism".

French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single systems are equally repugnant to him.)". He argued for a pluralistic economic logic when he said that "Here and there everything happening – here everyone receiving what they need, there each one getting whatever is needed according to their own capacity. Here, gift and barter – one product for another; there, exchange – product for representative value. Here, the producer is the owner of the product, there, the product is put to the possession of the collectivity". The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada thought that "capitalism is an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously. [...] That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State". His view on class division and technocracy are as follows "Since when no one works for another, the profiteer from wealth disappears, just as government will disappear when no one pays attention to those who learned four things at universities and from that fact they pretend to govern men. Big industrial enterprises will be transformed by men in big associations in which everyone will work and enjoy the product of their work. And from those easy as well as beautiful problems anarchism deals with and he who puts them in practice and lives them are anarchists. [...] The priority which without rest an anarchist must make is that in which no one has to exploit anyone, no man to no man, since that non-exploitation will lead to the limitation of property to individual needs".

Left-wing market anarchism is a market socialist form of individualist anarchism, left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism associated with scholars such as Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, Brad Spangler, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Sheldon Richman, Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Gary Chartier, who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these libertarians believe to be riddled with capitalist and statist privileges. Referred to as left-wing market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians, proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of free markets and self-ownership while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions these ideas support anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical, pro-labor positions in economics; anti-imperialism in foreign policy; and thoroughly liberal or radical views regarding socio-cultural issues.

The genealogy of contemporary left-wing market anarchism, sometimes labelled market-oriented left-libertarianism, overlaps to a significant degree with that of Steiner–Vallentyne left-libertarianism as the roots of that tradition are sketched in the book The Origins of Left-Libertarianism. Carson–Long-style left-libertarianism is rooted in 19th-century mutualism and in the work of figures such as Thomas Hodgskin, French Liberal School thinkers such as Gustave de Molinari and the American individualist anarchists Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. While with notable exceptions market-oriented libertarians after Tucker tended to ally with the political right, relationships between those libertarians and the New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for modern left-wing market anarchism. Left-wing market anarchism identifies with left-libertarianism which names several related yet distinct approaches to politics, society, culture and political and social theory, which stress both individual freedom and social justice.

Unlike right-libertarians, left-libertarians believe that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold and trees) ought to be held in some egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Those left-libertarians who support property do so under different property norms and theories, or under the condition that recompense is offered to the local or global community.

Criticism
Market abolitionists such as David McNally argue in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces inequitable outcomes and leads to unequal exchanges, arguing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free market he championed—the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not countenance. McNally criticizes market socialists for believing in the possibility of fair markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging parasitical elements from the market economy such as private ownership of the means of production, arguing that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage labour.

See also

 Co-determination
 Worker representation on corporate boards of directors
 Cooperative
 Worker cooperative
 Distributism
 Dirigisme
 Employee stock ownership
 Liberal socialism
 Mutualism
 New Economic Mechanism
 Social market economy
 Social ownership
 Socialist-oriented market economy
 Titoism

References

Further reading
 Alejandro Agafonow (2012). "The Austrian Dehomogenization Debate, or the Possibility of a Hayekian Planner," Review of Political Economy, Vol. 24, No. 02.
 Chartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. (2011). Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Brooklyn, NY:Minor Compositions/Autonomedia
 Bertell Ollman ed. (1998). Market Socialism: the Debate Among Socialists, with other contributions by James Lawler, Hillel Ticktin and David Schewikart. Preview.

External links

Comparative economic systems
Economic ideologies
Libertarianism by form
Neoclassical economics
Socialism
Socialist calculation
Left-wing politics

Market socialism


The Wideboys are an English electronic music duo known for club remixes and for their own song "Sambuca", featuring Dennis G on vocals, which reached number 15 in the UK in October 2001. Another top 40 single, "Daddy-O" featuring Shaznay Lewis, reached No. 32 in 2008.

The Wideboys compose and release many of their own productions, especially favouring the 12-inch vinyl format for club DJs. In 1998, they began producing dance remixes of songs by other artists, which led to fame in 2000 for two remixes featuring Craig David on vocals: "Re-Rewind" and "Woman Trouble", both by Artful Dodger. With this success, they began to remix songs by more widely known artists such as Kylie Minogue, Rihanna, Girls Aloud, Taio Cruz and the Pussycat Dolls. In 2009, they initiated a series of dance mix albums on the Ministry of Sound label. They are also known for composing the theme tune for Wheeler Dealers.

See also
List of songs remixed by Wideboys

References

External links
Wideboys on Facebook

British record production teams
English electronic music duos
Electronic dance music duos
Male musical duos
UK garage duos
Record production duos
Remixers
679 Artists artists
Ministry of Sound artists
Locked On Records artists

Wideboys


The migratory locust (Locusta migratoria) is the most widespread locust species, and the only species in the genus Locusta. It occurs throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It used to be common in Europe but has now become rare there.

Because of the vast geographic area it occupies, which comprises many different ecological zones, numerous subspecies have been described. However, not all experts agree on the validity of some of these subspecies.

Many other  species of Orthoptera  with gregarious and migratory behavior are indicated with the name of 'locusts'.

Polyphenism
The migratory locust is polyphenic. It has a solitary phase and a gregarious phase. This is a type of polymorphism where a single genotype produces two or more phenotypes. During development, an environmental factor causes a switch from one morph to another.

For the migratory locust, the switch is caused by population density. As the density of the population increases the locust transforms from the solitary phase to the gregarious phase, with intermediate phases.

The colour and size of the migratory locust changes according to its phase and its age. Gregarious larvae have a yellow to orange covering with black spots. Solitary larvae are green or brown. The gregarious adult is brownish with yellow, the latter colour becoming more intense and extensive on maturation. The solitary adult is brown with varying extent of green colour depending on the colour of the vegetation. Gregarious adults vary in size between 40 and 60 mm according to the sex. They are smaller than the solitary adults.

Steedman, Alison (ed) 1988. Locust Handbook. 2nd ed, London: Overseas Development Natural Resources Institute.

Orthoptera

Migratory locust


Milk powder is a powder made by dehydrating milk. When water is added, it becomes liquid milk again. Milk powder is often used in countries that lack widespread access to refrigeration. As well, it is often used in recipes that call for milk.

Milk

Milk powder


A credit default swap (or CDS for short) is a kind of investment where you pay someone so they will pay you if a certain company gives up on paying its bonds, or defaults. A credit default swap is like insurance on bonds, but different from insurance in important ways:
 Insurance companies make sure you own the thing you're insuring, but you can buy credit default swaps for bonds you don't own.
 The government makes rules (called regulations) for insurance, but they don't make any yet for credit default swaps.
 Insurance companies have to have enough money in case lots of people need to collect insurance at the same time. Because there aren't many rules for CDS sellers, they don't have to be as careful.
Because nobody makes sure you have the bonds you get credit default swaps for, people can speculate on them by buying credit default swaps on companies they think will get in trouble.

Role in Financial Crisis of 2008

When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on September 15, 2008, it defaulted on its bonds. The insurance company AIG had sold lots of credit default swaps for Lehman, but they didn't have enough money to pay all the people they had sold them to.

This is because the way lots of companies speculated was by hedging on credit default swaps. They bought credit default swaps for a company, and then sold credit default swaps for the same company when the CDSes got more expensive. For example, if you bought some Lehman Brothers CDSes from AIG where you had to pay $500,000, and you sold the same number of CDSes on Lehman a year later for $600,000, you made $100,000 profit. If Lehman defaulted, you're supposed to pay the people you sold the CDSes to, but that should be OK because now AIG is supposed to pay you for the CDSes you bought.

So many companies bought and subsequently sold CDSes that when Lehman collapsed, no one had enough money to pay the people they sold the CDSes to. They tried getting it from the companies they'd bought CDSes from, but they didn't have enough money either. Those companies tried collecting from the companies that owed them money, but they didn't have enough either, and so on. Since AIG had sold so many of these, people were afraid that AIG would just give up on trying to pay them all. If they had done that, there would be a domino effect where everybody would go out of business. Because so many companies would've gone out of business, the government decided to help AIG pay so the economy wouldn't collapse.

Role in the Greek Financial Crisis

When people found out that the Greek government owed more money than everybody thought it did, people who didn't own any Greek government bonds started buying credit default swaps on Greek bonds. They did that because they thought Greece would give up on trying to pay, so the bonds would become worthless and the people who sold the credit default swaps would pay them. Unfortunately, this makes people who have Greek bonds nervous, so they want to sell them and not buy any more. That makes it hard for Greece to borrow money to fix its money problems.

Insurance

Credit default swap


Brandon James Garbe (born February 3, 1981 in Moses Lake, Washington) is an American former minor league baseball player. In 1999, Garbe won the Gatorade High School Baseball Player of the Year Award.

Draft and professional career
Garbe was selected fifth overall by the Minnesota Twins in the 1999 amateur draft out of Moses Lake High School. He began his professional career that season, hitting .316 in 41 games for the Elizabethton Twins. That would be the only time he'd ever hit above .275 in a professional season.

In 2000, he hit only .233 in 133 games for the Quad Cities River Bandits, and in 2001 he hit only .242 in 127 games for the Fort Myers Miracle. With the Miracle again in 2002, he hit only .239 in 115 games.

Garbe split the 2003 season between the GCL Twins (eight games) and New Britain Rock Cats (66 games), hitting a combined .181. He began the 2004 season with the Rock Cats, hitting .201 in 114 games with them. On August 31, he was traded to the Seattle Mariners for Pat Borders. He spent three games in the Mariners organization that year, hitting .375 in nine at-bats with the San Antonio Missions. He hit .204 overall that year.

In 2005, Garbe hit .275 in 80 games for the Inland Empire 66ers. He wound up in the Florida Marlins organization in 2006, hitting .184 in 35 games with the Carolina Mudcats.

Overall, he hit .235 in 722 games over an eight-year career.

External links

Living people
1981 births
Elizabethton Twins players
Quad Cities River Bandits players
Fort Myers Miracle players
New Britain Rock Cats players
Gulf Coast Twins players
San Antonio Missions players
Inland Empire 66ers players
Carolina Mudcats players
Baseball players from Washington (state)
Minor league baseball players

B. J. Garbe


Emil Georg Conrad von Sauer (8 October 186227 April 1942) was a German composer, pianist, score editor, and music (piano) teacher. He was a pupil of Franz Liszt and one of the most distinguished pianists of his generation. Josef Hofmann called von Sauer "a truly great virtuoso." Martin Krause, another Liszt pupil, called von Sauer "the legitimate heir of Liszt; he has more of his charm and geniality than any other Liszt pupil."

Life
Sauer was born in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg on 8 October 1862 as Emil Georg Conrad Sauer. He studied with Nikolai Rubinstein at the Moscow Conservatory between 1879 and 1881. On an 1884 visit to Italy he met the Countess von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who recommended him to her former paramour, Franz Liszt. He went on to study with Liszt for two years, but did not for some time consider himself a Liszt pupil. In an 1895 interview, he even denied it: "It is not correct to regard me as a pupil of Liszt, though I stayed with him for a few months. He was then very old, and could not teach me much. My chief teacher has been, undoubtedly, Nicholas Rubinstein." In his later years, however, Sauer realized the influence of Liszt on himself and on music in general.

From 1882, Sauer made frequent and successful tours as a virtuoso pianist; his performing career lasted until 1940. He premiered in London in 1894 and New York in 1899. In 1901 he was appointed head of the Meisterschule für Klavierspiel at the Vienna Academy. Sauer left this post in April 1907 but returned to it in 1915. Some of his pupils continued on to successful concert or other significant music careers;

In 1917, Sauer was raised to the peerage by the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, which added the nobiliary particle "von" to his name. He was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society of London.

Emil von Sauer was married twice. Angelica Morales (von Sauer), his second wife, carried on his legacy in teaching. Sauer had two sons with Morales—Julio and Franz.

He died in Vienna, Austria on 27 April 1942, aged 79.

Playing
Regardless of his own opinion initially, Sauer was considered to have emphasized the original Liszt approach to piano as well as a strong Romantic approach to a musical technique which demanded total command of the keyboard in what was known as the Liszt School of piano. Unlike his fellow pupil Moriz Rosenthal, who could overwhelm the keyboard with orchestral force, von Sauer was said to caress the piano in a suave, polished manner. His recordings show him as a smooth pianist who was inclined toward relaxed tempos and the exactitude of detail over temperament. While his playing may have sometimes lacked breadth, it was always elegant and beautifully finished.

Compositions
Along with editing the complete piano works of Johannes Brahms and a number of academic works by Pischna, Plaidy and Kullak, Sauer wrote piano concertos, piano sonatas, concert études, piano pieces, and lieder. His compositions have been considered of minor importance. Nevertheless, six CDs of his piano music were recorded by Oleg Marshev.

Selected works
Two piano concertos
Two piano sonatas
Études de Concert
Suite moderne

Selected discography

Playing
 Emil von Sauer—1940 live recordings. Works by Chopin, Sauer, Schubert, Schumann, Sgambati. Willem Mengelberg conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Arbiter CD 114).
 Emil von Sauer: The Complete Commercial Recordings (3-CD set, Marston Records).
 Emil von Sauer Plays Liszt: Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2.  Orchestre des Concerts du Conservatoire conducted by Felix Weingartner (Dutton Labs UK B0001DCXLK).

Compositions
 Piano Concerto No. 1 played by Stephen Hough with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. Recorded in 1994. The CD also contains Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 82 (Hyperion no. 66790).
 Piano Concerto No. 2 played by Oleg Marshev with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Loughran (Danacord DACOCD 596).
 Piano Sonata No. 2 and Other Piano Works played by Oleg Marshev (Danacord DACOCD 534).
 Études de Concert played by Oleg Marshev (Danacord DACOCD 487).

References

Bibliography
Anderson, Robert Kinloch, ed. Stanley Sadie, "Sauer, Emil von," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, First Edition (London: Macmillan, 1980), 20 vols. .
Crocus, Anita, "Emil von Sauer, Liszt's Forgotten Protégé," biography: , July 12, 2022.
Heliotes, Steven, Notes for Hyperion CDA66790, Scharwenka: Piano Concerto No. 4; Sauer: Piano Concerto No. 1; Stephen Hough, pianist; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster (London: Hyperion records, 1995).
Renfroe, Anita Boyle, Emil von Sauer; A catalogue of his piano works. Louisville, KY, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Diss., 1981 Microfiche.

Schonberg, Harold C., The Great Pianists (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, 1963). .

External links
Review of recordings of his works for solo piano Contains biographical information and information about each piece

Recordings
Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)
Emil von Sauer - The Complete Commercial Recordings (Marston Records)
Emil Sauer plays Liszt (Dutton Vocalion)

1862 births
1942 deaths
19th-century classical composers
19th-century classical pianists
19th-century German composers
19th-century German male musicians
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century German composers
German classical pianists
German male classical composers
German pianists
German male pianists
German Romantic composers
Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society
Male classical pianists
Musicians from Hamburg
Pupils of Franz Liszt
Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists
20th-century German male musicians
Moscow Conservatory alumni

Emil von Sauer


Pamaréntah nyaéta hiji organisasi anu mibanda kakuatan keur nyieun jeung ngatur hukum di territory husus. Aya sababaraha harti ngeunaan hari sabenerna tina pamaréntah.

Pamaréntah geus dihartikeun kakuatan "pengambil keputusan" anu dominan (elit pulitik) di hiji state. The latter has been defined (by the political economist Max Weber and later political philosophy) as the organization that holds a monopoly in legitimate use of violence within its territory. If seen in ethical terms, the definition of "legitimate" is open to discussion, and implies that an organisation may be considered a state by its supporters but not by its detractors. Some define "legitimate" as simply involving active and tacit support by the vast majority of the population, i.e., the absence of civil war. (An entity that shares military/police power with independent militias and bandits is not a state in this view. It may be a "failed state.") Democratic control over the government—and thus the state—would encourage the legitimacy of the state in this view.

Government can also be defined as the political méans of créating and enforcing laws; typically via a bureaucratic hierarchy. Under this definition, a purely despotic organisation which controls a territory without defining laws would not be considered a government.

An alternative is to define a government as an organisation that attempts to maintain control of a territory, where "control" involves activities such as collecting taxes, controlling entry and exit to the state, preventing encroachment of territory by neighbouring states and preventing the establishment of alternative governments within the country.

Governments concern themselves with many issues, such as economics, education, health, science, territory, and war.

The modérn standard unit of territory comprises a country. In addition to the méaning used above, the word state can refer either to a government or to its territory. Within a territory, subnational entities may have local governments which do not have the full power of a national government.

Governments use a variety of methods to maintain control, such as police and military forces, (particularly under despotism, see also police state), making agreements with other states, and maintaining support within the state. Typical methods of maintaining support and legitimacy include providing infrastructure for justice, administration , transport, social welfare etc., claiming support of deities, providing benefits to influential groups, holding elections
for important posts within the state, limiting the power of the state through laws and constitutions and appéaling to nationalism. Groups opposed to government control include libertarians and anarchists.

Various forms of government have been implemented or proposed. A government in a developed state is likely to have various sub-organisations known as offices, departments, or agencies, which are héaded by politically appointed officials, often called ministers or secretaries. Ministers may in théory act as advisors to the head of state, but in practice have a certain amount of direct power in specific aréas. In most modérn democracies, the elected legislative assembly has the power to dismiss the government, though the head of state generally has gréat latitude in appointing a new one.

Sumangga tingali
 system of government
 head of government
 pulitik
 filosofi politis
 élmu politis
 kabinét
 executive
 legislature
 egovernment
 anarchism
 federalism
 governance
 world government

Government is also a name given, in debating events and competitions, to the téam which supports and tries to prove a motion.

Pamaréntah


Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin, KCIE (,  Khaja Nazimuddin) (July 19, 1894 - October 22, 1964) was the second Governor-General of Pakistan, and later the second Prime Minister of Pakistan as well. He was born in Dacca, Bengal, British India (now Dhaka, Bangladesh) into the family of the Nawabs (rulers) of Dacca, who had come from Kashmir and settled there. He received his education from Dunstable Grammar School in England, then Aligarh Muslim University, and later Trinity Hall, Cambridge University until the mid-1930s. After returning to British India, he became involved in politics in his native Bengal. Nazimuddin was initially the Education Minister, but climbed the ranks to become the Chief Minister of the province prior to independence. Nazimuddin also became the head of the Muslim League in Eastern India.

References

1964 deaths
1894 births
Prime Ministers of Pakistan
Governors General of Pakistan
Politicians from Dhaka

Khawaja Nazimuddin


Duct tape, sometimes called duck tape, is a very strong adhesive tape with a cloth backing . Usually duct tape is grey or black, but it is made in other colors including transparent, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, flames, zebra stripe, leopard spot, tye dye, and others. People use duct tape to repair many things, for example a broken handbag or a broken chair.

Duct tape was designed during World War I. It was first used to keep water out of ammunition cases. It was found to work so well that people started using it to fix many other things. Duct tape was also called "100 mph tape" by the military because it is said the tape will still stick in winds at speeds of 100 miles per hour. Duct tape got its name from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts but oddly enough, that is the one use that the tape is not very good for. It is illegal in California to use duct tape on ducts and most professional builders in the United States are not allowed to use it either.

In the United States, people use duct tape in many action movies and television shows. Strips of duct tape can be used to tie a person up because it is very hard to get them off.

Duct tape is also great for making things like wallets, purses, clothes, and sometimes even sculptures. The use of it as an art medium is fairly new, though.

Tools

Duct tape


Skepticism or scepticism (Greek skeptomai: to consider, to examine) refers to any view involving doubt.

An attitude of doubt about whether something exists.
A doubt about whether something can be known for certain.
A doubt about whether we are correct in arguing a certain way.
A practical method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt or criticism.

People who have skepticism as an attitude, opinion, or method are called skeptics or sceptics.

The roots of skepticism
Skepticism is not just a belief that something is incorrect. It is a system of thought which acts against superstitions and rumours. Characteristic of skepticism is the attitude that any statement is judged on the evidence for or against its truth.

Skepticism on philosophy has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy.

The Greek Sophists of the 5th century BC, such as Protagoras of Abdera (480–411 BC), were mostly skeptics. Gorgias (485–380 BC) said, "Nothing exists; if anything does exist, it cannot be known; if anything exists and can be known, it cannot be communicated". In the 4th century BC Pyrrho of Elis (c360–275 BC), who travelled and studied as far as India, adopted practical skepticism. Carneades (c213–129 BC) disagreed that things were completely true or false. He criticized the Dogmatists, especially Stoics. He said that completely certain knowledge is impossible. Sextus Empiricus (c200 AD), the main authority for Greek skepticism, brought together empiricism into the basis for stating knowledge.

Skepticism comes from Asian philosophy, too. The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi (c369–c286 BC) said that what seems real could be just a dream. In Indian philosophy, the Cārvāka school thought that we should neither try to infer knowledge nor trust what other people tell us. In Buddhism, Nāgārjuna said that nothing exists by itself, and that this idea is an important part of enlightenment.

The most important part of the argument is that unless we know something for certain, then we cannot know anything. The interest lies in the way great philosophers have tried to solve this problem. Some, like Descartes, retreat into the mind: "I think, therefore I am". Others, such as the British empiricists John Locke and David Hume, would rely on our sense perception. Certain kinds of knowledge may be especially vulnerable to skepticism. For example, an agnostic believes people cannot get knowledge about supernatural things.

Skepticism is widely used as a method for research in science, and (with changes) in modern legal procedure. Here doubt, suspending judgement, careful investigation, testing and discussion come before any statement of facts. Sometimes the process takes years before consensus is reached. This systematic approach is called methodological skepticism. It is probably the most important legacy of the skeptics.

Scepticism in Islam
In Islamic philosophy, philosophical skepticism was started by Al-Ghazali, known in the West as "Algazel", as a part of the orthodox Ash'ari school of Islamic theology. It has been said that Rene Descartes' ideas in Discourse on the Method may have been influenced by Al-Ghazli.

References

Further reading
Klein P. 2002. "Skepticism" in The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. P. Moser (ed) Oxford University Press. pp336–361

Resources

Literary skeptics
 Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary
 Ignacy Krasicki: Fables and Parables
 Bolesław Prus: Pharaoh
 Voltaire: Candide
 Montaigne: Essays

Organizations
 Center for Inquiry
 Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
 The Skeptics Society
 James Randi Educational Foundation
 Rationalist International
 The New England Skeptical Society
 Australian Skeptics

Media
 Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
 MythBusters

Other websites

 New York City Skeptics
 Skeptics Canada
 Sceptics in Russia (Manifesto)
 The Skeptic Friends Network
 British Skeptic magazine
 Australian Skeptics
 Skeptical about skeptics

Epistemology

Skepticism


Padmé Amidala is a fictional character in the fictional Star Wars universe. She is the secret wife of Anakin Skywalker and the mother of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. She is played by actress Natalie Portman in the prequel trilogy.

History
In The Phantom Menace, Padmé is the fourteen-year-old queen of the planet Naboo. In the movie, Amidala gets captured by the evil Trade Federation, meets the young slave boy Anakin Skywalker, and takes her captured planet back from the Trade Federation.

In Attack of the Clones, Padmé is not the queen anymore; she is now an adult, and a Senator. She and Anakin Skywalker fall in love though she said it would make them live a lie. Even though Anakin is a Jedi, and Jedi aren't supposed to get married, Padmé and Anakin got married anyway.

Revenge of the Sith is the last movie Padmé is in. She is going to have a baby, and her husband Anakin dreams that Padmé will die when she has the baby. Palpatine, a man that Anakin trusts, tells Anakin that he can save Padmé with the evil Dark Side of the Force. So Anakin goes to the Dark Side but little does he know that the power to save people from death was achieved by a jedi not a sith. He goes to a lava planet called Mustafar, and his master Obi-Wan Kenobi, along with Padmé, follow him there. Anakin, who has turned to the Dark Side, thinks that Padmé had got Obi-Wan to come with her (she had not). Anakin chokes Padmé using the Force and she blacks out and crumples to the floor.

Padmé is taken a little later to a hospital, where she gives birth to twins. Soon afterwards,  because Anakin broke her heart which no none except her and Obi-Wan Kenobi knew, finally telling Obi-Wan with her last breath that she knows there's still good in Anakin, she dies.

Fictional characters introduced in 1999
Star Wars characters

Padmé Amidala


Juan Diego Flórez (born January 13, 1973 in Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian operatic tenor. He is famous for the roles he sings in bel canto operas.

Life

Early years
Juan Diego Flórez was born in Lima, Peru on January 13, 1973. His father, Rubén Flórez, was a guitarist and singer of Peruvian popular music. His mother worked in a pub where music was performed live. When a musician was ill Juan would sing instead. It was good experience for him.

He entered the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima at the age of 17. He was intending to have a career in popular music. His teacher Andrés Santa María found that he had a superb voice for classical music. He became a member of the Coro Nacional of Peru and sang as a soloist in Mozart's Coronation Mass and Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle.

He was given a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied from 1993 to 1996 and began singing in student opera productions. He sang roles in operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. During this period, he also studied with Marilyn Horne at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. In 1994 the Peruvian tenor, Ernesto Palacio invited him to Italy to work on a recording of Vicente Martín y Soler's opera Il Tutore Burlato. Palacio became Flórez's teacher and helped him an enormous amount in his career.

1996 - present
Flórez's first big breakthrough came in 1996, at the Rossini Festival in the Italian city of Pesaro, Rossini's birthplace. At the age of 23, he was asked to sing the leading tenor role in Matilde di Shabran when Bruce Ford became ill. He first sang at La Scala in the same year as the Chevalier danois in Gluck's Armide. His Covent Garden debut followed in 1997 where he sang the role of Count Potoski in the world premiere of Donizetti's Elisabetta. Debuts followed at the Vienna Staatsoper in 1999 as Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia and at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 2002, again as Count Almaviva. On February 20 2007, the opening night of Donizetti's La Fille du régiment at La Scala, Flórez broke the theater's 74-year-old tradition of not having any encores when he repeated the aria "Ah! mes amis" with its nine high C's after the audience gave him an enormous ovation.

Flórez sing in concerts in Europe, North America, and South America. Amongst the many places in which he has given concerts and recitals are the Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Teatro Segura in Lima, and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. As a change from the usual music he sings, he sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the Broadway musical Carousel at the Berlin Live 8 concert in 2005.

He was signed by Decca in 2001 and since then made 5 CDs for them. Nearly all his operatic roles have been broadcast on radio or television.

Flórez was married to German-born Julia Trappe in a private civil ceremony on April 23, 2007 in Vienna. They held a religious ceremony at the Basilica Cathedral in Lima on April 5, 2008. Some of Peru's most famous people went, including President Alan García and author Mario Vargas-Llosa.

Awards and distinctions
Juan Diego Flórez has won many awards and distinction, including Peru's highest honour: the Gran Cruz de la Orden del Sol del Perú. He has even appeared on a Peruvian stamp.

Other websites
Official web site

1973 births
Living people
Tenors
Opera singers
People from Lima

Juan Diego Flórez


A zero-knowledge proof or zero-knowledge protocol is a protocol used in cryptography. In such a protocol, two parties are communicating. The task of one party is to convince the other that it knows some secret, but without revealing the secret.

Example

There is a well-known story showing some of the ideas of zero-knowledge proofs. Usually, the two parties in a zero-knowledge proof are called Peggy (the prover of the statement) and Victor (the verifier of the statement).

In this story, Peggy has uncovered the secret word used to open a magic door in a cave. The cave is shaped like a circle, with the entrance on one side and the magic door blocking the opposite side. Victor says he'll pay her for the secret, but not until he's sure that she really knows it. Peggy says she'll tell him the secret, but not until she receives the money. They devise a scheme by which Peggy can prove that she knows the word without telling it to Victor.

First, Victor waits outside the cave as Peggy goes in. They label the left and right paths from the entrance A and B. Peggy randomly takes either path A or B. Then, Victor enters the cave and shouts the name of the path he wants her to use to return, either A or B, chosen at random. Providing she really does know the magic word, this is easy: she opens the door, if necessary, and returns along the desired path.  Note that Victor does not know which path she has gone down.

However, suppose she did not know the word. Then, she would only be able to return by the named path if Victor were to give the name of the same path that she had entered by. Since Victor would choose A or B at random, he would have a 50% chance of guessing correctly. If they were to repeat this trick many times, say 20 times in a row, her chance of successfully anticipating all of Victor's requests would become very small.

For this reason, if Peggy reliably appears at the exit Victor names, he can conclude that she is very likely to know the secret word.

References

Cryptography

Zero-knowledge proof