Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal

In the late 20th century, and especially at the turn of the 21st, the Catholic Church in several countries was confronted with a series of allegations concerning sexual abuse of children under the legal age of consent ¹ by Catholic clergy and religious. The controversy was at its most famous when it hit the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, several countries, including Canada, had already faced similar controversies with high-profile cases such as the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Duplessis Orphans in the province of Quebec. Well-publicized charges that some members of the Church in certain instances deliberately covered up such crimes have fueled criticism of the institution and its leadership. While not every allegation stood up to scrutiny, some did, resulting in apologies and restitution by the Church and the criminal prosecution of those who engaged in the acts. It should be noted that the Roman Catholic Church doctrine has always considered the sexual abuse of children to be mortally sinful.

Threefold allegations

The allegations concerned: :1. The sexual abuse by some religious and secular clergy of children with whom they had contact in the community; :2. The sexual abuse of children in some religious-run houses, orphanages and schools, by both clergy and laity; :3. The policy of Catholic clergy in dealing with the abuse, namely a failure to report what were criminal acts to the local police, and efforts to pressure the victims, their families and independent witnesses into not reporting the incidents to civil authorities. Canon law (internal church law) was often given priority over secular criminal law, an action which led some Catholic Church leaders to be accused of "perverting the course of justice", itself a criminal act. (Note: the fight between Church Law and Civil Law's jurisdiction over the clergy is a centuries-old political struggle.) While not every allegation stood up to scrutiny, some did, resulting in the criminal prosecution of those who engaged in the acts. Senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law (USA) and Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns (Ireland) resigned over their mishandling of cases in their dioceses and in particular their failure to report incidents to police. In the aftermath, some national hierarchies introduced new rules of childcare and in the reporting of sex abuse allegations. However, very few dioceses experienced a drop in numbers of Catholics attending weekly Mass.

Abuse in the community

The largely unrestricted contact clergyman had with children (through teaching in schools and parish links with families) meant that a child molester in the priesthood was a serious danger to children. In part, this was because priests and religious officials and persons across all religions were viewed as trustworthy individuals, whom families allowed to get close to them. The clergy were involved in every aspect of their community's and its families' lives; from baptising the young to the weekly celebration of Mass, giving children First Communion to marrying couples and being the celebrant of their funerals. Apart from direct family connections, many Catholic families sent their children to Catholic schools, where Catholic priests either taught as teachers or visited regularly as the local parish priest or curate. Participation in the Catholic faith involved a close association with, and proximity to, priests. While the vast majority of priests never sought to abuse a single child, the small minority who did had easy access to children. One of the worst examples of a clergyman using his links with families to facilitate the abuse of children occurred in Ireland, where one priest ² systematically raped and sexually abused hundreds of children between 1945 and 1990. The scandal over the Fr. Brendan Smyth case, and the systematic obstruction of justice in his case by the Norbertine Order caused immense damage to the credibility of the Catholic church in Ireland, as did other cases, such as that of Fr. Jim Grennan, a parish priest, who abused children as they prepared for First Communion, and Fr. Sean Fortune, who committed suicide before his trial for the rape of children. The abuse by Grennan and others in the Diocese of Ferns in south-east Ireland led to the resignation of the local bishop, Brendan Comiskey while similar scandals in the Archdiocese of Dublin severely damaged the reputation of its archbishop, Cardinal Connell. Although there were other social factors at play, some have argued that the ten-year drop in the percentage of Irish people attending weekly Mass (from 63% to 48%) was related to these events.

Abuse in institutions

Like most religions, Catholicism has a direct involvement in other areas beyond parish work. Its many religious orders operate schools, hospitals, orphanages, and reformatory schools, and are involved in social work. Some of these institutions have been associated with allegations of sexual abuse of children. While the allegations made apply to only a minority of institutions and a minority of people working in that minority of institutions, enquiries have established the existence of both abuse and of a failure of the leaderships running the institutions, when confronted with evidence of abuse, to act in the best interests of the children or in accordance with the criminal law in their jurisdiction. Governmental institutions have also been heavily criticised for neglecting to adequately ensure that children placed in those institutions by agents of the state were properly looked after. Some of the most serious allegations of abuse were made against clergy who either worked in the institutions or who were allowed unlimited visitation rights and access to children. As with the secular clergy in parishes, the majority of allegations have resulted in criminal convictions. Perhaps the most serious charges facing the church in the contemporary world relate to Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, a Catholic order of priests founded in Mexico in the 1940s. In the 1990s, Maciel was accused by nine former seminarians of his order with molestation. One subsequently retracted his accusation, saying that it was a plot intended to discredit the Legion. Maciel has always denied the accusations. However, he recently stepped down as head of the order. Whether this is due to the charges is hard to determine.

Flawed policies

Abusers moved from location to location

Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish rather than seeking to have them stripped of their faculties. Many dioceses submitted priests guilty of child abuse for intensive psychotherapeutic treatment and assessment, with the priests only resuming parochial duties when the bishop was advised that it was safe for them to be so assigned. In response to questions, defenders of bishops' actions suggest that in re-assigning priests for duty after treatment they were acting on the basis of the best medical advice then available. Critics have questioned whether bishops are necessarily able to form accurate judgments on the nature of the recovery of a priest.

Failure to report criminal acts to police

From a legal perspective, the single worst failure—other than the actual abuse of children—was the unwillingness of certain Church leaders to report the incidents directly to the police. This phenomenon occurred in every country with rare exceptions. This is proving to have extremely negative consequences. The Norbertines, for example, knew not merely of Fr. Brendan Smyth's apparently pedophilic tendencies but also of allegations of sexually interfering with children from as early as 1945, yet it was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the two police forces in Ireland, the Garda Síochána and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, were able to gather sufficient information to prosecute Smyth. In May 2001, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (at that time prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and since made Pope Benedict XVI) sent a letter[http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010518_epistula_graviora%20delicta_lt.html] to all Catholic Bishops declaring that the Church's investigations into claims of child sex abuse claims were subject to the pontifical secret and were not to be reported to law enforcement, on pain of excommunication. However, the letter did not discourage victims from reporting the abuse itself to the police; the secrecy related only to the internal investigation.

Allegations of systematic plots to conceal evidence

Reviewers of the Smyth case differ as to whether it was a deliberate plot to conceal the nature of his behaviour, or whether much of what happened involved complete incompetence by his superiors, the abbots of Kilnacrott Abbey, or perhaps a mixture of an institution presuming that what happened to its members was its own business, plus the complete incompetence of his superiors, who failed to grasp the human and legal consequences of the actions of a particularly manipulative child molester, who found ways to circumvent whatever restrictions the abbots placed on him. (Cardinal Daly, both as Bishop of Down and Connor (where some of the abuse took place) and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, is recorded as having been privately scathing at the Norbertine "incompetence".) Citing a belief in an international Catholic conspiracy, a Louisville, Kentucky lawyer filed suit in June 2004 against the Vatican, alleging Roman participation in a cover-up of sexual abuse problems. Legal experts predict an unsuccessful outcome to this case, given the sovereignty of the Holy See and the lack of evidence of Vatican complicity. Sovereign immunity however, was recently denied upon appeal in a separate (WW II/ Vatican Bank/Ustazhe Genocide) United States federal lawsuit .

Payments to victims

Some have even gone so far as to allege that Church members paid off victims of child abuse, either in settlement of compensation claims, or in order to prevent them reporting to the police. In the mid-1990s, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Connell of Dublin lent money to a priest who had abused altar boy Andrew Madden; this money was used to pay compensation to Madden and to prevent him from reporting the abuse to the police. Connell later claimed never to have paid money to a victim, insisting that he had simply lent money to a priest who just happened to use the money to pay off his victim.

Implications of the scandal

Celibacy and the scandal

Critics have suggested that the discipline of celibacy in the Catholic priesthood offers a means by which priests with sexual urges that are aimed towards children rather than adults can hide those tendencies, their lack of sexual feelings towards adults being unnoticeable in a completely unmarried clergy. There have been suggestions that child molesters deliberately enter the Catholic clergy due to the "cover" its celibacy provides, and due to the fact that clergy have frequent access to children; these theories, however, remain unproven. Though child molestation rings have been found, the fact that there is no noticeable difference between the level of child-oriented sexual activity among the unmarried Catholic clergy and the married clergy of other denominations suggests that child molesters as a group have not specially targeted the Catholic clergy for entry, though it seems likely that some child molesters have entered its ordained ministry as they have other ministries elsewhere. There is no evidence whatsoever that child molestation is in any way related to celibacy itself. Some child abusers were themselves the victims of child abuse, as children, their sexual abuse tendencies being formed long before they reach the age of forming adult relationships. While some child abusers may prove incapable of forming stable adult relationships (though many do, producing the phenomenon of parents who abuse their children) their celibate status is not a cause of their abuse of children but a symptom of their sexual desires for sexual activity with children, not adults.

Seminary training

Clergy themselves have suggested their seminary training offered little to prepare them for a lifetime of celibate sexuality; a report submitted to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971, called The Role of the Church in the Causation, Treatment and Prevention of the Crisis in the Priesthood by Dr. Conrad Baars, a Dutch-born Catholic psychiatrist from Minnesota, and based on a study of 1500 priests, suggested that some clergy had "psychosexual" problems. It is a matter of speculation as to how much of the Catholic Church's mishandling of sex abuse cases was influenced by such problems. In some countries in the aftermath of the crisis caused by the sex abuse allegations, the Church has begun reforming seminary training to provide candidates for the priesthood with training to deal with a life of celibacy and sexual abstention. Homosexuality within the clergy has also come under scrutiny, in large part due to the disproportionate number of abuse cases involving post-pubescent males. (See Ephebophilia.)

Other Catholic teachings, practices

The Catholic Church clearly teaches the sexual abuse of children to be gravely sinful. In the Catechism of the Catholic Churchs list of moral offences, one finds: ::"...any sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children or adolescents entrusted to their care. The offense is compounded by the scandalous harm done to the physical and moral integrity of the young, who will remain scarred by it, all their lives; and the violation of responsibility for their upbringing." (CCC 2389). In the New Testament, Jesus says: "[H]e that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18:6). Despite these teachings, some critics have charged that specific doctrines or traditional practices in Catholicism contributed to the problem. Catholic teaching affirms that so long as the officiant has been validly ordained, his personal sins have no effect on the validity of the Masses, absolutions, baptisms, and other sacraments he has administered. The doctrine of apostolic succession makes valid ordinations and institutional affiliation the chief consideration in clerical status. In other cases, traditional Catholics have made the charge that the Second Vatican Council fostered a climate that encouraged priests to abuse children. In the January 27, 2003 edition of Time Magazine, actor and traditional catholic Mel Gibson charged that "...Vatican II corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." However abuse by priests was occurring long before the start of Vatican II. It is also widely understood that Catholic clergy are in short supply, at least in the United States. The doctrines outlined above and this understaffing combine, it has been claimed, to make Catholic clergy extraordinary valuable human capital. It is alleged that the Catholic hierarchy acted to preserve this human capital and ensure that they were still available to supply priestly services, in the face of serious allegations that these priests were unfit for duty. Others, however, disagree and believe that the Church's mishandling of the sex abuse cases merely reflected prevailing attitudes of the time towards such activity, in which the tendency was to suppress the information lest it cause scandal and a loss of trust in the institution, an approach reflected in the manner in which the media and secular organisations hid damaging information or ignored it; from the sexual promiscuity of leading politicians to domestic violence. They see the Church as having made horrendous but genuine mistakes, their leaders being out of touch with society's increasing demand for exposure and retribution. Yet others—including non-Catholic academics such as Philip Jenkins—have observed that the Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by a secular media which they say fails to highlight similar sexual scandals in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, various Protestant churches, and the Jewish and Islamic communities. The term paedophile priests, widely used in the media, implies a distinctly higher rate of child molesters within the Roman Catholic priesthood when in reality its 1.5–2% is no higher than any other segment of society and lower than many.
Episcopal resignations

- Bernard Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, United States had come under enormous public pressure to resign after Church documents suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. There is, for example, the priest John Geoghan, who was shifted from one parish to another despite knowledge of his depredations by Cardinal Law. The Vatican announced on December 13, 2002 that Pope John Paul II had accepted Law's resignation as Archbishop and reassigned him to an administrative position in the Roman Curia and named him archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Cardinal Law later presided at one of the Pope's funeral masses. :Bishop Séan P. O'Malley, the Capuchin friar who replaced Law as archbishop, was forced to sell a good deal of valuable real estate and to close a number of churches in order to pay $120,000,000 in claims against the archdiocese.
- Bishop Brendan Comiskey, Bishop of Ferns resigned under similar pressure.
- Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër had to resign from his post as Archbishop of Vienna over allegations of sexual abuse in 1995.
- Two Bishops of Palm Beach, Florida have resigned due child abuse allegations, Joseph Keith Symons, who was replaced by Anthony O'Connell, who also resigned. O'Connell was replaced by O'Malley, who had earlier been appointed Bishop of Fall River following an abuse scandal, and who would later replace Cardinal Law in Boston.
Bankruptcy
Citing monetary concerns arising from impending trials on sex abuse claims, the Archdiocese of Portland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 6, 2004, hours before two abuse trials were set to begin, becoming the first Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy. If granted, bankruptcy would mean pending and future lawsuits would be settled in federal bankruptcy court. The archdiocese had settled more than one hundred previous claims for a sum of over $53 million. The filing seeks to protect parish assets, school money and trust funds from abuse victims: the archdiocese's contention is that parish assets are not the archdiocese's assets. Plaintiffs in the cases against the archdiocese have argued that the Catholic church is a single entity, and that the Vatican should be liable for any damages awarded in judgement of pending sexual abuse cases. The Diocese of Tucson likewise filed bankruptcy in September, 2004, as has the Diocese of Spokane in December of that year. The Diocese of Tucson reached an agreement with its victims, which the bankruptcy judge approved June 11, 2005, specifying terms that included allowing the diocese reorganization to continue in return for a $22.2 million settlement.
Ferns Inquiry 2005
On 22 October 2005 a government-commissioned report compiled by a former Irish Supreme Court judge delivered a damning indictment of the handling of clerical sex abuse in the Irish diocese of Ferns. The report revealed over 100 cases of child sex abuse in the small diocese, involving a number of clergymen, including Monsignor Micheál Ledwidth, the former head of the National Catholic seminary, Maynooth College. Among the facts revealed were
- the "inexplicable" failure of Bishop Donal Herlihy to exclude clearly unsuitable candidates from the priesthood;
- his failure to report incidents of proven sexual abuse to the legal authorities and his failure to acknowledge that abusers needed to be kept from children;
- the failure of his successor, Brendan Comiskey to report incidents of abuse and remove abusers from positions where they worked with children. Among the cases revealed were
- the rape of teenage girls on the altar of a church by one priest;
- the use of blackmail by another priest to force children to perform sex acts on him; The report was also highly critical of the failure of the Garda Siochána to properly investigate incidents reported, and in particular the disappearance of one file detailing serious incidents of clerical sex abuse. The local health authorities also failed to protect children even when aware of allegations. There was however praise in subsequent debates and among survivors of abuse of the actions of the new Apostolic Administrator (acting bishop) for instituting wholesale reforms, including the toughest anti-abuse rules in any diocese in the Catholic Church, and also his willingness to hand over all files and all information to the inquiry. Victims' spokesman and himself one of the victims of one of the abusers, Colm O'Gorman praised the administrator and compared his actions with the inaction and incompetence of his predecessors.
Forth-coming Dublin Inquiry and Irish Parliamentary comment
Following November confirmation concerning a subsquent child sexual abuse Inquiry for the Diocese of Dublin, on November 09 2005, TD Liz O' Donnell, former Government Minister and member of the liberal Progressive Democrats governing alliance, spoke at length in the Irish Parliament concerning the necessary changes required following the Ferns report. O' Donnell stated that it was clear to her, and to everyone, that the Ferns report would prove to be entirely typical of any such report carried out in any Irish Diocese, and that therefore the relationship between Church and state in Ireland must now change from that of deference towards complete separation . O' Donnell characterised the Catholic Church in Ireland and as a whole as a secret, un-accountable, and anti-democratic organisation at variance with the State through its inability to uphold or adhere to civil law. She called for immediate financial auditing of all Church assets in Ireland . Liz O' Donnell also called for termination of deference to supposed Church morality in the fields of IV treatment, stem cell research, abortion, homosexuality and Third-world birth-control programs. Ireland does not possess civil legislation for the protection of children, and the references to separation of Church from State arises in the context of providing such legislatory enaction. Media programming containing debate upon the child sex-abuse scandals has focused particularly on the fact that Diocesan insurance policies against financial reparation claims by the victims were opened from 1987 throughout Ireland. The contradiction between this action and the complete inaction and failure at civil reporting, coupled with continuance of ministry by the very numerous offenders, has led to a point in Ireland where even the Church's senior theologian is unable to continue the general hierarchy claim of being within a "learning -curve" at that time. On state broadcast , it is admitted that indeed this contradiction is as indefensible as the crime and the seeking of insurance against sex abuse settlements overshadows the validity of what O' Donnell referred to as Catholic Church "denial" and "self-preservation" . The question of "canon law" and its quasi-legality in a modern state has been democratically raised amidst general popular shock that abusive rapist priests were authorised to continue ministry, or treated as if for alcoholism prior to re-instatement, or simply allowed full continuance of their abusive behaviour (as was the case in the seminary). The leading Irish theologian Father Twomey, on the same evening as the O'Donnell intervention, was unable to publicly affirm, on State broadcast, that any one of the 26 docesan bishops of Ireland would, in 1987, have understood or recognised that child sexual abuse (rape) was a civil crime. This contrasted weakly against Deputy O' Donnell's assertion as to the necessity for legal accountability of the Catholic Church in Ireland in 2005.
Footnotes
¹ The age of consent, that is, the age at which the law presumes a teenager has the physical, emotional and sexual maturity to make an informed adult decision to enter into sexual activity, differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from a low teenage in Italy and Spain to a mid to high teens age elsewhere, for example 16 in the United Kingdom, 17 in Ireland. (Some states also provide different ages of consent for homosexual boys as against heterosexual boys and girls.) Yet separately the law may specify a different age where a teenager ceases to be a child and becomes an adult. As a result, where a difference exists, it may be perfectly legal to have sex with a child where the individual, though still deemed a child in law, is above the age of consent specified in local legislation. ² Paedophilia and child sex abuse are not always the same: a paedophile may practice sexual abstinence, and not everyone who sexually abuses a child is a paedophile. ³ Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0195145976
See also

- Barry Ryan
- Hans Hermann Groër, Kurt Krenn (Austria)
- Jehovah's Witnesses and child sex abuse(for other religions with similar concerns)
- Paul Shanley
- John Geoghan
- Marcial Maciel
- Pontifical Secret
Additional reading

- Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0195145976
External links
General
- [http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm Sexual Abuse in Social Context - a Catholic League report]
- [http://www.stopitnow.com Stop it now] A campaign to prevent Child Sexual Abuse by calling on potential abusers to seek help
- [http://www.malesurvivor.org Male Survivor] - Overcoming sexual victimization of boys and men Ireland
- [http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/0401/comiskey01.html Bishop Brendan Comiskey's] United States
- [http://www.rcab.org/News/sexualAbuseStatement.html Cardinal Law's statement on child sex abuse in the Church]
- [http://www.usccb.org/comm/remarksanorm.htm Vatican-U.S. Mixed Commission on Charter and Norms for Protection of Children]
- [http://us.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/21/vatican.sex.abuse/ CNN - 22 March 2002 'Pope responds to sex abuse cases']
- [http://www.usccb.org/nrb/ National Review Board, John Jay, and Audit Reports]
- [http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=3592405 Experts: Tucson diocese settlement a bankruptcy model]
- [http://nytimes.com/2005/10/12/national/12priests.html?ei=5094&en=28d6f26f3cb2ed49&hp=&ex=1129176000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print Los Angeles Files Recount Decades of Priests' Abuse] October 12, 2005 New York Times Category:Catholic doctrines Category:Sex crimes Category:Scandals Category:Roman Catholic Church

20th century
The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begins with the year 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One was advanced, erroneously, by Stephen Jay Gould. He claimed that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989, rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st Century and is seen by some as not being truly a part of the 20th Century.
Overview
The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.
- Death rates
- Infant mortality
- Infectious disease
- Life expectancy
- Maternal death rates
- Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.
Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

- The assembly line and mass production of motor vehicles and other goods allowed manufacturers to produce more and cheaper products. This allowed the automobile to become the most important means of transportation.
- The invention of heavier-than-air flying machines and the jet engine allowed for the world to become "smaller". Space flight increased knowledge of the rest of the universe and allowed for global real-time communications via geosynchronous satellites.
- Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact
- Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication
- Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous computing, and all kinds of "intelligent" appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of exponentially growing calculation power (see supercomputer).
- The development of Nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides resulted in significantly higher agricultural yield.
- Advances in fundamental physics through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics led to the development of nuclear weapons (known informally as "the Bomb" and dropped on the industrial town of Hiroshima and the historic one of Nagasaki), the nuclear reactor, and the laser. Fusion power was studied extensively but remained an experimental technology at the end of the century.
- Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in Western societies.
- Most influential inventions in the 20th century: antibiotics, oral contraceptives, new plastics, transistors, Internet
- More...
Wars and politics

- Democratic nations began to extend voting privileges to all adults.
- Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the causes of World War I, the first of two wars to involve all the major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the British Commonwealth. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Ironically, it was said by many to be the 'War to end all Wars'.
- The economic and political aftermath of World War I led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe, and shortly to World War II. This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. While the First World War mainly cost lives among soldiers, civilians suffered greatly in the Second -- from the bombing of cities on both sides, and in the unprecedented German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust.
- During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, Communism became a major force in global politics, spreading all over the world: notably, to Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the western world, including wars in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1957 - 75).
- The "fall of Communism" in the late 1980s freed Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. It also led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism, and left the United States as the world's superpower.
- Through the League of Nations and, after World War II, the United Nations, international cooperation increased. Other efforts included the formation of the European Union, leading to a common currency in much of Western Europe, the euro around the turn of the millennium.
- The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the USA, the USSR, or China for defense.
- The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in a mostly Arab region of the world, fueled many conflicts in the region, which were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the Arab countries.
- The term Southeast Asia coined.
Culture and entertainment

- Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
- After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques women became more independent throughout the century.
- Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world. The Beatles, a 1960s British Rock and Roll band, becomes one of the most successful acts of all time, and is credited, in their experimental later albums, with permanently changing what was thought possible in popular music.
- Modern art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
- The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles.
- Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.
Disease and medicine

- Although the availability and quality of medicine continued to improve, epidemic diseases continued to spread, aided by modern transportation. An influenza pandemic, the Spanish Flu, killed 25 million between 1918 and 1919, while AIDS is yet uncured and treatments remain too expensive for wide use in developing countries.
- Advances in medicine, such as the invention of antibiotics, decreased the number of people dying from diseases. Contraceptive drugs and organ transplantation were developed. The discovery of DNA molecules and the advent of molecular biology allowed for cloning and genetic engineering.
Natural resources and the environment

- The widespread use of petroleum in industry -- both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane -- led to the vital geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became a center of geopolitical and military tension throughout the latter half of the century. (For example, oil was a factor in Japan's decision to go to war against the United States in 1941, and the oil cartel, OPEC, used an oil embargo of sorts in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s).
- A vast increase in fossil fuel consumption leads to depletion of natural resources, while air pollution has led to the develoment of an ozone hole and, many believe, global warming and both local and global climate change. The problem is increased by world-wide deforestation, also causing a loss of biodiversity. The problem of a depletion of natural resources is decreased by advances in drilling technology which led to a net increase in the amount of fossil fuel that is readily obtainable at the end of the century, as compared with the amount considered obtainable at the beginning of the century.
Significant people

World leaders

- Africa
- Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo
- Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire
- Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia
- Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya
- Idi Amin, Uganda
- Nelson Mandela, South Africa
- Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
- Gamal Abdal Nasser, Egypt
- Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana
- Julius Nyerere, Tanzania
- Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia
- Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya
- Haile Selassie, Ethiopia
- Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal
- Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinea
- Americas
- Juan Perón, Argentina
- Eva Perón, Argentina
- Getúlio Vargas, Brazil
- Luis Carlos Prestes, Brazil
- Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil
- Wilfrid Laurier, Canada
- William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada
- Pierre Trudeau, Canada
- Salvador Allende, Chile
- Augusto Pinochet, Chile
- Fidel Castro, Cuba
- Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Argentina/Cuba
- Emiliano Zápata, Mexico
- Pancho Villa, Mexico
- Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, Mexico
- Augusto César Sandino, Nicaragua
- Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Peru
- Alberto Kenya Fujimori, Peru
- Theodore Roosevelt, USA
- Woodrow Wilson,USA
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, USA
- Harry S Truman, USA
- Dwight Eisenhower, USA
- John F. Kennedy, USA
- Lyndon B. Johnson, USA
- Richard Nixon, USA
- Ronald Reagan, USA
- Bill Clinton, USA
- George H. W. Bush, USA
- José Batlle y Ordóñez, Uruguay
- Romulo Betancourt, Venezuela
- Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi, India
- Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore
- Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines
- Corazon Aquino, the Philippines
- Mao Zedong, People's Republic of China
- Deng Xiaoping, People's Republic of China
- Pol Pot, Cambodia
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan
- Indira Gandhi, India
- Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia
- Jawaharlal Nehru, India
- Emperor Hirohito, Japan
- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
- Sun Yat-sen, Republic of China
- Chiang Kai-shek, Republic of China
- Achmad Sukarno, Indonesia
- Suharto, Indonesia
- Australia and Oceania
- Edmund Barton, Australia
- Sir Robert Menzies, Australia
- Peter Fraser, New Zealand
- Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand
- David Lange, New Zealand
- Europe
- Franz Joseph of Austria, Austria-Hungary
- Václav Havel, Czech Republic
- Franjo Tuđman, Croatia
- Archbishop Makarios III, Cyprus
- Urho Kekkonen, Finland
- Philippe Pétain, France
- Charles de Gaulle, France
- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, France
- François Mitterrand, France
- Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany
- Friedrich Ebert, Germany
- Adolf Hitler, Germany
- Konrad Adenauer, West Germany
- Walter Ulbricht, East Germany
- Erich Honecker, East Germany
- Willy Brandt, West Germany
- Helmut Kohl, Germany
- Gerhard Schröder, Germany
- Eleftherios Venizelos, Greece
- Ioannis Metaxas, Greece
- Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greece
- Andreas Papandreou, Greece
- Miklós Horthy, Hungary
- Imre Nagy, Hungary
- Benito Mussolini, Italy
- Aldo Moro, Italy
- Eamon de Valera, Ireland
- Einar Gerhardsen, Norway
- Józef Piłsudski, Poland
- Lech Wałęsa, Poland
- António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal
- Mário Soares, Portugal
- Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romania
- Milan Kučan, Slovenia
- Francisco Franco, Spain
- Felipe González, Spain
- Adolfo Suárez, Spain
- Olof Palme, Sweden
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey
- Neville Chamberlain, United Kingdom
- Winston Churchill, United Kingdom
- Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom
- Tony Blair, United Kingdom
- Josip Broz Tito,Yugoslavia
- Slobodan Milošević, Yugoslavia
- Russia and Soviet Union
- Czar Nicholas II
- Vladimir Lenin
- Joseph Stalin
- Leon Trotsky
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Leonid Brezhnev
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Boris Yeltsin
- Middle East
- Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran
- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran
- Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran
- Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran
- Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran
- Mohammad Khatami, Iran
- Abdul Nasser, Egypt or United Arab Republic
- Anwar Sadat, Egypt or United Arab Republic
- David Ben-Gurion, Israel
- Golda Meir, Israel
- Menachem Begin, Israel
- Yitzhak Rabin, Israel
- Hafez el Assad, Syria
- Saddam Hussein, Iraq
- King Hussein, Jordan
- Yassar Arafat, Palestine
Scientists
; Biology and Anthropology
- Norman Borlaug
- Francis Crick
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
- Paul Ehrlich
- Jane Goodall
- Stephen Jay Gould
- Hans Adolf Krebs
- Ernst Mayr
- John Maynard Smith
- Albert Szent-Györgyi
- James Watson ; Chemistry
- Elias Corey
- Maria Skłodowska-Curie
- Pierre Curie
- Fritz Haber
- Stanley Miller
- Linus Pauling
- Ernest Rutherford
- J.J. Thomson
- Harold Urey ; Computer Science
- John Backus
- Edsger Dijkstra
- Richard Matthew Stallman
- Linus Torvalds
- Grace Murray Hopper
- John von Neumann
- Claude Shannon
- Alan Turing
- William Gates III ; Mathematics
- Paul Erdős
- Kurt Gödel
- David Hilbert
- Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- John Nash
- John von Neumann ; Medicine and Pharmacy
- Carl Djerassi
- Alexander Fleming
- Howard Walter Florey
- Ma Haide (George Hatem)
- Jonas Salk ; Physics and Astronomy
- Abdus Salam
- Niels Bohr
- Paul Dirac
- Freeman Dyson
- Albert Einstein
- Enrico Fermi
- Richard Feynman
- Stephen Hawking
- Werner Karl Heisenberg
- Edwin Hubble
- Wolfgang Pauli
- Max Planck
- Carl Sagan
- Erwin Schrödinger ; Psychology
- Aaron T. Beck
- Mary Whiton Calkins
- Albert Ellis
- Sigmund Freud
- Carl Jung
- Alfred Kinsey
- Stanley Milgram
- Ivan Pavlov
- Jean Piaget
- B.F. Skinner
- John B. Watson
Humanities

- Art and Literary Theory
- Rudolf Arnheim
- Clive Bell
- Fredric Jameson
- Pauline Kael
- Siegfried Kracauer
- Raymond Williams
- Civil Rights
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Economics
- John Maynard Keynes
- John Kenneth Galbraith
- Milton Friedman
- Ludwig von Mises
- History
- Stephen Ambrose
- Charles A. Beard
- Marc Bloch
- Fernand Braudel
- Lucien Febvre
- Jacques Le Goff
- Philosophy
- Theodor Adorno
- Louis Althusser
- Hannah Arendt
- Gaston Bachelard
- Walter Benjamin
- Henri Bergson
- Gilles Deleuze
- Michel Foucault
- Jürgen Habermas
- Martin Heidegger
- W. V. Quine
- John Rawls
- Bertrand Russell
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Political Science
- Robert A. Dahl
- Maurice Duverger
- Francis Fukuyama
- Arend Lijphart
- C. Wright Mills
Business

- Paul Allen
- Warren Buffett
- Walt Disney
- Henry Ford
- Bill Gates
- Howard Hughes
- Steve Jobs
- Linus Torvalds
- Donald Trump
- Sam Walton
- Thomas J. Watson
Aerospace pioneers

- Alberto Santos-Dumont
- Robert Goddard
- Wernher von Braun
- Neil Armstrong
- Louis Bleriot
- Yuri Gagarin
- Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov
- Freddie Laker
- Charles Lindbergh
- Ron McNair
- Ellison Onizuka
- Herman Potočnik Noordung
- Alan Shepard
- Valentina Tereshkova
- Wright Brothers
- Chuck Yeager
Military leaders

- Moshe Dayan
- Dwight Eisenhower
- Sir Bernard Freyberg
- Charles de Gaulle
- Vo Nguyen Giap
- Che Guevara
- Douglas Haig
- Paul von Hindenburg
- Erich Ludendorff
- Douglas MacArthur
- Rudolf Maister
- Bernard Montgomery
- Chester Nimitz
- George Patton
- Colin Powell
- Erwin Rommel
- Franc Rozman Stane
- Leon Trotsky
- Mao Zedong
- Georgy Zhukov
Spiritual figures

- Pope Pius X
- Pope Pius XII
- Pope John XXIII
- Pope John Paul II
- Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi
- Mother Teresa of Calcutta
- The 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Thubten Gyatso
- The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso
- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
- The Rev. Billy Graham
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Aurobindo Ghosh
- Ramana Maharshi
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
- Ayatollah Khomeini
- Ayatollah Khamenei
- Rasputin
- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
- Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon
Artists

- Josef Albers
- Ernst Barlach
- Balthus
- Max Beckmann
- Hans Bellmer
- Joseph Beuys
- Louise Bourgeois
- Constantin Brancusi
- George Braque
- John Cage
- Marc Chagall
- Giorgio de Chirico
- Chuck Close
- Enzo Cucchi
- Salvador Dalí
- Otto Dix
- Marcel Duchamp
- Jacob Epstein
- Max Ernst
- Lyonel Feininger
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Alberto Giacometti
- Juan Gris
- Walter Gropius
- Erich Heckel
- Barbara Hepworth
- Eva Hesse
- Donald Judd
- Frida Kahlo
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Anselm Kiefer
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Paul Klee
- Yves Klein
- Gustav Klimt
- Oskar Kokoschka
- Käthe Kollwitz
- Willem de Kooning
- Jannis Kounellis
- Le Corbusier
- Sol LeWitt
- Roy Lichtenstein
- El Lissitzky
- René Magritte
- Marino Marini
- Henri Matisse
- Joan Miró
- Amedeo Modigliani
- László Moholy-Nagy
- Piet Mondrian
- Henry Moore
- Robert Motherwell
- Edvard Munch
- Bruce Nauman
- Emil Nolde
- Eduardo Paolozzi
- Pino Pascali
- Max Pechstein
- Pablo Picasso
- Jackson Pollock
- Diego Rivera
- Alexander Rodchenko
- Auguste Rodin
- James Rosenquist
- Mark Rothko
- Henri Rousseau
- Egon Schiele
- Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
- Kurt Schwitters
- Richard Serra
- Robert Smithson
- Andy Warhol
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Music

- ABBA
- King Sunny Ade
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
- Louis Armstrong
- Béla Bartók
- Alban Berg
- Luciano Berio
- Chuck Berry
- Pierre Boulez
- David Bowie
- John Cage
- Ray Charles
- John Coltrane
- Aaron Copland
- Dalida
- Gary Davis
- Miles Davis
- Claude Debussy
- Bob Dylan
- Carlos Gardel
- Marvin Gaye
- George Gershwin
- Philip Glass
- Amy Grant
- Nazia Hassan
- Jimi Hendrix
- Gustav Holst
- Michael Jackson
- Janis Joplin
- Scott Joplin
- Aram Khachaturian
- Kraftwerk
- Fela Kuti
- Led Zeppelin
- Bob Marley
- Olivier Messiaen
- Nirvana
-

Footnotes
A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a book or document that comments on, and may cite a reference for, a part of the main text and is normally flagged by a superscript number within the main text thus: :¹ for the first footnote on the page, ² for the second footnote, and so on. A footnote reference symbol should be placed at the end of the section in question (within the main text) as opposed to before it. Occasionally a number between brackets or parentheses, is used instead, thus: [1]. Typographical devices such as the asterisk (
- ) or dagger (†) may also be used to point to footnotes. In documents like timetables many different symbols, as well as letters and numbers, may be used to refer the reader to particular footnotes. Sometimes, especially in learned works, what are loosely called "footnotes" do not in fact appear at the foot of the particular page where the text to which they apply is printed, but are collected together, usually chapter by chapter, and appear as an appendix of notes at the end of the work. Such footnotes are more accurately called endnotes.
- The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual devotes six pages to the topic.
- NASA has guidance for footnote usage in its historical documents.
Academic usage
Academic and scientific works are written by a process of argument. A good argument puts forward a point of view that is well grounded: it has evidence to support it. Scholars use footnotes and/or endnotes for a variety of reasons including:
- To make it clear to the reader which views are yours and which are the views of other writers;
- To allow you to acknowledge your intellectual debts to others if you decide to accept their views or information;
- To direct the reader by the most efficient signposts to the place where the information you have provided can be checked and verified or where further useful information is.
References
# #
See also

- Citation
- Endnote
- Warichu Category:Typography

Religious (Catholicism)

In the lexicon of the Church, especially the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox, religious as a noun usually refers to a member of a religious order of monks, nuns, friars, clerics regular, or other individuals who take the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the evangelical councils). Neither of those groups should be identified as clergy, which in Catholicism includes bishops, priests and deacons. Though seemingly contradictory, there are also "religious priests" used in reference to priests who are members of orders, such as the Society of Jesus or the Franciscans. Such clergy are differentiated from diocesan priests who serve under a bishop or archbishop who has jurisdiction over a geographically defined diocese. Category:Roman Catholic orders and societies

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.

History

American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded¹ from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.