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Gondor, Byzantium, and feudalism
13 March 2010 by Tom Simon 8 Comments
A reader on LiveJournal, who goes by the name of 'dirigibletrance', asks:
How exactly is Byzantine politics different from feudalism, other than taking place earlier and not in Western Europe? How are the politics we see of Gondor outside of the bounds of what we know as feudalism, both the narrow and broader definitions?
As it happens, Mr. or Ms. Trance is in a certain amount of luck: Byzantium and Tolkien are two of the subjects I have studied in some detail. However, I shall approach the matter in my own way, which means answering a lot of questions that were not asked, but that may, when answered, give meaningful context to the answer that was asked for.
To begin with, Tolkien at various points made both explicit and implicit comparisons of Gondor with Byzantium. The terms 'North-kingdom' and 'South-kingdom' for Arnor and Gondor are deliberate echoes of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire. In his famous letter to Milton Waldman (Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 131), Tolkien writes:
In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium.
In a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer (Letters no. 294), he touches on the historical analogy again:
The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic'.
There are other parallels between later Roman history and the history of Gondor. The story of Eorl the Young and the founding of Rohan is a sort of alternate history of the Goths, somewhat sanitized, and with the bitter tragedy left out. Allow me to set the scene:
In the third century A.D., the Roman Empire fell into a rather bad way. A series of civil wars, which became more or less continuous after the assassination of Alexander Severus in 235, ravaged the economy, depleted the treasury, and depopulated significant areas of the empire. Plague, which had been a recurrent problem since the time of Marcus Aurelius, further reduced the population; and the Romans, who had gradually come to imitate the habit of family limitation that had been de rigueur among the aristocracy since the reign of Augustus, were no longer breeding fast enough to restore their population to its old level. Population and production both went into a serious and prolonged decline.
In the poisonous political atmosphere of the time, literally dozens of men proclaimed themselves emperors, almost one per year on average, climbing over the bodies of their predecessors, and sometimes not even waiting until the predecessors were dead. By the 260s, an 'Empire of the Gauls' had established its de facto independence in the west; in the east, the Syrian potentate Odaenathus of Palmyra, and then his widow Zenobia, ruled Egypt and the Asian provinces with scarcely more than a symbolic nod to the authority of Rome. The currency was hopelessly debased, the government corrupt, the armies more interested in plundering the provinces than protecting them; many people believed the dissolution of the empire was at hand.
Two great external threats hung over the empire: the Germanic tribes of the north, chiefly the Alemanni and Goths, and the Persians in the east. Odaenathus and Zenobia held the Persians at bay, but the Alemanni penetrated into Italy itself before Aurelian defeated them and drove them out. He then reconquered the eastern provinces, taking Zenobia prisoner, and made a deal with Tetricus, emperor of Gaul, that resulted in the reunification of the whole empire. With the Goths he took a different tack, making an alliance with them and giving them the largely deserted province of Dacia. This reduced the empire's northern border to a shorter and more defensible line along the Rhine and Danube, and delegated the defence of the Balkans to the Goths.
In Tolkien's version of the story, the Goths become the Éothéod, the ancestors of the Rohirrim. Their earliest recorded leader, in fact, was called Vidugavia, a name Tolkien derived from the Gothic Widugawi. At that time they lived in eastern Rhovanion, between Mirkwood and the River Running. Under pressure from the Easterlings, they removed to the headwaters of the Anduin west of Mirkwood, and later moved south. In the time of Cirion, steward of Gondor, they helped the Men of Gondor rout a great invasion of the Easterlings at the Field of Celebrant. As a reward, he pledged perpetual alliance with them, and gave them the largely deserted northern province of Calenardhon, which became the kingdom of Rohan. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, their alliance had endured for over 500 years.
The Goths did not do so well, though their alliance with Rome lasted, with lamentable interruptions, for more than a century. The Huns, moving in great force over the Ukrainian steppes, conquered Dacia, sending a flood of Gothic refugees across the Danube. There was immediate strife between the Romans and the desperate Goths, who supported themselves by raid and pillage. At last their leader Fritigern met a huge Roman army in battle outside Adrianople. Valens, the Roman emperor, was killed, and his army slaughtered. The whole northern boundary lay open to the dreaded Huns.
Aurelian's end, too, was unhappier than Cirion's. Scarcely a year after he reunited the empire, he was murdered by his own officers. Although he brought all the former Roman territories (except Dacia) under one rule again, he failed to deal with the two most pressing problems of the empire. One, as his assassination showed, was the lack of discipline in the army, and its distressing tendency to mutiny. The other, closely related, was the decline of the currency. The silver antoninianus, which had first been coined to replace the debaseddenarius, was itself debased until it was made of pure copper with a thin silver wash. Aurelian called in the old coinage and issued newantoniniani containing 5 percent silver. By itself, this move might have restored confidence in the economy. But he made a fatal mistake. Corrupt as the old coins were, they were in principle redeemable in gold at a fixed rate, so prices did not go up nearly as fast as the currency was debased. Aurelian's new coins were not redeemable at a fixed rate; in effect, he took Rome off the gold standard. Records from Egypt show that prices went up eightfold in a few years. Between the trouble with the coinage and the general economic decline, the empire began to have enormous difficulty paying its troops — which made discipline in the army even worse.
The earliest roots of feudalism can be found in the empire's attempt to deal with these problems. Diocletian, a brilliant but eccentric politician whose many reforms tended to smell of the lamp, took another stab at reforming the currency, but for the most part he evaded the issue by making taxes collectable in kind. Another 'reform' made all occupations hereditary: every Roman had to take up his father's trade, and remain in the district where he grew up. Social and geographic mobility were at an end. Under Diocletian's successors, the upper and middle classes managed to evade most of these restrictions, but much of the peasantry remained glebae adscripti, bound to the land: in fact, they became the first European serfs. When the empire fell and the barbarians took over the West, the serfs changed hands; instead of being owned by rich Romans, they were owned by men who spoke a different language and thought of themselves as a superior caste.
But this is to get ahead of the story. Valens lay dead on the field of Adrianople, and Fritigern the Goth had the only organized body of troops between the Huns and Rome. The new emperor, Valentinian I, inherited the worst position in the history of the empire. He needed to recruit tens of thousands of new troops, and he had no money to pay them. In this emergency he did what many a ruler and CEO has done: he hired cheap foreign labour. Valentinian renewed Rome's alliance with the Goths, recruiting them en masse to form a new Roman army. Rome had often recruited Germanic soldiers before. But where the Germans had formerly been incorporated into Roman legions under Roman generals, Valentinian let the Goths keep their own leaders and their own command structure, fighting as foederati— allies rather than citizens. In exchange he gave them lands along the Danube frontier, and such payments in cash as the treasury could afford. (Valentinian did not invent this technique. Some years earlier, Julian the Apostate had recruited Franks as foederati to help defend the Rhine. But Valentinian was the first to hire foederati on such a large scale.)
This filled the empire's immediate need for an army, but in the long run it was disastrous. The old legions might pillage towns and farms to supplement their pay, but at least they were Romans, loyal to the empire in principle, and sharing a bond of blood and culture with the people who occasionally suffered under them. The foederati were men of jealously separate nations, never Romanized, and felt no bond of kinship with the peoples of the provinces. Most of them did not even hold the Roman citizenship. A generation after Adrianople, the Goths living in the Balkans, being cruelly mistreated by their Roman neighbours, rebelled; they did enormous damage to the country before the Eastern emperor paid them a huge bribe to go away. They did: they invaded the Western Empire instead, under a brilliant military leader whose name remains famous to this day: Alaric. For a while they were held at bay by the Roman general Stilicho, who was himself the son of a Vandal foederatus. But the Western emperor Honorius, one of the most idiotic men ever to sit a throne, had Stilicho executed on trumped-up charges. Alaric promptly invaded Italy, and in 410 he sacked Rome. Neither Honorius nor his feeble successors ever restored the Rhine and Danube frontiers; the foederati took over direct rule of the territories where they had been stationed, and gradually overran the whole of the West.
The barbarian kingdoms that succeeded the Western Empire laid the groundwork for feudalism, though the legal theory of the feudal state did not fully emerge until feudalism itself had begun to unravel. The essence of feudalism was that it based tenure of land on military service. A local magnate would be given control over a territory in exchange for a promise to supply a certain number of troops at the king's command; and he would distribute parcels of land to lesser captains, or to the individual warriors who formed his retinue. At the bottom of the system, of course, were the Roman peasants, already reduced by their own laws to the status of serfs. This was on the whole a workable system. It had the enormous disadvantage of giving too much power to the local magnates. The king, in theory supreme, was in practice merely the largest of many armed landowners, and could not hope to enforce his will upon his vassals if they combined against him. But the system also had one great advantage: it worked without any large payments of cash. If the king did not have direct authority over the feudal domains, he also did not have to tax them. And since none of the barbarian kings were any better at maintaining a solid currency than the later Romans had been, a system that did not require money was worth adopting no matter what defects it had.
Tolkien mirrored this development, rather loosely, in the sketchy chronicle of the breakup of Arnor. In the North-kingdom, we are told, the Dúnedain were relatively few, just as the West was the less populous part of the Roman Empire. Arnor eventually broke up into three separate principalities, just as the empire of the Franks (theoretically a revival of the Western Roman Empire) broke up into the three realms of Neustria, Austrasia, and Lotharingia. The royal house of the Dúnedain died out in Cardolan and Rhudaur, and they fell under the rule of lesser Men; Rhudaur eventually allied itself with the Witch-king, who, as we know, was the Lord of the Nazgûl incognito. Arthedain must have had feudalism of a sort, for King Argeleb II granted lands to the Hobbits, under their leaders Marcho and Blanco, in exchange for such military service as they could offer. It was said in the Shire that a troop of Hobbit archers went to fight for Arthedain in the final war against the Witch-king, but none came back from the battle, and the Dúnedain made no record of their presence.
The Shire seems to have been somewhat feudal itself at one stage. Not only was it divided into the four Farthings, it was further divided into the 'folklands' of the twelve principal Hobbit families, Took, Baggins, Oldbuck, and so forth. (The Oldbucks crossed the Brandywine into Buckland, and became known as the Brandybucks.) Much of the land seems to have belonged to the various branches or septs of those families, and farmed by tenants: Bilbo Baggins, as head of the Baggins family, seems to have got most of his income (pre-Smaug) in this way. The Thain of the Shire was originally an Oldbuck, but the office passed into the Took family; in The Lord of the Rings, Pippin Took was the son of the Thain, and later became Thain himself. The title of Thain is of course a variant spelling of thane, a title used by the Anglo-Saxon nobility. There was no such fixed system of precedence as among the modern English aristocracy, but a thane was generally inferior to an earl, and about equivalent to a baron on the Continent.
But it will not do to press the analogy too closely. The Shire was Tolkien's analogue of England in this scheme; Marcho and Blanco correspond to Hengest and Horsa, the leaders who first brought the Jutes across the North Sea to settle in Kent. (All four of these names derive from various Germanic words for 'horse'.) Hengest and Horsa were invited, according to tradition, by the Romano-Britons themselves, after Honorius withdrew the legions from the island and left them defenceless against the Picts and Scots. The Jutes were followed by larger contingents of Angles and Saxons, just as the Fallohides, the least numerous variety of Hobbits, were followed by larger contingents of Stoors and Harfoots. The Angles came from a territory known as Angeln, 'the Angle' or 'the Narrows', in Schleswig; just as the Stoors came from 'the Angle' between the rivers Hoarwell and Loudwater. Clearly, anything we say about the early social structure of the Shire must be conditioned by what we know (and what Tolkien knew) about Anglo-Saxon England.
For England was never a feudal state in quite the Continental sense. It long preserved the older Germanic tradition of personal military service, not directly linked to tenure of land, but to kinship and the (presumably) dominant and eminent personality of the leader. After the Norman Conquest the land was divided into feudal domains on the French model, but the canny Norman kings kept their vassals on a short leash and never permitted them to rival the power of the Crown as they had done in France. The Wars of the Roses largely broke the power of the Norman aristocracy, and the Tudors supplemented them with a new aristocracy, created by royal fiat, and enriched by grants of land taken from the Church by Henry VIII. Under this new system, most of the land was held by local squires, among whom the titled nobility were the most revered and respectable but not necessarily the largest landowners. (So, too, 'the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer.') A minority of the peasants owned their own land, but most were tenants, renting farms from squires or nobles. It is this 'squirearchy' that most resembles the situation in the Shire at the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was indeed the condition of rural England in Tolkien's childhood, for which he was always nostalgic, and to which he would have liked England to return. 'Tipping your cap to the Squire may be dam' bad for the Squire but it's dam' good for you,' he once said.
The South-kingdom, as I have said, was patterned deliberately after Byzantium, though without the pervasive influence of the Orthodox Church. Most of the Men of the Third Age were 'virtuous pagans'; those of Númenorean descent, and their subjects, were strict monotheists of a rather colourless and non-sacerdotal type, having neither temples nor priests, but showing their worship of Eru chiefly by resisting Sauron with all their might. Whether this is a realistic model for the religious life of a human society is a question I shall leave on one side. The point is that it limits the degree of resemblance to Byzantium, where the Church had wealth and influence even greater than in mediaeval Italy or Christian Spain. But within these limits we can draw some parallels between Byzantine and Gondorian society.
The Eastern Empire survived where the West was destroyed, partly because it was much less exposed to the barbarians, but also because it evolved its own solutions to the two desperate problems that brought about the fall of the West. Constantine is famed for being the first Christian emperor, and for founding the city of Constantinople, which quickly became the Eastern capital; and the Church and the City were two pillars of the Eastern Empire until 1453. It is less often remembered that he built a third pillar, almost as important as the other two: he issued a new gold coin, called the solidus in Latin and the nomisma in Greek, which remained the basis of Byzantine coinage for 700 years. As far as possible, he abandoned Diocletian's practice of collecting taxes in kind, requiring instead that they be paid in gold; and with this gold he paid his troops. But there was not enough gold in the treasury to pay the number of soldiers the empire needed, as Valentinian discovered at the start of his reign. Until the middle of the fifth century, the East, like the West, depended upon barbarian foederati for its defence.
But this system, so obviously unworkable in the West, was abandoned in the East as soon as an alternative could be found. At first the Eastern emperors recruited large numbers of Isaurians, a people who lived in the Taurus mountains of eastern Anatolia. These were mostly pastoral people, uneducated and desperately poor; we would probably call them hillbillies. Even at the low wages the empire could afford to pay, the army was an attractive career for them. But this was not nearly enough. Gradually the Byzantine emperors raised the pay of the troops, until under Justinian they were earning as much as they had under the early empire — twenty nomismata per year for a common soldier. To raise this money, Justinian increased taxes to new heights, and the burden grew even greater after a fresh outbreak of plague killed as much as a quarter of the population. His immediate successors teetered on the verge of insolvency, desperately needing the soldiers but unable to cut their wages without inducing mass mutiny. Then the Arabs came.
More than half the territory of the Eastern Empire fell to the heirs of Muhammad in just a few years, and out of an active field army of perhaps 150,000, no more than 80,000 were safely evacuated to secure quarters in Anatolia and Greece. This surviving remnant of the empire was what Tolkien meant by the 'proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium'; it is this that corresponds to the Gondor of the Stewards. And it was in no way a feudal kingdom. The emperor retained full control of the bureaucracy and the army, and every province was ruled by officials appointed by the emperor and recallable at will. There were great landowning families, but their wealth did not automatically mean high political office, as it did for the dukes and counts of the feudal West. Byzantium had its dukes and counts, but these were military ranks, bestowed by the emperor and not inheritable. The great landowners tended to monopolize these positions, because they could afford to give their sons the advanced education required for a career in high public service; but there was always some room for a talented parvenu, and the emperor always retained the authority to sack his generals and banish them to their private estates. He did not always retain the power; but that generally meant that the rebellious general deposed the emperor and took the throne for himself, rather than becoming a quasi-independent ruler as in the West.
Constans II, who came to the throne in 641, abolished the old provinces and divided the empire into military districts called themata — 'themes' in English. Each theme held a certain body of troops, derived from the field armies of an earlier day, commanded by a strategosor general. The pay of a common soldier was cut to a mere five nomismata, which the empire could comfortably afford to pay even after losing so much territory and wealth. To compensate for the pay cut, each soldier was given a grant of land, which he could pass on to his son along with his place in the army rolls. Since some parts of the empire were very rich indeed, while others were scarcely arable, the grant was not a fixed acreage, but land of a certain market value. A cavalryman received land worth 288 nomismata, or four pounds of pure gold: enough to require three or four tenant families to farm it, which indeed meant that he did not have to worry about neglecting his land while he was away at the wars. An infantryman received only half as much, and probably had to do a large share of the farming himself; but the thematic infantry were seldom called out on campaigns far from home. They were chiefly intended to defend their own territories against Arab raids.
This system had one striking resemblance to feudalism: each soldier held his land on the condition of military service. But there was also a striking difference: there was no subinfeudation. It was not the strategos who gave lands to the troops, but the emperor himself; and there were no intermediate layers of vassals between the emperor and the soldier. Later on, when the thematic system broke down under the Turkish invasions, soldiers were given a kind of tax concession, called pronoia; this, being collected entirely in cash, resembled feudalism even less.
How does this match up with what we know about Gondor? Tolkien makes several references to the 'fiefs' of Gondor, a definitely feudal term. But it is not at all clear that these were really fiefs in the Western sense. In the time of Denethor, the leading noble of Gondor was Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth. Now Dol Amroth was in the fief of Belfalas; but Imrahil was not called the Prince of Belfalas. He was a very important and august nobleman, descended from the ancient Númenorean aristocracy, and clearly a rich man; but he was not the hereditary ruler of Belfalas. There seems to have been no such person; if there were, obviously, he would have been Imrahil's superior, and we should have heard of him instead. In Byzantine terms, we could say that Imrahil was the principal landowner in Belfalas, the head of its leading family, and strategos of the district; but he was strategos at the gift of the Ruling Steward, who could in principle revoke his gift.
The men of the themes were expected to stay at home and guard their territories; as I have said, they were not usually called out on foreign campaigns, except temporarily and in small numbers. This seems to have been true in Gondor as well. When the host of Mordor moved to attack Minas Tirith, the leaders of the various fiefs sent only a small part of their forces to reinforce the city; the rest were kept at home to defend against the black fleet of Umbar. Here is how Tolkien describes the matter in The Return of the King:
'Forlong! Forlong!' Pippin heard men calling. 'What do they say?' he asked.
'Forlong has come,' Bergil answered; 'old Forlong the Fat, the Lord of Lossarnach. That is where my grandsire lives. Hurrah! Here he is. Good old Forlong!' . . . .
'Forlong!' men shouted. 'True heart, true friend! Forlong!' But when the men of Lossarnach had passed, they muttered: 'So few! Two hundreds, what are they? We hoped for ten times the number. That will be the new tidings of the black fleet. They are sparing only a tithe of their strength. Still every little is a gain.'
He goes on to mention 'the men of Ringló Vale behind the son of their lord,' and 'tall Duinhir with his sons' from 'the uplands of Morthond', and so forth; and last of all, Imrahil with 'a company of knights in full harness' and seven hundred men at arms. This could easily be a list of feudal lords with their vassals and retainers. But it is worth noticing that none of these leaders commanded a very large force, and none is referred to as the vassal or liegeman of another. They were all the lords of fairly small districts (as you can confirm from the map of Gondor in the book), none much bigger than another, except for the large fief of Belfalas and the remote and thinly populated Anfalas, 'the Langstrand far away'; and they all seemed to be tenants in chief of the Steward himself. This is at best a highly modified feudalism; and I would argue that it fits as well or better with the Byzantine model, where these would be the strategoi of the themes (or their officer sons, as in the case of Ringló Vale) leading a portion of their men out on campaign.
What, then, of Imrahil's knights? That at least sounds like a definitely feudal term. But in fact there were knights before feudalism, and after it was gone. The term 'knight' is often applied to the Ordo Equester of republican Rome, where it meant simply those citizens of the First Class who were expected to equip themselves as cavalry for the legions. This usage is a frank (and not entirely accurate) imitation of the mediaeval usage, of course. But in that mediaeval usage, a knight was simply an armoured cavalryman. He had to be a man of some wealth and substance, for it was no trivial expense to maintain a heavy warhorse and its armour; but this was equally true of a Byzantine cavalryman, who served under a strategos, but had technically no liege lord except the emperor. It is true that Western knights served in the context of a feudal system; but feudalism was not what made them knights.
Indeed, there were Byzantine troops who resembled Western knights very closely. When Justinian sent an army under Belisarius to reconquer the West, his shock troops were cataphracti, heavy cavalry on the Persian model, men and horses both armoured from head to foot. The Goths and Vandals had no force that could withstand them or make much impression on them, and they must have had some influence on the later development of heavy cavalry among the Franks. The cataphracti were largely abandoned during the Arab invasions, for they were easily outmanoeuvred and defeated by the light Arab cavalry on their swift and nimble horses. But in later times, the Byzantines developed a special striking force independent of the themes, divided into units called tagmata. Each tagma was stationed in a particular area near Constantinople itself; they were highly trained, highly paid, and in return they were expected to accompany the emperor or his general on any foreign campaign. Some tagmata were composed entirely of heavy cavalry, and in the later Byzantine period these units were armed and equipped on the pattern of Western knights. It was these heavy troops, backed up by the lighter cavalry of the themes, that broke the power of the Arab caliphate in the 10th century and advanced, according to one account, to a point within sight of Jerusalem. They were Crusaders before the Crusades; and what could you call them, in any western European language, except knights? I rather fancy that the knights of Dol Amroth were troops of this sort.
In the end, of course, the Stewards of Gondor submitted to the rule of King Elessar, the Heir of Isildur returned from the North. For all that Byzantium maintained the legal fiction of a united Roman Empire, it never submitted to an emperor out of the barbarous West. Yet something like that did almost happen once; and this, too, has a parallel in Tolkien. We are told that there was a dispute over the kingship of Gondor once, the direct line of Anárion having died out; and Arvedui, then crown prince of Arthedain, came down from the North to claim the kingship of Gondor. His claim was rejected, for the Men of Gondor regarded Arthedain as a place of little account and Arvedui as an uncouth upstart, despite his ancestry. There was a real counterpart to Arvedui, and you have almost certainly heard of him: his name was Charlemagne.
In 780, Constantine VI became Byzantine emperor at the age of nine, with his mother Irene as regent. They fought frequently once Constantine grew up enough to oppose his will to hers, and in the end he stripped her of her offices and banished her from the court. But he was not a particularly strong emperor, and did rather poorly at running the empire on his own; and after a while he gave in to her importunities, recalled her, and restored to her nearly all the powers she had held as regent. Their next dispute was fatal to him and fateful in history. In 797, Irene deposed and blinded her son; he may have lived on some time as a prisoner, but probably died of his wounds. Constantine had no heir, so Irene did something without precedent in Roman history: she had herself crowned, not as empress, but as emperor.
At this time, Charlemagne was busy expanding the Frankish kingdom to its greatest extent, stretching from Catalonia to Saxony; and he was eagerly seeking some unprecedented eminence with which to awe and control his divers and polyglot subjects. Irene's usurpation was a godsend to him. He began negotiations with the pope, who agreed that since there was now no Eastern emperor (women having hitherto been ineligible for the throne), it would be quite proper to crown a new one in the West. Traditionally, of course, it was the patriarch of Constantinople who crowned emperors, but the pope claimed to be superior to the patriarch, and therefore ought to have that power as well. So Charlemagne was duly crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day of 800, with endless consequences for European history.
At first, Irene reacted with fury; then with resignation; then with a bold and crafty stroke of diplomacy. She had at one point declared war against the Franks, though the two empires were hundreds of miles apart and there was really no place where they could meet and fight. Now she sent an embassy to Charlemagne's court at Aachen, offering terms of peace and alliance. She needed both, for the Byzantines were growing restive under her rule, and many of them had never accepted the idea of a female emperor. Charlemagne answered her embassy in the most enthusiastic terms. He actually proposed to Irene by proxy; the two emperors would marry, and the two empires would be legally united. Since Irene had no children and was past childbearing age, Charlemagne's heirs would have reigned at Constantinople. The Frankish knights and the Byzantine themes would have fought side by side against the Moors and Arabs, and who knows? The Roman Empire of old might have been restored, four hundred years after it was finally divided and three hundred years after the Western Empire fell.
But the Byzantines, who disliked the rule of a woman, were even more offended at the prospect of being ruled by a barbarian. Irene's court rose against her, deposed her, and forced her into a convent. Nicephorus, the general logothete (i.e., the imperial treasurer), became emperor, and the prospect of union was dead.
One more resemblance between Byzantium and Gondor is worth remarking upon. When the Men of Gondor rejected the barbarian Arvedui's claim to the throne, as the Byzantines rejected Charlemagne, they chose Eärnil as their king. Eärnur, his son, was captured by the Lord of Minas Morgul, and the line of kings came to an end; but not the state of Gondor. The Stewards ruled in the King's place for a thousand years, until Aragorn came to renew the kingship. The Byzantines, who never considered their monarchy the property of a particular family, called their rulers emperors until the end; but for all that, they had something of the Gondorian reverence for legitimacy, and it grew stronger as the centuries passed. Faramir recounts a telling conversation:
'And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that his father was not king. "How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king, if the king returns not?" he asked. "Few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty," my father answered. "In Gondor ten thousand years would not suffice." Alas! poor Boromir. Does that not tell you something of him?'
In 867, Basil the Macedonian (who, despite his name, seems to have been an ethnic Armenian) became emperor and founded the Macedonian dynasty. His descendants reigned over the empire until 1056, though they did not always rule. It was a peculiarity of this period that for much of the time, there were two emperors: one of the Macedonian house, who inherited the title and was ruler de jure; the other, a successful general, who acted as ruler de facto. The greatest Byzantine emperor of all, Basil II, inherited the throne at the age of five, and had two co-emperors, both magnificently gifted military men, before taking up active rule at 18. After his death and his brother's, his niece Zoë became ruler de jure, and her assorted husbands and favourites were rulers de facto. None of them could establish themselves without the legitimacy conferred by marriage to a Macedonian. After Zoë's death, the people of Constantinople actually stormed the convent where her sister Theodora was living as a nun, and forced her to become empress at the age of 75 — so deep was the Byzantine people's attachment to the dynasty.
Later still, after the Crusader kingdom of Constantinople was swept away and Byzantine rule restored, the Palaeologus dynasty took the same place in popular affection. In the 14th century, John V Palaeologus, a vacillating nitwit, appointed the capable John VI Cantacuzenus as his co-emperor; and when Cantacuzenus tried to take over sole control of the state, he precipitated such a ferocious civil war that the empire was finally ruined and became a mere dependency of the Turks. The Palaeologi reigned in ghostly supremacy over the shreds and tatters of Byzantium until the Turks seized Constantinople in 1453. If you had asked a Byzantine how long it would take to accept an emperor from outside the ruling family, he might well have answered: 'Few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty. In Constantinople ten thousand years would not suffice.'
We do not know what was the ultimate fate of Gondor. No doubt the glory of Minas Tirith passed away and was forgotten, like the Elves and Hobbits; for they are not in the world today, and Tolkien meant Middle-earth to stand for our own earth in the remotest antiquity. But we may be sure that Gondor stood by the heirs of Isildur as long as the kingdom lasted. No Byzantine could do less.
Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: history, j. r. r. tolkien
John Cowan says:
More locally, it was the kings of pre-Norman England who passed their rule down in an unbroken line of descent. Only after England became Great Britain "in a quite unnecessary desire for a common name" did it come to be ruled by the Stewards, who being Scottish spelled their name "Stuart", and whose descendant (through several female connections, to be sure) sits on the throne today.
Talk about completely backward. The Stuarts came first, and the unification as a consequence.
The coming of Stuarts to the throne of England was effectively simultaneous with the Union of the Crowns. Of course, the Stuarts had been kings of Scotland before that.
It was not the United Kingdom until some time after that. Prior to then, it was two kingdoms that happened to have the same sovereign.
Tom Simon says:
To be precise, James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603 (while still retaining his separate title as King of Scotland). Scotland continued to have its own Parliament, its own laws, and its own Established Church until the Acts of Union in 1707; and while it joined in all the English wars during that period, it retained the right and the ability to raise its own separate armies. (The Scottish army was one of the great imponderables of the English Civil War: neither King nor Parliament could ever quite rely on its support.)
That 104-year gap, I should say, convicts Mr. Cowan of a mighty loose usage of the phrase 'effectively simultaneous'.
The More You Know says:
Gondor's not connected to Byzantine Empire. Minas Tirith literally means Belgrade (Serbia). Lookup Siege of Belgrade during 15th century and it becomes clear.
Boromir and Faramir are names similar to Radomir and Milomir, typical for the Serbian region. It was also unveiled that Tolkien wrote about Belgrade in his map works alongside the Italian city of Ravena.
fantasywind says:
Regarding the Middle-earth version of 'knights' Tolkien actually gives an interesting in-universe explanation, from The Unfinished Tales:
"17 Ohtar is the only name used in the legends; but it is probably only the title of address that Isildur used at this tragic moment, hiding his feelings under formality. Ohtar "warrior, soldier" was the title of all who, though fully trained and experienced, had not yet been admitted to the rank of roquen, "knight." But Ohtar was dear to Isildur and of his own kin. [Author's note.]"
So indeed the term 'knight' in Middle-earth are not really like the feudal knights but indeed like those old roman 'Ordo Equester' mixed with a military rank. Unfinished Tales are mine of information, Tolkien also gives quite a bit about military and administrative structure of Rohan :). It is indeed interesting that Middle-earth is not feudal in strict sense, even Arnor doesn't seem like feudal, though examples of granting lands to the Hobbits may imply that. We know that the land where Shire is located was once part of royal demesne:
"While there was still a king they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside."
"The land was rich and kindly, and though it had long been deserted when they entered it, it had before been well tilled, and there the king had once had many farms, cornlands, vineyards, and woods." (and it seems the Hobbits took over the winemaking traditions of Dunedain "Old Rory Brandybuck, in return for much hospitality, got [from Bilbo] a dozen bottles of Old Winyards: a strong red wine from the Southfarthing, and now quite mature, as it had been laid down by Bilbo's father…."Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. …
In the Southfarthing the vines were laden, and the yield of 'leaf' was astonishing; and everywhere there was so much corn that at Harvest every barn was stuffed." hehe)
Kings of Arthedain gave the Hobbits some duties, which I guess could be seen as somewhat feudal:
"For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits. They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took ail the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs. All that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and all other bridges and roads, speed the king's messengers, and acknowledge his lordship."
But it's still not feudalism in true sense. Also as a funfact, since you wrote a bit about coinage in historical analysis of the West Roman Empire, Tolkien wrote this little piece:
"Similarly farthing has been used for the four divisions of the Shire, because the Hobbit word tharni was an old word for 'quarter' seldom used in ordinary language, where the word for 'quarter' was tharantin 'fourth part'. In Gondor tharni was used for a silver coin, the fourth part of the castar (in Noldorin the canath or fourth part of the mirian)." HoME XII
Also from story itself we learn how in Shire and Bree-land was used a coin, simply known as 'silver penny'
"Mr. Butterbur paid for it himself, and offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals. He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him, and being cheated by Bill Ferny made it harder to bear."
And it seems that this is the leftover of the currency of old kingdom of Arnor (plus maybe some coin of gold and silver minted by Dwarves due to trade with the Dwarves that constantly crossed Eriador), in other words the numenorean Realms-in-Exile used gold and silver standard :).
Nerdlife 13: Never Tell Me the Odds – Of Wolves and Men says:
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
/*
 * This file is part of the swblocks-baselib library.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

#ifndef __BL_LOADER_PLATFORM_H_
#define __BL_LOADER_PLATFORM_H_

#include <baselib/core/ObjModel.h>
#include <baselib/core/BaseIncludes.h>

namespace bl
{
    namespace loader
    {
        /**
         * @brief class PlatformIdentity
         */

        template
        <
            typename E = void
        >
        class PlatformIdentityT : public om::Object
        {
            BL_DECLARE_OBJECT_IMPL_DEFAULT( PlatformIdentityT )

        private:

            const std::string                                   m_os;
            const std::string                                   m_architecture;
            const std::string                                   m_toolchain;

            static std::string removeCompilerId( SAA_in const std::string& toolchain )
            {
                const auto parts = str::splitString( toolchain, "-" );

                BL_CHK(
                    false,
                    parts.size() == 2,
                    BL_MSG()
                        << "Toolchain string "
                        << str::quoteString( toolchain )
                        << " is not in expected format: <compiler id>-<build flavor>"
                    );

                return parts.back();
            }

        public:

            PlatformIdentityT( SAA_in PlatformIdentityT&& other )
                :
                m_os( std::move( other.m_os ) ),
                m_architecture( std::move( other.m_architecture ) ),
                m_toolchain( std::move( other.m_toolchain ) )
            {
            }

            PlatformIdentityT& operator= ( SAA_in PlatformIdentityT&& other )
            {
                m_os = std::move( other.m_os );
                m_architecture = std::move( other.m_architecture );
                m_toolchain = std::move( other.m_toolchain );

                return *this;
            }

            PlatformIdentityT(
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       os,
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       architecture,
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       toolchain
                )
                :
                m_os( BL_PARAM_FWD( os ) ),
                m_architecture( BL_PARAM_FWD( architecture ) ),
                m_toolchain( BL_PARAM_FWD( toolchain ) )
            {
            }

            const std::string& os() const NOEXCEPT
            {
                return m_os;
            }

            const std::string& architecture() const NOEXCEPT
            {
                return m_architecture;
            }

            const std::string& toolchain() const NOEXCEPT
            {
                return m_toolchain;
            }

            std::string name( SAA_in_opt const bool ignoreCompilerId = false ) const
            {
                cpp::SafeOutputStringStream name;

                name
                    << m_os
                    << "_"
                    << m_architecture
                    << "_"
                    << ( ignoreCompilerId ? removeCompilerId( m_toolchain ) : m_toolchain );

                return name.str();
            }

            bool matchesToolchain(
                SAA_in          const std::string&                  value,
                SAA_in_opt      const bool                          ignoreCompilerId = false
                )
            {
                if( ignoreCompilerId )
                {
                    return removeCompilerId( m_toolchain ) == removeCompilerId( value );
                }
                else
                {
                    return m_toolchain == value;
                }
            }
        };

        typedef om::ObjectImpl< PlatformIdentityT<>, false, true, om::detail::LttLeaked > PlatformIdentity;

        /**
         * @brief class Platform
         */

        template
        <
            typename E = void
        >
        class PlatformT
        {
            BL_DECLARE_STATIC( PlatformT )

        public:

            static om::ObjPtr< PlatformIdentity > get(
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       os,
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       architecture,
                SAA_in      std::string&&                       toolchain
                )
            {
                return PlatformIdentity::createInstance(
                    std::forward< std::string >( os ),
                    std::forward< std::string >( architecture ),
                    std::forward< std::string >( toolchain )
                    );
            }
        };

        typedef PlatformT<> Platform;

    } // loader

} // bl

#endif /* __BL_LOADER_PLATFORM_H_ */

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


LOS ANGELES / TOKYO — October 16, 2018 — Kind Heaven, the immersive entertainment experience opening next year on the Las Vegas Strip, today announced it has selected NEM as its blockchain partner. Through this agreement, Kind Heaven will integrate blockchain technology using the NEM platform, with Asta as its official development partner. NEM provides industry-leading speed and scalability, meeting the needs of Kind Heaven's ambitious plans to integrate blockchain technology within its state-of-the-art entertainment venue. Asta is an experienced blockchain development house having already developed deployed solutions using the NEM blockchain in Australia and South East Asia.
Photo courtesy of Kind Heaven.
The concept of Kind Heaven was developed by Jane's Addiction frontman and Lollapalooza Founder Perry Farrell along with Immersive Artistry, whose team includes CEO Cary Granat (founder and former CEO of Walden Media, and former President and COO of Miramax/Dimension Films) and President Ed Jones (Academy® Award-winning visual effects pioneer, Star Wars' The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones, and E.T.) Through the use of leading-edge technology and Hollywood-style storytelling, Kind Heaven at the LINQ Promenade will provide a wide variety of experiences exploring the culture of Southeast Asia.
The Front entrance of the 100,000-square-foot Kind Heaven venue at the Linq Promenade. Photo courtesy of Kind Heaven.
Global collectibles are a $600 billion market, and digital collectibles represent a growing subset. In the coming years, it's estimated that digital collectibles will grow from a $35 million to $10 billion market. Kind Heaven is focused on developing a digital collectibles business using blockchain technology that will capitalize on its mythology, characters, icons, and geography. This will create a vibrant, actively-traded market for digital collectibles existing in multiple formats.
The Kind Heaven Marketplace. Photo courtesy of Kind Heaven.
Kind Heaven is forming relationships with prominent partners in Asia, including an upcoming e-commerce partnership that will integrate NEM to create a decentralized marketplace. This marketplace will allow vendors in Asia to share goods and services in North America. Kind Heaven will also collaborate with artists, who will have limited-edition digital collectibles of their own available through the Kind Heaven marketplace.
Kind Heaven is advised by Rod Jao and Apolo Ohno of Hybrid Block; Michael Terpin, Founder and CEO of Transform Group; Mike Jones, CEO of Science, Inc; Matthew Roszak, Co-Founder and Chairman of Bloq, and Ken Hertz, Advisor, and Investor.
NEM's blockchain platform was designed and coded from the ground up for scale and speed. Its permissioned, private blockchain delivers industry-leading transaction rates for international ledgers. Additionally, its revolutionary consensus mechanism ensures NEM's open, public blockchain can grow without compromising throughput or stability.
Immersive Artistry (IA) believes the future of entertainment is about the creation of immersive, multisensory, communal experiences that will transport audiences on journeys both shared and unique. The company combines state-of-the-art technology with Hollywood storytelling to create extraordinary 360-degree experiences that involve all the senses. Immersive Artistry is headquartered in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.immersiveartistry.com.
Founded in 1999, Asta has grown to be a leading End-to-End IT services provider across Australia and New Zealand. With a solid track record of business growth underpinned by a strong people culture and excellent relationships with business partners and clients, Asta has flourished into a multi-faceted IT solutions business. For more information, visit https://www.asta.com.au.


Fluoride concentrations above and below certain limits are deleterious to human health, having been implicated in diseases such as fluorosis, arthritis, caries, cancers etc. Better methods of its qualitative and quantitative determination are therefore necessary. A novel, less toxic and more environmentally friendly analytical method for determination of fluorides, named the PAGIKAND method, is proposed, based on the complex formation capability of diferuloylmethane with zirconium. Absorbance of the complex at its absorption maximum of 465 nm was found to decrease (up to 94.69%) with increase in fluoride concentration in solution (up to 10 mg F- L-1). The optimum pH for the required complex formation was determined to be 8.5, and the Detection Limit (LOD) for the proposed method was calculated to be 1.3 x 10-6 mol L-1. The proposed method was applied to the analysis of fluorides in river water and T .
test was used to compare contents of fluorides determined using a known method (SPADNS) with those determined using the new method. The mean fluoride concentration for the new method was found to be 0.1232}0.030 mg L-1 while that of the SPADNS method was 0.1257}0.289 mg L-1. At 95% confidence interval (p = 0.05) and 18 degrees of freedom, with critical value of 2.10, the " texp" was 1.987. This indicates there is no significant difference between the results obtained from the known method (SPADNS) and that obtained from the proposed method, since " texp" < tcritical.


Ganzirri, just at the south of Torre Faro, has preserved its aspect of seafaring village, with its characteristic of overlooking contemporarily on the Straits and on one of the salty lake of Capo Peloro's wildlife reserve. The lakes are connected through some channels that flow also into the sea. The lake of Ganzirri is the biggest, it expands lengthwise and there the fishermen use to breed mussels and clams. This zone is one of the most favorite of the citizens, and you have to visit it. If you are in this part of the coast particularly during the spring or the autumn, you could see the passage of migratory birds that like to stop in this lagoon area.


If you could meet any one person, who would it be and why?
Position:Home>Philosophy> If you could meet any one person, who would it be and why?
Question: If you could meet any one person, who would it be and why!?
Friedrich Nietzsche, he is my favorite philosopher and I'd love to just BS about life with him!. He has had a huge influence on how I view life!. If language wasn't an issue I would talk to Siddhartha but I can only speak german and english so I'd talk to Nietzsche!.
I would love to meet Adam!.
You know, the guy from ADAM & EVE!.
To just find out if they were really the first people on earth!.
If there is no Adam or Eve due to biblical error/ lies!.
I would love to meet Angelina Jolie, Simply because I am only human!.!.!.
I would probably change my mind!.
I would be interested in meeting the Christ!.


text:
Diamond S Shipping Group Inc. (DSG) is a shipping company legally incorporated in the Marshall Islands with headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States that owns and operates medium-range (MR) tanker vessels engaged in the international transoceanic shipping market of refined petroleum and other products. Diamond S Shipping "runs 33 product tankers." Diamond S Shipping Group Inc is traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol.(NYSE:DSSI).

History
Diamond S Shipping is legally incorporated in the Marshall Islands.

Subsidiaries
Diamond S Shipping's subsidiaries include DSS Vessel II LLC, Diamond S Shipping III LLC, and Diamond S Management LLC. The parent or holding company is Diamond S Shipping Group Inc.,"one of the world's largest owners and operators of medium-range tanker vessels, which crisscross the globe as crucial cogs in the transoceanic shipping trade."

Services

Diamond S Shipping "runs 33 product tankers that move refined petroleum and other products." Most of the 33 vessels ships are "chartered to companies for years at a time." Diamond S Shipping operates in ports in China and other parts of Asia.

Board of Directors

Craig Stevenson, Jr. is the CEO of Diamond S Shipping. Wilbur Ross was on the management team of Diamond S Shipping until he was appointed U. S. Secretary of Commerce in February 2017.  According to a March 23, 2017 article by the Center for Public Integrity, while he stepped down from any decision-making at Diamond S Shipping to avoid conflict-of-interest concerns, Ross kept his "stake in Diamond S Shipping Group Inc."

Shareholders

Shareholders include First Reserve Corporation, a private equity company based in Greenwich, Connecticut and Cargill's investment arm CarVal. WL Ross & Co affiliates have also been major investors.

WL Ross & Co
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had part ownership of Diamond S Shipping. until the news media coverage from the release of the Paradise Papers in November 2017 focused attention on conflict of interests concerns between Ross' role in trade policy formulation and his investments in large transoceanic shipping companies. The Commerce Department announced on November 7, 2017 that Commerce Secretary Ross "had fully divested" his stakes in Diamond S Shipping, and Navigator Gas LLC. Concerns were raised about Wendy Teramoto, in an in depth November 6, 2017 report by American Public Media (ABM). " Teramato is Ross' chief of staff at the Commerce Department. The APM Reports investigation found that Teramoto, "cut the China trade deal despite serving as a director for Navigator Holdings Ltd."

References

External links

Companies based in Greenwich, Connecticut
Transport companies established in 2007
Shipping companies of the United States
Container shipping companies
Offshore companies of the Marshall Islands

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


On Wednesday, May 31, 2017, there will be a HOUSE MOVE on Champlain Road.
The structure will be moved from 181 Champlain Road to 43 Sears Road.
This will require the CLOSURE OF CHAMPLAIN ROAD from 07:00am to 02:00pm.
There will be police officers to assist motorist and residents of this area. During the time of this move, no through traffic will be allowed. This section of Champlain Road is also popular for pedestrians who walk or run "the Loop". During this move, pedestrians and cyclists will not be allowed into the area.
Sears Road (area) will be open and will have access during this move period.
Battlefield Landing may be closed for a limited time.


text:
Home / Resources / Blog Hong Kong / Hong Kong – improved options for employee remuneration packages
Hong Kong – improved options for employee remuneration packages
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Hong Kong has long attracted the best and the brightest to work in one of the world's leading international financial centre, and one which also happens to be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, the world's fastest-growing major economy. But while Hong Kong has always been forward thinking in its approach to capital, it has generally been less dynamic in its approach to human capital.
That is now changing. The traditional 'base plus bonus' formula for remuneration in Hong Kong is increasingly being supplanted by more progressive packages that include occupational pension schemes and employee benefit trusts to assist employers in Hong Kong to attract, retain and reward key talent in the face of ever greater international competition.
Occupational pension schemes
Hong Kong joined major economies like the UK, Australia and the US in mandating that employees and employers should contribute to a retirement benefit scheme on behalf of their staff. The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) system was launched in December 2000 to complement the existing voluntary Occupational Retirement Schemes Ordinance (ORSO).
As a result, employees are required to fund their pension with 5% of their monthly salary subject to a maximum of HK$ 1,500, with the employer matching their contribution. The individual can claim full tax relief against salaries tax on their MPF contributions up to a maximum of HK$ 18,000 per annum. Any additional contributions to a Hong Kong pension (whether MPF or ORSO) do not give rise to greater salaries tax relief. However,
This is not the case for employers making contributions on behalf of their staff. Hong Kong companies are subject to profits tax at a rate of 8.25% on the first HK$ 2 million of profit and 16.5% on any further profit. Contributions into pension schemes on behalf of a company's staff members get full tax relief against corporate profits tax, subject to a maximum of 15% of each of those individuals total annual remuneration.
For example where an individual is earning HK$ 1 million per year, a maximum of an additional HK$ 150,000 can be settled upon the pension scheme. That HK$ 150,000 is a business expense that comes off the company's' accounts, with an additional HK$ 150,000 of the retained profit amount being ring-fenced from the profits tax.
The benefits paid by a pension scheme will be subject to tax in Hong Kong tax if the beneficiary is resident in Hong Kong but, if the beneficiary is resident overseas, benefits may be subject to relief under Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs). Hong Kong currently has DTAs in force with Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, South Korea, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Switzerland and the UK, which means that the income from a Hong Kong-sited pension will only be taxable in Hong Kong.
Whilst an occupational pension scheme requires the company to apply additional funding to the individuals' remuneration, some companies wish to incentivise and reward employees through types of share option plans. By aligning the interests of employees with those of the shareholders, the intention is to encourage loyalty and commitment on the part of the employees and a desire to see the company perform well. Companies benefit from dedicated and motivated employees who in turn may expect greater reward from the successes of their employer.
Using the company's shares as an incentive means that there is no need for an instant cash settlement and, in future years, settlements can typically made from surplus profits. Where an employer wishes to use its shares, with or without an additional cash settlement, they can create an employee benefit trust (EBT).
Under an EBT arrangement, an employee is typically required to remain as an employee of the company for a prescribed period of time before the benefits vest with them. At this point, they can either hold the shares and receive any dividends that are paid, or they can sell the shares back to the company for a prescribed sum.
Not all EBTs hold shares in the company as an asset. A common variant involves bonus payments earned by employees. Instead of being paid directly to the employee, these can be deferred and settled on the EBT to vest as and when the employee has completed a prescribed period of continuous employment with the company.
The advantages of using an EBT are that assets held in an EBT are not available to creditors should the company go into bankruptcy and any potential conflicts of interest can be avoided because trustees are required to act in the interests of the beneficiaries. In the case of private companies, an EBT can also be used to create an internal market in shares.
As an employer in Hong Kong adding these tools to your employment proposition will allow you to match the best-in-class employers in a tax efficient manner. Sovereign Trust (Hong Kong) is highly experienced in consulting on and constructing these structures. Our consultants would be happy to meet with you and discuss if and how they might be of benefit to yourself and your business.
Yuseff Murphy
Head of Pensions - Sovereign Trust (Hong Kong) Ltd
View all Blog Hong Kong


What is the Role of Master of Science (MSc), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Students and Postdoctoral Fellows in the CRC in Person-Centred Interventions for Older Adults with Multimorbidity Program?
Dr. Markle-Reid takes pride in guiding the next generation of scholars and provides the building blocks for them to carry out their own research. Graduate students have the opportunity to work on their thesis within ongoing research projects to highlight real-life issues and narrow the research-to-practice gap. Students are involved in the Canada Research Chair (CRC) program in the areas of protocol development, data collection and analysis, evaluation of implementation and writing. They also participate in conferences, co-author publications in peer-reviewed journals and attend research team and community stakeholder meetings. Postdoctoral fellows are directly involved in training and mentoring graduate and undergraduate student trainees.
Dr. Markle-Reid also hosts a Seminar Series entitled Research Issues in the Development, Evaluation, and Translation of Nurse-Led Interventions, for graduate students and faculty members.
Why Train as a Student with the CRC in Person-Centred Interventions for Older Adults with Multimorbidity Program?
Students have the opportunity to conduct research, teach and receive financial support with the assistance of McMaster University School of Nursing (SON) and the Aging, Community and Health Research Unit (ACHRU).
If you are interested in becoming a student in the CRC in Aging program please email Dr. Markle-Reid your resume.


Your startup and entrepreneurial coworking community in the heart of Eau Claire, WI.
CoLab's mission is to remove barriers by creating accessibility in a shared workspace and serving as a community for startups and entrepreneurs across the full spectrum of technology and entrepreneurship to have their ideas supported and accelerated by giving them access to a larger network, diverse perspectives, and the local startup ecosystem.
Provides you a dedicated desk that includes a locker with key access for personal belongings, partitions for member privacy, and access to meeting rooms, phone booths and additional complimentary amenities provided by CoLab.
$110/month - 3 month commitment - Access from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Provides you access to the common space floating desks equipped with power stations on a first come, first serve basis. This membership will also provide you with access to meeting rooms, phone booths and additional complimentary amenities provided by CoLab.
$120/month - Month-to-month - Access from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Provides you access to the common space floating desks equipped with power stations on a first come, first serve basis. This membership will also proved you with access to meeting room, phone booths and additional complimentary amenities provided by CoLab.
$15/day - Access from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The daily drop-in provides you access to the common space floating desks equipped with power stations on a first come, first serve basis. You will also be provided access to meeting rooms, phone booths and additional complimentary amenities provided by CoLab.
This week will provide activities that focus on increasing the awareness for local programs that create jobs, advance career development opportunities and increase the quality of life in the Chippewa Valley. More to come!
May 16: 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
CoLab is officially open and on sale and we're celebrating with a grand opening event highlighting some of the amazing startups that have been with us from the beginning!
Join us this evening from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. as we showcase the next up-and-coming businesses that got their start right here in Eau Claire.
Starting in June, Eau Claire's One Million Cups will host their weekly Wednesday meetups at CoLab from 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. Join local entrepreneurs as they present their startups to the thriving peer network of founders in Eau Claire. The coffee is encouraged.


1 Now the land was in bitter need of food.
2 And when the grain which they had got in Egypt was all used up, their father said to them, Go again and get us a little food.
3 And Judah said to him, The man said to us with an oath, You are not to come before me again without your brother.
5 But if you will not send him, we will not go down: for the man said to us, You are not to come before me if your brother is not with you.
6 And Israel said, Why were you so cruel to me as to say to him that you had a brother?
7 And they said, The man put a number of questions to us about ourselves and our family, saying, Is your father still living? have you another brother? And we had to give him answers; how were we to have any idea that he would say, Come back with your brother?
8 Then Judah said to Israel, his father, Send the boy with me, and let us be up and going, so that we and you and our little ones may not come to destruction.
9 Put him into my care and make me responsible for him: if I do not give him safely back to you, let mine be the sin for ever.
10 Truly, if we had not let the time go by, we might have come back again by now.
14 And may God, the Ruler of all, give you mercy before the man, so that he may give you back your other brother and Benjamin. If my children are to be taken from me; there is no help for it.
15 So they took what their father said for the man, and twice as much money in their hands, and Benjamin, and went on their journey to Egypt, and came before Joseph.
16 And when Joseph saw Benjamin, he said to his chief servant, Take these men into my house, and make ready a meal, for they will take food with me in the middle of the day.
17 And the servant did as Joseph said, and took the men into Joseph's house.
18 Now the men were full of fear because they had been taken into Joseph's house and they said, It is because of the money which was put back in our bags the first time; he is looking for something against us, so that he may come down on us and take us and our asses for his use.
22 As well as more money, with which to get food: we have no idea who put our money in our bags.
23 Then the servant said, Peace be with you: have no fear: your God, even the God of your father, has put wealth in your bags for you: I had your money. Then he let Simeon come out to them.
24 And the servant took them into Joseph's house, and gave them water for washing their feet; and he gave their asses food.
25 And they got ready the things for Joseph before he came in the middle of the day: for word was given to them that they were to have a meal there.
26 And when Joseph came in, they gave him the things which they had for him, and went down to the earth before him.
27 And he said, How are you? is your father well, the old man of whom you were talking to me? is he still living?
28 And they said, Your servant, our father, is well, he is still living. And they went down on their faces before him.
29 Then, lifting up his eyes, he saw Benjamin, his brother, his mother's son, and he said, Is this your youngest brother of whom you gave me word? And he said, God be good to you, my son.
30 Then Joseph's heart went out to his brother, and he went quickly into his room, for he was overcome with weeping.
31 Then, after washing his face, he came out, and controlling his feelings said, Put food before us.
32 And they put a meal ready for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians who were with him by themselves; because the Egyptians may not take food with the Hebrews, for that would make them unclean.
33 And they were all given their seats before him in order of birth, from the oldest to the youngest: so that they were looking at one another in wonder.
34 And Joseph sent food to them from his table, but he sent five times as much to Benjamin as to any of the others. And they took wine freely with him.


RAM.Bo256 is a RAM Add-On Board for the HCS12 Microcontrollers. It provides 256KB of RAM for easy debugging and code download. The schematic diagram, circuit description and necessary software will be published on this project page. It can be plugged directly onto a DP256 "Barracuda" EVB (Motorola) or a HCS12 T-Board (Elektronikladen) as shown in the picture above.
Some features were added with the introduction of Enhanced Version V1.3 starting April 2004. When using default settings the new version behaves exactly the same way as V1.1.
In order to access the external RAM, the HCS12 must be initialized properly. The following script file shows how this can be accomplished using the NoICE Remote Debugger.
First, the debugger will issue a reset and the MCU will start in Single Chip Mode. After that, the debugger must perform a number of control register accesses, as detailed below. As a result, the Multiplexed External Bus Interface is prepared to access the RAM.Bo256 ressources.
The final step is to switch over to Expanded Mode by accessing the MODE register. The MCU will then "see" the external RAM in the address range $4000..$7FFF. Specific portions (pages) of the external RAM can be selected by setting PORTK. Since one page is 16KB, the total number of pages is 16 (16x16KB=256KB).


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Updated April 5, 2019 at 1:29 PM
CFM awarded $13.2M to provide spare P-8A Poseidon engine for Britain
Allen Cone
The P-8A is a modification of the Boeing 737-800ERX passenger plane. It is the Navy's multi-mission maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft fitted for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, including torpedoes and missiles. Photo by Darren Koch/Wikipedia Commons
April 4 (UPI) -- The Defense Department has awarded CFM International a $13.2 million contract to provide one spare engine for the P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft for Britain.
The deal exercises an option on a previously awarded contract, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.
Fifty-five percent of the work will be performed in Villaoche, France, and 45 percent in Evendale, Ohio. Work is expected to be complete in January 2020.
Foreign military sales funds in the full amount of the contract have been obligated at time of the award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines of France, builds and supports the CFM56 and LEAP series of turbofan engines.
The P-8A, a modification of the Boeing 737-800ERX passenger plane, is the Navy's multi-mission maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft. It is fitted for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, including torpedoes and missiles, according to the U.S. Navy.
Last October, Boeing built its 100th P-8A in October 2018, and several more on order for the United States and other nations.
On March 19, the Defense Department awarded a $326 million contract to Boeing Co. for upgrades to the P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft.
Boeing awarded $428M for modifications to P-8A Poseidon Boeing awarded $2.46B for P-8A patrol planes for U.S., U.K., Norway AAR, Boeing, StandardAero contracted for P-8A Poseidon support
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What is in the food parcel?
The food parcel contains none-perishable items for each person named on the voucher. Whenever possible, subject to availability, we also offer fresh fruit and vegetables and toiletries. We also accommodate dietary requirement such as vegetarianism, allergies etc, as best we can.
What happens when clients go to the distribution centre?
Clients will always be treated with respect and compassion at the distribution centre. They are offered refreshments and a chance to talk with one of the volunteers. Often clients are signposted to another agency who may be able to help them to ensure the crisis is resolved, or there may be a part of the Big Help Project that can help them, for example with debt or unemployment.


Okay folks, this will be the last entry about my Euro trip and then I will return to the fabulous happenings of NYC (although we are currently hunkering down for Hurricane Sandy and I am trapped in an apartment for potentially three days and nights with two of my best friends but more on that and if we are still friends later).
One of my last days in Amsterdam, I went to the cutesy little touristy town of Zaanse Schans because I *had* to see a windmill. And when I say this is a touristy town, I really mean, I don't think I have done anything more touristy in NYC...I went to a Dutch clock museum and a wooden shoe museum which is probably something that 90-year-olds do but I loved it. I also climbed up to the top of a windmill and did not get caught in any of the sails by the straps of my overalls - is that from a cartoon or did my crazy mind make it up? I wasn't *actually* wearing overalls.
As you may know, my trip this month was my first time to "mainland Europe", although I have explored London and many areas of Ireland. I wanted to explore another country while I was away since it's so easy via train over there. Initially, Davesh and I were going to travel through Northern France, hitting up Paris, Giverny, Rouen, Honfleur, Bayeux, Normandy, AND Mont St. Michel BUT we didn't exactly plan things before I arrived in the Netherlands and the ticket to Paris was too much moola for a day and a half of travel, so we ended up booking train tickets last minute to Belgium instead and traveled from Amsterdam to Antwerp to Bruges to Antwerp to Brussels to Antwerp to Amsterdam.
While in Bruges, we climbed 366 steps to the top of the Bell Tower (built between the years 1300 and 1486), went to a few different churches/cathedrals – including Basilica of the Holy Blood which had on display a relic with the alleged blood of Jesus himself and Church of our Lady with a Michelangelo statue of Mary and the babe, went on a Belgian beer brewery tour, and ate chocolate and frites (though not together).
We got to Antwerp around nine at night and walked around a little to our hostel. I kept hearing Antwerp described as "posh" and although originally not totally digging that word (can't stop thinking about Victoria Beckham), it really is the right word for the city. It's kind of like Soho, if Soho also had beautiful and intricate buildings from the 1600s.
We were pretty tired and I'll admit, I was kind of a buzzkill (too much chocolate and frites?) so we didn't do the city nightlife that we would have done if we hadn't gotten up so early that morning to start our journey. It tells you a lot about the nightlife that when we went for waffles at 10 am no place was open yet since no one wakes up that early. (Typically, that would be my kind of city!) There is not really a lot to *see* in Antwerp and it was pretty rainy for the morning so when places opened, we ate waffles and hightailed it to Brussels early afternoon.
In Brussels, we walked around the city for a while, saw their famous fountain statue from 1619 of a little boy urinating (and if that isn't weird enough, he has 700 costumes that they dress him up in), went to the Belgian Comic Strip Center (where my dad's comic strip is *not* displayed unfortunately), the Magritte Museum, and of course ate lots of waffles and frites.
I think we spent the perfect amount of time in each city. I wouldn't necessarily say that anyone should plan an entire vacation to Belgium, BUT if you are already in the area, it is worth a side trip, if for nothing else but to cross a country off your list and to eat TONS of chocolate, waffles, and frites. And aren't chocolate, waffles, and frites what life is all about anyway?


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Understanding Pre-term Labor for Diagnostics and Therapeutics
Home/News, Press Releases, Reproductive Sciences And Regenerative Medicine, Research Units/Understanding Pre-term Labor for Diagnostics and Therapeutics
Research conducted at the CNPRC on chorioamnionitis-induced preterm labor in women has been recommended by Faculty of 1000, in recognition of the research's high impact in its field. Faculty of 1000 is a collaboration of over 5,000 world-wide faculty experts who identify important articles in biology and medical research publications. Articles that are selected by Faculty of 1000 are rated and highlighted for their significance. The recognized publication is led by a team of investigators from Cincinnati Children's Hospital including Suhas Kallapur MD, Alan Jobe, MD and Claire Chougnet PhD, all of whom conducted their study at the CNPRC in collaboration with Associate Director of Research Lisa Miller, PhD.
Chorioamnionitis is a bacterial infection of the placenta and fetal membranes that is frequently associated with preterm labor in women. This inflammatory condition is poorly defined and controversy still surrounds its mechanism. For instance, do lower genital organisms ascend into the upper genital tract causing a diffuse, chronic deciduitis (a type of long-lasting inflammation in pregnancy that affects the endometrial stromal tissue) which then invades the amniotic cavity? Or, do lower genital organisms initially disseminate into the amniotic cavity from a focal and not generalized inflammation, resulting in signaling to the uterine lining from the amniotic cavity?
This study by Drs. Kallapur, Jobe and Chougnet may provide some clues to answer these questions. The research team initiated their study with the hypothesis that neutrophils (primary white blood cells that respond to a bacterial infection) recruited to the decidua would be the major producers of cytokines, a category of proteins that are important in cell signaling and are especially important in the immune system. Due to their pro-inflammatory action, cytokines tend to make a disease worse by producing fever, inflammation, and tissue destruction.
In previous studies that were also conducted at the CNPRC, the authors showed that fetal exposure to pro-inflammatory cytokines via the amnionic cavity during the third trimester of pregnancy in rhesus macaques resulted in chorioamnionitis and fetal inflammation characterized by a skewed distribution between T-regulatory and interleukin-17 positive T lymphocytes in fetal lymphoid tissue.
Following this line of inquiry, the inference from the current study is that decidua neutrophils act as amplifiers of the initial inflammation that is initially triggered by as yet unidentified cells, but may also act as regulators to dampen the inflammation.
The results are significant because neutrophil influx is not a prominent feature of mouse models of inflammation induced preterm labor, but humans and macaques have a significant chorio-decidua neutrophil influx as a prominent feature of chorioamnionitis. These results help to understand the contribution of neutrophils to the pathogenesis of chorioamnionitis-induced preterm labor, and reinforce the value of using nonhuman primates as a relevant model in developing diagnostics and designing therapeutic strategies for human preterm labor.
Presicce P, Senthamaraikannan P, Alvarez M, Rueda CM, Cappelletti M, Miller LA, Jobe AH, Chougnet CA, Kallapur SG. Chorioamnionitis-induce Neutrophil Recruitment and Activation in Decidua with Intra-Amniotic IL-1beta in the Preterm Rhesus Macaque. Biol Reprod. 2015 Feb;92(2):56. doi: 10.1095/biolreprod.114.124420.
web.cnprc@ucdavis.edu2017-08-30T23:07:06+00:00March 10th, 2015|Tags: chorioamnionitis, CNPRC, fetal inflammation, monkeys, preterm labor, UC Davis|


Goodwood Revival is without a doubt the best organized historic weekend. A seemingly desperate attempt to relive the past, everything from the tickets to the mini skirts are retrograde at Goodwood and we love it.
While the RAC TT takes center stage, this year was distinguished by the 50th anniversary of the Mini. A complete race was dedicated to the 1963-1967 Cooper S and provided the weekend's best racing. Furthermore, a parade included some of the most important and least important Minis as well as Mr Bean.
Stirling Moss held his 80th birthday at the track. To commemorate his tremendous career, 80 cars which he raced filled a parade. Included were four Aston Martin DBR1s and two DBR2s!
Unlike other classic weekends, Goodwood is eyecandy at every turn. There is no better proof than Dirk de Jager's fantastic Gallery which features all of the sports car classes and more.


My work is stressful at times. I work with kids, and they are great. Sometimes they go a bit cray-cray, but who doesn't. It's the parents that drive me crazy, and my co-workers. Some pretty tough times are behind me. (Long story short: I had just started working and was thrown into the fire from the get go.). And so, I sat there thinking about things and realised I do have some things in my life that save me a little every day, and after the leap you'll get a peek at some of them.
This is my ultimate fetish. I love shoes. So much. It ain't even funny. I fangirled about my shoes here. If I have some extra money I'll use it to buy shoes. Maybe that's how junkies feel when the get a fix, I don't know. But I do know that they make me happy. All I have to do is wear a cute pair of shoes and I already feel a lot better.
My great escape. What better tool to use to escape reality than reading. I love to read. Whether it's professional literature or simple fiction I feel like I leave reality. I tune out and leave my work and other troubles outside.
My fuel. My favourite cup is the first cup of the day. I have a slice of buttered bread and a cup of dark, black, no sugar, Turkish coffee. My 20 minutes of peace. The other cups of coffee through the day make me happy and provide a break and a few minutes rest.
My joy. I love to eat cake. My faves are those with a lot of cream, but I'm not really picky. They add sugar to my life.
A smile on my face. I don't earn a lot of money. But I try to save as much as I can and go somewhere. Traveling completely relaxes me, takes me away literally and metaphorically. Nothing matters but the place I'm visiting and exploring. No one exists, no troubles, no jobs, nothing. But the best part comes after I come home. All I have to do is think about the places I've seen and the people I've met and I smile. I feel this genuine happiness and joy.
So, our, dear readers, what is fuel to your life? Tell us in the comments!


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My development courses at Columbia
I've mostly readied my syllabus for my Fall undergraduate development course, POLS W3503: The Political Economy of African Development. See the draft here.
I will teach a similar (but slightly less Africa-focused) Master's level course in the Spring at SIPA, INAF U6164: Political Economy of Development. Syllabus available in January.
For PhD students, I'll also have a Spring course on Political Economy of Development that is much more research focused, on theory, empirics, and replications.
24 thoughts on "My development courses at Columbia"
Mark on October 1, 2012 at 12:09 am said:
Can you repost the PDF with live links? Looks like they were stripped from the syllabus, so all you see are blue, underlined words but no underlying links. Thanks
facebook_roberto.romero.90 on September 8, 2012 at 7:47 pm said:
Wished this class was offered at UCSD.
dan on September 6, 2012 at 12:33 pm said:
any chance you could make the link to the "books rarely read" live?
Andrew Hurst on September 4, 2012 at 3:25 am said:
Great syllabus. Thanks for sharing. My only suggestion would be to think about including consideration of regional integration efforts in Africa, of both the political and economic kind. The African Union's raison d'etre is to help member states address Africa's development challenges, be they related to peace and security, or economic integration. The idea of pan-Africanism and the institutional architecture it has given rise to is an important dimension to the political economy of development in Africa. Selfishly too, if you included readings on this in your course, it would save those of us that are working to support regional integration the effort of tracking down the latest in critical perspectives on regional integration in Africa! Next time you are in Addis, I'd be happy to discuss…
Eric on September 1, 2012 at 10:20 am said:
Yes, if only the lectures were available online.
AnimalSpiritEd on August 31, 2012 at 10:33 pm said:
Thanks for putting this online @cblatts #ancoraimparo "@cblatts: My development courses at Columbia http://t.co/qXSlPfL6"
NicSpaull on August 31, 2012 at 9:13 am said:
RT @owenbarder: Chris Blattman's syllabus and reading list for Political Economy of African Development http://t.co/BC8XiKBj @cblatts
toddjmoss on August 31, 2012 at 7:14 am said:
Stellar reading list! "@cblatts: My development courses at Columbia http://t.co/mL8GBpeG"
karicketts on August 31, 2012 at 4:14 am said:
mlemich on August 31, 2012 at 2:57 am said:
eoinmcguirk on August 31, 2012 at 2:39 am said:
adelaigue on August 31, 2012 at 2:27 am said:
fp2p on August 31, 2012 at 2:13 am said:
jpshazza on August 31, 2012 at 1:57 am said:
RT @robcrilly: RT @owenbarder: Chris Blattman's syllabus and reading list for Political Economy of African Development http://t.co/X7xBx …
Marguer_d on August 31, 2012 at 1:57 am said:
RT @owenbarder: Chris Blattman's syllabus and reading list for Political Economy of African Development http://t.co/QXvwbwzL @cblatts
robcrilly on August 31, 2012 at 1:53 am said:
RT @owenbarder: Chris Blattman's syllabus and reading list for Political Economy of African Development http://t.co/X7xBxLYR @cblatts
owenbarder on August 31, 2012 at 1:50 am said:
Chris Blattman's syllabus and reading list for Political Economy of African Development http://t.co/BC8XiKBj @cblatts
udy on August 30, 2012 at 8:23 pm said:
To be so lucky as to take this class… "@cblatts: My development courses at Columbia http://t.co/PYBcVcKy"
Deanrizzetti on August 30, 2012 at 3:24 pm said:
Great looking course. If only the lectures were online….
CitizenEmpodera on August 30, 2012 at 1:02 pm said:
RT @cblatts: My development courses at Columbia http://t.co/7pFHmBCP
kamromero on August 30, 2012 at 12:19 pm said:
ConduitJournal on August 30, 2012 at 12:15 pm said:
My development courses at Columbia http://t.co/UvfOgXjP
dougsatre on August 30, 2012 at 12:15 pm said:
@cblatts I can't thank you enough for sharing this with those of us who are working – but wish we were still in school
kukkaro on August 30, 2012 at 12:09 pm said:


After going along to Grapevine's Re-Imaging Waiting Times Ideas Factory, I was buzzing with ideas of how young people could use doodling as a way to improve their fine motor skills.
Many children wait for a long time to see an occupational therapist. They often find out lots of things that they could've been doing to help themselves whilst they waited. A large number of children don't need a specialist assessment but just some guidance. Imagine what the impact would be if they receive some input much quicker.
I felt privileged to be asked to deliver a workshop at the Summer Camp that was organised by Grapevine and Occupational Therapists from CWPT. They had identified a group of young people that we would work with to help assess their fine motor skills.
My task was to help the young people create Feel Good Monster Doodles using pre-cut stencils to draw around and bringing the Feel Good Rock faces alive by sticking eyes and drawing smiles on them. We had a fab fun filled the afternoon and produced some amazing creations. There were other fab activities such as Tactile Twister, dressing up and making stress balls. The Occupational Therapists were able to assess the fine motor skills of the young people and offer solutions to their parents.