Prehistory of Pampanga

Pampanga lies within the Central Plain region and has a total land area of 2,180.70 square kilometers. Together with Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and Tarlac, the region includes a total area of approximately 5,900 square miles, mostly composed of lowlands and arable areas.
The original Kapampangan region was ten times larger than the present borders shown on the map. 35,000 years ago Neolithic is from 12,000 BP only. Candaba adze ax is estimated at 3,000BP only(Neolithic era), a series of Mt. Pinatubo eruptions dumped lava, ashes, tephra and lahar into the sea, forming the present landmass of the region.
The People of Pampanga.
Oral tradition says that the early Kapampangans were from the Malays. As early as 300 BC, people from Indonesia started their adventure from the Malay Peninsula and West Sumatra. People of Malay from the south sailed in groups using boats called "barangays". Around the mid 1300s, Prinsipe Balagtas from the Kingdom of Madjapahit in Indonesia led a group of Kapampangans to what is well known as Central Luzon. This group of people belonged to the brown race, characterized by black to dark brown hair, brownish eyes, medium height, and almost hairless bodies. They settled in scattered communities called barangays, ruled by chieftains called datus, and resided along Rio Grande de la Pampanga (currently known as Pampanga River) and extended their settlement to the Lingayen Gulf in the North, Manila Bay down South, Sierra Madre mountain range in the East and in the West were the mountains of Zambales.
Furthermore, these Malays descendants brought their culture to Pampanga in terms of their industry, residence, clothing, and other aspects of their life. They introduced pottery, smelting, weaving, and making necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments. In terms of their housing, the early Kapampangans settled on houses made of bamboo with roofs made of palm leaves. They also incorporated jewels of pearls and gold on their clothing, which used woven fabrics. "Bolos", swords, spears and bows and arrows were also introduced as armaments.
Moreover, as a reflection of Pampanga’s history, similarities in the Kapampangan and Indonesian language can be observed in the present.
Pre-Spanish to Spanish Period.
Before the Spaniards arrived in Pampanga, the Kapampangans were expert in constructing sailboats. These were made using hardwood, such as "apitong" and "baticuling", for dwelling, fishing and trading. Moreover, the "caracoa", owned by the chieftains, were war boats which predominantly carried warriors. These boats were light and crescent-shaped. Due to these features, boats were known to be swift and easy to maneuver especially on the cunning waves of the old Pampanga River.
On the other hand, Chinese junks were flat-bottomed in order to navigate shallow waters without getting damaged. During the Spanish regime, these junks were used as carriers to transport goods from Pampanga, and then to be sold along the "esteros", between Sta. Cruz and Quiapo markets. Its five-stage masts provided power to secure the goods.
Archaeology of Pampanga.
Pampanga is among the earliest provinces which underwent through scientific archaeological research. As early as the American colonial period, there have been several ventures by different groups of scientists, most of which are foreigners. All these expeditions aimed to give contributions in understanding the history of the said province as a whole.
Porac.
One of the most famous archaeological sites in the province is the Hacienda Ramona site, located near Porac, Pampanga. Originally it was a plantation, owned by Warner, Barnes, & Co., an American company. It was first explored by a team led by G.M. Goodall from 1935–36, where they found an early and remarkable Porcelain-Age site. In 1939, a more extensive exploration was done in the area, hoping to retrieve more artifacts from the site. The team, which includes E.D. Hester, George Woods, and Herman Costenoble, found a large quantity of burial jars and smaller ceramic pieces of various shapes and sizes. Sadly, only few of these artifacts were preserved – most of them were either lost or destroyed during the war.
The Hacienda Ramona site is of great relevance in reconstructing the area’s earlier times. Since the site is large, it provided many artifacts such as jars, porcelain, and bowls. This is important, since it establishes the fact that the early Pampangueῆos already had a fixed and thriven trade system with the Chinese merchants. The archaeologists were also able to identify three periods of inhabitation within the site. They discovered an extensive burial area dated from the Late Tang to the Middle Sung dynasty, a village site dated from the Late Sung to the Yuan dynasty, and a smaller village site dated to the beginning of the Ming period. The age and order of the sites were identified mostly because of the patterns and motifs embedded in the porcelains (since every Chinese dynasty has its own unique way of designing the pottery within its era).
Besides the Hacienda Ramona site, other sites have also been unearthed within the town of Porac. Two sites, both formerly sugar plantations, were found a few kilometers southeast of the hacienda by Herman Costenoble in 1941. Upon examination, both sites were categorized as of early Porcelain-Age sites, yielding almost similar artifacts to those discovered in the hacienda.
Another interesting site was found near the hacienda, in one of the agricultural fields of Porac. Archaeologists found a slightly trapezoidal remnant of a tool (a chisel, specifically) which was thought to be associated with the artifacts found in the nearby site. However, upon analysis, the artifact was dated to the Late Neolithic period, making it the first evidence of Neolithic occupation in the province.
In 1947, "Dr. Henry Otley Beyer" observed that there were different types of porcelain in Hacienda Ramona in Porac, Pampanga. Burial jars and ceramic pieces of different shapes and sizes were seen on the site. The burial jars and ceramic pieces are dated from 9th to 12th centuries A.D. (Late Tang to Middle Sung Dynasty), 13th to 14th centuries A.D. (Late Sung to Yuan Dynasty) and 14th to 15th centuries A.D. (beginning of the Ming Dynasty).
"Dr. Robert Bradford Fox" in 1960, excavated Balukbuk, Hacienda Dolores in Porac, Pampanga. He found habitation and burial sites. The artifacts found are earthenware sherds, 7 metal implements, 13 metal tools (not considered as grave goods), mortar and pestles, and polished stones. A grave good of 50 pieces of Chinese beads string into a bracelet was also found. The tradeware ceramics found are from China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. These ceramics are dated from 13th to 16th centuries CE. From this site, it is observed that the dead are buried near houses and near agricultural lands.
Some people from the National Museum of the Philippines conducted an archaeological impact assessment in 1993. Three more excavations were done during 1999, 2001, and 2002 in the sugarcane plantation of Mr. Nestor Dizon in Sitio Babo Balukbuk. In the 2002 excavation, the archaeologists were able to map the site with the help of the findings from previous excavations. Approximately, 85% of the remains found in Babo Balukbuk were earthenware sherds. Some of the sherds had soot or carbon traces in the outer and inner surface, which implies that they were used for cooking. Several were decorated by carving, combing, incising, impressing and multiple combinations. The most usual design is the incision of lines below the rim or neck area of the pot. Furthermore, Dr. Victor Paz stated that some of the sherds have rice impressions, suggesting that rice was used as a temper.
Only teeth enamel, arm bones and votive elements like bracelets and tradeware were present in the matrix, implying that the site of excavation was a burial site. There was absence of skeletal remains due to the acid content of the matrix, resulting to a complicated grave identification.
Besides the artifacts mentioned above, mortars, spindle whorls, pestles and polished pumice stones were unearthed. In addition, Chinese beads from a bracelet, associated with a bangle and a brown stoneware jarlet, were also obtained. Nuts, plant remains and wood fragments were also obtained through wet flotation method. Animal bones and teeth were also present. Lastly, features such as postholes, hearths, middens and plough marks were recorded.
Recent excavations in Guagua, Pampanga supports the theory of primeval trade with China that was dated back to the 10th century or even earlier, which earlier Porac artifacts stipulated. There were hundreds of artifacts excavated in the Balagtas-Capuno property in Guagua. Among them were small blue beads used for trading and coins that was dated back to the Ching Dynasty. Moreover, Chinese plates and cookware were found by archaeologists in burial sites in Porac and Guagua towns.
Candaba.
The town of Candaba was founded in 1575 from an already established settlement called Candawe. It is one of the oldest communities in pre-Hispanic times, and was settled even before the first Spanish conqueror took control of the town.
A 5,000 year old stone adze uncovered in Candaba, Pampanga (currently in the National Museum) was discovered during the 1930s. This artifact was used as a tool in making canoes or "bancas." The affluent accessibility of timber, specifically "apalit, lanang," and whatnot, along with skilled labors formed the industry. The adze proves a boat-building society and trading economy along the Pampanga River and Manila Bay. Additionally, the territory covers the largest shallow swamp in Luzon.
Presently, fisheries and agriculture remain as the primary livelihood.
Lubao.
Along with Candaba, Lubao is one of the three oldest settlements in Pampanga with advanced culture and civilization in the archipelago. It is believed to have been founded by Malays, and was once governed by a native chief, assisted by the council of elders. The town got its name from “"baba"” meaning “lowland”.
A test excavation was conducted in Porac-Gumain River restored the paleo-shoreline at the Lim Property Site in Purok Israel II, Barangay Remedios, Lubao, Pampanga. It uncovered the earliest directly dated human occupation, about 700–600 years B.P., in the archaeological records. The occupation was dated using radiocarbon dates from samples in one of the excavation layers.
The materials that were excavated and recorded were composed of 223 earthenware sherds, 4 celadon sherds, 29 blue and white porcelain sherds, an undefined porcelain sherds, 5 black glazed stoneware sherds, a metal tool fragment, a worked Bovid bone, several worked fragments of Sus bone, and at least one small (about 10mm long) charred wood fragment.
Apart from this, the only other records in Lubao was a survey that disclosed a late Chinese tradeware. As a matter of fact, the 2005 excavation marks the first settlement that was excavated in the area.
Mexico.
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the Philippines, the town was called Masicu after the exotic fruit tree "sicu" (chico or Sapodilla). Another theory of its name origin tells that the town lies along the bend of Sapang Matulid, which was known as “maca-sicu ya”. When the Spaniards arrived, they renamed the town into Mexico after their prized American colony.
During its glory days, Mexico was known for its gold and silversmithing. The Naveta, an incense boat made of silver, which came from Mexico, is now present in the Museum of Archdiocese of San Fernando.
In addition, an intricate bamboo wood carving created during 1887 in Mexico, Pampanga is now on display in a Spanish museum.


Paku Alam V

Paku Alam V - was a ruler of the principality of Pakualaman between 1878 and 1900.
Pakualaman (also written Paku Alaman) became a small hereditary Duchy within the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, as a mirror-image of the Mangkunegaran principality in the territory of the Susuhunanate of Surakarta
The son of Paku Alam IV, Paku Alam V was the instigator of and buried at the graveyard in Girigondo.


Central Committee elected by the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The 27th Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was elected by the 27th Congress, and was in session from 1986 until 1990. Its 1st Plenary Session elected the 27th Politburo, the 27th Secretariat and the 27th Party Control Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
History.
Election and composition.
The 27th Congress witnessed the greatest turnover of Central Committee members in the party's history since 22nd Party Congress (held in 1961) during Nikita Khrushchev's leadership. The numbers of full membership were reduced from 319 in the 26th Central Committee to 307, while candidate membership was increased from 151 to 170. Of the 307 full members elected to the 27th Central Committee, 102 (making up 33 percent of membership) were newcomers. 25 officials, who had previously served as candidate members in the 26th Central Committee, were promoted to full membership. In total 125 new full members were appointed, making up 41 percent. 182 members (59 percent) were reelected to the 27th Central Committee, a decrease from the 26th Congress, in which 238 (75 percent) were reelected. Of the 170 candidate members, 54 (32 percent) were reelected, while the other 116 were newcomers. The 1st Plenary Session elected Lev Zaykov (then First Secretary of the Leningrad City Party Committee) to full membership in the Politburo, while Nikolay Slyunkov (Communist Party of Byelorussia First Secretary) and Yuri Solovyev (First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee) were given Politburo candidate membership. The plenum elected five newcomers to the Secretariat; Alexandra Biryukova (the first women to hold high party office since Yekaterina Furtseva in the Khrushchev era), Anatoly Dobrynin, Vadim Medvedev, Georgy Razumovsky and Alexander Yakovlev. The 1st Plenary Session reelected Mikhail Gorbachev to the office of the general secretary.
In a similar vein, Gorbachev managed to get close advisers elected to the Central Committee. Anatoly Chernyaev (Gorbachev's foreign adviser) and Anatoly Lukyanov, (head of the party's General Department) were promoted to full membership, while Valery Boldin was elected to the 27th Central Committee as a candidate member. Several figures within the Central Academy of Social Sciences, most notably Evgeny Velikhov, were appointed to the Central Committee as candidate members. Notably the 27th Congress did not reelect Richard Kosolapov, the longtime editor of the party's theoretical journal "Kommunist", and was replaced by Ivan Frolov. Several Brezhnev appointed heads of Central Committee departments failed to be reelected to the Central Committee; Ivan Sakhnyuk (Agricultural-Machine Building Department), Kirill Simonov (Transport and Communications Department) and Vasily Shauro (Culture Department). Nikolay Savkin (Administrative Organs Department) and Vladimir Karlov (Agriculture and Food Industry Department) were the two last remaining Central Committee departments heads appointed by Brezhnev. Of the 23 department heads, fourteen were replaced by the 1st Plenary Session. Four leading officials from the Brezhnev era, who retired from the Politburo and the Secretariat at the 27th Congress, were reelected to the Central Committee; Nikolai Tikhonov (former Chairman of the Council of Ministers), Nikolai Baibakov (the former Chairman of the State Planning Committee), Boris Ponomarev (former Head of the International Department) and Vasili Kuznetsov (the former First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet).
Tenure.
Combating party formalism; 1st–2nd Plenary Sessions.
The newly elected leadership was united in supporting reforms, principally behind the slogan "uskoreniye" (literally "acceleration"), which called for improving the Soviet economy, and to combat formalism, corruption, nepotism and centralism within the party. Beginning in March 1985, the Central Committee (through the Soviet press) began criticizing the norms and organizational habits of the party; criticism increased by the discovery of corruption rings in the communist parties of Kazakhstan (CPK, Kirghizia (CPKi), Turkmenistan (CPT), Moldavia (CPM), Uzbekistan (CPU) and Azerbaijan (ACP). The policy of appointing officials on the basis of "personal loyalty, servility and protectionism" were blamed on the party's subpar performance in certain areas, and in areas in which this was not the case, the Central Committee focused on the lack of inner-party democracy. To strengthen party democracy, Gorbachev called for an increase in criticism and self-criticism (claiming it was as critical "for us as air") to overcome "'paradeness, ballyhoo . . . [and] the embellishment of reality". An article in "Pravda" noted that "In some places people try to 'prepare' the discussion in such a way as to avoid any tricky issues in it. Speeches are usually made only by 'staff' speakers, usually in a predetermined order. Things even go as far as the editing of draft texts of speeches." Meetings became ceremonial, and lacked effective power—which led local authorities to misinform the central authorities on the situation in the given area. All forms of "window-dressing", or hiding abuses of power in general, were to be stopped. In the current situation, Solovyev noted;
The main demand which the party makes under modern conditions on the party committee secretary and the staff officer is ensuring that nowhere, under no circumstances, does word part from deed since any discrepancy here causes palpable damage to the authority of our policy and cannot be tolerated in any form.
Boris Griaznov, the First Secretary of the Frunze District Party Committee, was signalled out as an official "'accustomed to stagnation, encouraged ostentation, ignored collective opinion, lost the feeling of party comradeship, and only pretended to be carrying out restructuring", while party leaders in Kazakhstan had difficulty of ridding"themselves of elements of excessive administration and a commander-like style [behaviour]". The central leadership continued to highlight the party work ethics of first secretaries at every level; at the 2nd Plenary Session Gorbachev condemned certain localities of not committing themselves to the new work-style. In other cases, as noted by Gorbachev, party leaders did not know how to react to criticism or how to introduce changes, noting that "Sometimes words are substituted for deeds, no action is taken in response to criticism, and self-criticism takes the form of self-flagellation." Historian Graeme Gill asserts; "complaints about the way in which the party was operating which resounded through the press in 1985 and 1986 amounted to a condemnation of the party's organisational culture. [...] During the first eighteen months or so of Gorbachev's tenure as General Secretary, there seems to have been a general underestimation of the strength and sources of this culture and of what was necessary to eradicate it. The heart of the solution the Gorbachev leadership pursued was thoroughly traditional in the Soviet context, personnel.
Collectivity of leadership, and collectivism in general, was hailed as "a reliable guarantee against the adoption of volitional, subjective decisions, manifestations of the cult of personality, and the infringement of Leninist norms of party life." In tandem, the Central Committee began calling for psychological restructuring of party members. However, since the 27th Congress failed to create institutions which oversaw the implementation of these measures (and others), individual members who had no interest in changing their work habits were not punished. The reason for the lack of oversight was Gorbachev's belief that the party was a "healthy organism", and as Graeme Gill concludes, "A healthy organism clearly did not need radical institutional surgery." When it became clear to Gorbachev that the reforms to "invigorate" the party had failed, the reform consensus within the leadership was split asunder. Gorbachev began moving in a more radical directions, while several prominent colleagues in the Politburo, Secretariat and the Central Committee opposed his new measures. The schism in the leadership led to the failure to convene the 3rd Plenary Session in the last half of 1986 (being postponed to January 1987). Nonetheless, before the 3rd Plenary Session, the Central Committee was able to remove Dinmukhamed Konayev, the CPK First Secretary. The removal of Konayev, who was widely perceived to support an out-dated work ethic and to be corrupt, led to the "Jeltoqsan" riots when it was discovered that Konayev would be replaced by Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian who had never lived in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.
Democratization: 3rd–7th Plenary Sessions.
On 23 December 1985, the Politburo appointed Boris Yeltsin, an official from Sverdlovsk, First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee ("de facto" mayor of Moscow). Gorbachev had endorsed the appointment, heeding the advice of Yegor Ligachev (the party's informal second-in-command) who personally recommended him. In contrast, Nikolai Ryzhkov told Gorbachev in private that "He [Yeltsin] will cause you only grief. I would not recommend him." Yeltsin, who had introduced himself as something of a centrist at the 27th Congress, proved himself to be a supporter of radical change, going even as far, as on 19 January 1986, of criticising Gorbachev personally for "exaggerat[ing] the changes that had occurred" during his leadership.
Gorbachev opened the 3rd Plenary Session by criticising the party's performance, claiming the party's failure to reform was due to "conservatism and inertia, lenience and lack of demandingness, toadyism and personal adulation, red tape, formalism, intolerance and suppression of criticism, ambition and careerism, administration by decree, permissiveness, mutual coverups, careerism, departmentalism, parochialism, nationalism, substitutionism, a weakening of the role of party meetings and elective bodies,embezzlement, bribery, report-padding and violation of discipline." The cure for this "disease" was "demokratizatsiya", literally the democratization of society. He called for open, democratic debates in the primary party organizations and to allow a secret ballot during plenary sessions of the district, area, city, region and territory party committees and the central committees of the republican parties to elect the executive organs. This was an attack on the "nomenklatura", a system in which leading officials appointed the cadres at the level below, the basis of the Soviet system. The plenary session opposed his suggestions, and while his criticisms were mentioned in the Resolution of the 3rd Plenary Session, the idea of multi-candidate elections within the Party were omitted from the text.
In preparation of the 4th Plenary Session, Gorbachev had prepared a speech on Soviet and Party history. In it he condemned the rule of Joseph Stalin and Stalinism in general, but the speech was amended by Politburo. Conservatives such as Ligachev, Andrei Gromyko, Mikhail Solomentsev and Vitaly Vorotnikov did not share Gorbachev's views, or at least, did not support a public anti-Stalinist proclamation. Despite the conservative reaction, Gorbachev was able to rehabilitate Nikolay Bukharin and Nikita Khrushchev, while referring to Stalin's repressive regime as "immense and unpardonable".
The 4th Plenary Session was supposed to discuss economic reforms, but instead of focusing on the matter at hand Yeltsin, according to Gorbachev, attacked the speed of "perestroika", the work of the Secretariat and Ligachev personally. From this point on, the relationship between Gorbachev and Yeltsin would only grow worse—however, by this time, the press mistakenly had begun to present Yeltsin as Gorbachev's closest reformist associate in the Politburo. In the summer of 1987, when Gorbachev was on vacation, Ligachev (on Gorbachev's bidding) led the party apparatus (and chaired the meetings of the Politburo). On 10 September he organized an Inquiry Commission of the Central Committee to investigate the performance of the Moscow City Committee under Yeltsin's stewardship—Yeltsin reacted to the inquiry by becoming the first Politburo member in history to willingly resign from his seat. In respsonse Gorbachev told Yeltsin they could discuss the situation after the 70th Anniversary of the October Revolution. At the 5th Plenary Session, which was devoted to the aforementioned anniversary, Yeltsin completely broke by protocol by denouncing Gorbachev and Ligachev personally, and resigned from the Politburo. The central leadership reacted in kind, by criticizing him at the plenary session; Yakovlev contended that he had been "reacting immaturely to 'petty offenses'", while Ryzhkov accused him of being driven by "ambition pure and simple". Soon after his resignation, Yeltsin was hospitalized, either for suffering a heart attack (as Yeltsin contends) or for "a fake suicide attempt with scissors" (as Gorbachev and the members of the central leadership contends). At a session of the Moscow City Committee on 11 November 1987, the party leadership dragged Yeltsin out of the hospital and forced him to attend the meeting in which he was relieved of his duties as First Secretary and unceremoniously humiliated. The meeting proved to be a mistake; the Soviet populace began sympathising with Yeltsin—a problem which was compounded "by the mistake" of Gorbachev attending the Moscow City Committee session. In the aftermath, Yeltsin was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Construction (chaired by Yuri Batalin), but was told on the day of his appointment by Gorbachev that he could not participate in politics.
At the 6th Plenary Session Ligachev delivered the first speech, the first time that Gorbachev had not done so himself. Ligachev attacked what he perceived as the excesses of "glasnost", the influence of rock music in society, "the blackening of Soviet history" and the failure of the leadership to do anything with the growing nationalism in the republics. Gorbachev did not speak until the second day of the plenum, and gave a defensive speech in which he defended his reform efforts but called for the establishment of a "middle ground" in which balanced Soviet historiography and supported using Soviet patriotism to counter the rising nationalism in the republics. The plenary session relieved Yeltsin of his duties as candidate member of the Politburo and member of the Secretariat, and elected Razumovsky (Head of the Organisational-Party Work Department) and Yuri Maslyukov (Chairman of the State Planning Committee) to Politburo candidate membership. Leading conservative figures, such as General Dmitry Yazov, had begun criticising Gorbachev's democratising policies openly in December 1987, claiming they weakened the honour of the Soviet military, while party first secretaries in the republics called for a tightening of party control in reaction to the growing nationalism amongst the populace.
In between the 6th and the 7th plenary sessions, the Nina Andreyeva Affair took place. Andreyeva, "an hitherto unknown lecturer at a Leningrad chemical institute, wrote an article in "Sovetskaya Rossiya" titled "I Cannot Forsake My Principles". She condemned Gorbachev's reforms and called for their reversal. She criticized the Gorbachev leadership's habit of opening the previous black spots in Soviet history, which she claimed only helped to denigrate the Soviet past. In addition, the article is notable for its anti-semitism; of all the Jews mentioned, only Karl Marx was not accused of participating in blackening of Soviet history and destroying the Soviet order. The importance of the article does not lay in its author, but rather how it was interpreted by the forces in the Central Committee — both conservatives, centrists and reformers fought Nina Andreyeva was a pseudonym used by a high-standing official. It was consistently referred to posthumously as "an anti-perestroika manifesto". The publication of the article had been chosen carefully by conservative forces within the Central Committee apparatus and Valentin Chikin, the editor-in-chief of "Sovetskaya Rossiya", and it was published on 13 March to coincide with Gorbachev's visit to Yugoslavia and Yavkovlev's visit to Mongolia on 14 March. With both of the leading reformers gone, the conservative Ligachev was in charge of the Central Committee apparatus. Ligachev endorsed the article, stating it was "a benchmark for what we need in our ideology today." In the words of historian Archie Brown "Old habits of prudence rapidly reasserted themselves in the face of an apparent signal of change in the balance of forces at the top of the party hierarchy and of a return to a time when dissenting intellectuals would no longer be treated with tolerance." Upon his return on 18 March, Gorbachev discussed it with the Politburo. To his surprise several of his colleagues supported the content of the article, among them Vorotnikov, Gromyko, Ligachev, Solomentsev and Viktor Nikonov. The article was discussed in the 24–26 March Politburo meeting, in which the aforementioned conservatives alongside Viktor Chebrikov, the Chairman of the KGB, and Anatoly Lukyanov, a close associate of Gorbachev and the Head of the General Department, supported the article. Chebrikov condemned the criticisms of the Soviet system which had appeared with Gorbachev's reforms, and lamented the scheming "of our ideological adversary". Despite forming a majority, the conservatives did not opt for removing Gorbachev, largely because the institution of General Secretary still meant something in Soviet politics. Gorbachev insisted that every Politburo member had to openly state their position on the matter; Yakovlev, Ryzhkov, Medvedev and Eduard Shevardnadze condemned the article. In light of the pro-reformist stance of this mentioned, and Gorbachev himself, they managed to push the conservatives on the defensive, and got their approval to publish a formal reply to the article.
In light of this event, Gorbachev would seek to consolidate his power within the apparatus even further, especially in the Secretariat (which oversaw the work of the Central Committee apparatus). In his first years as General Secretary, Gorbachev had never chaired a meeting of the Secretariat, leaving that responsibility to the conservative. But in light of the strong backing the Andreyeva article had in the Central Committee apparatus, Gorbachev chaired the first Secretariat meetings in the affair's aftermath.
Membership.
Members.
Listed in alphabetical order
Candidates.
Listed in alphabetical order


Maqpon dynasty

The Maqpon dynasty of Skardu was founded by Ibrahim Shah (1190-1220), who was born in Skardu. This royal family ruled over Baltistan for approximately 700 years. The kings of the Maqpon dynasty extended the frontiers of Baltistan to Gilgit Agency, Chitral, and Ladakh.
Rulers.
Genealogy of Maqpon rulers:


Bulchan

Bulchan (Bulčan) or Bluchan (Blučan) was, according to Georgian chronicles, a Khazar general around the year 800 CE. According to the Georgian sources, Bulchan led the Khazar army in its capture of Tbilisi. As part of the surrender terms a Georgian princess named Shushan was supposed to accompany Bulchan back to the khagan's court and marry the Khazar ruler, but the girl killed herself instead. When he returned home with the news, the hapless Bulchan was killed by the khagan in a fit of rage.
The connection between Bulchan and Bulan, if any, is unknown; Peter B. Golden has commented on the common etymological roots of the two names.


Central Committee elected by the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The 26th Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was elected by the 26th Congress, and was in session from 1981 until 1986. It elected, at its 1st Plenary Session, the 26th Politburo, the 26th Secretariat and the 26th Party Control Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.


Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw

Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw ( ; c. 1714–1756) was chief of Musket Corps of the Royal Burmese Army of the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar). He was the top general under the command of King Alaungpaya, his childhood friend. He conquered Dagon in May 1755, which later became the city of Yangon. He died in action during the battle of Syriam in July 1756. He was buried with highest honors. Alaungpaya posthumously awarded his old friend the title of Agga Maha Thenapati (), the highest honor possible for a commoner.
Early life.
He was born Shwe Kaung (more commonly known as Maung Kaung or simply Nga Kaung) in a small village of Moksobo (present-day Shwebo) in Upper Burma circa 1714. He was a childhood friend of Aung Zeya who was a son of chief of Moksobo.
Military career.
In 1752, Kaung joined his friend Aung Zeya's fledgling resistance force to resist the occupation armies of the southern kingdom of Hanthawaddy, which had toppled the Toungoo Dynasty at Ava (Inwa). Aung Zeya claimed himself king, and assumed the title of Alaungpaya. Kaung was chosen as one of the Sixty Eight Commanders in Alaungpaya's army. He was among the first seven of the sixty eight to win a title of valor with the title of Minkyaw Pyanchi for the successful defense of Shwebo (as their once little village was now known) against a major Hanthawaddy siege.
Upper Burma and Shan States.
Kaung proved to be an able commander, winning many battles in Upper Burma and more titles. By mid-1754, he had been awarded Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw, by which he would be known thenceforth, and had been given the command of the Musket Corps of the army. With Upper Burma driven out of Hanthawaddy armies, Alaungpaya sent Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw and his Musket Corps to the Shan States to secure the allegiance of the nearer Shan States. (The farther Shan States, in present-day northern Kachin State, northern Shan State, southern Yunnan, remained out of reach.) After a show of force, Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw secured the allegiance of the Shan States. More importantly, he secured contingents of Shan levies for the upcoming invasion of Lower Burma.
Invasion of Lower Burma.
By January 1755, at the eve of Alaungpaya's invasion of Lower Burma, he had been awarded Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw, by which he would be known thenceforth, and was the chief of the Musket Corps of the army. Alaungpaya's armies swept the western-side of Lower Burma, capturing Prome (Pyay) and the Irrawaddy delta by the end of April. In early May, Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw's musket corps led the capture the important town of Dagon (present-day Yangon) opposite the main seaport of Syriam (Thanlyin). For his success at Yangon, Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw was awarded the title of Maha Thenapati, (lit. Great Commander).
Battle of Syriam.
Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw was given the overall command to take Syriam, with 5000 men and 100 war boats. But Syriam, which was defended by the French personnel and arms, repelled several Konbaung charges. Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw had to defend against a Hanthawaddy attack to retake Yangon in June. For the rest of 1755, no side made any gains, and the siege continued. In July 1756, Minhla Minkhaung Kyaw personally led another Konbaung attack by water and by land. While the Konbaung forces captured the only French ship left at the port, and further tightened the noose of the starving city, their lead general was severely wounded by mortar fire.
The dying general was brought back by boat to the other bank, where Alaungpaya and the rest of army was watching the battle. Alaungpaya had already heard of the news, and waiting right by the bank. As the boat approached the bank, the king discarded royal protocol and waded into the water to see his old friend, who had won him many battles. In Alaungpaya's hands, the general was said to have said "he was deeply sorry he would have to leave first". He died soon afterwards, while doctors were trying to save him. The king publicly mourned the death of his chief general and honored him with a funeral under a white umbrella before the whole army. It was 14 July 1756 (3rd waning of Waso 1118 ME). The general was posthumously awarded the title of Agga Maha Thenapati, the highest honor possible for a commoner.


Kobuleti

Kobuleti ( ) is a town in Adjara, western Georgia, situated on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. It is the seat of Kobuleti Municipality and a seaside resort, visited annually by Georgians and many former Soviet Union residents. It is especially popular with Armenian tourists. It was known as "Çürüksu" during Ottoman rule.
Geography.
The town is situated in the south-western part of Georgia, i.e. the northern part of the Autonomous Republic of Ajara. It borders with Ozurgeti Region to the north. The Regional centre is Kobuleti City, which stretches along the Black Sea shore.
Kobuleti Region consists of one municipal, two district and seventeen village councils. There are 48 villages in the region. Representatives of 24 different nationalities live together with Georgians in the region. Kobuleti is known with its traditions, hospitality, climatic areas, mild subtropical climate, ionized maritime air, bright shining sun and warm sea. The unique sandy beach widely inclined to the sea is noted with its marvelous views beautified by sky-scraped endemic pine trees, eucalypts, bamboo, cypress grove, date and cocoa palms.
Nature.
The Kintrishi and Tikeri reserve areas are unique with their bio-diversity. One can find rare flora in the Ispani marsh.
The surrounding region has diverse soil: seashore lowland is rich in peatbog soil. There are alpine rocks in the highlands, red soil is found in the hill areas. The mountainous area is good for subtropical species.
Kobuleti has several rivers. The most important ones are the Kintrishi River, the Chakvistskali River, the Acharistskali River, the Ochkhamuri River, the Achkva River, and the Dekhva River.
Kintrishi Protected Landscape and Kobuleti Managed Reserve are located in Kobuleti.


May Hnin Theindya

May Hnin Theindya (, ) was a principal queen consort of King Tarabya of Pegu (Bago) from 1293 to 1296. She was the only known child of King Wareru of Martaban, and may have been a granddaughter of King Ram Khamhaeng of Sukhothai.
Theindya was torn between her husband and her father, who were rival strongmen in present-day Lower Myanmar. It was she who told her father of Tarabya's plan to assassinate him 1296. But when her father ordered Tarabya's execution, she unsuccessfully tried to save her husband.
Early life.
Theindya was born 1281 to Princess May Hnin Thwe-Da of Sukhothai and her commoner husband Ma Gadu in Tagaw Wun, then part of the Pagan Empire. According to Mon chronicles, her mother was a daughter of King Ram Khamhaeng of Sukhothai, who had eloped with Gadu, then a foreign-born captain of royal elephant stables at the Sukhothai palace. (However, the narrative may be a legend, or "a trope" to link the early kings of Martaban and those of Siam, and may not be historical.)
Queen consort of Pegu.
Whatever her parents' origins may have been, Theindya became a princess of Martaban in 1287. That year, her father, who had seized the provincial governorship of Martaban (Mottama) a few years earlier, declared independence from Pagan, and proclaimed himself king. About six years later, her father, now known by the royal style of Wareru, married Theindya off to Tarabya of Pegu, the strongman and self-proclaimed king of Pegu (Bago), the region immediately north of Martaban. Wareru also married Tarabya's daughter Shin Saw Hla in double marriages of state.
Theindya and Tarabya had two sons before the alliance between her father and her husband ended acrimoniously 1296. Her father defeated her husband, and became the sole ruler of the three Mon-speaking regions of Lower Burma. Although Wareru spared Tarabya's life, Tarabya was soon discovered plotting an attempt on Wareru. It was Theindya that overheard the plot and reported it to her father. But when her father ordered Tarabya's execution, she tied her tresses with his and dared executioners to cut off his head. It did not work; the executioners managed to cut his hair off, and beheaded him.
Epilogue.
It was the last mention of Theindya in the chronicle "Razadarit Ayedawbon". The chronicle states that Wareru brought up Shin Gyi and Shin Nge, the two young sons of Tarabya and Theindya. But the boys held a grudge against their grandfather for the father's death. In January 1307, they stabbed their unsuspecting grandfather to death. The boys were caught, and executed.


Chiefdom of Kokang

The Chiefdom of Kokang (), ruled by the Yang clan from China, was an autonomous "Tusi" chiefdom located in modern-day Kokang, Shan State, Myanmar.
History.
The state was officially founded by Yang Shien-tsai (楊獻才/杨献才, Yáng Xiàncái); who began his reign in 1739 in and around Ta Shwe Htan, then called Xingdahu (興達戶/兴达户, Xīng Dáhù), and took the title "Chief of Xingdahu". He was succeeded upon his death in 1758 by his son Yang Weixing (楊維興/杨维兴), later referred to as Chief of Kho Kan Shan (科干山, Kēgàn Shān).
He expanded his territory tenfold compared to that inherited from his predecessor. After his death in 1795, his son Yang You Gen (楊有根/杨有根, Yáng Yǒugēn) became the chief. He soon renamed the state as Kokang and titled himself Heng of Kokang.
In 1840, Yang Guohua (楊國華) was given the title "the Hereditable Magistrate of Guogan (Kokang) County (世襲果敢縣令)" by the Chinese Qing dynasty.
The Heng was succeeded after his death in 1874 by his younger brother Yang Guozheng (楊國正/杨国正), who ruled peacefully and began relations with Britain upon the annexation of Upper Burma. In 1916 he went blind, and abdicated in favor of his nephew Yang Chunrong (楊春榮/杨春荣, Yáng Chūnróng). The new ruler then took the Burmese title "Myosa" (lit. town eat, given to a prince). He died in 1927 and was succeeded by his son Colonel Sao Yang Wen Ping (楊文炳/杨文炳, Yáng Wénbǐng), Saopha of Kokang.
Rulers.
Title Heng.
After China relinquished jurisdiction on 4 February 1897, Kokang came under British protection.
Title Saopha.
During World War II, Kokang was recognized as separate from Shan State in August 1947 by the British, and the ruler took the title Saopha. He died in 1949 and was succeeded by his son Sao Edward Yang Kyein Tsai (楊振材/杨振材, Yáng Zhèncái) who was deposed by the Burmese in 1959. Before that it is part Hsenwi Saopha territory.


Naungdawgyi

Dabayin Min (), commonly known as Naungdawgyi ( ; 10 August 1734 – 28 November 1763) was the second king of Konbaung Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), from 1760 to 1763. He was a top military commander in his father Alaungpaya's reunification campaigns of the country. As king, he spent much of his short reign suppressing multiple rebellions across the newly founded kingdom from Ava (Inwa) and Toungoo (Taungoo) to Martaban (Mottama) and Chiang Mai. The king suddenly died less than a year after he had successfully suppressed the rebellions. He was succeeded by his younger brother Hsinbyushin.
Early life.
Naungdawgyi was born Maung Lauk () to Yun San and Aung Zeya (later King Alaungpaya) on 10 August 1736 (Tuesday, 11th waxing of Wagaung 1096 ME) in a small village of Moksobo, about 60 miles northwest of Ava (Inwa). He was the eldest child of the couple's nine children. In 1736, his father became the chief of Moksobo, and the deputy chief of the Mu valley, their home region.
Lauk grew up during the period in which the royal authority of the king at Ava had largely dissipated across the kingdom. He watched helplessly as the Meiteis ransack his home region year after year, and could not understand why the king could not prevent these repeated raids. Their sense of helplessness only deepened in 1740, the Mon of Lower Burma broke away, and founded the Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom centered in Pegu (Bago). Throughout his teens, Lauk and his fellow Upper Burmans watched how Pegu was increasingly winning the war against Ava.
Heir-apparent and commander.
By the time Peguan armies captured Ava in March 1752, his father had persuaded the people of Mu valley to join him in his resistance effort, declared himself king with the royal style of Alaungpaya, and founded the Konbaung Dynasty. As the eldest son, Naungdawgyi was appointed the heir apparent although their self-styled "kingdom" consisted of just 46 villages in the Mu valley.
Still just 17, Naungdawgyi fought alongside his father's best commanders against the invading forces of Pegu. Though not as talented as his younger brother Hsinbyushin, two years his junior, Naungdawgyi proved to be a top military commander in his own right, leading armies in the Konbaung military campaigns that defeated the Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757.
He stayed behind managing the kingdom on his father's behalf during Alaungpaya's later campaigns: Manipur in 1758 and Siam (1759–1760). His father died from a sudden illness in the Siamese campaign in May 1760.
Succession crisis.
As the heir-apparent, Naugndawgyi was in line to succeed Alaungpaya who had pronounced that all of his six sons by his first wife would become king in the order of seniority. Yet the succession was not smooth. Throughout Burmese monarchy, succession was usually associated with rebellions by vassal kings and governors, coups, and/or bloody purges. Naungdawgyi's accession was no exception.
The first threat to his authority came from his eldest younger brother Hsinbyushin, who sought the army's support for his attempt at the throne. Hsinbyushin did not get the support but Naungdawgyi forgave his brother at the queen mother's intercession. Naungdawgyi was crowned on 26 July 1760 at Sagaing, and ascended the Peacock throne at Shwebo on 9 February 1761 with the reign name of Thiri Pawara Maha Dhammayaza (; ). Following Alaungpaya's wishes, Hsinbyushin was made the heir-apparent.
Rebellions.
Naungdawgyi faced multiple rebellions during his short reign: one by Gen. Minkhaung Nawrahta (1761), two separate ones by the vassal states of Toungoo (1761–1762) and Lan Na (1761–1763). Another vassal state Manipur also came under attack by Manipuri rebels in 1763.
Ava.
Naungdawgyi forgave Hsinbyushin possibly because he was more concerned with a possible insurrection by the army. He had incurred distrust among the army command because he executed two of the generals he disliked as soon as he became king. One of his father's most trusted generals Minkhaung Nawrahta, with whom Naungdawgyi never got along, decided to rebel when he was summoned to see the new king. The general, who commanded deep respect among the troops, and his followers (12,000-strong) seized Ava on 25 June 1760. It took over five months for Naungdawgyi to retake the city in early December. The general was killed by a musket shot as he fled the city. Naungdawgyi was shaken by this tragedy, and was deeply remorseful at the death of one of his father's brothers-in-arms.
Toungoo.
But worse was yet to come. In the following year, two vassal states, Toungoo and Lan Na, revolted. Manipur, another vassal state, came under attack by rebels. The leader of the Toungoo rebellion was none other than Naungdawgyi's uncle, Thado Theinkhathu, who along with a few senior army commanders had decided to challenge his nephew. The Toungoo rebellion was largely a protest at the treatment given to Minkhaung Nawrahta. Naungdawgyi with his army now marched to Toungoo, and laid siege to the city. (Hsinbyushin provided no help to his brother.) It was not until January 1762 that the city surrendered. Weary over the developments, Naungdawgyi pardoned his uncle and the commanders. (Among the pardoned officers included the likes of Balamindin who would go on to lead the army in future wars.)
Lan Na and Martaban.
While Naungdawgyi was laying siege to the Toungoo, the vassal king loyal of Lan Na at Chiang Mai was overthrown. (Southern Lan Na had come back to the fold only in 1757. Prior, the Ping valley of southern Lan Na had been in revolt since 1725.) The leader of the rebellion, Chao Khihut, immediately began defensive preparations, as well as implementing a preemptive offensive strategy. Khihut allowed Talaban, the top Restored Hanthawaddy general who had been on the run, to use Chiang Mai as his base to raise an army to launch an attack. In late 1761, Talaban and his army entered Martaban (Mottama), and for a time, appeared to distract Naungdawgyi's army at Toungoo. But Talaban's army could not rally greater support among the Mon population in Lower Burma, and was driven back. Talaban fell back to the jungle between the Salween (Thanlwin) and Moei rivers (present-day Mon State and Kayin State), reduced to conducting guerrilla warfare.
After Toungoo was captured, Naungdawgyi then sent an 8000-strong army to Chiang Mai. The Burmese army captured Chiang Mai in early 1763, and marched right up to the Chinese frontier, demonstrating Burmese control over the entire region.
By then, Talaban had also been captured. The army actually caught Talaban's family first. Talaban came out from hiding and offered his life in return for his family. Struck by chivalry, Naungdawgyi released them all, and took Talaban into his service.
Manipur.
By early 1763, Naungdawgyi had suppressed all the rebellions. Unbeknown to him, Manipur was to be the next trouble spot. In April 1763, the Manipuri king who was driven out by Alaungpaya in 1758 tried to invade his former kingdom with an army that also included a small detachment of English East India Company troops. He had received the Company's support in September 1762. But the invading army never made it to Manipur as it got bogged down on their way in Cachar. The English detachment was unprepared to march in terrible terrain.
Anglo-Burmese relations.
Fresh off the Negrais affair, the Anglo-Burmese relations remained decidedly frosty. While Naungdawgyi was laying siege to Ava, in September 1760, he received the English East India Company envoy Captain Walter Alves whose mission was to demand reparations for the Burmese sack of the English colony at Negrais in October 1759. The king refused to consider the demand but agreed to release English prisoners. He asked to resume trade as he was in urgent need of munitions. The English, still amid the Seven Years' War, did not deem the Burma trade profitable enough to resume trade.
Instead, the English entered into an agreement with the fugitive Manipuri king to provide military assistance in exchange for land and trade privileges. On 4 September 1762, the Company signed an agreement to provide a contingent of troops to drive out the Burmese from Manipur. In return, the Manipuri rebels promised to cede in perpetuity a rent-free land at a suitable place in Manipur for the installation of a factory and a fort, and also provide every facility for the promotion of trade with China. The Manipuris not only agreed to pay the expenses of English troops but also promised to compensate for the loss suffered by the English at Negrais.
While their first attempt to invade Manipur in 1763 had to be abandoned, Sigh's Manipuri resistance remained active with English help. (They would temporarily drive out the Burmese vassal king in 1764 before being driven back out by Hsinbyushin.)
Death and succession.
Naungdawgyi died in November 1763. He was only 29. According to historian Helen James, he died of scrofula, the same illness that inflicted his father and would also take his brother Hsinbyushin. Finally free of rebellions, the king had spent his last few months on works of merit building two pagodas on the Mahananda Lake near Shwebo. He was succeeded by his brother Hsinbyushin. He had five sons and two daughters.


Throne village

Throne villages ( Arabic transliteration: "qura al-karasi"; singular "qaryat al-kursi") were villages in the central mountain areas of Palestine (today making up the modern-day West Bank) that served as seats of political and military power for the local leaders (sheikhs) of rural subdistricts ("nahiya", pl. "nawahi") primarily during the latter half of Ottoman rule.
Political and social functions.
There were roughly two dozen throne villages within the subdistricts that made up the central mountain areas of Palestine. For the most part, they were relatively distant from the main urban centers of the region (Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron), which had their own separate administrators. Many were strategically located along trade routes or served as centers of olive oil production.
In the rural highlands, neighboring villages were grouped together into administrative subdistricts or virtual sheikhdoms, in which one or more throne villages, which were typically larger in population and landholdings, served as the socio-political and economic centers for the lesser villages. The throne village was the administrative center for the dominant clan of the area, and some were also branch centers for various Sufi orders, particularly the Qadiriyya. The leading clans of the area maintained connections with other clans through patronage networks and alliances, and had similar relationships with urban mercantile clans. The sheikhs' relationship to the authorities stemmed from their role as local tax collectors on behalf of the government.
The sheikhs of the prominent rural landowning clans ultimately based their power on violence or the threat thereof. However, force was rarely used due to the durability of patronage networks, whereby the sheikhs offered the local peasantry protection in exchange for loyalty. This network further increased the power of the sheikhs, who could effectively restrict local and regional trade routes with their ability to mobilize peasant militias. Their allegiance with the peasantry was also solidified due to the presence of kinsmen in lesser villages, intermarriage with large peasant clans, and the sheikhs' role as arbiters of disputes or enforcers of customary law.
The throne villages played a key role in maintaining the autonomy of the region from direct Ottoman rule for much of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Jarrar clan's fortress village of Sanur, continually served as the principal obstacle to the attempts by the governors of Acre, Sidon and Damascus to extend their authority to the central highlands of Palestine, particularly Jabal Nablus. In response to Napoleon's siege of Acre in 1799, the ruling clans of the throne villages dispatched forces to counter the French invasion. The throne villages also joined forces during the 1834 revolt against Muhammad Ali of Egypt's conscription orders.
During the second half of the 19th century, Ottoman reforms brought changes to the political administration of the highlands region, with the central Ottoman authorities shifting their reliance on governing the region to the urban notables and appointed mukhtars (leaders of individual villages). This signified the loss of power of the rural sheikhs and the influence of their throne villages all but disappeared by the beginning of the 20th century.
Architecture.
Each throne village contained a fortress-like palace where the local sheikh would reside. The palace architecture were influenced by the building style of the urban centers as opposed to the simpler architecture of peasant homes. This was a reflection of the close relationship between the rural sheikhs and the urban notables.


Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project

The Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project (KEP), based in the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines, was one of the longest-running ethnoarchaeological projects in the world. It was initiated by William Longacre, professor at the University of Arizona, in 1973. Lasting for almost 20 years, research focused on pottery production, use, exchange, and discard, and was carried out by Longacre and his team of Kalinga assistants, archaeology students, and colleagues.
History of the region.
Kalinga is a province located in the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines. The word “Kalinga” is not native to the region in fact it “is derived from the Ibanag and Gaddang "Kalinga" which means "headhunters”. Headhunting was a historical practice that was thought to have shown leadership and respect within the community. Once the peace pact was established rules and codes were implemented to limit intertribal quarrels and headhunting. The peace pact is often referred to as the “Bodong” and helped “resolve public disputes, negotiate border problems with neighboring villages” This practice of headhunting is no longer widely and openly practiced, but during World War II “Kalingas loyal to American forces resumed headhunting against Japanese soldiers”. The inhabitants of the Cordillera Mountains are often referred to as Ygorretes. The region was not established as its own political province until after the Philippine–American War. The region of Kalinga has a rich cultural history. The Cordillera Mountain region—where Kalinga is located—is currently known for its mineral resources and at one point was renowned for its gold mines. Since Kalinga was abundant with gold Spaniards and missionaries tried to pacify and colonize the region in hopes of gaining access to the gold and own the land therefore owning the mines and monopolizing the gold. However, after many attempts they were not successful and the colonizers often encountered hostility and defiance from the Ygorretes. It was not until the 1880s when colonizers were successful in gaining control over the region, and much of that was attributed to the recent gun technology advancements which allowed the Spanish colonizers established a militia in the Kalinga area. After the Philippine–American War U.S. colonization occurred and the U.S. began constructing roads and firms in Kalinga. However, the establishment of these entities were drawn to a halt after World War II. After the war American presence in the area began to diminish and the Philippine government neglected the region's politics. This in turn created a downfall of Kalinga. The interventions from the colonizers such as roads and firms began to fall apart. The enterprise's post World War II were haphazard and not supported by the state which resulted in raids from outside forces that hurt the economy, culture and ecology of Kalinga. Due to the decline of Kalinga post WWII there have been pressures to assimilate to non-mountain—more specifically Ilocano—ways of life.
William Longacre and the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project.
The site was introduced to Longacre by Edward Dozier, who had previously worked with the Kalingas. He suggested Longacre study the ceramics of the Kalinga because they were a tribal society who lived in small villages. He knew that women used pottery in a way that it was not always traded out of the community. Lastly, he knew that since the Kalinga had previously been studied, long-term research with the Kalingas could be achieved more easily.
Longacre was determined to follow the New Archaeology movement which emphasized explanation over description. Longacre proposed that the pottery the Kalinga made (and still make) could reveal their past. Previously, Longacre studied the pottery of Carter Ranch Pueblo, Arizona. It was here that he made the inference that "certain aspects of social organization could be inferred through such a distributional study". Longacre chose to study a community that still lives and uses the pottery today so that the truth behind the pottery could be revealed. He chose the Kalinga because they are a culture that uses the pottery not only for commercial use, but also for household use. He also wanted a culture that had been previously studied by anthropologists in order to have a foundation of ethnoarchaeological research to rely on. When Longacre went to see the area, the Kalinga convinced him to come back and study their pottery.
The main idea of the Kalinga ethnoarchaeological project was to compare inferences made in Carter Ranch Pueblo to the results of the Kalinga project about the social context of pottery making. Later, in 1975, "the new research goal" was added to the Kalinga ethnoarchaeological project. Longacre and his researchers wished to investigate how long artifacts lasted before they were discarded by the people who used them. Within the Kalinga project specifically, this meant studying how long pots were used before they were discarded.
Determining relationships between pottery and household kinship.
The Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project was a comparative study proposed by William Longacre to verify whether or not the social relations (kinship systems) observed at his Carter Ranch Pueblo study were applicable to all pottery making societies or just Carter Ranch itself.
Methods of Longacre's research included: mapping the pottery-making villages in Dangtalan and Dalupa, determining relationships among different households, and identifying stylistic changes in pottery between pottery makers who knew one another vs. pottery makers who did not know each other. The exchange of pottery in the Kalinga community led to a dominance of kinship in the primary social order. The pottery is exchanged via kinship channels, modeling the Kalinga's social relationships. Therefore, this means that the Kalinga's pottery exchange used social relationships in order to frame their economy.
In his dissertation, “Aspects of Exchange in a Kalinga society, Northern Luzon”, Michiko Takaki focused on the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project, specifically how “a particular agricultural people [the Kalinga] make their living and regulate their social relations”. Takaki's field work with the Kalinga as part of the Ethnoarchaeological project took place from 1964-1968. He found that social relations among the Kalinga were one of the main ways that made it possible for pottery to be part of their economic process.
The ranking of goods one receives in the Kalinga community parallel to the relationship they have to the member they are receiving from. Receiving goods based on kinship relationships is optional once a fifth degree of genealogical distance is reached. Longacre's study led to the term "ceramic sociology".
Ceramic production and exchange.
Analysis of Previously unpublished data.
In a study, William A. Longacre and Taylor R. Hermes analyzed the exchange of pottery, and household rice farming in Dangtalan that took place from 1975 to 1976. The study involved the analyzation of non previously published data from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project. The data shed light on the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project contains information about the exchange of pottery between different levels of rice farming households. Longacre et al. (2015) argue how the exchange of pottery provides evidence of a Dangtalan household's craft specialization as well as agricultural intensification. In a 2015 research study Longacre and Hermes analyzed pottery exchange in Dangtalan, which included datasets from household material culture inventory that contained ceramic vessels. Longacre's inventory of the Kalinga barrio, Dangtalan, consisted of fifty households, four -hundred ninety four ceramic vessels, and two hundred and fifty-seven individuals. Longacre et al. (2015) argue that there was a correlation between the net trade of ceramic vessels, and the household rice productivity amongst people in Dangtalan. More specifically, the households that had very little rice productivity frequently traded their pots, and households that had immense rice productivity would retrieve the ceramic vessels from the households with low rice productivity. According to Longacre et al. (2015), these findings suggest that the exchange of pottery arbitrated each household's labor in the rice fields as "a function of cooperative work through social relations." The trading of pottery centered on specific households that specialized in the making of pottery, and households that specialized in rice cultivation. The exchange of pottery between the two groups surfaces the existence of specialization in both pottery, and rice cultivation.
Ceramic function and technique.
In the Kalinga society, pottery serves as an extra source of income, and is made by women. The women use their hands to form the vessel, and do not use a wheel. Instead, the potters use coil and scrape techniques as well as paddle and anvil techniques. The clay that is used to form the vessels is local, and often mined by males in the society. Male traders in the Dalupa and Dangtalan villages sometimes barter resin and ocher collected from upland forests, but women prepare the clay as well as shape and fire the pottery. The women learn how to make pots from their mothers, and often make ceramic vessels in groups rather than alone. The pottery is not only made for exchange, but also is made for household needs. The most common household pots are those made for water storage, and cooking rice as well as meat. These types of pots consist of similar decorative features. Pots made for cooking and water jars often are coated with organic resins to reduce water permeability, and also are decorated with red ochre. Open fire is used to fire the pots, and the pots are also air dried. The gifts, such as pottery, that are given are often reciprocated with rice in the Kalinga culture. In addition, the women are responsible for the exchange of pottery that takes place outside of the household, and the amount of uncooked rice that a vessel can hold determines the value of that vessel.
Work of other archaeologists.
In another study, Miriam T. Stark, Ronald L. Bishop, and Elizabeth Miksa analyzed ceramic variations in the pottery producing villages of Dalupa and Dangtalan in the Philippines. Dalupa and Dangtalan are kalinga villages located in the Pasil river valley. Dalupa and Dangtalan are involved in a single exchange network. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Dalupa village had a larger population of around four-hundred residents while the Dangtalan village consisted of around three-hundred to three- hundred and fifty city residents . The Dalupa potters are part-time ceramic specialists, and the women in Dangtalan produce ceramics less often. The women potters in both villages provide residents in the Pasil region with earthenware ceramics, and both villages consist of women that are not active in the production of pottery. Earthenware ceramics are used for storing water in earthenware jars, and also, are used for cooking food such as meat. Earthenware ceramics are also used to cook vegetables . Large earthenware pots are utilized during communal events such as weddings. Pasil potters made a cooking vessel for meat/vegetables, a cooking vessel for rice, a storage vessel for water, and sometimes made a wine storage jar . However, changes occurred in the mid -1980s. During the mid-1980s, not a lot of potters in either village made wine storage earthenware jars. During this time, the Dalupa potters began making stylistic and technological changes such as modifying the surface decorations of the storage jars, and utilized nontraditional ceramics. The Dalupa nontraditional ceramics (ay-ayam) included a wide range of forms that included flower pots, ashtrays for photographic plaques, and animal sculptures. Both Dangtalan and Dalupa ceramics have differences in style and morphology. The Dangtalan potters paint red ocher on the shoulder of the cooking vessels but the Dalupa potters do not do this. Dangtalan cooking pots have wider mouths, and are shorter than Dalupa cooking pots.
Pottery production was utilized for economic necessity. While Dalupa women produced pottery for economic needs, the Dangtalan women did not focus as much on producing pottery as their spouses gained employment beyond the Pasil region. The scale of pottery production in Dalupa is much higher than in Dangtalan today . Factors that include market demand, environmental stress, and younger women, with a lack of experience, entering the Dalupa pottery field contributed to the changes described. The Dalupa women also expanded the distribution of the ceramics, and traveled to more distant markers to sell a wider range of ceramic products. Despite expanding the distribution of ceramics, the Pasil system is not a market oriented industry. Dalupa ceramic production is more intensive than in Dangtalan, but both communities engage in varying degrees of part-time specialization.
The Kalinga environment.
The region consists of a cool and temperate climate. The Cordilleras has two distinct ways rain falls throughout the year. In the eastern parts of the region the land could be dry from November to April and receives rain the rest of the year, or there is also another category in which there is no official seasons for rain to fall. Water is a major component of the Kalinga Provence and it could be found scattered throughout streams and springs as well as drainage systems. Kalinga experiences oscillations in its yearly rainfall, but as long as the land receives sufficient rain, the rice fields are not heavily affected. There has been iron axes excavated, and remnants of wood in Sisupalgarh that indicate no dramatic climatic changes during the last two thousand years. During the hot and dry environments water becomes most limited, sometimes leaving the irrigation channels for rice plantations empty in which case farmers obtain their water from streams and springs. Every rice field is unique in its size and shape. The maintainment of rice plantations requires strenuous labor and the gathering of water from many sources in which cases the closer plantains are to a water sources the more convenient it is for workers. The Kalinga regions has two general categories of rice, the qōyak and the qūnoy; the qūnoy only flourishes in the dry season.
The distinct habitat enables the production of unique stylistic industry of artifacts, and the variation found in Kalinga also help archeologist determine the paths of interactions that were made among the people, and it expands upon knowledge on the wealth, religion and political beliefs of the region.
The Kalinga archeological project focuses on the southern part of the Kalinga province including the Pasil River valley. The Pasil region is composed of 13 communities that are independent of each other, each containing anywhere from 30 to over 100 households including Dalupa, Dangtalan, and Guina-ang. Out of the 13 settlements in the Pasil River valley only Dalupa and Dangtalan were regularly producing pottery by the 1980s. The community of Dalupa is found in the mountains of Northern Luzon. Dalupa has resisted 300 years of colonization resulting in the indigenous Kalingas becoming isolated from the modern world.
The production and distribution of ceramic in Kalinga has been influenced by the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological project. Ceramic Sociology is the study that aims to recreate “social organization” and gain knowledge on how the people interacted. Kalinga made for an appropriate study since they were considered a “tribal” society made up of stationary agriculturalists which utilized pottery on a daily basis. Many of the pots found in Danglatan were not actually made from residents mainly because in Kalinga barter and gift-giving were utilized as the major form of distribution. The increase of ceramic production in Dalupa is coupled with a wider expansion of pottery, allowing potters to trade their products past the boundaries of the Pasil Valley. When trading past the boundaries, potters encounter areas with new social and ethnic practices and some areas that still do not have producer-consumer kinship ties. “ Balanced exchange” negotiations are enacted and earthward pots are one of the artifacts that are bargained. In a traditional Kalinga pottery business deal pounded rice is the method of payment and the amount of uncooked rice contained by each pot dictates its worth. However, there is limited knowledge on the size and methods on which ceramic is distributed in places that do not utilize market methods to exchange.
A significant event that led to changes in the Pasil River valley was the controversy that was developed due to the Chico River dam which initiated in the 1970s. Dams were to be created in the Kalinga region in order to generate electricity for the urban areas, which did not house native Kalinga's. This project would force movement of the Kalingas, which elicited resistance from the people leading to military involvement. Kalinga has undergone construction such as, building, motor vehicles and roads that unite the older more primitive Kalinga villages. Increased developments has made it easier to transport goods to various places.
Kalinga is a region with resources wanted to be exploited by other places, like the mines of gold present and logging. Longacre discovered that many of the water pots in Dangtalan had their exteriors polished with "lebu", which is a resin from the "almaciga tree". People were able to obtain resin supplies from the migratory traders that lived in areas with the almaciga tree and then traveled to places like Dalupa and Dagnlatan to deliver resin supplies. However, the supply of resin for the Dulapa potters began to dwindle due to governmental changes. One of the main resin deposits is located near the Batong Buhay gold mine that was reopened for mining in the 1970s depriving Dalupa potters from resin because the traders were able to obtain a new form of income. The gold mine has also endangered local resin harvesters due to an increase in highway robberies. The mining of gold in the region would in turn destroy riverine resources that are important for the region.
Kalinga is also getting stripped of its magnificent tropical forests and the vast animal and plant diversity present. The Philippine government has allowed the cutting of trees for lumber having a trickle effect on the native Kalingas. The clearing of land results in less land for Swidden agriculture, mainly with rice cultivation and also forces the natives to modify the materials utilized in the production of artifacts and tools like ceramics. Trees are one of the main ingredients to create pots and other pottery designs. Another major resin reservoir is found in the areas owned by big logging companies like the Cellophil Resources Corporation. Their logging has caused major deforestation in the Kalinga region leaving no trees in which to create resin. Kalinga potters are not only losing forests that allows the manufacture of resin, but are also banned from the remaining forest areas by have fines placed up by the Cellophil corporation. With the newly found rarity for resin, potters need to investigate new materials they could use to polish the exterior of their creations.
Although the mining and logging industries have allowed the introduction of non Kalinga goods into the region since the 1930s, they have still managed to keep a low influx of Filipino populations. The economy in Kalinga is heavily influenced by intensive rice cultivation and the barter system. The Kalinga economy also has a foundation of specialization with different people specializing in different jobs. The Pasil settlements are all composed of bilateral kin groups following the trend of matrilocal communities and endogamy. Within the Kalinga region they are “politically significant units” which are regions that are made up of many communities that act as a unit and have peace pacts with other units.
The KEP from the 1990s onward.
Archaeology in the Philippines is broken up into five separate periods correlating not only with the years but with the ethical practices of the archaeologists working at the time. The Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project today falls within the Directed Archaeology Period of archaeology during which the state grew increasingly interested in supporting these projects. A few other sites were led by private groups and academic institutions. Success was largely had by research-driven projects such as the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeologial Project—These sites were often foreign-led and supported by the National Museum, and projects that are led by foreign scholars draw global attention to the region. The KEP is an example of “Systematic problem-oriented ethnoarchaeological research” which means that the work done in this place has been done to answer larger questions raised by research in other places. On top of their fieldwork, archaeologists may encounter, by chance, useful infortmants for their research. What is certain about this work is that it is organized with specific questions in mind that are relevant to other archeologists. The KEP was designed by Longacre, and it addresses questions of relationships between ceramic industries, the way people learn, and postmarital residences that were raised in the course of archeological research in the American Southwest. The comparative nature of the KEP were critical in the choice of doing fieldwork in the Kalina in the first place. Researchers of the Kalinga ethnoarchaeological project continue to do research on the site and its findings, but there has not been a large scale dig at the site since the late 1980s. Instead, smaller-scale research is being conducted by Margaret Beck on ceramics and their relationship with the household. Findings from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological project have inspired other projects across the globe. Tactics from the KEP are being applied to other sites in South East Asia as well as in the American Southwest. The results have shed light on other similar ceramic industries and has served as framework for understanding what they reveal about a people. The findings themselves have been used to compare with other ceramic industries in the region. The insights provided by the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project is owed to its longitudinal nature—because the project was conducted over a number of years, it was not bounded by the narrow lens of much shorter-termed archaeological projects. The long time spent gathering artifacts and information by the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project has contributed knowledge to the field of archaeology that has been instrumental in later projects all over the globe. William Longacre has had archaeological projects for the KEP until quite recently, publishing work until the year of his death in 2015 including a study on rice farming and ceramics among the Kalinga. Several other studies on the Kalinga ceramic industry and ethnoarchaeological projects just like the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project continue throughout Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.


History of Sikkim

The history of Sikkim, begins with contacts between ancient Hindus and Tibetans, followed by the establishment of a Buddhist kingdom or Chogyal in the 17th century. Sikkim emerged as a polity in its own right against a backdrop of incursions from Tibet and Bhutan, during which the kingdom enjoyed varying degrees of independence. In the early 18th century, the British Empire sought to establish trade routes with Tibet, leading Sikkim to fall under British suzerainty until independence in 1947. Initially, Sikkim remained an independent country, until it merged with India in 1975 after a decisive referendum. Many provisions of the Indian constitution had to be altered to accommodate the international treaties and between Sikkim and India.
Ancient history.
When the Kirat King Yalambar captured outer Nepal in 1,500 B.C his kingdom extended from river Trisuli in the west to river Teesta in the east. According to Hindu mythology, Lord Shiva is said to have appeared in the form of hunter "Kirateshwar" or "Lord of the Kiratas" to Arjuna in the very spot where the ancient Kirateshwar temple lies in Legship, West Sikkim. By the 6th century the Lepchas occupied the Lapchan area of Nepal (present Ilam region), present Sikkim, "Har Chu Valley" and "Ammo Chu Valley" (present South Western Bhutan) and most of Eastern part of Greater Sikkim up to the Chumbi Valley. Meanwhile, the Limbus inhabited the Western part of Greater Sikkim (present Limbuwan region). A part of Limbuwan is still retained in present Sikkim in the West district, South district and a part of North district. The Lepchas spoke the Himalayish language Lepcha, and were believers of "Boongthism" and "Munism" or Animism by faith. The Limbus spoke the Limbu dialect and were believers of Yumaism or Yuma Sammang, a form of Kirat Mundhum.
In the 7th century, Thekung Adek consolidated the Lepcha tribes and declared himself a "Panu", a Tribal Religious and Administrative chief or king. Similarly, the Limbu tribes were ruled by 10 elected chiefs or "Hangs" from each of their clans to form a social and administrative body called "Thibong Yakthum Tumyanghang" (tribal republic council or Ten Limbus Council). Around 870 A.D. Na Hang, the chief of Daramdin, West Sikkim was incited by the Chilikchom people to fight against the Kirati Limbu king of Limbuwan, Mabo Hang. Na Hang was defeated and the Chilikchom were banished from Limbuwan. Sikkim also finds mention in many Hindu texts because the Buddhist saint Guru Rinpoche or Padmasambhava is said to have passed through the land in the 9th century . According to legend, the Guru blessed the land, introduced Buddhism to Sikkim and also foretold the era of the monarchy in the state, which would arrive centuries later. There are numerous stories regarding the migration of Tibetans into Sikkim and the establishment of the Sikkimese monarchy. The most popular states that in the 13th century, Guru Tashi, a prince from the Minyak House in Kham in Eastern Tibet, had a divine revelation one night instructing him to travel south to seek his fortunes. Guru Tashi settled down in the Chumbi Valley. The population and linguistic survey were not held during this period but it's certain that the region was inhabited by the Lepchas, the Limbus, the Magars and some Bhutias in the later periods.
Kingdom of Sikkim.
By 1641 the Lepchas, the Limbus and the Magars were ruling in different villages independently. The Limbu and the Magar tribes lived in the remote Western and Southern regions. In the early 17th century Tibetan migrants (called "Bhutias" locally) were forced to take refuge in Sikkim due to the conflict between followers of the "Yellow hat" and the "Red hats" in Tibet. The Bhutias tried to convert the Sikkimese "worshippers of nature" to Buddhism and succeeded to an extent. The Tibetan Lamas sought to establish Sikkim as a Buddhist Kingdom thereby electing a Lhopa King of Tibetan origin.
In 1642, the fifth generation descendant of Guru Tashi, Phuntsog Namgyal was consecrated as the first Denjong Gyalpo or the Chogyal (king) of Sikkim by Lhatsun Chhenpo, Nga-dag Lama and Kathhog Lama, three great Lamas who came from the north, west and south to Yuksom Norbugang in West Sikkim. The event, "Naljor Chezhi", was as predicted by Guru Rinpoche some eight hundred years before. The Dalai Lama sent the new Chogyal a silk scarf, the mitre of Guru Rinpoche and a sand image of him as a coronation present. However the Limbu and the Magar chiefs refused to accept the rule of the Chogyal who had to bring in Tibetan soldiers to subdue them.
This historical gathering of the three virtuous lamas is called Yuksom, which in Lepcha means 'The Place where the Three monks met' as in Lepcha a lama is called a "Yukmun" and the word for three is "Som". The Chogyal, along with the three lamas proselytised the Lepcha tribes into Buddhism and annexed the Chumbi Valley, the present-day Darjeeling district and parts of today's eastern Nepal.
Shortly after his coronation the new Chogyal appointed 12 "kalons" or ministers from the Bhutia community and split his kingdom into 12 "Dzongs" or administrative units, which each contained a fort. Individual Dzongs were headed by a "Dzonga" drawn from amongst the Lepchas. The lands of Sikkim were leased as gifts to "kazis" and "thikadars" who in turn leased sub-plots to peasants at high rents. "Mandals" (headmen) and "karbaris" (assistants to the mandals) were employed by the kazis and thikadars as rent collectors and dispute mediators. Out of Sikkims 104 revenue estates, 61 were leased to kazis and thikadars for fixed sums, five were given to monasteries and fifteen retained by the Chogyal for his private use. The Limbu chiefs or the Subbas were also given full autonomy of their districts under the King.
Thus Phuntsog Namgyal became the first King of the Kingdom of Sikkim and all the Kirat chiefs agreed to regard him as the supreme ruler. However the Magars did not get along with the Bhutias and left Sikkim after they were defeated in a battle. The King called all the Kirat chiefs and proclaimed that Bhutias or Lhopsas, Tsongs or the Limbus and the Mempas or the Lepchas were all part of one family known as the "Lho-Mehn-Tsong" with the King as the father, the Lepchas as the mother and the Limbus as the sons and they were forbidden to fight amongst themselves. The signing of this tripartite treaty of "Lho-Mehn-Tsong Tsum" was overseen by eight Bhutia tribal leaders, twelve Limbu tribal leaders and four Lepcha tribal leaders in present West Sikkim.
Invasions from Bhutan and Nepal.
Phuntsog Namgyal was succeeded by his son, Tensung Namgyal in 1670. The reign of this Chogyal was peaceful and saw the capital move from Yuksom to Rabdentse. Chakdor Namgyal, the king's second wife's son, took over the throne from him in 1700. This outraged his elder half-sister Pendiongmu, who ousted him with the help of the Bhutanese. From 1700 to 1706, when Chakdor Namgyal, the third Chogyal of the Kingdom of Sikkim, most parts of it were invaded by Deb Naku Zidar, the king of Bhutan. Chakdor Namgyal went into exile in Tibet. The Tibetan people subsequently expelled the Bhutanese army, and called Chakdor Namgyal back to Sikkim. Chakdor's son Gyurmed Namgyal succeeded him in 1717. Gyurmed's reign saw many skirmishes between the Nepalese and Sikkimese. Phuntsog Namgyal II, the illegitimate child of Gyurmed, succeeded his father in 1733. His reign was tumultuous in the face of attacks by the Bhutanese and the Nepalese who managed to capture the capital Rabdentse.
Tenzing Namgyal, Chogyal from 1780 to 1793, was a weak ruler, and his sovereignty saw most of Sikkim being appropriated by Nepal. In 1788, the Nepali Gorkha Army invaded Sikkim, and took Limbuana and the former capital Rabdentse by storm. The king of Sikkim went into exile in Tibet for a second time. In 1788, the 8th Dalai Lama stationed him in Chumbi Valley in Rènà zong (also "Rèrì," today's Yadong County). His son Tshudpud Namgyal, returned to Sikkim in 1793 to reclaim the throne with the help of China. Finding Rabdentse too close to the Nepalese border, he shifted the capital to Tumlong.
Relations with the British Empire.
With the arrival of the British in neighbouring India, Sikkim allied itself with them as they had a common enemy – the Gorkha Kingdom of Nepal. The infuriated Nepalese attacked Sikkim with vengeance, over-running most of the region including the Terai. This prompted the British East India Company to attack Nepal resulting in the Anglo-Nepalese War, which began in 1814. Treaties signed between British and Nepal – the Sugauli Treaty and Sikkim and British India – Treaty of Titalia, returned the territory annexed by the Nepalese to Sikkim in 1817.
Meanwhile, the British were looking for a route to establish trading links with Tibet. An offshoot of the ancient Silk Road through Sikkim meant that the kingdom was ideal as a transit route. A secondary reason for the establishment of links was to quell the growing Russian influence in Tibet in the context of The Great Game. However ties between Sikkim and India grew sour with the taxation of the area of Morang by the British. An internal disturbance, which began in 1825, gave the British the opportunity to secure the 1835 cession of Darjeeling to British Sikkim in view of its perceived advantages as a sanitorium. Unhappy with this development, Sikkim's Dewan often frustrated the cessation by denying aid to the British in capturing escaped criminals and offering amnesty for escaped slaves. As compensation for the loss, the British Government paid the Sikkim Raja Rs. 3,000 from 1841 onwards, a sum that was later increased to Rs. 12,000.
In 1849, British doctor Archibald Campbell, then superintendent of Darjeeling, and botanist Joseph Hooker, ventured into the mountains of Sikkim with the permission of the British and the Chogyal of Sikkim but strayed across the Cho La into Tibet. They were detained by the Sikkim government at the instigation of the pro-Tibetan "mad Dewan" T. Namguey, which led to a punitive British expedition against the Himalayan kingdom. Although subsequent bloodshed was avoided, the British annexed the whole of Darjeeling district and the Terai in 1861. In the same year, signature of the Treaty of Tumlong effectively made Sikkim a "de facto" protectorate of the British.
Alongside "British Sikkim", "Independent Sikkim" continued to exist as a rump state centred around the capital at Gangtok ruling over of territory. The former Chogyal was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Sidkeong Namgyal in 1863.
The Chogyals endeavored to modernize Sikkim in the succeeding decades, along with their army. A state visit to Darjeeling by Sidekong's half brother, Chogyal Thutob Namgyal in 1873 failed to yield such results, and he returned to Tumlong disappointed. In 1886, the British, interested in trade with Tibet, launched a brief expedition into Sikkim. The Tibetans occupied several of Sikkim's northern border forts, and the Chogyal and his wife were held prisoner by the British when they came to negotiate at Calcutta. In 1888, the Tibetans were defeated and northern Sikkim came under the rule of British India. The British established new landholdings in Sikkim, but released the Chogyal only to have him captured again in 1891. In 1894, the capital was shifted to Gangtok.
In 1895, the Chogyal was released, but the British governors in India reneged on an agreement – the Ten Clauses Agreement – which returned sovereignty to Sikkim. The Political Officer in Sikkim, John Claude White, refused to return any sovereignty, and only let the Chogyal retain the judiciary of Sikkim.
In 1905, the Prince of Wales – the future King George V – arrived in Calcutta on a state visit during which he met the Chogyal. The two made an excellent acquaintance and the Crown Prince of Sikkim, Sidkeong Tulku was sent to study at Oxford University. When Sidkeong came to power, he arranged widened sovereignty for Sikkim from King George's government and endorsed sweeping reforms in his short rule as Chogyal, which ended in 1914. In 1918, Sikkim's independence in all domestic affairs was restored, and in the next decade the kingdom embarked on a policy to end social ills, outlawing gambling, child labour, and indentured service.
Independent monarchy.
Sikkim had retained guarantees of independence from Britain when it became independent, and such guarantees were transferred to the Indian government when it gained independence in 1947. A popular vote for Sikkim to join the Indian Union failed and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru agreed to a special protectorate status for Sikkim. Sikkim was to be a tributary of India, in which India controlled its external defence, diplomacy and communication. A state council was established in 1953 to allow for constitutional government for the Chogyal, which was sustained until 1973.
In the 1950s, Sikkim was used by the American CIA as a base for secret operations supporting Tibetan guerillas opposed to Chinese control of Tibet. The dramatic 1959 escape of the Dalai Lama demonstrated Sikkim's Value to both India and China. Nehru said the Chumbi Valley,
controlled by China, was a "dagger pointed at the heart of India." During the 1962 Sino-Indian War, Indian troops arrived to block a possible Chinese invasion; there were some skirmishes between Indian and Chinese forces. After the war, India closed the ancient pass; it reopened in 2006. The 50s and 60s marked the emergence of political parties in Sikkim including Sikkim State Congress, Sikkim National Party, Sikkim Swatantra Dal, Sikkim Janata Party and Sikkim National Congress.
The old ruler Tashi Namgyal died in 1963 from cancer. The last hereditary ruler, the Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, ascended to the throne in 1965. Trouble began to brew for the crown even before the Chogyal assumed the throne, as Nehru, who had carefully preserved Sikkim's status as an independent protectorate, died in 1964. His daughter Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister in 1966, had little patience for maintaining an independent Sikkim or its monarchy. The chogyal, who responded to the increased pressure by drinking, was viewed by India as politically dangerous, especially after his wife, the American socialite Hope Cooke, advocated a return of certain former Sikkimese properties.
In December 1950, by signing the "India - Sikkim Peace Treaty",
Sikkim became India's protectorate.
India took control of Sikkim in April 1973 as its associate state as the people overthrew the monarchy. On April 9, 1975, the Sikkim Parliament announced the king was deposed and declared Sikkim had become part of India through a referendum. On May 16, the Indian parliament announced that Sikkim officially became a state of India.
Political History of Sikkim.
The 1979 assembly election saw Nar Bahadur Bhandari elected Chief Minister of Sikkim. Bhandhari held on to win again in 1984 and 1989. In 1994, Assembly politician Pawan Kumar Chamling became the Chief Minister of Sikkim. In 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 Chamling consolidated his position to sweep the polls. Sikkim voted for its one delegate to the All India Lok Sabha on 3 January 1980. The voters strongly favored a local listing party, strongly rejecting the candidates from the Janata and Congress.
Sino-Indian relations were somewhat bruised in 2000 by an event in Sikkim which challenged China's longstanding claim of Sikkim as an independent country. The unusual event was the escape of Ogyen Trinley Dorje from Tibet to Dharamsala, India. Ogyen Trinley Dorje is one of the two rival claimants who seek recognition as the 17th Karmapa, the head of the Black Hat branch of Tibetan Buddhism (see Karmapa controversy). The two claimants did battle in the Indian court system for control of the considerable funds collected by the 16th Karmapa for the restoration and maintenance of Rumtek Monastery, located in Gangtok, Sikkim. The Chinese, who recognise Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the true Karmapa, was unhappy about the court outcome which awarded the monastery funds to the other rival. However, the Chinese government was in a quandary as to what to do about it, as any protest to India would mean an explicit endorsement that the high court of India holds jurisdiction over Sikkim.
In 2003, with the thawing of relations between the two nations, Indian sovereignty over Sikkim was finally recognised by China. The two governments also proposed to open the Nathula and Jelepla Passes in 2005.
On 18 September 2011, a magnitude 6.9Mw earthquake struck Sikkim, killing at least 116 people in the state and in Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Tibet. More than 60 people died in Sikkim alone, and the city of Gangtok suffered significant damage.


Vani

Vani () is a town in Imereti region of western Georgia, at the Sulori river (a tributary of the Rioni river), 41 km southwest from the regional capital Kutaisi. The town with the population of 3,744 (2014) is an administrative center of the Municipality of Vani comprising also 40 neighbouring villages (total area – 557 km²; population – 24,512, 2014).
Systematic archaeological studies (N.Khoshtaria, O.Lortkiphanidze) carried out in the Vani environs since 1947 revealed the remnants of a rich city of the ancient power of Colchis. The name of this ancient settlement is still unknown but four distinct stages of uninterrupted occupation have been identified. The first phase is dated to the 8th to 7th centuries BC. In this period Vani is presumed to have been a major cultic centre. The second phase - end of the 7th and beginning of the 6th to the first half of the 4th century BC - is represented by cultural layers, remains of wooden structures, sacrificial altars cut in the rocky ground, and rich burials. It is assumed that on this stage Vani was the centre of a political-administrative unit of the kingdom of Colchis. The third phase covers the second half of the 4th to the first half of the 3rd century BC. It is represented largely by rich burials, remains of stone structures. To the fourth phase (3rd to mid-1st centuries BC) belong defensive walls, the so-called small gate, sanctuaries and cultic buildings (temples, altars sacrificial platforms), and the remains of a foundry for casting bronze statues. It is assumed that in the 3rd to 1st centuries BC Vani was a temple-city. According to the archaeological data, the city was destroyed in the mid-1st century BC. Subsequently, Vani declined to a village and was officially granted a status of a town only in 1981.
In town Vani there is an interesting museum (founded in 1985), where some unique pieces of the ancient Colchis are exhibited.


Baresmanas

Baresmanas () was an eminent Sassanian Persian general. He is known only from his participation in the Battle of Dara in 530 against the Byzantines led by Belisarius, recorded by Procopius of Caesarea. In this battle, Baresmanas was the second-in-command of the Persian army under Perozes, and was killed during the fight by Sunicas. According to the account of Procopius, he was one-eyed.


Petra, Cyprus

Petra (; or ) is a former village in Cyprus, now uninhabited and largely destroyed. It is located east of the town of Lefka and just north the Green Line. "De facto", Petra is under the control of Northern Cyprus.
Petra had a mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriot population with a Greek Cypriot majority. Some of the village has been used as a military camp.