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Nasser's friendship with certain CIA officers in Cairo led Washington to vastly overestimate its influence in Egypt. Sony VPCCA35FF/P battery That Nasser was close to CIA officers led the Americans for a time to view Nasser as a CIA "asset".[46] In turn, the British who were aware of Nasser's CIA ties deeply resented this relationship, which they viewed as an American attempt to push them out of Egypt. Sony VPCCA35FG/PI battery The principal reason for Nasser's courting of the CIA before the July Revolution of 1952 was his hope that the Americans would act as a restraining influence on the British should Whitehall decide on intervention to put an end to the revolution (until Egypt renounced it in 1951, the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty allowed Britain the right of intervention against all foreign and domestic threats). Sony VPCCA35FH/D battery In turn, many American officials, such as Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, saw the continued British military presence in Egypt as anachronistic, and viewed the Revolutionary Command Council (as Nasser called his government after the coup) in a highly favorable light.Caffery was consistently very positive about Nasser in his reports to Washington right up until his departure from Cairo in 1955. Sony VPCCA35FN/R battery The regime of King Farouk was viewed in Washington as weak, corrupt, unstable, and anti-American, so Free Officers' July coup was welcomed by the United States. As it was, Nasser's contacts with the CIA were not necessary to prevent British intervention against the July coup as Anglo-Egyptian relations had deteriorated so badly in 1951-52 that the British viewed any Egyptian government not headed by King Farouk as a huge improvement. Sony VPCCA35FW/B battery In May 1953, during a meeting with the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who asked Egypt to join an anti-Soviet alliance, Nasser responded by saying that the Soviet Union has never occupied our territory..but the British have been here for seventy years. How can I go to my people and tell them I am disregarding a killer with a pistol sixty miles from me at the Suez Canal to worry about somebody who is holding a knife a thousand miles away? Sony VPCCA35FW/W battery Dulles informed Nasser of his belief that the Soviet Union was seeking world conquest, that the principal danger to the Near East came from the Kremlin, and urged Nasser to set aside his differences with Britain to focus on countering the Soviet Union.[37] In this spirit, Dulles suggested that the Nasser negotiate a deal that would see Egypt assume sovereignty over the Canal Zone base, Sony VPCCA36EC battery but then allow the British to have "technical control" in the same way that Ford auto company provided parts and training to its Egyptian dealers.[37] Nasser did not share Dulles's fear of the Soviet Union taking over the Middle East, and insisted quite vehemently that he wanted to see the total end of all British influence not only in Egypt, but all the Middle East. Sony VPCCA36EC/W battery The CIA offered Nasser a $3 million bribe if he would joined the proposed Middle East Defence Organization; Nasser took the money, but then refused to join.[51] At most, Nasser made it clear to the Americans that he wanted an Egyptian-dominated Arab League to be the principal defense organization in the Near East, Sony VPCCA36FA/B battery which might be informally associated with the United States, and most of all, he wanted the United States to supply arms on a generous scale to Egypt.[52] Nasser refused to promise that any U.S. arms he might buy would not be used against Israel, and rejected out of hand the American demand for Military Advisory Group to be sent to Egypt as part of the price of arms sales. Sony VPCCA36FG/B battery After he returned to Washington, Dulles advised Eisenhower that the Arab states believed "the United States will back the new state of Israel in aggressive expansion. Our basic political problem...is to improve the Moslem states' attitudes towards Western democracies because our prestige in that area had been in constant decline ever since the war".Sony VPCCA36FH/W battery The immediate consequence was a new policy of "even-handedness" where the United States very publicly sided with the Arab states in several disputes with Israel in 1953-54.[54] Moreover, Dulles did not share any sentimental regard for the Anglo-American "special relationship", which led the Americans to lean towards the Egyptian side in the Anglo-Egyptian disputes. Sony VPCCA36FW/B battery During the extremely difficult negotiations over the British evacuation of the Suez Canal base in 1954-55, the Americans generally supported Egypt, though at the same time trying hard to limit the extent of the damage that this might cause to Anglo-American relations. Sony VPCCA36FW/W battery While the Americans were attempting to erect an alliance in the form of the still-born Middle East Defence Organization to keep the Soviet Union out of the Near East, the Soviet Union under the new leadership of Nikita Khrushchev was making a major effort to win influence in the so-called "third world".Sony VPCCA37EC battery As part of the diplomatic offensive, Khrushchev had abandoned Moscow's traditional line of treating all non-communists as enemies and adopted a new tactic of befriending so-called "non-aligned" nations, which often were led by leaders who were non-Communists, but in varying ways and degrees were hostile towards the West. Sony VPCCA37EC/B battery Khrushchev had realized that by treating non-communists as being the same thing as being anti-communist, Moscow had needlessly alienated many potential friends over the years in the third world. Under the banner of anti-imperialism, Khrushchev made it clear that the Soviet Union would provide arms to any left-wing government in the third world as a way of undercutting Western influence.Sony VPCCA38EC battery The Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai who met Nasser at the 1955 Bandung Summit and was impressed by him, recommended that Khrushchev treat Nasser as a potential ally.[57] Zhou described Nasser to Khrushchev as a young nationalist, who though no Communist, could if used correctly do much damage to Western interests in the Middle East. Sony VPCCA38EC/R battery Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, who also come to know Nasser at Bandung told Khrushchev in a 1955 meeting that "Nasser was a young man without much political experience, but if we give him the benefit of the doubt, we might be able to exert a beneficial influence on him, both for the sake of the Communist movement, and...the Egyptian people".Sony VPCCA3E1E battery Traditionally, most of the equipment in the Egyptian military had come from Britain, but Nasser's desire to break British influence in Egypt meant that he was desperate to find a new source of weapons to replace Britain.[59] Nasser had first broached the subject of buying weapons from the Soviet Union in 1954. Sony VPCCA3S1E battery Instead of siding with either super-power, Nasser took the role of the spoiler and tried to play off the super-powers in order to have them compete with each other in attempts to buy his friendship. Nasser's first choice for buying weapons was the United States, but his frequent anti-Israeli speeches and his sponsorship for the fedayeen who were making raids into Israel had made it difficult for the Eisenhower administration to get the approval of Congress to sell weapons to Egypt. Sony VPCCA3SFX/R battery American public opinion was deeply hostile towards selling arms to Egypt that might be used against Israel, and moreover Eisenhower feared starting a Middle Eastern arms race. Eisenhower very much valued the Tripartite Declaration as a way of keeping peace in the Near East. In 1950, in order to limit the extent that the Arabs and the Israelis could engage in an arms race, Sony VPCEH13FX/B battery the three nations which dominated the arms trade in the non-Communist world, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France had signed the Tripartite Declaration, where they had committed themselves to limiting how many arms they could sell in the Near East, and also to ensuring that any arms sales to one side was matched by arms sales of equal quantity and quality to the other. Sony VPCEH13FX/L battery Eisenhower viewed the Tripartite Declaration, which sharply restricted how many arms Egypt could buy in the West, as one of the key elements in keeping the peace between Israel and the Arabs, and believed that settling off an arms race would inevitably lead to a new war. Nasser had let it be known in 1954-55 that he was considering buying weapons from the Soviet Union as a way of pressuring the Americans into selling him arms he desired. Sony VPCEH13FX/P battery Nasser's hope was that faced with the prospect of Egypt buying Soviet weapons, and thus coming under Soviet influence the Eisenhower administration would be forced to sell Egypt the weapons he wanted.[57] Khrushchev who very much wanted to win the Soviet Union influence in the Middle East, was more than ready to arm Egypt if the Americans proved unwilling. Sony VPCEH13FX/W battery During secret talks with the Soviets in 1955, Nasser's demands for weapons were more than amply satisfied as the Soviet Union had not signed the Tripartite Declaration.[63] The news in September 1955 of the Egyptian purchase of a huge quantity of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia was greeted with shock and rage in the West, where this was seen as major increase in Soviet influence in the Near East. Sony VPCEH15EG/B battery In Britain, the increase of Soviet influence in the Near East was seen as an ominous development that threatened to put an end to British influence in the oil-rich region.[65] In the same report of May 1953 to Eisenhower calling for "even-handedness", Dulles stated that the Egyptians were not interested in joining the proposed MEDO; Sony VPCEH15EN/W battery that the Arabs were more interested in their disputes with the British, the French, the Israelis and each other than in standing against the Soviets; and that the "Northern Tier" states of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan were more useful as allies at present than Egypt. Accordingly, the best American policy towards Egypt was to work towards Arab-Israeli peace and the settlement of the Anglo-Egyptian Sony VPCEH16EA/P battery dispute over the British Suez Canal base as the best way of securing Egypt's ultimate adhesion to an American sponsored alliance centered around the "Northern Tier" states. The "Northern Tier" alliance was achieved in early 1955 with the creation of the Baghdad Pact comprising Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and the United Kingdom. Sony VPCEH16EF/B battery The presence of the last two states was due to the British desire to continue to maintain influence in the Middle East, and Nuri Said's wish to associate his country with the West as the best way of counter-balancing the increasing aggressive Egyptian claims to regional predominance. he conclusion of the Baghdad Pact occurred almost simultaneously with a dramatic Israeli raid on the Gaza Strip on 28 February 1955 in retaliation for fedayeen raids into Israel, Sony VPCEH16EG/W battery during which the Israeli Unit 101 commanded by Ariel Sharon gave the Egyptian Army a bloody nose.The close occurrence of the two events was mistakenly interpreted by Nasser as part of coordinated Western effort to push him into joining the Baghdad Pact. The signing of the Baghdad Pact and the Gaza raid marked the beginning of the end of Nasser's once good relations with the Americans. Sony VPCEH16EH/W battery In particular, Nasser saw Iraq's participation in the Baghdad Pact as a Western attempt to promote his archenemy Nuri al-Said as an alternative leader of the Arab world. Britain's close relationship with the two Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan were of particular concern to Nasser. In particular, Iraq's increasingly amicable relations with Britain were a threat to Nasser's desire to see Egypt as head of the Arab world. Sony VPCEH16EN/B battery The creation of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 seemed to confirm Nasser's fears that Britain was attempting to draw the Eastern Arab World into a bloc centred upon Iraq, and sympathetic to Britain.[70] Nasser's response was a series of challenges to British influence in the region that would culminate in the Suez Crisis. Sony VPCEH17FG/B battery Starting in 1949 owing to shared nuclear research, France and Israel started to move towards an alliance. Following the outbreak of the Algerian War in late 1954, France began to ship more and more arms to Israel. In November 1954, Shimon Peres visited Paris, where he was received by the French Defense MinisterMarie-Pierre K nig, who told him that France would sell Israel any weapons it wanted to buy. Sony VPCEH17FG/L battery By early 1955, France was shipping large amounts of weapons to Israel.[73] In April 1956, following another visit to Paris by Peres, France agreed to totally disregard the Tripartite Declaration, and supply even more weapons to Israel.[74] During the same visit, Peres informed the French that Israel had decided upon war with Egypt in 1956. Sony VPCEH17FG/P battery Peres claimed that Nasser was a genocidal manic intent upon not only destroying Israel, but also exterminating its people, and as such, Israel wanted a war before Egypt received even more Soviet weapons, and there was still a possibility of victory for the Jewish state.[75] Peres asked for the French, who had emerged as Israel's closest ally by this point, to give Israel all they help they could give in the coming war. Sony VPCEH17FG/W battery In January 1956 in an effort to end the incipient arms race in the Middle East set off by the Soviet Union selling Egypt arms on a scale unlimited by the Tripartite Declaration and with France doing likewise with Israel, which he saw as opening the Near East to Soviet influence, Eisenhower launched a major effort to make peace between Egypt and Israel. Sony VPCEH17FJ/W battery Eisenhower sent out his close friend Robert B. Anderson to serve as a secret envoy who would end the Arab-Israeli dispute once and for all. During his meetings with Nasser, Anderson offered bountiful quantities of American aid in exchange for a peace treaty with Israel, only to see his offer rejected as unacceptable to Egypt. Anderson was no more successful in his talks with the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Sony VPCEH18FA/B battery A second round of secret diplomacy by Anderson in February 1956 was equally fruitless.[79] Nasser sometimes suggested during his talks with Anderson that he was interested in peace with Israel if only the Americans would supply him with unlimited quantities of military and economic aid and ensure that Israel accepted the return of the Palestinians displaced in 1948-49. Sony VPCEH18FF/B battery It is not clear if Nasser was sincerely interested in peace, or just merely saying what the Americans wanted to hear in the hope of obtaining American funding for the Aswan high dam and American weapons. The truth will likely never be known as Nasser was an intensely secretive man, who managed to hide his true opinions on most issues from both contemporaries and historians. Sony VPCEH18FG/L battery However, the British historian P.J. Vatikitos noted that Nasser's determination to promote Egypt as the world's foremost anti-Zionist state as a way of reinforcing his claim to Arab leadership did not bode well for the prospects of peace. Throughout 1955 and 1956 Nasser pursued a number of policies that would frustrate British aims throughout the Middle East, and result in increasing hostility between Britain and Egypt. Sony VPCEH18FH/P battery Nasser saw Iraq's inclusion in the Baghdad Pact as indicating that the United States and Britain had sided with his much hated archenemy Nuri as-Said's efforts to be the leader of the Arab world, and much of the motivation for Nasser's turn to an active anti-Western policy starting in 1955 was due to his displeasure with the Baghdad Pact. Sony VPCEH18FJ/B battery For Nasser, attendance at such events as the Bandung conference in April 1955 served as the both the means of striking a posture as a global leader, and of playing hard to get in his talks with the Americans, especially his demand that the United States sell him vast quantities of arms. Nasser "... played on the widespread suspicion that any Western defence pact was merely veiled colonialism and that Arab disunity and weakness Sony VPCEH18FJ/P battery especially in the struggle with Israel was a consequence of British machinations."[70] He also began to align Egypt with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia whose rulers were hereditary enemies of the Hashemites in an effort to frustrate British efforts to draw Syria, Jordan and Lebanon into the orbit of the Baghdad Pact. Sony VPCEH18FJ/W battery Nasser struck a further blow against Britain by negotiating an arms deal with communist Czechoslovakia in September 1955[84] thereby ending Egypt's reliance on Western arms. Later, other members of the Warsaw Pact also sold arms to Egypt and Syria. In practice, all sales from the Eastern Bloc were authorised by the Soviet Union, as an attempt to increase Soviet influence over the Middle East. Sony VPCEH19FJ/B battery This caused tensions in the United States because Warsaw Pact nations now had a strong presence in the region.Nasser frustrated British attempts to draw Jordan into the pact by sponsoring demonstrations in Amman, leading King Hussein to dismiss the British commander of the Arab Legion, Sir John Bagot Glubb (known to the Arabs as Glubb Pasha) in March 1956 and throwing Britain's Middle Eastern security policy into chaos.[85Sony VPCEH19FJ/P battery After one round of bloody rioting in December 1955 and another in March 1956 against Jordan joining the Baghdad Pact, both instigated by Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs radio station, Hussein believed his throne was in danger.[86] In private, Hussein assured the British that he was still committed to continuing the traditional Hashemite alliance with Britain, Sony VPCEH19FJ/W battery and that his sacking of Glubb Pasha and all the other British officers in the Arab Legion were just gestures to appease the rioters. Eden was especially upset at the sacking of the Glubb Pasha, and as one British politician recalled: For Eden...this was the last straw...This reverse, he insisted was Nasser's doing... Sony VPCEH1AJ battery Nasser was our Enemy No. 1 in the Middle East and he would not rest until he destroyed all our friends and eliminated the last vestiges of our influence...Nasser must therefore be...destroyed. After the sacking of Glubb Pasha, which he saw as a grievous blow to British influence, Eden become consumed with an obsessional hatred for Nasser, and from March 1956 onwards, was in private committed to the overthrow of Nasser. Sony VPCEH1E1E battery ] The American historian Donald Neff wrote that Eden's often hysterical and overwrought views towards Nasser almost certainly reflected the influence of the amphetamines to which Eden had become addicted to following a botched operation in 1953 together with the related effects of sustained sleep deprivation (Eden slept on average about 5 hours/per night in early 1956). Sony VPCEH1J1E battery Increasingly Nasser came to be viewed in British circles - and in particular by Prime Minister Anthony Eden - as a dictator, akin to Benito Mussolini. Ironically, in the build up to the crisis, it was the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and the left-leaning tabloid newspaper The Mirror that first made the comparison between Nasser and Mussolini. Anglo-Egyptian relations would continue on their downward spiral. Sony VPCEH1J8E battery Over the same period, the French Premier Guy Mollet, was facing an increasingly serious rebellion in Algeria, where the FLN rebels were being supported by Egypt, and he also came to perceive Nasser as a major threat.[90] During a visit to London in March 1956, Mollet told Eden that his country was faced with an Islamic threat to the very soul of France supported by the Soviet Union. Sony VPCEH1L0E battery Mollet stated that: "All this is in the works of Nasser, just as Hitler's policy was written down in Mein Kampf. Nasser has the ambition to recreate the conquests of Islam. But his present position is largely due to the policy of the West in building up and flattering him". In a May 1956 gathering of French veterans, Louis Mangin spoke in place of the unavailable Minister of Defence and gave a violently anti-Nasser speech, Sony VPCEH1L8E battery which compared the Egyptian leader to Hitler. He accused Nasser of plotting to rule the entire Middle East and of seeking to annex Algeria, whose "people live in community with France".[91] Mangin urged France to stand up to Nasser, and being a strong friend of Israel, urged an alliance with that nation against Egypt. Sony VPCEH1L9E battery Britain was eager to tame Nasser and looked towards the United States for support. However, President Eisenhowerstrongly opposed British-French military action.[93] America's closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, was just as fundamentally opposed to the Hashemite-dominated Baghdad Pact as Egypt, and the U.S. was keen to increase its own influence in the region. Sony VPCEH1M1E battery The failure of the Baghdad Pact aided such a goal by reducing Britain's dominance over the region. "Great Britain would have preferred to overthrow Nasser; America, however uncomfortable with the 'Czech arms deal', thought it wiser to propitiate him." The events that brought the crisis to a head occurred in the spring and summer of 1956. Sony VPCEH1M9E battery On 16 May, Nasser officially recognised the People's Republic of China, a move that angered the U.S. and its secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, a keen sponsor of Taiwan.[85] This move, coupled with the impression that the project was beyond Egypt's economic capabilities, caused Eisenhower to withdraw all American financial aid for the Aswan Dam project on 19 July. Sony VPCEH1S0E battery The Eisenhower administration took the view that if Nasser were able to secure Soviet economic support for the high dam, that would be beyond the capacity of the Soviet Union to support, and in turn would strain Soviet-Egyptian relations.[96]Eisenhower wrote in March 1956 that "If Egypt finds herself thus isolated from the rest of the Arab world, Sony VPCEH1S1E battery and with no ally in sight except Soviet Russia, she would very quickly get sick of the prospect and would join us in the search for a just and decent peace in the region".[96] Dulles told his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles "If they [the Soviets] do make this offer we can make a lot of use of it in propaganda within the satellite bloc. You don't get bread because you are being squeezed to build a dam".Sony VPCEH1S8E battery Finally, the Eisenhower administration had become very annoyed at Nasser's efforts to play the United States off against the Soviet Union, and decided to call Nasser's bluff by refusing to finance the Aswan high dam with the intention of teaching Nasser a lesson. As early as September 1955, when Nasser announced the purchase of the Soviet military equipment via Czechoslovakia, Sony VPCEH1S9E battery Dulles had written that competing for Nasser's favour was probably going to be "an expensive process", one that Dulles wanted to avoid as much as possible. Nasser's response was the nationalization of the Suez Canal. On 26 July, in a speech in Alexandria, Nasser gave a riposte to Dulles. During his speech he deliberately pronounced the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps, Sony VPCEH1Z1E battery the builder of the canal, a code-word for Egyptian forces to seize control of the canal and implement its nationalization.[98] He announced that the Nationalization Law had been published, that all assets of the Suez Canal Company had been frozen, and that stockholders would be paid the price of their shares according to the day's closing price on the Paris Stock Exchange. Sony VPCEH24FX/B battery That same day, Egypt closed the canal to Israeli shipping.[100] Egypt also closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, in contravention of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Many argued that this was also a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The nationalisation surprised Britain and its Commonwealth. There had been no discussion of the canal at theCommonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London in late June and early July. Sony VPCEH24FX/L battery :7-8 Egypt's action, however, threatened British economic and military interests in the region. Prime Minister Anthony Eden was under immense domestic pressure from Conservative MPs who drew direct comparisons between the events of 1956 and those of the Munich Agreementin 1938. Since the US government did not support the British protests, the British government decided in favour of military intervention against Egypt to avoid the complete collapse of British prestige in the region. Sony VPCEH24FX/P battery Eden was hosting a dinner for King Feisal II of Iraq and his Prime Minister, Nuri es-Said, when he learned the Canal had been nationalised. They both unequivocally advised Eden to "hit Nasser hard, hit him soon, and hit him by yourself" - a stance shared by the vast majority of the British people in subsequent weeks. Sony VPCEH24FX/W battery "There is a lot of humbug about Suez," Guy Millard, Eden's private secretary, later recorded. "People forget that the policy at the time was extremely popular." Opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell was also at the dinner. He immediately agreed that military action might be inevitable, but warned Eden would have to keep the Americans closely informed. Sony VPCEH25EG/B battery After a session of the House of Commons expressed anger against the Egyptian action on 27 July, Eden justifiably believed that Parliament would support him; Gaitskell spoke for his party when he called the nationalisation a "high-handed and totally unjustifiable step".[103]:8-9 Gaitskell's support became more cautious. On 2 August he said of Nasser's behavior, Sony VPCEH25EN/W battery "It is all very familiar. It is exactly the same that we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those years before the war". He cautioned Eden, however, that "[w]e must not, therefore, allow ourselves to get into a position where we might be denounced in the Security Council as aggressors, or where the majority of the Assembly was against us". Sony VPCEH26EA/W battery He had earlier warned Eden that Labour might not support Britain acting alone against Egypt.[103]:8-9 In two letters to Eden sent on 3 and 10 August 1956 Gaitskell condemned Nasser, but again warned that he would not support any action that violated the United Nations charter.[106] In his letter of 10 August, Gaitskell wrote: Sony VPCEH26EF/B battery Lest there should be any doubt in your mind about my personal attitude, let me say that I could not regard an armed attack on Egypt by ourselves and the French as justified by anything which Nasser has done so far or as consistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Nor, in my opinion, would such an attack be justified in order to impose a system of international control over the Canal-desirable though this is. Sony VPCEH26EG/P battery If, of course, the whole matter were to be taken to the United Nations and if Egypt were to be condemned by them as aggressors, then, of course, the position would be different. And if further action which amounted to obvious aggression by Egypt were taken by Nasser, then again it would be different. Sony VPCEH26EH/P battery So far what Nasser has done amounts to a threat, a grave threat to us and to others, which certainly cannot be ignored; but it is only a threat, not in my opinion justifying retaliation by war. 24 Labour PMs issued a statement on 8 August stating that forcing Nasser to denationalise the canal against Egypt's wishes would violate the UN charter. Other opposition politicians were less conditional in their support. Sony VPCEH26EN/B battery Former Labour Foreign Minister Herbert Morrison hinted that he would support unilateral action by the government.[103]:9-10 Jo Grimond, who became Liberal Party leader that November, thought if Nasser went unchallenged the whole Middle East would go his way. The French Premier Guy Mollet was outraged by Nasser's move, and was utterly determined that Nasser would not be allowed to get away with it. Sony VPCEH26FJ/W battery French public opinion was very supportive of Mollet, and besides for the Communists, all of the criticism of his government came from the right, who very publicly doubted that a socialist like Mollet had the guts to go to war with Nasser.[108] During an interview with Henry Luce, Mollet held up a copy of Nasser's book The Philosophy of the Revolution and said: "This is Nasser's Mein Kampf. Sony VPCEH27FG/W battery If we're too stupid not to read it, understand it and draw the obvious conclusions, then so much the worse for us". On 29 July 1956, the French Cabinet had decided upon military action against Egypt in alliance with Israel, and Admiral Nomy of the French Naval General Staff was sent to Britain to inform the leaders of that country of what France had decided to, and to invite them to join if they were interested. Sony VPCEH28FA/B battery At the same time, Mollet was very much offended by what he considered to be the lackadaisical attitude of the Eisenhower administration to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company.[110] This was especially the case because earlier in 1956 the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotovhad offered the French a deal in exchange for which Moscow ended its support of the FLN in Algeria, Sony VPCEH28FF/B battery Paris would pull out of NATO and became neutral in the Cold War.[110] Given the way that the Algeria (which was considered to be integral part of France) had become engulfed in a spiral of increasing savage violence that French leaders longed to put an end to, the Mollet cabinet had been tempted by Molotov's offer, but in the end, Mollet who was a firm Atlanticist had chosen to remain faithful towards NATO. Sony VPCEH28FG/B battery In Mollet's view, his fidelity to NATO had earned him the right to expect firm American support against Egypt, and when that support was not forthcoming, he became even more determined that if the Americans were not willing to do anything about Nasser, then France would. Direct military intervention, however, ran the risk of angering Washington and damaging Anglo-Arab relations. Sony VPCEH28FG/P battery As a result, the British government concluded a secret military pact with France and Israel that was aimed at regaining control over the Suez Canal. On 1 August 1956, a tripartite meeting was opened at 10 Downing Street between British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, U.S. Ambassador Robert D. Murphy and French Foreign Affairs Minister Christian Pineau. Sony VPCEH28FH/B battery An alliance was soon formed between Eden and Guy Mollet, French Prime Minister, with headquarters based in London. General Hugh Stockwell and Admiral Barjotwere appointed as Chief of Staff. Britain sought co-operation with the United States throughout 1956 to deal with what it maintained was a threat of an Israeli attack against Egypt, but to little effect. Sony VPCEH28FJ/B battery Between July and October 1956, unsuccessful initiatives encouraged by the United States were made to reduce the tension that would ultimately lead to war. International conferences were organised to secure agreement on Suez Canal operations but all were ultimately fruitless. In July 1956, the Israeli Chief of Staff, General Moshe Dayan informed the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion that Israel should attack Egypt at the first chance, Sony VPCEH28FJ/P battery but Ben Gurion stated he preferred to attack Egypt with the aid of France.[112] On 7 August 1956 the French Defense Minister Maurice Bourg s-Maunoury asked Peres if Israel would attack Egypt together with France, to which he received a positive reply.[113] On 1 September 1956 the French government formally asked that France and Israel begin joint planning for a war against Egypt. Sony VPCEH28FJ/W battery By 6 September 1956, General Meir Amit, the chief of operations at the Israeli general staff was meeting with Admiral Pierre Barjot to discuss joint Franco-Israeli operations.[114] On 25 September 1956 Peres reported to Ben Gurion that France wanted Israel as an ally against Egypt, and that the only problem was Britain, which was opposed to Israel taking action against Nasser. Sony VPCEH28FN/L battery In late September 1956, the French Premier Guy Mollet had embarked upon a dual policy of attacking Egypt with Britain, and if the British backed out (as Mollet believed that they might), with Israel.[116] On 30 September 1956 secret Franco-Israeli talks on planning a war started in Paris, which were based on the assumption that Britain would not be involved. Sony VPCEH29FJ/B battery The French very much wanted to use airfields in Cyprus to bomb Egypt, but being not certain about Britain's attitude, wanted to use Israeli airfields if the ones in Cyprus were not free.[118] Only on 5 October 1956 during a visit by General Maurice Challe to Britain where he met with Eden, were the British informed of the secret Franco-Israeli alliance. Sony VPCEH29FJ/P battery Among the "White Dominions" of the British Commonwealth, Canada had few ties with the Suez Canal and twice had refused British requests for peacetime military aid in the Middle East. It had little reaction to the seizure before military action. By 1956 Asia was much more important than Suez to Australia and New Zealand; the following year two experts would write that it "is not vital to the Australian economy". Sony VPCEH29FJ/W battery The memory, however, of the two nations fighting in two world wars to protect a canal which many still called their "lifeline" to Britain or "jugular vein", contributed to Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies andSidney Holland of New Zealand's support for Britain in the early weeks after the seizure. On 7 August Holland hinted to his parliament that New Zealand might send troops to assist Britain, and received support from the opposition; on 13 August Menzies, Sony VPCEH2C0E battery who had traveled to London from the United States after hearing of the nationalisation and became an informal member of the British Cabinet discussing the issue, spoke on the BBC in support of the Eden government's position on the canal. He called the dispute over the canal "a crisis more grave than any since the Second World War ended".Sony VPCEH2D0E battery An elder statesman of the Commonwealth who felt that Nasser's actions threatened trading nations like Australia, he argued publicly that Western powers had built the canal but that Egypt was now seeking to exclude them from a role in its ownership or management.[120][121] South Africa's Johannes Strijdom stated "it is best to keep our heads out of the beehive". Sony VPCEH2E0E battery His government saw Nasser as an enemy but would benefit economically and geopolitically from a closed canal, and politically from not opposing a nation's right to govern its internal affairs.[103]:16-18 The "non-white Dominions" saw Egypt's seizing of the canal as an admirable act of anti-imperialism, and Nasser's Arab nationalism as similar to Asian nationalism. Sony VPCEH2F1E battery Jawaharlal Nehru of India was with Nasser when he learned of the Anglo-American withdrawal of aid for the Aswan Dam. As India was a user of the canal, however, he remained publicly neutral other than warning that any use of force, or threats, could be "disastrous". Suez was also very important to Ceylon's economy, and it was renegotiating defense treaties with Britain, Sony VPCEH2H1E battery so its government was not as vocal in supporting Egypt as it would have been otherwise. Pakistan was also cautious about supporting Egypt given their rivalry as leading Islamic nations, but its government did state that Nasser had the right to nationalise.[103]:18-24,79 Almost immediately after the nationalisation, Eisenhower suggested to Eden a conference of maritime nations that used the canal. Sony VPCEH2J1E battery The British preferred to invite the most important countries, but the Americans believed that inviting as many as possible amid maximum publicity would affect world opinion. Invitations went to the eight surviving signatories of the Constantinople Convention and the 16 other largest users of the canal: Australia, Ceylon, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, West Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Sony VPCEH2L9E battery Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All except Egypt which sent an observer, and used India and the Soviet Union to represent its interests and Greece accepted the invitation, and the 22 nations' representatives met in London from 16 to 23 August. Sony VPCEH2M1E battery 15 of the nations supported the American-British-French position of international operation of the canal; Pakistan chose its western allies over its sympathy for Egypt's anti-western position despite resulting great domestic controversy. Ceylon, Indonesia, and the Soviet Union supported India's competing proposal which Nasser had preapproved of international supervision only. Sony VPCEH2M9E battery India criticized Egypt's seizure of the canal, but insisted that its ownership and operation now not change. The majority of 18 chose five nations to negotiate with Nasser in Cairo led by Menzies, while their proposal for international operation of the canal would go to the Security Council. Sony VPCEH2N1E battery Menzies' 7 September official communique to Nasser presented a case for compensation for the Suez Canal Company and the "establishment of principles" for the future use of the Canal that would ensure that it would "continue to be an international waterway operated free of politics or national discrimination, Sony VPCEH2P0E battery and with financial structure so secure and an international confidence so high that an expanding and improving future for the Canal could be guaranteed" and called for a Convention to recognise Egyptian sovereignty of the Canal, but for the establishment of an international body to run the canal. Nasser saw such measures as a "derogation from Egyptian sovereignty" and rejected Menzies' proposals. Sony VPCEH2Q1E battery Menzies hinted to Nasser that Britain and France might use force to resolve the crisis, but United States President Eisenhower openly opposed the use of force and Menzies left Egypt without success. Three months after Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal company, a secret meeting took place at S vres, outside Paris. Britain and France enlisted Israeli support for an alliance against Egypt. Sony VPCEH2S9E battery The parties agreed that Israel would invade the Sinai. Britain and France would then intervene, purportedly to separate the warring Israeli and Egyptian forces, instructing both to withdraw to a distance of 16 kilometres from either side of the canal. The British and French would then argue that Egypt's control of such an important route was too tenuous, and that it needed be placed under Anglo-French management. Sony VPCEH2Z1E battery David Ben-Gurion did not trust the British in view of their treaty with Jordan and he was not initially in favour of the plan, since it would make Israel alone look like the aggressor; however he soon agreed to it since such a good opportunity to strike back at Egypt might never again present itself. The interests of the parties were various. Britain was anxious lest it lose efficient access to the remains of its empire. Sony VPCEH3B1E battery Both the French and the British felt that Nasser should be removed from power. The French "held the Egyptian president responsible for assisting the anticolonial rebellion in Algeria." France was nervous about the growing influence that Nasser exerted on its North African colonies and protectorates. Sony VPCEH3D0E battery Both Britain and France were eager that the canal should remain open as an important conduit of oil. Israel wanted to reopen theStraits of Tiran leading to the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, and saw the opportunity to strengthen its southern border and to weaken what it saw as a dangerous and hostile state. Sony VPCEH3N1E battery This was particularly felt in the form of attacks injuring approximately 1,300 civilians emanating from the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip.[126] The Israelis were also deeply troubled by Egypt's procurement of large amounts of Soviet weaponry that included 530 armored vehicles, of which 230 were tanks; 500 guns; 150 MiG 15 jet fighters; 50 Iluyshin-28 bombers; submarines and other naval craft. Sony VPCEH3N6E battery The influx of this advanced weaponry altered an already shaky balance of power.[127] Additionally, Israel believed Egypt had formed a secret alliance with Jordan and Syria.[128] Instead of the 18-nation proposal, the United States proposed an association of canal users that would set rules for its operation. 14 of the other nations agreed, not including Pakistan. Sony VPCEH3T9E battery Britain, in particular, believed that violation of the association rules would result in military force, but after Eden made a speech in parliament on 12 September stating this the United States stated "we do not intend to shoot our way through" the canal.[103]:89-92 Washington disagreed with Paris and London on whether to use force to resolve the crisis. Sony VPCZ21V9E battery The United States worked hard through diplomatic channels to resolve the crisis without resorting to conflict. "The British and French reluctantly agreed to pursue the diplomatic avenue but viewed it as merely an attempt to buy time, during which they continued their military preparations." The British, Washington's closest ally, ignored Eisenhower's pointed warning that the American people would not accept a military solution. Sony VPCZ21Q9E battery Prior to its military operation London deliberately neglected to consult the Americans, trusting instead that Nasser's engagement with communist states would persuade the Americans to accept British and French actions if they were presented as a fait accompli. This proved to be a critical miscalculation. Sony VPCZ21M9E battery The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was taking high-altitude photos of the allied activities, and more details came from human sources in London, Paris and Tel Aviv. CIA chief Allen Dulles said that "intelligence was well alerted as to what Israel and then Britain and France were likely to do ... In fact, United States intelligence had kept the government informed".Sony VPCZ13Z9E/X battery British troops were well-trained, experienced, and had good morale, but suffered from the economic and technological limitations imposed by post-war austerity.[132] The 16th Independent Parachute Brigade Group, which was intended to be the main British strike force against Egypt, was heavily involved in the Cyprus Emergency, which led to a neglect of paratroop training in favour of counter-insurgency operations. Sony VPCZ13V9E/X battery The Royal Navy could project formidable power through the guns of its warships and aircraft flown from its carriers, but a shortage of landing craft proved to be a serious weakness.[133] It had just undergone a major and innovative carrier modernization program. The Royal Air Force (RAF) had just introduced two long-range bombers, the Vickers Valiant and the English Electric Canberra, Sony VPCZ13X5003B battery but owing to their recent entry into service the RAF had not yet established proper bombing techniques for these aircraft.[133] Despite this, General Sir Charles Keightley, the commander of the invasion force, believed that air power alone was sufficient to defeat Egypt.[133] By contrast, Keightley's deputy General Hugh Stockwell believed that methodical and systematic armored operations centered around the Centurion battle tank would be the key to victory. Sony VPCZ13V9E battery French troops were experienced and well-trained but suffered from cutbacks imposed by post-war politics of economic austerity.[135] In 1956, the French military was heavily involved in the Algerian war, which made operations against Egypt a major distraction. French paratroopers of the elite Regiment de Parachutistes Coloniaux (RPC) were extremely experienced, Sony VPCZ13M9E/X battery battle-hardened, and very tough soldiers, who had greatly distinguished themselves in the fighting in Indochina and in Algeria.[135] The men of the RPC followed a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy towards civilians, first adopted in Vietnam, which was to lead to the killing of a number of Egyptian civilians. Sony VPCZ13M9E/B battery The rest of the French troops were described by the American military historian Derek Varble as "...competent, but not outstanding". The main French (and Israeli) battle tank, the AMX-13, was designed for mobile, outflanking operations, which led to a tank that was lightly armoured but very fast. Sony VPCZ138GA battery General Andr Beaufre, who served as Stockwell's subordinate favored a swift campaign of movement in which the main objective was to encircle the enemy. Throughout the operation, Beaufre proved himself be more aggressive than his British counterparts, always urging that some bold step be taken at once.[135] The French Navy had a powerful carrier force which was excellent for projecting power inland, but, like its British counterpart, suffered from a lack of landing craft. Sony VPCZ12Z9E/X battery American military historian Derek Varble called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) the "best" military force in the Middle East while at the same time suffering from "deficiencies" such as "immature doctrine, faulty logistics, and technical inadequacies".The IDF's Chief of Staff, Major General Moshe Dayan, encouraged aggression, Sony VPCZ12X9E/X battery initiative, and ingenuity amongst the Israeli officer corps while ignoring logistics and armoured operations.[136] Dayan, a firm infantry man, preferred that arm of the service at the expense of armour, which Dayan saw as clumsy, pricey, and suffering from frequent breakdowns.At the same time, the IDF had a rather disorganized logistics arm, Sony VPCZ12M9E/B battery which was put under severe strain when the IDF invaded the Sinai.[136] Most of the IDF weapons in 1956 came from France.[136] The main IDF tank was the AMX-13 and the main aircraft were the Dassault Myst re IVA and the Ouragan.Superior pilot training was to give the Israeli Air Force an unbeatable edge over their Egyptian opponents. Sony VPCZ11Z9E/B battery The Israeli Navy consisted of two destroyers, seven frigates, eight minesweepers, several landing craft, and fourteen torpedo boats.In the Egyptian military, politics rather than military competence was the main criterion for promotion. The Egyptian commander, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, was a purely political appointee who owed his position to his close friendship with Nasser. Sony VPCZ11X9E/B battery A heavy drinker, he would prove himself grossly incompetent as a general during the Crisis.[138] In 1956, the Egyptian military was well equipped with weapons from the Soviet Union such as T-34 and JS-3 tanks, MiG-15fighters, Ilyushin Il-28 bombers, SU-100 self-propelled guns and assault rifles.[138] Rigid lines between officers and men in the Egyptian Army led to a mutual "mistrust and contempt" between officers and the men who served under them.[139] Sony VPCY11S1E battery Egyptian troops were excellent in defensive operations, but had little capacity for offensive operations, owing to the lack of "rapport and effective small-unit leadership". In July 1956, Eden ordered his Chiefs of Staff to begin planning for an invasion of Egypt.[140] Eden's plan called for the Cyprus-based 16th Independent Parachute Brigade Group to seize the Canal Zone. The Prime Minister's plan was rejected by the Chiefs of Staff who argued that the neglect of parachute training in the 16th Independent Parachute Brigade rendered his plan for an airborne assault unsuitable.[140] Instead, the Chiefs of Staff suggested the sea-power based Contingency Plan, which called for the Royal Marines to take Port Said, Sony VPCY11S1E/S battery which would then be used as a base for three British divisions to overrun the Canal Zone.[140] In early August, the Contingency Plan was modified by including a strategic bombing campaign that was intended to destroy Egypt's economy, and thereby hopefully bring about Nasser's overthrow.[140] In addition, a role was allocated to the 16th Independent Parachute Brigade, which would lead the assault on Port Said in conjunction with the Royal Marine landing. Sony VPCY21S1E/G battery The commanders of the Task Force led by General Stockwell rejected the Contingency Plan, which Stockwell argued failed to destroy the Egyptian military. Stockwell offered up Operation Musketeer, which was to begin with a two-day air campaign that would see the British gain air superiority.[142] In place of Port Said, Musketeer called for the capture of Alexandria. Sony VPCY21S1E/L battery ] Once that city had been taken in assault from the sea, British armoured divisions would engage in a decisive battle of annihilation somewhere south of Alexandria and north of Cairo.[142] Musketeer would require thousands of troops, and which led the British to seek out France as an ally.[142] To destroy the 300,000-strong Egyptian Army in his planned battle of annihilation, Stockwell estimated that he needed 80,000 troops, while at most the British Army could spare was 50,000 troops; Sony VPCY21S1E/SI battery the French could supply the necessary 30,000 troops to make up the shortfall.[142] On 11 August 1956 General Keightley was appointed commander of Musketeer with the French Admiral Barjot as Deputy-Commander.[142] The appointment of Stockwell as the Task Force commander charged with leading the assault on Egypt caused considerable disappointment with the other officers of the Task Force.[143] Sony VPCY22Z5008B battery One French officer recalled that Stockwell was Extremely excitable, gesticulating, keeping no part of him still, his hands, his feet, and even his head and shoulders perpetually on the go, he starts off by sweeping objects off the table with a swish of his swagger cane or in his room by using it to make golf-strokes with the flower vases and ash-trays. Sony VPCYA1V9E/B battery Those are the good moments. You will see him pass in an instant from the most cheerfully expressed optimism to a dejection that amounts to nervous depression. He is a cyclothymic. By turns courteous and brutal, refined and coarse, headstrong in some circumstances, hesitant and indecisive in others, he disconcerts by his unpredictable responses and the contradictions of which he is made up. Sony VPCYA1S1E/B battery One only of his qualities remains constant: his courage under fire. By contrast, the majority of the officers of the Task Force, both French and British admired Beaufre as an elegant yet tough general with a sharp analytical mind who always kept his cool.[143] Most of the officers of the Anglo-French Task Force expressed regret that it was Beaufre who was Stockwell's deputy rather the other way around. Sony VPCW11S1E/P battery A major problem both politically and militarily with the planning for Musketeer was the one week interval between sending troops to the eastern Mediterranean and the beginning of the invasion. Additionally, the coming of winter weather to the Mediterranean in late November would render the invasion impossible, which thus meant the invasion had to begin before then. Sony VPCW11S1E/T battery An additional problem was Eden, who constantly inferenced with the planning and was so obsessed with secrecy that he refused to tell Keightley what his political objectives were in attacking Egypt, namely was he interested in retaking the Suez canal or toppling Nasser, or both.[145] Eden's refusal to explain to Keightley just what exactly he was hoping to accomplish by attacking Egypt exasperated Keightley to no end, and greatly complicated the planning process. Sony VPCW11S1E/W battery In late August 1956, the French Admiral Pierre Barjot suggested that Port Said once again be made the main target, which lessened the number of troops needed and thus reduced the interval between sending forces to the eastern Mediterranean and the invasion. Beaufre was strongly opposed to the change, warning that Barjot's modification of merely capturing the Canal Zone made for an ambiguous goal, and that the lack of a clear goal was dangerous. Sony VPCW12S1E/P battery On 8 September 1956 Revise was approved by the British and French cabinets.[146] Both Stockwell and Beaufre were opposed to Revise as an open-ended plan with no clear goal beyond seizing the Canal zone, but was embraced by Eden and Mollet as offering greater political flexibility and the prospect of lesser Egyptian civilian casualties. Sony VPCW12S1E/T battery At the same time, Israel had been working on Operation Kadesh for the invasion of the Sinai.[141] Dayan's plan put an emphasis on air power combined with mobile battles of encirclement.[141] Kadesh called for the Israeli air force to win air superiority, which was to be followed up with "one continuous battle" in the Sinai. Sony VPCW12S1E/W battery Israeli forces would in a series of swift operations encircle and then take the main Egyptian strongpoints in the Sinai.[141] Reflecting this emphasis on encirclement was the "outside-in" approach of Kadesh, which called for Israeli paratroopers to seize distant points first, with those closer to Israel to be seized later.[141] Sony VPCW12S1E/WZ battery Thus, the 202nd Paratroop Brigade commanded by Colonel Ariel Sharon was to land in the far-western part of the Sinai to take the Mitla Pass, and thereby cut off the Egyptian forces in the eastern Sinai from their supply lines.[141] In October 1956, Eden, after two months of pressure, finally and reluctantly agreed to French requests to include Israel in Operation Revise. Sony VPCW21C7E battery The British alliances with the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq had made the British very reluctant to fight alongside Israel, lest the ensuing backlash in the Arab world threaten London's friends in Baghdad and Amman.[141] The coming of winter weather in November meant that Eden needed a pretext to begin Revise as soon as possible, which meant that Israel had to be included. Sony VPCW21M2E/WI battery This was especially the case as many Conservative back-benchers had expected Eden to launch operations against Egypt in the summer, and were disappointed when Eden had instead chosen talks. By the fall of 1956, many Tory back-benchers were starting to grow restive about the government's seeming inability to start military action, Sony VAIO PCG-7148L battery and if Eden continued to put off military action for the winter of 1956-57, it is possible that his government might not had survived. Operation Kadesh received its name from ancient Kadesh, located in the northern Sinai and mentioned several times in the Hebrew Pentateuch. Sony VAIO PCG-7151L battery Israeli military planning for this operation in the Sinai hinged on four main military objectives; Sharm el-Sheikh, Arish, Abu Uwayulah, and the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian blockade of the Tiran Straits was based at Sharm el-Sheikh and, by capturing the town, Israel would have access to the Red Sea for the first time since 1953, which would allow it to restore the trade benefits of secure passage to the Indian Ocean. Sony VAIO PCG-7152L battery The Gaza Strip was chosen as another military objective because Israel wished to remove the training grounds for Fedayeen groups, and because Israel recognised that Egypt could use the territory as a staging ground for attacks against the advancing Israeli troops. Israel advocated rapid advances, Sony VAIO PCG-7153L battery for which a potential Egyptian flanking attack would present even more of a risk.Arish and Abu Uwayulah were important hubs for soldiers, equipment, and centres of command and control of the Egyptian Army in the Sinai.[147] Capturing them would deal a deathblow to the Egyptian's strategic operation in the entire Peninsula. Sony VAIO PCG-7154L battery The capture of these four objectives were hoped to be the means by which the entire Egyptian Army would rout and fall back into Egypt proper, which British and French forces would then be able to push up against an Israeli advance, and crush in a decisive encounter. On 24 October, Dayan ordered a partial mobilization. Sony VAIO PCG-7161L battery When this led to a state of confusion, Dayan ordered full mobilization, and chose to take the risk that he might alert the Egyptians.[147] As part of an effort to maintain surprise, Dayan ordered Israeli troops that were to go to the Sinai to be ostentatiously concentrated near the border with Jordan first, which was intended to fool the Egyptians into thinking that it was Jordan that the main Israeli blow was to fall on. Sony VAIO PCG-7162L battery The conflict began on 29 October 1956.[148] At about 3: 00 pm, Israeli Air Force Mustangs launched a series of attacks on Egyptian positions all over the Sinai.[147] Because Israeli intelligence expected Jordan to enter the war on Egypt's side,[149] Israeli soldiers were stationed along the Israeli-Jordanian frontier. Sony VAIO PCG-7171L battery The Israel Border Police militarized the Israel-Jordan border, including the Green Line with the West Bank, during the first few hours of the war. Israeli-Arab villages along the Jordanian border were placed under curfew, and orders were given to shoot curfew violators. This resulted in the killings of 48 civilians in the Arab village of Kafr Qasim in an event known as the Kafr Qasim massacre. Sony VAIO PCG-7172L battery The border policemen involved in the killings were later tried and imprisoned, with an Israeli court finding that the order to shoot civilians was "blatantly illegal". This event had major effects on Israeli law relating to the ethics in war and more subtle effects on the legal status of Arab citizens of Israel, who at the time were regarded as a fifth column. Sony VAIO PCG-7173L battery The Israeli Chief of Staff, Major General Moshe Dayan, first planned to take the vital Mitla Pass. Dayan planned for the Battalion 890 of the Paratroop Brigade, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Eitan, a veteran of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and future head of the IDF, to drop at Parker's Memorial, near one of the defiles of the pass, Jebel Heitan. Sony VAIO PCG-7174L battery The rest of the brigade, under the command of Colonel Ariel Sharon would then advance to meet with the battalion, and consolidate their holdings. On 29 October, Operation Kadesh - the invasion of the Sinai, began when an Israeli paratrooper battalion was air-dropped into the Sinai Peninsula, east of the Suez Canal near the Mitla Pass. Sony VAIO PCG-7181L battery In conjunction with the para drop, four Israeli P-51 Mustangs using their wings and propellers, cut all overhead telephone lines in the Sinai, severely disrupting Egyptian command and control. Due to a navigation error, the Israeli DC-3 transports landed Eitan's 400 paratroopers three miles away from Parker's Memorial, their intended target. Sony VAIO PCG-7182L battery Eitan marched his men towards Jebel Heitan, where they dug in while receiving supplies of weapons dropped by French aircraft.[153]At the same time, Colonel Sharon's 202nd Paratroop Brigade raced out towards the Mitla Pass.[153] A major problem for Sharon was vehicle break-down.[153] Dayan's efforts to maintain strategic surprise bore fruit when the Egyptian commander Field Marshal Abdel Hakim AmerSony VAIO PCG-7183L battery at first treated the reports of an Israeli inclusion into the Sinai as a large raid instead of an invasion, and as such Amer did not order a general alert.[147] By the time that Amer realized his mistake, the Israelis had made significant advances into the Sinai. As the paratroopers were being dropped into the Sinai, the Israeli 9th Infantry Brigade captured Ras an-Naqb, an important staging ground for that brigade's later attack against Sharm el-Sheikh. Sony VAIO PCG-7184L battery Instead of attacking the town by a frontal attack, they enveloped the town in a night attack, and negotiated their way through some of the natural chokepoints into the rear of the town, surprising the Egyptians before they could ready themselves to defend.[153] The Egyptians surrendered, with no Israeli casualties sustained. Sony VAIO PCG-7185L battery The 4th Infantry Brigade, under the command of Colonel Josef Harpaz, captured al-Qusaymah, which would be used as a jumping off point for the assault againstAbu Uwayulah.[153] Colonel Harpaz out-flanked al-Qusaymah with two pincers from the south-east and north-east in a night attack.[154] In a short battle lasting from 3:00 am to sunrise, the IDF stormed al-Qusaymah. Sony VAIO PCG-381L battery The portion of the Paratroopers under Sharon's command continued to advance to meet with the 1st Brigade. En route, Sharon assaulted Themed in a dawn attack, and was able to storm the town with his armor through the Themed Gap.[155]Sharon routed the Sudanese police company, and captured the settlement.[155] Sony VAIO PCG-382L battery On his way to the Nakla, Sharon's men came under attack from Egyptian MIG-15s.[155] On the 30th, Sharon linked up with Eytan near Nakla.[155] Dayan had no more plans for further advances beyond the passes, but Sharon decided to attack the Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan.[155] Sharon sent his lightly armed paratroopers against dug-in Egyptians supported by aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery.[155] Sony VAIO PCG-383L battery Sharon's actions were in response to reports of the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the 4th Egyptian Armored Division in the area, which Sharon believed would annihilate his forces if he did not seize the high ground.[155] Sharon sent two infantry companies, a mortar battery and some AMX-13 tanks under the command of Mordechai Gur into the Heitan Defile on the afternoon of 31 October 1956.[155] Sony VAIO PCG-384L battery The Egyptian forces occupied strong defensive positions and brought down heavy anti-tank, mortar and machine gun fire on the IDF force.[156] Gur's men were forced to retreat into the "Saucer", where they were surrounded and came under heavy fire.[156] Hearing of this, Sharon sent in another task force while Gur's men used the cover of night to scale the walls of the Heitan Defile.[156] Sony VAIO PCG-391L battery During the ensuing action, the Egyptians were defeated and forced to retreat. A total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle.[156] Although the battle was an Israeli victory, the casualties sustained would surround Sharon with controversy.[157] Sony VAIO PCG-393L battery In particular, Sharon was criticized for ordering the attack on Jebel Heitan without authorization, and not realizing that with the Israeli Air Force controlling the skies, his men were in not such danger from the Egyptian tanks as he believed.[157] Sony VAIO PCG-394L battery Dayan himself maintained that Sharon was correct to order the attack without orders, and that under the circumstances, Sharon made the right decision; instead he criticized Sharon for his tactics of attacking the Egyptians head-on, which Dayan claimed led to unnecessary casualties.[157] Most of the deaths sustained by the Israelis in the entire operation were sustained at Jebel Heitan. Sony VAIO PCG-3A1L battery From the outset, the Israeli Air Force flew paratroop drops, supply flights and medevac sorties. Israel's new French-made Dassault Mystere IV jet fighters provided air cover for the transport aircraft. In the initial phase of the conflict, the Egyptian Air Force flew attack missions against advancing Israeli ground forces. Sony VAIO PCG-3A2L battery The Egyptian tactic was to use their new Soviet-made MiG-15 jets as fighter escorts, while their older British-made De Havilland Vampire andGloster Meteor jets conducted strikes against Israeli troops and vehicles. In air combat, Israeli aircraft shot down between seven and nine Egyptian jets with the loss of one plane, Sony VAIO PCG-3A3L battery but Egyptian strikes against the ground forces continued through to 1 November.[160] With the attack by the British and French air forces and navies, President Nasser ordered his pilots to disengage and fly their planes to bases in Southern Egypt. The Israeli Air Force was then free to strike Egyptian ground forces at will, as Israeli forces advanced into the Western Sinai. Sony VAIO PCG-3A4L battery On 3 November, four Israeli warplanes attacked a British warship, the Black Swan class sloop HMS Crane as it was patrolling the approaches to the Gulf of Aqaba. According to the IDF, Crane had been identified as an Egyptian warship, and the Israeli General Staff authorized the attack. Three rockets penetrated the ship's hull and caused significant internal damage, Sony VAIO PCG-41112L battery including severed power mains and a ruptured oil tank. The ship also sustained some external damage from shrapnel and cannon fire, and three crewmen were wounded. Crane shot down one Israeli plane and damaged another during the engagement. On 30 October, the Egyptian Navy dispatched the Ibrahim el Awal, an ex-British Hunt class destroyer, to Haifa with the aim of shelling that city's coastal oil installations. Sony VAIO PCG-51211L battery On 31 October the Ibrahim el Awal reached Haifa and began bombarding the city with its four 102mm (4-inch) guns. The French destroyer Kersaint, which was guarding Haifa port as part of Operation Musketeer, returned fire but failed to score any hits. The Ibrahim el Awal disengaged and turned northwest. Sony VAIO PCG-51311L battery Israeli destroyers INS Eilat and INS Yaffo then gave chase and caught up with the Egyptian warship. The Israeli destroyers, together with two Israeli Air Force Dassault Ouragans, succeeded in damaging the destroyer's turbo generator, rudder and antiaircraft guns. Left without power and unable to steer, the Ibrahim el Awal surrendered to the Israeli destroyers. Sony VAIO PCG-51312L battery The Egyptian destroyer was subsequently incorporated into the Israeli Navy and renamed INS Haifa (K-38). On the night of 31 October in the northern Red Sea, the British light cruiser HMS Newfoundland challenged and engaged the Egyptian frigate Domiat, reducing it to a burning hulk in a brief gun battle. Sony VAIO PCG-51411L battery The Egyptian warship was then sunk by escorting destroyer HMS Diana, with 69 surviving Egyptian sailors rescued.The village of Abu Uwayulah in the central Sinai served as the road centre for the entire Sinai, and thus was a key Israeli target. To the east of Abu Uwayulah were several ridges that formed a natural defensive zone known to the Israelis as the "Hedgehog".Sony VAIO PCG-51412L battery Holding the "Hedgehog" were 3,000 Egyptians of the 17th and 18th battalions of the 3rd Infantry Division commanded by Colonel Sami Yassa.[156] Yassa's men held a series of well-fortified trenches.[156] The "Hedgehog" could only be assaulted from the east flank of Umm Qataf ridge and the west flank of Ruafa ridge.[156] Sony VAIO PCG-51511L battery On 30 October, a probing attack by Israeli armour under Major Izhak Ben-Ari turned into an assault on the Umm Qataf ridge that ended in failure.[167] During the fighting at Umm Qataf, Colonel Yassa was badly wounded and replaced by Colonel Saadedden Mutawally.[168] To the south, another unit of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade discovered the al-Dayyiqa gap in the Jebel Halal ridge of the Sony VAIO PCG-51513L battery

http://www.all-keyboard.com/,http://www.keyboards-shop.com/,http://www.laptop-fan-shop.com/,http://www.laptopkeyboard-shop.com/ The Suez Canal (Arabic: Qan t al-S wais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting theMediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allowstransportation by water between Europe and Asia without navigation around Africa. Sony VAIO VPCF117FJ battery The northern terminus is Port Saidand the southern terminus is Port Tawfiq at the city of Suez. Ismailia lies on its west bank, 3 km (1.9 mi) from the half-way point.[1] When first built, the canal was 164 km (102 mi) long and 8 m (26 ft) deep. After multiple enlargements, the canal is 193.30 km (120.11 mi) long, 24 m (79 ft) deep and 205 metres (673 ft) wide as of 2010. Sony VAIO VPCF118FJ battery It consists of the northern access channel of 22 km (14 mi), the canal itself of 162.25 km (100.82 mi) and the southern access channel of 9 km (5.6 mi). The canal is single lane with passing places in the "Ballah By-Pass" and the Great Bitter Lake.[4] It contains nolocks; seawater flows freely through the canal. Sony VAIO VPCF11AFJ battery In general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the lakes changes with the tide at Suez.[5] The canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority[6] (SCA) of Egypt. Under international treaty, it may be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag." Sony VAIO VPCF11AGJ battery Ancient west-east canals have facilitated travel from the Nile to the Red Sea.[8][9][10] One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of either Senusret II[11] or Ramesses II.[8][9][10] Another canal probably incorporating a portion of the first[8][9] was constructed under the reign ofNecho II and completed by Darius. Sony VAIO VPCF11AHJ battery The Canal of the Pharaohs also called the Ancient Suez Canal or Necho's Canal is the forerunner of the Suez Canal, constructed in ancient times. It followed a different course than its modern counterpart, by linking the Nile to the Red Seavia the Wadi Tumilat. Work begun under the Pharaohs. According to Suez Inscriptions and Herodotus, the first opening of the canal was under Persian king Darius the Great, Sony VAIO VPCF11ZHJ battery but later ancient authors like Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder claim that he failed to complete the work.[5] Other possibility is that it was finished in the Ptolemaic period underPtolemy II, when Greek engineers solved the problem of overcoming the difference in height through canal locks. Probably first cut or at least begun by Necho II, in the late 6th century BC, Darius the Great either re-dug or completed it. Sony VAIO VPCF127FJ/W battery Exactly when it was finally completed is not known as the classical sources disagree. At least as far back as Aristotle there have been suggestions that perhaps as early as the 12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878 BC-1839 BC), also called Sesostris, may have started a canal joining the River Nile with the Red Sea. In his Meteorology, Aristotle wrote: Sony VAIO VPCF128FJ/B battery One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable; Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it. Sony VAIO VPCF129FJ/BI battery Strabo also wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote: 165. Next comes the Tyro tribe and, on the Red Sea, the harbour of the Daneoi, from which Sesostris, king of Egypt, intended to carry a ship-canal to where the Nile flows into what is known as the Delta; this is a distance of over 60 miles. Sony VAIO VPCF12AFJ battery Later the Persian king Darius had the same idea, and yet again Ptolemy II, who made a trench 100 feet wide, 30 feet deep and about 35 miles long, as far as the Bitter Lakes.[10] Although Herodotus (2.158) tells us Darius I continued work on the canal,[11] Aristotle (Aristot. met. I 14 P 352b.), Strabo (Strab. XVII 1, 25 C 804. 805.), andPliny the Elder (Plin. n. h. VI 165f.) all say that he failed to complete it, Sony VAIO VPCF12AGJ battery while Diodorus Siculus does not mention a completion of the canal by Necho II.[12] Pliny the Elder also says that Ptolemy II, who took up the work again, also stopped because of the differences of water level.[13] Diodorus, however, reports that it was completed by Ptolemy II after being fitted with a lock.[14] Ptolemy II was the first to solve the problem of keeping the Nile free of salt water when his engineers invented the water lock around 274/273 BC.[15] Sony VAIO VPCF12AHJ battery In the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy the Astronomer mentions a "River of Trajan", a Roman canal running from the Nile to the Red Sea. A stela (one of four commemorating the construction of a canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea by Darius I) was located at the Wadi Tumilat and probably recorded sections of Darius's canal.[13] Sony VAIO VPCF135FG battery Islamic texts also discuss the canal, which they say had been silted up by the seventh century but reopened in 641 or 642 AD by 'Amr ibn al-'As, the conqueror of Egypt and was in use until closed in 767 AD in order to stop supplies reaching Mecca and Medina which were in rebellion.[13] Thereafter, the land routes to tranship camel caravans' goods were from Alexandria to ports on the Red Sea or the northern Byzantine silk route through theCaucasian Mountains transhipping on the Caspian Sea and thence to India. Sony VAIO VPCF138FC/BI battery The legendary Sesostris (likely either Pharaoh Senusret II or Senusret III of the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt[11][12]) is suggested to have perhaps started work on an ancient canal joining the River Nile with the Red Sea (1897 BC-1839 BC). (It is said that in ancient times the Red Sea reached northward to the Bitter Lakes[8][9] and Lake Timsah. One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable; Sony VAIO VPCF138FJ/B battery Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and Dariusafterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it. Remnants of an ancient west-east canal, running through the ancient Egyptian cities of Bubastis, Sony VAIO VPCF139FJ/BI battery Pi-Ramesses, and Pithom were discovered by Napoleon Bonaparteand his cadre of engineers and cartographers in 1799.According to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, about 600 BC, Necho II undertook to dig a west-east canal through the Wadi Tumilat between Bubastis and Heroopolis,[9] and perhaps continued it to the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea. Sony VAIO VPCF13AFJ battery Regardless, Necho is reported as having never completed his project.[8][9] Herodotus was told that 120,000 men perished in this undertaking, but this figure is doubtlessly exaggerated.[29] According to Pliny the Elder, Necho's extension to the canal was approximately 57 English miles,[9] equal to the total distance between Bubastis and the Great Bitter Lake, allowing for winding through valleysthat it had to pass through. Sony VAIO VPCF13AGJ battery The length that Herodotus tells us, of over 1000 stadia (i.e., over 114 miles), must be understood to include the entire distance between the Nile and the Red Sea[9] at that time. With Necho's death, work was discontinued. Herodotus tells us that the reason the project was abandoned was because of a warning received from an oracle that others would benefit by its successful completion. Sony VAIO VPCF13AHJ battery In fact, Necho's war with Nebuchadnezzar II most probably prevented the canal's continuation. Necho's project was finally completed by Darius I of Persia, who conquered Ancient Egypt. We are told that by Darius's time a natural[9] waterway passage which had existed[8] between the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea[31] in the vicinity of the Egyptian town of Shaluf[9] (alt. Chalouf[32] or Shaloof[14]), Sony VAIO VPCF13M8E/B battery located just south of the Great Bitter Lake,[9][14] had become so blocked[8] with silt[9] that Darius needed to clear it out so as to allow navigation[9] once again. According to Herodotus, Darius's canal was wide enough that two triremes could pass each other with oars extended, and required four days to traverse. Sony VAIO VPCF13Z0E/B battery Darius commemorated his achievement with a number of granite stelae that he set up on the Nile bank, including one near Kabret, and a further one a few miles north of Suez. The Red Sea is believed by some historians to have gradually receded over the centuries, its coastline slowly moving farther and farther southward away fromLake Timsah and the Great Bitter Lake to its present coastline today. Sony VAIO VPCF13ZHJ battery Coupled with persistent accumulations of Nile silt, maintenance and repair of Ptolemy's canal became increasingly cumbersome over each passing century. Two hundred years after the construction of Ptolemy's canal, Cleopatra seems to have had no west-east waterway passage,[8][9] because the Pelusiac branch of the Nile River, which had fed Ptolemy's west-east canal, had by that time dwindled, being choked with silt. Sony VAIO VPCF148FJ/B battery By the 8th century, a navigable canal existed between Old Cairo and the Red Sea, but accounts vary as to who ordered its construction either Trajan or'Amr ibn al-'As, or Omar the Great. This canal reportedly linked to the River Nile at Old Cairo[9] and ended near modern Suez. A geography treatise by Dicuil reports a conversation with an English monk, Sony VAIO VPCF149FJ/BI battery Fidelis, who had sailed on the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the first half of the 8th century [36] The Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur is said to have ordered this canal closed in 767 to prevent supplies from reaching Arabian detractors. Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is claimed to have repaired the Old Cairo to Red Sea passageway, Sony VAIO VPCF14AFJ battery but only briefly, circa 1000 AD,[8][9] as it soon "became choked with sand." However, we are told that parts of this canal still continued to fill in during the Nile's annual inundations. Napoleon Bonaparte's interest in finding the remnants of an ancient waterway passage[37] culminated in a cadre of archaeologists, scientists, cartographers andengineers scouring the area beginning in the latter months of 1798. Sony VAIO VPCF14AGJ battery Their findings, recorded in the Description de l' gypte, include detailed maps that depict the discovery of an ancient canal extending northward from the Red Sea and then westward toward the Nile. Napoleon had contemplated the construction of another, modern, north-south canal to join the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Sony VAIO VPCF14AHJ battery But his project was abandoned after the preliminary survey erroneously concluded that the Red Sea was 10 metres (33 ft) higher than the Mediterranean, making a locks-based canal too expensive and very long to construct. The Napoleonic survey commission's error came from fragmented readings mostly done during wartime, which resulted in imprecise calculations. Sony VAIO VPCF14ZHJ battery Though by this time unnavigable,[9] the ancient route from Bubastis to the Red Sea still channeled water in spots as late as 1861[9] and as far east as Kassassin. Although the alleged difference in sea levels could be problematic for a canal's construction, the idea of finding a shorter route to the east remained alive. In 1830, F. R. Chesney submitted a report to the British government, Sony VAIO VPCF217HG battery which stated that there was no difference in altitude, and that the Suez Canal was feasible, but his report received no further attention.Lieutenant Waghorn established his 'Overland Route', which transported post and passengers to India via Egypt. Linant de Bellefonds, a French explorer of Egypt, became chief engineer of Egypt's Public Works. In addition to his normal duties, Sony VAIO VPCF217HG/BI battery he surveyed the Isthmus of Suez and made plans for the Suez Canal. French Saint-Simonianists showed an interest in the canal and in 1833, Barth lemy Prosper Enfantin tried to draw Muhammad Ali's attention to the canal but was unsuccessful. Alois Negrelli, the Austrian railroad pioneer, became interested in the idea in 1836. Sony VAIO VPCF217FG battery In 1846, Prosper Enfantin's Soci t d' tudes du Canal de Suez invited a number of experts, among them Robert Stephenson, Negrelli and Paul-Adrien Bourdaloue to study the feasibility of the Suez Canal (with the assistance of Linant de Bellefonds). Bourdaloue's survey of the isthmus was the first generally accepted evidence that there was no practical difference in altitude between the two seas. Sony VAIO VPCF217FG/BI battery Britain, however, feared that a canal open to everyone might interfere with its India trade and, therefore, preferred a connection by train from Alexandria via Cairo to Suez, which eventually was built by Stephenson. In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Sa'id Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, to create a company to construct a canal open to ships of all nations. Sony VAIO VPCF219FJ/BI battery The company was to operate the canal for 99 years from its opening. De Lesseps had used his friendly relationship with Sa'id, which he had developed while he was a French diplomat during the 1830s. As stipulated in the concessions, de Lesseps convened the International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez (Commission Internationale pour le percement de l'isthme des Suez) Sony VAIO VPCF21AFJ battery consisting of thirteen experts from seven countries, among them John Robinson McClean, later to become President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, and again Negrelli, to examine the plans of Linant de Bellefonds and to advise on the feasibility of and on the best route for the canal. After surveys and analyses in Egypt and discussions in Paris on various aspects of the canal, where many of Negrelli's ideas prevailed, Sony VAIO VPCF21AGJ battery the commission produced a final unanimous report in December 1856 containing a detailed description of the canal complete with plans and profiles.[41] The Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) came into being on 15 December 1858 and work started on the shore of the future Port Said on 25 April 1859. Sony VAIO VPCF21AHJ battery The excavation took some 10 years using forced labour (corv e) of Egyptian workers during a certain period. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period, that altogether more than 1.5 million people from various countries were employed, and that thousands of laborers died on the project. Sony VAIO VPCF21Z1E/BI battery The British government had opposed the project of the canal from the outset to its completion. As one of the diplomatic moves against the canal, it disapproved the use of "slave labor" of forced workers on the canal. The British Empire was the major global naval force and officially condemned the forced work and sent armed Bedouins to start a revolt among workers. Sony VAIO VPCF21ZHJ battery Involuntary labour on the project ceased, and the viceroy condemned the corv e, halting the project. Angered by the British opportunism, de Lesseps sent a letter to the British government remarking on the British lack of remorse a few years earlier when forced workers died in similar conditions building the British railway in Egypt. Sony VAIO VPCF115FG/B battery Initially international opinion was sceptical and Suez Canal Company shares did not sell well overseas. Britain, the United States, Austria, and Russia did not buy any significant number of shares.[45] All French shares were quickly sold in France. A contemporary British sceptic claimed: One thing is sure... our local merchant community doesn't pay practical attention at all to this grand work, Sony VAIO VPCF116FG/BI battery and it is legitimate to doubt that the canal's receipts... could ever be sufficient to recover its maintenance fee. It will never become a large ship's accessible way in any case. The canal opened to shipping on 17 November 1869. Although numerous technical, political, and financial problems had been overcome, the final cost was more than double the original estimate. Sony VAIO VPCF117HG/BI battery The opening was performed by Khedive Ismail of Egypt and Sudan, and at Ismail's invitation French Empress Eugenie in the Imperial yacht Aigle, piloted by Napol on Coste who was bestowed by the Khedive the Order of the Medjidie (Blue Flame of Service c 1955). The first ship to follow the yacht Aiglethrough the canal was the British P&O liner Delta. Sony VAIO VPCF119FC battery Although L'Aigle was officially the first vessel to pass through the canal that honor should really go to HMS Newport captained by George Nares who would in 1870 captain HMS Challenger on her four year long, 80,000 mile, voyage of discovery. On the night before the canal was due to open Captain Nares navigated his vessel, in total darkness and without lights, Sony VAIO VPCF119FC/BI battery through the mass of waiting ships until it was in front of L'Aigle. When dawn broke the French were horrified to find that the British Royal Navy were now first in line and that it would be impossible to pass them. Captain Nares received both an official reprimand and an unofficial vote of thanks from the Admiralty for his actions in promoting British interests and for demonstrating such superb seamanship.Sony VAIO VPCF119FJ battery After the opening of the canal, the Suez Canal Company was in financial difficulties. The remaining works were completed only in 1871, and traffic was below expectations in the first two years. De Lesseps therefore tried to increase revenues by interpreting the kind of net ton referred to in the second concession (tonneau de capacit ) Sony VAIO VPCF11JFX/B battery as meaning a ship's real freight capacity and not only the theoretical net tonnage of the "Moorsom System" introduced in Britain by the Merchant Shipping Act in 1854. The ensuing commercial and diplomatic activities resulted in the International Commission of Constantinople establishing a specific kind of net tonnage and settling the question of tariffs in their protocol of 18 December 1873. Sony VAIO VPCF11M1E battery This was the origin of the Suez Canal Net Tonnage and the Suez Canal Special Tonnage Certificate still used today. The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed six months earlier, it allowed the entire world to be circled in record time. It played an important role in increasingEuropean colonisation of Africa. Sony VAIO VPCF11M1E/H battery The construction of the Suez Canal was one of the reasons for the Panic of 1873, because the goods from the Far East were carried in sailing vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and were stored in British warehouses, but sailing vessels were not adaptable for use through the Suez Canal, because the prevailing winds of the Mediterranean Sea blow from west to east. Sony VAIO VPCF11S1E battery External debts forced Said Pasha's successor, Isma'il Pasha, to sell his country's share in the canal for 4,000,000 to the United Kingdom in 1875, but French shareholders still held the majority. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was accused by William Ewart Gladstone of undermining Britain's constitutional system, because he had not referred to, or obtained consent from, Sony VAIO VPCF11Z1E battery Parliament when purchasing the shares with funding from the Rothschilds. The Convention of Constantinople in 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under the protection of the British, who had occupied Egypt and Sudan at the request of Khedive Tewfiq to suppress the Urabi Revolt against his rule. Sony VAIO VPCF127HG/BI battery They were later to defend the strategically important passage against a major Ottoman attack in 1915, during the First World War. Under theAnglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the United Kingdom insisted on retaining control over the canal. In 1951 Egypt repudiated the treaty, and in 1954 the UK agreed to remove its troops. Withdrawal was completed on 18 July 1956. Sony VAIO VPCF135FG/B battery Because of Egyptian overtures towards the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States withdrew their pledge to support the construction of the Aswan Dam. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser responded by nationalizing the canal in 1956 and transferring it to the Suez Canal Authority, intending to finance the dam project using revenue from the canal. Sony VAIO VPCF136FG/BI battery This led up to the Suez Crisis, known in theArab World as the "Tripartite Aggression", in which the UK, France, and Israel invaded Egypt. According to the pre-agreed war plans under the Protocol of S vres, the Israelis invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, forcing Egypt to engage them militarily, and allowing the Anglo-French partnership to declare the resultant fighting a threat to the canal and enter the war on Israel's side. Sony VAIO VPCF137HG/BI battery To save the British from what he thought was a disastrous action, and to stop the war from a possible escalation, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, proposed the creation of the first United Nations peacekeeping force to ensure access to the canal for all, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. Sony VAIO VPCF135Z1E/B battery On 4 November 1956, a majority of nations at the United Nations voted for Pearson's peacekeeping resolution, which mandated the UN peacekeepers to stay in Sinai unless both Egypt and Israel agreed to their withdrawal. The United States backed this proposal by putting pressure on the British government through the selling of sterling, which would cause it to depreciate. Sony VAIO VPCM125AGP battery Britain then agreed to withdraw its troops. Pearson was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As a result of damage and ships intentionally sunk under orders from Nasser the canal was closed until April 1957, when it was cleared with UN assistance.[52] A UN force (UNEF) was established to maintain the free navigability of the canal, and peace in the Sinai Peninsula. Sony VAIO VPCM128JC/L battery In May 1967 President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping forces out of Sinai, including the Suez Canal area. Israel objected to the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The canal itself had been closed to Israeli shipping since 1949, except for a short period in 1951-1952. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, called the Six Day War, the canal was closed by an Egyptian blockade until 5 June 1975. Sony VAIO VPCM128JC/P battery As a result, fourteen cargo ships known as "The Yellow Fleet" remained trapped in the canal for over eight years. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the canal was the scene of a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-occupied Sinai, and in the later stage of the war, a counter-crossing by the Israeli army to African Egypt. Sony VAIO VPCM129AJ/L battery Much wreckage from this conflict remains visible along the canal's edges.[citation needed] After the Yom Kippur War the United States initiatedOperation Nimbus Moon. The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima was sent to the Canal, carrying twelve RH-53D minesweepinghelicopters of HM-12. These partly cleared the Suez Canal between May and December 1974. Sony VAIO VPCM129AJ/P battery She was relieved by the LST USSBarnstable County (LST1197). The British Royal Navy initiated Operation Rheostat and Task Group 65.2 provided the MinehuntersHMS Maxton, HMS Bossington and HMS Wilton, and HMS Abdiel, a practice minelayer/MCMV support ship that spent two periods of 6 months in 1974 and in 1975 based at Ismailia. Sony VAIO VPCM129AJ/W battery When the Canal Clearance Operations were completed, the Suez Canal and its lakes were considered 99% clear of mines. The Canal was then reopened by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat aboard an Egyptian destroyer which led the first convoy Northbound to Port Said in 1975. The UNEF mandate expired in 1979. Despite the efforts of the United States, Sony VAIO VPCM13M1E/L battery Israel, Egypt, and others to obtain an extension of the UN role in observing the peace between Israel and Egypt, as called for under the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, the mandate could not be extended because of the veto by the USSR in the security council, at the request of Syria. Accordingly, negotiations for a new observer force in the Sinai produced the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), Sony VAIO VPCM13M1E/P battery stationed in Sinai in 1981 in coordination with a phased Israeli withdrawal. It is there under agreements between the United States, Israel, Egypt, and other nations. The canal allows passage of ships up to 20 m (66 ft) draft or 240,000 deadweight tons and up to a maximum height of 68 m (223 ft) above water level and a maximum beam of 77.5 m (254 ft) under certain conditions. Sony VAIO VPCM13M1E/W battery The Suez Canal can handle more ship traffic and larger ships than thePanama Canal. Some supertankers are too large to traverse the canal. Others can offload part of their cargo onto a canal-owned boat to reduce their draft, transit, and reload at the other end of the canal. The canal is too small for free two lane traffic. Therefor the ships pass in convoys, and they use bypasses. The by-passes are over a total of 78 km (48 mi) out of 193 km (120 mi) (40%).Sony VAIO VPCM125AG/L battery From North to South, they are: Port Said by-pass (entrances) 36.5 km (23 mi), Ballah by-pass & anchorage, 9 km (6 mi), Timsah by-pass 5 km (3 mi), and the Deversoir by-pass (North ern end of the Great Bitter Lake) 27.5 km (17 mi). The by-passes were completed in 1980. Typically, it takes a ship from 12 to 16 hours to transit the canal. In 24 hours the canal can pass about 76 standard ships. Sony VAIO VPCM125AG/P battery Suezmax is a naval architecture term for the largest ship measurements capable of transiting the Suez Canal in a laden condition, and is almost exclusively used in reference to tankers. Since the canal has no locks, the only serious limiting factors are draft (maximum depth below waterline), and height due to the Suez Canal Bridge. Sony VAIO VPCM125AG/W battery The current channel depth of the canal allows for a maximum of 20.1 m (66 ft) of draft,[1] meaning a few fully ladensupertankers are too deep to fit through, and either have to unload part of their cargo to other ships ("transhipment") or to a pipeline terminal before passing through, or alternatively avoid the Suez Canal and travel around Cape Agulhas instead. The canal was deepened in 2009 from 18 to 20 m (60 to 66 ft). Sony VAIO VPCM125JC/W battery The typical deadweight of a Suezmax ship is about 160,000 tons and typically has a beam (width) of 50 m (164.0 ft). Also of note is the maximum head room "air draft" limitation of 68 m (223.1 ft), resulting from the 70 m (230 ft) height above water of the Suez Canal Bridge. Suez Canal Authority produces tables of width and acceptable draft, which are subject to change. Sony VAIO VPCM126AA/L battery From 2010 the wetted surface cross sectional area of the ship is limited by 1006 m2, which means 20.1 m (66 ft) of draught for ships with the beam no wider than 50.0 m (164.0 ft) or 12.2 m (40 ft) of draught for ships with maximum allowed beam of 77.5 m (254 ft 3 in).[3] Similar terms of Panamax, Malaccamax and Seawaymax are used for the largest ships capable of fitting through thePanama Canal, the Strait of Malacca and Saint Lawrence Seaway, respectively. Sony VAIO VPCM126AA/P battery Aframax tankers are those with a capacity of 80,000 metric tons deadweight (DWT) to 120,000 DWT. The term "Chinamax" refers to vessels able to use a number of harbours while fully laden. "Capesize" refers to bulk carriers too big to pass through the Suez Canal - and needing to go around the Cape of Good Hope - but recent dredging means many Capesize vessels can use the canal. Sony VAIO VPCM126AA/W battery Plans to deepen the draft to 70 ft could lead to a redefinition of the Suezmax specification, as happened to the Panamax specification after deepening and widening of the Panama Canal. The canal has no locks because of the flat terrain, and the minor sea level difference between each end is inconsequential for shipping. Sony VAIO VPCM126AG/L battery The canal has no sea surge gates so that both entrances/exits ports are subject to the sudden impact of tsunamis from the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea, according to a 2012 article in the Journal of Coastal Research. There is one shipping lane with passing areas in Ballah-Bypass near El Qantara and in the Great Bitter Lake. On a typical day, three convoys transit the canal, two southbound and one northbound. Sony VAIO VPCM126AG/P battery The passage takes between 11 and 16 hours at a speed of around 8 knots (15 km/h; 9 mph). The low speed helps prevent erosion of the canal banks by ships' wakes. By 1955 approximately two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through the canal. About 7.5% of world sea trade is carried via the canal today. Sony VAIO VPCM126AG/W battery In 2008, a total of 21,415 vessels passed through the canal and the receipts from the canal totaled $5.381 billion, with the average cost per-ship at roughly $251,000. New Rules of Navigation that constitute an improvement over the older ones, which came into force as of 1 January 2008, were passed by the board of directors of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) to organise vessels' and tankers' transit. Sony VAIO VPCM126AH/L battery The most important amendments to the Rules include allowing vessels with 62-foot (19 m) draught to pass, and increasing the allowed breadth from 32 metres (105 ft) up to 40 metres (130 ft) following improvement operations, as well as imposing a fine on vessels using divers from outside the SCA inside the canal boundaries without permission. Sony VAIO VPCM126AH/P battery The amendments also allow vessels loaded with dangerous cargo (such as radioactive or inflammable materials) to pass, if they conform with the latest amendments provided by international conventions. The SCA also has the right to determine the number of tugs required to assist warships traversing the canal, to achieve the highest degree of safety during transit. Sony VAIO VPCM126AH/W battery Since the canal does not allow free two-way traffic, all ships transit in convoy formations on regular times. They are scheduled on a 24 hour scheme. Each day a single Northbound convoy starts at 06.00 h from Suez. This convoy gets an unhindered passage. At by-passes, it uses the Eastern route.[59] Interwoven in this convoy's Northbound traveling, are two Southbound convoys. Sony VPCCA15FA/B battery The first starts at 0.00 h from Port Said, and anchors in the Great Bitter Lake to let the Northbound pass. The second Southbound convoy starts at 07.00 h from Port Said and anchors in the western Ballah by-pass to let the Northbound convoy pass. Due to the Ballah canal dimensions, this convoy only has smaller and often unloaded ships. Sony VPCCA15FA/G battery The main alternative is travelling around Cape Agulhas at the south end of the African continent, commonly referred as the Cape of Good Hope route. This was the only route before the canal was constructed, and more recently when the canal was closed. It is still the only route for ships which are too large for the canal. In the early 21st century the long route has enjoyed decreased popularity because of increasing piracy in Somalia. Sony VPCCA15FA/L battery Between 2008 and 2010, it is estimated that the canal has lost 10% of traffic due to the threat of piracy, and another 10% due to the financial crisis. An oil tanker going from Saudi Arabia to the United States has 2,700 miles longer to go when taking the route south of Africa rather than the canal.[63] Before the canal's opening in 1869 goods were sometimes offloaded from ships and carried overland between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Sony VPCCA15FA/P battery In recent years, the shrinking Arctic sea ice has also made the Northern Sea Route feasible for commercial cargo ships plying between Europe and East Asia during a six-to-eight week window in the summer months, shaving off thousands of miles from the voyage compared to the Suez Canal. Sony VPCCA15FA/W battery According to polar climate researchers, as the extent of the Arctic summer ice pack recedes, the route will become passable without the help of icebreakers for a greater period each summer. The Bremen-based Beluga Group claimed in 2009 to be the first Western company to attempt crossing the Northern Sea Route for shipping without assistance from icebreakers, cutting 4000 nautical miles off the journey between Ulsan, Korea andRotterdam, the Netherlands. Sony VPCCA15FF/B battery The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red seas. Although the Red Sea is about 1.2 m (4 ft) higher than the eastern Mediterranean,[70] the current between the Mediterranean and the middle of the canal at the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. Sony VPCCA15FF/G battery The current south of the Bitter Lakes is tidal, varying with the height of tide at Suez.[5] The Bitter Lakes, which were hypersaline natural lakes, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalised with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, Sony VPCCA15FF/L battery and plants and animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonise the eastern Mediterranean. The Red Sea is generally saltier and more nutrient-poor than the Atlantic, so the Red Sea species have advantages over Atlantic species in the salty and nutrient-poor eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, most Red Sea species invade the Mediterranean biota, and only few do the opposite. Sony VPCCA15FF/P battery This migratory phenomenon is called Lessepsian migration (after Ferdinand de Lesseps) or "Erythrean invasion". Also impacting the eastern Mediterranean, starting in 1968, was the operation of Aswan High Dam across the River Nile. While providing for increased human development, the project both reduced the inflow of freshwater and ended all natural nutrient-rich silt from entering the eastern Mediterranean at the adjacent Nile Delta. Sony VPCCA15FF/W battery This provided less natural dilution of Mediterranean salinity and ended the higher levels of natural turbidity, additionally making conditions more like those in the Red Sea.[citation needed] Invasive species originated from the Red Sea and introduced into the Mediterranean by the construction of the canal have become a major component of the Mediterranean ecosystem, Sony VPCCA15FG battery and have serious impacts on the Mediterranean ecology, endangering many local andendemic Mediterranean species. Currently about 300 species from the Red Sea have been identified in the Mediterranean Sea, and there are probably others yet unidentified. The Egyptian government's intent to enlarge the canal has raised concerns from marine biologists, fearing that this will worsen the invasion of Red Sea species in the Mediterranean. Sony VPCCA15FG/B battery Construction of the Suez Canal was preceded by cutting a small fresh-water canal from the Nile delta along Wadi Tumilat to the future canal, with a southern branch to Suez and a northern branch to Port Said. Completed in 1863, these brought fresh water to a previously arid area, initially for canal construction, and subsequently facilitating growth of agriculture and settlements along the canal. Sony VPCCA15FG/D battery The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War, or Second Arab-Israeli War[13][14] (Arabic: / Azmat al-Suways / al- Udw n al-Thul th , "Suez Crisis"/ "the Tripartite Aggression"; French: Crise du canal de Suez; Hebrew: Mivtza' Kadesh "Operation Kadesh," or Mil emet Sinai, "Sinai War"), Sony VPCCA15FG/G battery was a diplomatic and military confrontation in late 1956 between Egypt on one side, and Britain, France and Israel on the other, with the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations playing major roles in forcing Britain, France and Israel to withdraw.[15] The attack followed the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, Sony VPCCA15FG/P battery after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which was in response to Egypt's new ties with the Soviet Union and recognizing the People's Republic of Chinaduring the height of tensions between China and Taiwan. The aims of the attack were primarily to regain Western control of the canal and to remove Nasser from power, and the crisis highlighted the danger that Arab nationalism posed to Western access to Middle East oil. Sony VPCCA15FG/R battery Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel, and then began to bomb Cairo. Despite the denials of the Israeli, British, and French governments, allegations began to emerge that the invasion of Egypt had been planned beforehand by the three powers. Sony VPCCA15FG/W battery Anglo-French forces withdrew before the end of the year, but Israeli forces remained until March 1957, prolonging the crisis. In April, the canal was fully reopened to shipping, but other repercussions followed. The three allies, especially Israel, were mainly successful in attaining their immediate military objectives, Sony VPCCA15FH/B battery but pressure from the United States and the USSR at the United Nations and elsewhere forced them to withdraw. As a result of the outside pressure Britain and France failed in their political and strategic aims of controlling the canal and removing Nasser from power. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran. Sony VPCCA15FH/G battery As a result of the conflict, the UNEF would police the Egyptian-Israeli border to prevent both sides from recommencing hostilities. The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, after ten years of work financed by the French and Egyptian governments. Sony VPCCA15FH/L battery The canal was operated by the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal, an Egyptian-chartered company; the area surrounding the canal remained sovereign Egyptian territory and the only land-bridge between Africa and Asia. The canal instantly became strategically important; it provided the shortest ocean link between theMediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Sony VPCCA15FH/P battery The canal eased commerce for trading nations and particularly helped European colonial powers to gain and govern their colonies. In 1875, as a result of debt and financial crisis, the Egyptian ruler was forced to sell his shares in the canal operating company to the British government of Benjamin Disraeli. Sony VPCCA15FH/W battery They were willing buyers and obtained a 44% share in the canal's operations for less than 4 million; this maintained the majority shareholdings of the mostly French private investors. With the 1882 invasion and occupation of Egypt, the United Kingdom took de facto control of the country as well as the canal proper, and its finances and operations. Sony VPCCA15FW/B battery The 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection.[20] In ratifying it, the Ottoman Empire agreed to permit international shipping to pass freely through the canal, in time of war and peace. The Convention came into force in 1904, the same year as the Entente cordiale, between Britain and France. Sony VPCCA15FW/D battery Despite this convention, the strategic importance of the Suez Canal and its control were proven during theRusso-Japanese War of 1904-1905, after Japan and Britain entered into a separate bilateral agreement. Following the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet based at Port Arthur the Russians sent reinforcements from their fleet in the Baltic Sea. Sony VPCCA15FW/P battery The British denied the Russian fleet use of the canal and forced it to steam around the entire continent of Africa, giving the Japanese forces time to solidify their position in the Far East. The importance of the canal as a strategic intersection was again apparent during the First World War, when Britain and France closed the canal to non-Alliedshipping. Sony VPCCA15FW/W battery The attempt by German-Ottoman forces to storm the Canal in February 1915 led the British to commit 100,000 troops to the defense of Egypt for the rest of the First World War.[22] The canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War as a conduit for the shipment of oil.[23] Petroleum business historian Daniel Yergin wrote of the period: Sony VPCCA15FX/W battery "In 1948, the canal abruptly lost its traditional rationale.... [British] control over the canal could no longer be preserved on grounds that it was critical to the defence either of India or of an empire that was being liquidated. And yet, at exactly the same moment, the canal was gaining a new role - as the highway not of empire, but of oil.... Sony VPCCA16EC battery By 1955, petroleum accounted for half of the canal's traffic, and, in turn, two thirds of Europe's oil passed through it. At the time, Western Europe imported two million barrels (bbls) per day from the Middle East, 1,200,000 by tanker through the Canal, and another 800,000 via pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, where tankers received it. Sony VPCCA16EC/P battery The US imported another 300,000 bbls. daily from the Middle East.[25] Though pipelines linked the oil fields of Iraq and the Persian Gulf states to the Mediterranean, these routes were prone to suffer from instability, which led British leaders to prefer to use the sea route through the Suez Canal. As it was, the rise of super-tankers for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, Sony VPCCA16FG/B battery which were too big to use the Suez Canal meant that British policy-makers greatly overestimated the importance of the canal.[23] By 2000, only 8% of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez canal with the rest coming via the Cape route. In August 1956 the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a report titled "Britain and the Suez Canal" revealing government perception of the Suez area. Sony VPCCA16FG/W battery It reiterates several times the strategic necessity of the Suez Canal to the United Kingdom, including the need to meet military obligations under theManila Pact in the Far East and the Baghdad Pact in Iraq, Iran, or Pakistan. The report also points out how the canal was used in past wars and could be used in future wars to transport troops from the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand in the event of war in Europe. Sony VPCCA16FH/B battery The report also cites the amount of material and oil which passes through the canal to the United Kingdom, and the economic consequences of the canal being put out of commission, concluding:The possibility of the Canal being closed to troopships makes the question of the control and regime of the Canal as important to Britain today as it ever was. Sony VPCCA16FW/W battery In the aftermath of the Second World War, Britain was reassessing its role in the region in light of the severe economic constraints and its colonial history. The economic potential of the Middle East, with its vast oil reserves, as well as the Suez Canal's geo-strategic importance against the background of the Cold War, prompted Britain to consolidate and strengthen its position there. Sony VPCCA17EC battery The kingdoms of Egypt and Iraq were seen as vital to maintaining strong British influence in the region. Britain's military strength was spread throughout the region, including the vast military complex at Suez with a garrison of some 80,000, making it one of the largest military installations in the world. The Suez base was considered an important part of Britain's strategic position in the Middle East; Sony VPCCA17EC/W battery however, increasingly it became a source of growing tension in Anglo-Egyptian relations.[27] Egypt's post-war domestic politics were experiencing a radical change, prompted in no small part by economic instability, inflation, and unemployment. Unrest began to manifest itself in the growth of radical political groups, Sony VPCCA17FX/D battery such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and an increasingly hostile attitude towards Britain and her presence in the country. Added to this anti-British fervour was the role Britain had played in the creation of Israel.[27] As a result, the actions of the Egyptian government began to mirror those of its populace and an anti-British policy began to permeate Egypt's relations with Britain. Sony VPCCA17FX/G battery In October 1951, the Egyptian government unilaterally abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the terms of which granted Britain a lease on the Suez base for 20 more years.[28] Britain refused to withdraw from Suez, relying upon its treaty rights, as well as the sheer presence of the Suez garrison. Sony VPCCA18EC battery The price of such a course of action was a steady escalation in increasingly violent hostility towards Britain and British troops in Egypt, which the Egyptian authorities did little to curb. On 25 January 1952, British attempts to disarm a troublesome auxiliary police force barracks in Ismailia resulted in the deaths of 41 Egyptians. Sony VPCCA18EC/D battery This in turn led to anti-Western riots in Cairo resulting in heavy damage to property and the deaths of several foreigners, including 11 British citizens. This proved to be a catalyst for the removal of the Egyptian monarchy. On 23 July 1952 a military coup by the 'Free Officers Movement' led by Muhammad Neguib and future Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser overthrew King Farouk and established an Egyptian republic. Sony VPCCA190 battery Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, cargo shipments to and from Israel had been subject to Egyptian authorization, search and seizure while attempting to pass through the Suez Canal.[30] On 1 September 1951, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 95 called upon Egypt: "... to terminate the restrictions on the passage of international commercial ships and goods through the Suez Canal, Sony VPCCA1AFJ battery wherever bound, and to cease all interference with such shipping." This interference and confiscation, contrary to the laws of the canal (Article 1 of the 1888 Suez Canal Convention), increased following the coup. Britain's desire to mend Anglo-Egyptian relations in the wake of the coup saw her strive for rapprochement throughout 1953 and 1954. Sony VPCCA1AGJ battery Part of this process was the agreement, in 1953, to terminate British rule in Sudan by 1956 in return for Cairo's abandoning of its claim to suzerainty over the Nile Valley region. In October 1954, Britain and Egypt concluded an agreement on the phased evacuation of British troops from the Suez base, the terms of which agreed to withdrawal of all troops within 20 months, Sony VPCCA1AHJ battery maintenance of the base to be continued, and for Britain to hold the right to return for seven years.[31] The Suez Canal Company was not due to revert to the Egyptian government until 16 November 1968 under the terms of the treaty. In the 1950s the Middle East was dominated by four different but overlapping struggles, each distinct from the other, but linked in various ways. Sony VPCCA1C5E battery The first was the geopolitical struggle for influence between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the Cold War. The second was the struggle between various Arab nationalists against the two remaining imperial powers, Britain and France. The third was the Arab-Israeli dispute, and the fourth was the struggle between different Arab states for the leadership of the Arab world, known as the Arab Cold War. Sony VPCCA1S1C/CN1 battery In regard to the latter, particularly venomous was the feud between Nasser and the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri el-Said, for Arab leadership, with the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs radio station regularly calling for the overthrow of the government in Baghdad. The most important factors that drove Egyptian foreign policy in this period was on the one hand, Sony VPCCA1S1E battery a determination to see the entire Middle East as Egypt's rightful sphere of influence, and on the other, a tendency on the part of Nasser to fortify his pan-Arabist and nationalist credibility by seeking to oppose any and all Western security initiatives in the Near East. Despite the establishment of such an agreement with the British, Nasser's position remained tenuous.Sony VPCCA1S1E/B battery The loss of Egypt's claim to Sudan, coupled with the continued presence of Britain at Suez for a further two years, led to domestic unrest including an assassination attempt against him in October 1954. The tenuous nature of Nasser's rule caused him to believe that neither his regime, nor Egypt's independence would be safe until Egypt had established itself as head of the Arab world. Sony VPCCA1S1E/D battery This would manifest itself in the challenging of British Middle Eastern interests throughout 1955. In late 1954, Nasser began a policy of sponsoring raids into Israel by the fedayeen, triggering a series of Israeli reprisal operations. The raids were targeted as much at Iraq politically as against Israel militarily. Sony VPCCA1S1E/G battery It was Nasser's intention to win himself the laurels of the foremost anti-Zionist state as a way of establishing his leadership over the Arab world.[35] Before 1954, the principal target of Nasser's speeches had been Britain. Only after the Anglo-Egyptian agreement on evacuating the Canal Zone did Israel emerged as one of Nasser's main enemies. Sony VPCCA1S1E/P battery At the same time, the United States was attempting to woo Nasser into an alliance.[37] The central problem for American policy in the Middle East was that this region was perceived as strategically important due to its oil, but the United States, weighed down by defense commitments in Europe and the Far East, lacked sufficient troops to resist a Soviet invasion of the Middle East. Sony VPCCA1S1E/W battery In 1952, General Omar Bradley of Joint Chiefs of Staff declared at a planning session about what to do in the event of a Soviet invasion of the Near East: "Where will the staff come from? It will take a lot of stuff to do a job there".Sony VPCCA1S2C/CN1 battery As a consequence, American diplomats favored the creation of a NATO-type organization in the Near East to provide the necessary military power to deter the Soviets from invading the region. The Eisenhower administration, even more than the Truman administration saw the Near East as a huge gap into which Soviet influence could be projected, Sony VPCCA1S3C/CN1 battery and accordingly required an American-supported security system.[39] An American diplomat later recalled: It's hard to put ourselves back in this period. There was really a definite fear of hostilities, of an active Russian occupation of the Middle East physically, and you practically hear the Russian boots clumping down over the hot desert sands. Sony VPCCA2AJ battery The projected Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO) was to be centered around Egypt.[40] A National Security Council directive of March 1953 called Egypt the "key" to the Near East and advised that Washington "...should develop Egypt as a point of strength". A major dilemma for American policy was that the two strongest powers in the Near East, Sony VPCCA2S0E battery Britain and France, were also the nations whose influence many local nationalists most resented. From 1953 onwards, American diplomacy had attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the powers involved in the Near East, both local and imperial, to set aside their differences and unite against the Soviet Union. Sony VPCCA2S1E battery The Americans took the view that, just as fear of the Soviet Union had helped to end the historic Franco-German enmity, so too could anti-Communism end the more recent Arab-Israeli dispute. It was a source of constant puzzlement to American officials in the 1950s that the Arab states and the Israelis had seemed to have more interest in fighting each other rather that uniting against the Soviet Union. Sony VPCCA2SFX/R battery After his visit to the Middle East in May 1953 to drum up support for MEDO, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles found much to his astonishment that the Arab states were "more fearful of Zionism than of the Communists". The policy of the United States was colored by considerable uncertainty as to whom to befriend in the Near East. Sony VPCCA2Z0E battery American policy was torn between a desire to maintain good relations with NATO allies such as Britain and France who were also major colonial powers, and a desire to align Third World nationalists with the Free World camp. Though it would be entirely false to describe the coup which deposed King Farouk in July 1952 as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coup, Sony VPCCA35FA/PI battery Nasser and his Society of Free Officers were nonetheless in close contact with CIA operatives led by Miles Copeland beforehand (Nasser maintained links with any and all potential allies from the Egyptian Communist Party on the left to the Muslim Brotherhood on the right). Nasser's friendship with certain CIA officers in Cairo led Washington to vastly overestimate its influence in Egypt. Sony VPCCA35FF/P battery That Nasser was close to CIA officers led the Americans for a time to view Nasser as a CIA "asset".[46] In turn, the British who were aware of Nasser's CIA ties deeply resented this relationship, which they viewed as an American attempt to push them out of Egypt. Sony VPCCA35FG/PI battery The principal reason for Nasser's courting of the CIA before the July Revolution of 1952 was his hope that the Americans would act as a restraining influence on the British should Whitehall decide on intervention to put an end to the revolution (until Egypt renounced it in 1951, the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty allowed Britain the right of intervention against all foreign and domestic threats). Sony VPCCA35FH/D battery In turn, many American officials, such as Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, saw the continued British military presence in Egypt as anachronistic, and viewed the Revolutionary Command Council (as Nasser called his government after the coup) in a highly favorable light.Caffery was consistently very positive about Nasser in his reports to Washington right up until his departure from Cairo in 1955. Sony VPCCA35FN/R battery The regime of King Farouk was viewed in Washington as weak, corrupt, unstable, and anti-American, so Free Officers' July coup was welcomed by the United States. As it was, Nasser's contacts with the CIA were not necessary to prevent British intervention against the July coup as Anglo-Egyptian relations had deteriorated so badly in 1951-52 that the British viewed any Egyptian government not headed by King Farouk as a huge improvement. Sony VPCCA35FW/B battery In May 1953, during a meeting with the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who asked Egypt to join an anti-Soviet alliance, Nasser responded by saying that the Soviet Union has never occupied our territory..but the British have been here for seventy years. How can I go to my people and tell them I am disregarding a killer with a pistol sixty miles from me at the Suez Canal to worry about somebody who is holding a knife a thousand miles away? Sony VPCCA35FW/W battery Dulles informed Nasser of his belief that the Soviet Union was seeking world conquest, that the principal danger to the Near East came from the Kremlin, and urged Nasser to set aside his differences with Britain to focus on countering the Soviet Union.[37] In this spirit, Dulles suggested that the Nasser negotiate a deal that would see Egypt assume sovereignty over the Canal Zone base, Sony VPCCA36EC battery but then allow the British to have "technical control" in the same way that Ford auto company provided parts and training to its Egyptian dealers.[37] Nasser did not share Dulles's fear of the Soviet Union taking over the Middle East, and insisted quite vehemently that he wanted to see the total end of all British influence not only in Egypt, but all the Middle East. Sony VPCCA36EC/W battery The CIA offered Nasser a $3 million bribe if he would joined the proposed Middle East Defence Organization; Nasser took the money, but then refused to join.[51] At most, Nasser made it clear to the Americans that he wanted an Egyptian-dominated Arab League to be the principal defense organization in the Near East, Sony VPCCA36FA/B battery which might be informally associated with the United States, and most of all, he wanted the United States to supply arms on a generous scale to Egypt.[52] Nasser refused to promise that any U.S. arms he might buy would not be used against Israel, and rejected out of hand the American demand for Military Advisory Group to be sent to Egypt as part of the price of arms sales. Sony VPCCA36FG/B battery After he returned to Washington, Dulles advised Eisenhower that the Arab states believed "the United States will back the new state of Israel in aggressive expansion. Our basic political problem...is to improve the Moslem states' attitudes towards Western democracies because our prestige in that area had been in constant decline ever since the war".Sony VPCCA36FH/W battery The immediate consequence was a new policy of "even-handedness" where the United States very publicly sided with the Arab states in several disputes with Israel in 1953-54.[54] Moreover, Dulles did not share any sentimental regard for the Anglo-American "special relationship", which led the Americans to lean towards the Egyptian side in the Anglo-Egyptian disputes. Sony VPCCA36FW/B battery During the extremely difficult negotiations over the British evacuation of the Suez Canal base in 1954-55, the Americans generally supported Egypt, though at the same time trying hard to limit the extent of the damage that this might cause to Anglo-American relations. Sony VPCCA36FW/W battery While the Americans were attempting to erect an alliance in the form of the still-born Middle East Defence Organization to keep the Soviet Union out of the Near East, the Soviet Union under the new leadership of Nikita Khrushchev was making a major effort to win influence in the so-called "third world".Sony VPCCA37EC battery As part of the diplomatic offensive, Khrushchev had abandoned Moscow's traditional line of treating all non-communists as enemies and adopted a new tactic of befriending so-called "non-aligned" nations, which often were led by leaders who were non-Communists, but in varying ways and degrees were hostile towards the West. Sony VPCCA37EC/B battery Khrushchev had realized that by treating non-communists as being the same thing as being anti-communist, Moscow had needlessly alienated many potential friends over the years in the third world. Under the banner of anti-imperialism, Khrushchev made it clear that the Soviet Union would provide arms to any left-wing government in the third world as a way of undercutting Western influence.Sony VPCCA38EC battery The Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai who met Nasser at the 1955 Bandung Summit and was impressed by him, recommended that Khrushchev treat Nasser as a potential ally.[57] Zhou described Nasser to Khrushchev as a young nationalist, who though no Communist, could if used correctly do much damage to Western interests in the Middle East. Sony VPCCA38EC/R battery Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, who also come to know Nasser at Bandung told Khrushchev in a 1955 meeting that "Nasser was a young man without much political experience, but if we give him the benefit of the doubt, we might be able to exert a beneficial influence on him, both for the sake of the Communist movement, and...the Egyptian people".Sony VPCCA3E1E battery Traditionally, most of the equipment in the Egyptian military had come from Britain, but Nasser's desire to break British influence in Egypt meant that he was desperate to find a new source of weapons to replace Britain.[59] Nasser had first broached the subject of buying weapons from the Soviet Union in 1954. Sony VPCCA3S1E battery Instead of siding with either super-power, Nasser took the role of the spoiler and tried to play off the super-powers in order to have them compete with each other in attempts to buy his friendship. Nasser's first choice for buying weapons was the United States, but his frequent anti-Israeli speeches and his sponsorship for the fedayeen who were making raids into Israel had made it difficult for the Eisenhower administration to get the approval of Congress to sell weapons to Egypt. Sony VPCCA3SFX/R battery American public opinion was deeply hostile towards selling arms to Egypt that might be used against Israel, and moreover Eisenhower feared starting a Middle Eastern arms race. Eisenhower very much valued the Tripartite Declaration as a way of keeping peace in the Near East. In 1950, in order to limit the extent that the Arabs and the Israelis could engage in an arms race, Sony VPCEH13FX/B battery the three nations which dominated the arms trade in the non-Communist world, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France had signed the Tripartite Declaration, where they had committed themselves to limiting how many arms they could sell in the Near East, and also to ensuring that any arms sales to one side was matched by arms sales of equal quantity and quality to the other. Sony VPCEH13FX/L battery Eisenhower viewed the Tripartite Declaration, which sharply restricted how many arms Egypt could buy in the West, as one of the key elements in keeping the peace between Israel and the Arabs, and believed that settling off an arms race would inevitably lead to a new war. Nasser had let it be known in 1954-55 that he was considering buying weapons from the Soviet Union as a way of pressuring the Americans into selling him arms he desired. Sony VPCEH13FX/P battery Nasser's hope was that faced with the prospect of Egypt buying Soviet weapons, and thus coming under Soviet influence the Eisenhower administration would be forced to sell Egypt the weapons he wanted.[57] Khrushchev who very much wanted to win the Soviet Union influence in the Middle East, was more than ready to arm Egypt if the Americans proved unwilling. Sony VPCEH13FX/W battery During secret talks with the Soviets in 1955, Nasser's demands for weapons were more than amply satisfied as the Soviet Union had not signed the Tripartite Declaration.[63] The news in September 1955 of the Egyptian purchase of a huge quantity of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia was greeted with shock and rage in the West, where this was seen as major increase in Soviet influence in the Near East. Sony VPCEH15EG/B battery In Britain, the increase of Soviet influence in the Near East was seen as an ominous development that threatened to put an end to British influence in the oil-rich region.[65] In the same report of May 1953 to Eisenhower calling for "even-handedness", Dulles stated that the Egyptians were not interested in joining the proposed MEDO; Sony VPCEH15EN/W battery that the Arabs were more interested in their disputes with the British, the French, the Israelis and each other than in standing against the Soviets; and that the "Northern Tier" states of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan were more useful as allies at present than Egypt. Accordingly, the best American policy towards Egypt was to work towards Arab-Israeli peace and the settlement of the Anglo-Egyptian Sony VPCEH16EA/P battery dispute over the British Suez Canal base as the best way of securing Egypt's ultimate adhesion to an American sponsored alliance centered around the "Northern Tier" states. The "Northern Tier" alliance was achieved in early 1955 with the creation of the Baghdad Pact comprising Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and the United Kingdom. Sony VPCEH16EF/B battery The presence of the last two states was due to the British desire to continue to maintain influence in the Middle East, and Nuri Said's wish to associate his country with the West as the best way of counter-balancing the increasing aggressive Egyptian claims to regional predominance. he conclusion of the Baghdad Pact occurred almost simultaneously with a dramatic Israeli raid on the Gaza Strip on 28 February 1955 in retaliation for fedayeen raids into Israel, Sony VPCEH16EG/W battery during which the Israeli Unit 101 commanded by Ariel Sharon gave the Egyptian Army a bloody nose.The close occurrence of the two events was mistakenly interpreted by Nasser as part of coordinated Western effort to push him into joining the Baghdad Pact. The signing of the Baghdad Pact and the Gaza raid marked the beginning of the end of Nasser's once good relations with the Americans. Sony VPCEH16EH/W battery In particular, Nasser saw Iraq's participation in the Baghdad Pact as a Western attempt to promote his archenemy Nuri al-Said as an alternative leader of the Arab world. Britain's close relationship with the two Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan were of particular concern to Nasser. In particular, Iraq's increasingly amicable relations with Britain were a threat to Nasser's desire to see Egypt as head of the Arab world. Sony VPCEH16EN/B battery The creation of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 seemed to confirm Nasser's fears that Britain was attempting to draw the Eastern Arab World into a bloc centred upon Iraq, and sympathetic to Britain.[70] Nasser's response was a series of challenges to British influence in the region that would culminate in the Suez Crisis. Sony VPCEH17FG/B battery Starting in 1949 owing to shared nuclear research, France and Israel started to move towards an alliance. Following the outbreak of the Algerian War in late 1954, France began to ship more and more arms to Israel. In November 1954, Shimon Peres visited Paris, where he was received by the French Defense MinisterMarie-Pierre K nig, who told him that France would sell Israel any weapons it wanted to buy. Sony VPCEH17FG/L battery By early 1955, France was shipping large amounts of weapons to Israel.[73] In April 1956, following another visit to Paris by Peres, France agreed to totally disregard the Tripartite Declaration, and supply even more weapons to Israel.[74] During the same visit, Peres informed the French that Israel had decided upon war with Egypt in 1956. Sony VPCEH17FG/P battery Peres claimed that Nasser was a genocidal manic intent upon not only destroying Israel, but also exterminating its people, and as such, Israel wanted a war before Egypt received even more Soviet weapons, and there was still a possibility of victory for the Jewish state.[75] Peres asked for the French, who had emerged as Israel's closest ally by this point, to give Israel all they help they could give in the coming war. Sony VPCEH17FG/W battery In January 1956 in an effort to end the incipient arms race in the Middle East set off by the Soviet Union selling Egypt arms on a scale unlimited by the Tripartite Declaration and with France doing likewise with Israel, which he saw as opening the Near East to Soviet influence, Eisenhower launched a major effort to make peace between Egypt and Israel. Sony VPCEH17FJ/W battery Eisenhower sent out his close friend Robert B. Anderson to serve as a secret envoy who would end the Arab-Israeli dispute once and for all. During his meetings with Nasser, Anderson offered bountiful quantities of American aid in exchange for a peace treaty with Israel, only to see his offer rejected as unacceptable to Egypt. Anderson was no more successful in his talks with the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Sony VPCEH18FA/B battery A second round of secret diplomacy by Anderson in February 1956 was equally fruitless.[79] Nasser sometimes suggested during his talks with Anderson that he was interested in peace with Israel if only the Americans would supply him with unlimited quantities of military and economic aid and ensure that Israel accepted the return of the Palestinians displaced in 1948-49. Sony VPCEH18FF/B battery It is not clear if Nasser was sincerely interested in peace, or just merely saying what the Americans wanted to hear in the hope of obtaining American funding for the Aswan high dam and American weapons. The truth will likely never be known as Nasser was an intensely secretive man, who managed to hide his true opinions on most issues from both contemporaries and historians. Sony VPCEH18FG/L battery However, the British historian P.J. Vatikitos noted that Nasser's determination to promote Egypt as the world's foremost anti-Zionist state as a way of reinforcing his claim to Arab leadership did not bode well for the prospects of peace. Throughout 1955 and 1956 Nasser pursued a number of policies that would frustrate British aims throughout the Middle East, and result in increasing hostility between Britain and Egypt. Sony VPCEH18FH/P battery Nasser saw Iraq's inclusion in the Baghdad Pact as indicating that the United States and Britain had sided with his much hated archenemy Nuri as-Said's efforts to be the leader of the Arab world, and much of the motivation for Nasser's turn to an active anti-Western policy starting in 1955 was due to his displeasure with the Baghdad Pact. Sony VPCEH18FJ/B battery For Nasser, attendance at such events as the Bandung conference in April 1955 served as the both the means of striking a posture as a global leader, and of playing hard to get in his talks with the Americans, especially his demand that the United States sell him vast quantities of arms. Nasser "... played on the widespread suspicion that any Western defence pact was merely veiled colonialism and that Arab disunity and weakness Sony VPCEH18FJ/P battery especially in the struggle with Israel was a consequence of British machinations."[70] He also began to align Egypt with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia whose rulers were hereditary enemies of the Hashemites in an effort to frustrate British efforts to draw Syria, Jordan and Lebanon into the orbit of the Baghdad Pact. Sony VPCEH18FJ/W battery

The render farm occupies the 193rd to 197th spots in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A new texturing and paint software system, called Mari, was developed by The Foundry in cooperation with Weta.Creating the Na'vi characters and the virtual world of Pandora required over a petabyte of digital storage, Sony VPCY21S1E/P Battery and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage.^[110] To help finish preparing the special effects sequences on time, a number of other companies were brought on board, including Industrial Light & Magic, which worked alongside Weta Digital to create the battle sequences. Sony VPCY21S1E/SI Battery ILM was responsible for the visual effects for many of the film's specialized vehicles and devised a new way to make CGI explosions.^[111] Joe Letteri was the film's visual effects general supervisor. Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic.^[113] Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008.^[114] Sony VPCCW1E8R/WU Battery He also worked with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.^[115] The first scoring sessions were planned to take place in spring 2009.^[116] During production, Horner promised Cameron that he would not work on any other project except for Avatar and reportedly worked on the score from four in the morning till ten at night throughout the process. Sony VPCCW1S1E Battery He stated in an interview, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken."^[117] Horner composed the score as two different scores merged into one. He first created a score that reflected the Na'vi way of sound and then combined it with a separate "traditional" score to drive the film.^[89] Sony VAIO PCG-5S1M Battery British singer Leona Lewis was chosen to sing the theme song for the film, called "I See You". An accompanying music video, directed by Jake Nava, premiered December 15, 2009, on MySpace. The first photo of the film was released on August 14, 2009,^[119] and Empire magazine released exclusive images from the film in its October issue.^[120] Sony VAIO PCG-9Z1M Battery Cameron, producer Jon Landau, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, and Sigourney Weaver appeared at a panel, moderated byTom Rothman, at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con on July 23. Twenty-five minutes of footage was screened^[121] in Dolby 3D.^[122] Weaver and Cameron appeared at additional panels to promote the film, speaking on the 23rd^[123] and 24th^[124] respectively. Sony VAIO PCG-7171M Battery James Cameron announced at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that August 21 will be 'Avatar Day'. On this day the trailer for the film was released in all theatrical formats. The official game trailer and toy line of the film were also unveiled on this day.^[125] The 129-second trailer was released online on August 20, 2009.^[126] Sony VAIO PCG-7186M Battery The new 210-second trailer was premiered in theatres onOctober 23, 2009, then soon after premiered online on Yahoo! on October 29, 2009, to positive reviews.^[127][128] An extended version in IMAX 3D received overwhelmingly positive reviews.^[126] The Hollywood Reporter said that audience expectations were coloured by "the Sony VAIO PCG-81112M Battery [same] establishment skepticism that preceded Titanic" and suggested the showing reflected the desire for original storytelling. The teaser has been among the most viewed trailers in the history of film marketing, reaching the first place of all trailers viewed on Apple.com with 4 million views.^[130] Sony VAIO PCG-31111M Battery On October 30, to celebrate the opening of the first 3-D cinema in Vietnam, Fox allowed Megastar Cinema to screen exclusive 16 minutes of Avatar to a number of press.^[131] The three-and-a-half-minute trailer of the film premiered live on November 1, 2009, during a Dallas Cowboys football game at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Sony VAIO PCG-31311M Battery Texas, on the Diamond Vision screen, one of the world's largest video displays, and to TV audiences viewing the game on Fox. It is said to be the largest live motion picture trailer viewing in history.^[132] The Coca-Cola Company collaborated with Twentieth Century Fox to launch a worldwide marketing campaign to promote the film. Sony VAIO PCG-8152M Battery The highlight of the campaign was the website AVTR.com. Specially marked bottles and cans of Coca-Cola Zero, when held in front of a webcam, enabled users to interact with the website's 3-D features using augmented reality (AR) technology.^[133] The film was heavily promoted in an episode of the Fox Network series Bones in the episode Sony VAIO PCG-61111M Battery "The Gamer In The Grease" (Season 5, Episode 9). Avatar star Joel David Moore has a recurring role on the program, and is seen in the episode anxiously awaiting the release of the film.^[134] A week prior to the American release, Zoe Saldana promoted the film on Adult Swim when she was interviewed by an animated Space Ghost.^[135] Sony PCG-71213M Battery McDonald's had a promotion mentioned in television commercials in Europe called "Avatarize yourself", which encouraged people to go to the website set up byOddcast, and use a photograph of themselves to change into a Na'vi. Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, Sony PCG-71311M Battery a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on November 24, 2009.^[137] It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page James Cameron's Avatar: Sony PCG-71312M Battery The Reusable Scrapbook for children.^[138] The Art of Avatar: James Cameron's Epic Adventure was released on November 30, 2009, by Abrams Books. The book features detailed production artwork from the film, including production sketches, illustrations by Lisa Fitzpatrick, and film stills. Producer Jon Landau wrote the foreword, Sony PCG-71212M Battery Cameron wrote the epilogue, and director Peter Jackson wrote the preface.^[139] In October 2010, Abrams Books also released The Making of Avatar, a 272-page book that detailed the film's production process and contains over 500 color photographs and illustrations.^[140] In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel version of Avatar after the film was released.^[141] Sony PCG-71811M Battery In February 2010, producer Jon Landau stated that Cameron plans a prequel novel for Avatar that will "lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with", saying that "Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things".Sony PCG-71911M Battery Cameron chose Ubisoft Montreal to create an Avatar game for the film in 2007. The filmmakers and game developers collaborated heavily, and Cameron decided to include some of Ubisoft's vehicle and creature designs into the film.^[143] James Cameron's Avatar: The Game was released on December 1, 2009,^[144] Sony PCG-91211M Battery for most home video game consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, iPhone), Microsoft Windows and December 8 for PSP. Mattel Toys announced in December 2009 that it would be introducing a line of Avatar action figures. Each action figure will be made with a 3-D web tag, called an i-TAG, that consumers can scan using a web cam, revealing unique on-screen content that is special to each specific action figure.^[145] Sony PCG-91111M Battery A series of toys representing six different characters from the film were also distributed in McDonald's Happy Meals in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the United States and Venezuela.^[147] In December 2009, France Post released a special limited edition stamp based on Avatar, coinciding with the film's worldwide release. Sony VAIO PCG-5J4M Battery Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was released theatrically worldwide from December 16 to 18.^[149] The film was originally set for release onMay 22, 2009, during filming,^[150] but was pushed back to allow more post-production time (the last shots were delivered in November),^[96] and to give more time for theatres worldwide to install 3D projectors.^[151] Sony VAIO PCG-5K1M Battery Cameron stated that the film's aspect ratio would be 1.78:1 for 3D screenings and that a 2.39:1 image would be extracted for 2D screenings.^[152] However, a 3D 2.39:1 extract was approved for use with constant-image-height screens (i.e. screens which increase in width to display 2.39:1 films).^[153] During a 3D preview showing in Germany on December 16, the movie's DRM 'protection' system failed, Sony VAIO PCG-5K2M Battery and some copies delivered could not be watched at all in the theaters. The problems were fixed in time for the public premiere, however.^[154] Avatar was released in a total of 3,457 theatres in the US, of which 2,032 theatres ran it in 3D. In total 90% of all advance ticket sales for Avatar were for 3D screenings.^[155] Sony VAIO PCG-5J5M Battery Internationally, Avatar opened on a total of 14,604 screens in 106 territories, of which 3,671 were showing the film in 3D (producing 56% of the first weekend gross).^[156][157] The film was simultaneously presented in IMAX 3D format, opening in 178 theaters in the United States on December 18. Sony VAIO PCG-5L2M Battery The international IMAX release included 58 theaters beginning on December 16, and 25 more theaters were to be added in the coming weeks.^[158] The IMAX release was the company's widest to date, a total of 261 theaters worldwide. The previous IMAX record opening was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opened in 161 IMAX theatres in the US, and about 70 international.^[159] Sony VAIO PCG-6S4M Battery 20th Century Fox Korea adapted and later released Avatar in 4D version, which included "moving seats, smells of explosives, sprinkling water, laser lights and wind". Avatar released internationally in more than 14,000 screens.^[160] Avatar earned $3,537,000 from midnight screenings domestically (United States and Canada), Sony VAIO PCG-6W1M Battery with the initial 3D release limited to 2,200 screens.^[161] The film earned $26,752,099 on its opening day, and $77,025,481 over its opening weekend, making it the second largest December opening ever behind I Am Legend,^[5][26] the largest domestic opening weekend for a film not based on a franchise (topping The Incredibles), Sony VAIO PCG-6W2M Battery the highest opening weekend for a film entirely in 3D (breaking Up's record),^[162] the highest opening weekend for an environmentalist film (breaking The Day After Tomorrow's record),^[163] and the 40th largest opening weekend in North America,^[5] despite a blizzard which blanketed the East Coast of the United States and reportedly hurt its opening weekend results.^[ Sony VAIO PCG-7Z1M Battery The film also set an IMAX opening weekend record, with 178 theaters generating approximately $9.5 million, 12% of the film's $77 million (at the time) North American gross on less than 3% of the screens.^[158] International markets generating opening weekend tallies of at least $10 million were Russia ($19.7 million), Sony VAIO PCG-8Y2M Battery France ($17.4 million), the UK ($13.8 million), Germany ($13.3 million), South Korea ($11.7 million), Australia ($11.5 million) and Spain ($11.0 million).^[164] Avatar's worldwide gross was US$241.6 million after five days, the ninth largest opening-weekend gross of all time, and the largest for a non-franchise, non-sequel and original film.^[165] Sony VAIO PCG-8Y3M Battery 58 international IMAX screens generated an estimated $4.1 million during the opening weekend.^[158] Revenues in the film's second weekend decreased by only 1.8% in domestic markets, marking a rare occurrence,^[166] earning $75,617,183, to remain in first place at the box office^[167] and recording the biggest second weekend of all time^[168] (since surpassed by Marvel's The Avengers).^[169] Sony VAIO PCG-8Z1M Battery The film experienced another marginal decrease in revenue in its third weekend, dropping 9.4% to $68,490,688 domestically, remaining in first place at the box office,^[170] to set a third-weekend record.^[171] Avatar crossed the $1 billion mark on the 19th day of its international release, making it the first film to reach this mark in only 19 days^[172] Sony VAIO PCG-8Z2M Battery (a record now matched by both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 in 2011 and The Avengers in 2012).^[173] It became the fifth film gross more than $1 billion worldwide, and the only film of 2009 to do so.^[174] In its fourth weekend, Avatar continued to lead the box office domestically, setting a new all-time fourth-weekend record of $50,306,217,^[175] Sony VAIO PCG-8Z3M Battery and becoming the highest-grossing 2009 release in the United States.^[176] In the film's fifth weekend, it set the Martin Luther King Day four-day weekend record, grossing $54,401,446,^[177] and set a fifth-weekend record with a take of $42,785,612.^[178] It held to the top spot to set the sixth and seventh weekend records earning $34,944,081^[179] and $31,280,029^[180] respectively. It was (and still is) the fastest film to gross $600 million domestically, on its 47th day in theatres.^[181] Sony VAIO PCG-7112M Battery On January 31, it became the first film to earn over $2 billion worldwide,^[182] and it became the first film to gross over $700 million in North America, onFebruary 27, after 72 days of release.^[183] It remained in the number one spot at the domestic box office for seven consecutive weeks - the most consecutive No. 1 weekends since Titanic spent 15 weekends at No. 1 in 1997-'98^[184] Sony VGP-BPL15/B Battery - and also spent 11 consecutive weekends at the top of the box office outside the United States and Canada, breaking the record of 9 consecutive weekends set by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.^[185] By the end of its first theatrical release Avatar had grossed $749,766,139 in the U.S. and Canada, and $1,999,298,189 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $2,749,064,328.^[5] Sony VGP-BPS15/B Battery Including the revenue from a re-release of Avatar featuring extended footage, Avatar grossed $760,507,625 in the U.S. and Canada, and $2,021,767,547 in other territories for a worldwide total of $2,782,275,172^[5][6] with 72.7% of its total worldwide gross in international markets.^[5][6] Avatar has set a number of box office records during its release: on January 25, 2010, Sony VGP-BPL15/S Battery it surpassed Titanic's worldwide gross to become the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide 41 days after its international release,^{[186][187][188]} just two days after taking the foreign box office record,^[189] and on February 2, 47 days after its domestic release, Avatar surpassed Titanic to become the highest-grossing film of all time in Canada and the United States.^[190] Sony VGP-BPS15/S Battery It became the highest-grossing film of all time in at least 30 other countriesand is the first film to earn over $2 billion in foreign box office receipts.^[29] IMAX ticket sales account for $228 million of its worldwide gross,^[197] more than double the previous record.^[198] Box Office Mojo estimates that after adjusting for the rise in average ticket prices, Sony VGP-BPS15 Battery Avatar would be the 14th-highest-grossing film of all time in North America.^[199] Box Office Mojo also observes that the higher ticket prices for 3D and IMAX screenings have had a significant impact on Avatar's gross; it estimated, on April 21, 2010, that Avatar had sold approximately 75 million tickets in North American theatres, more than any other film since 1999's Star Wars Episode I: Sony VGP-BPL15 Battery The Phantom Menace.^[200] On a worldwide basis, Avatar ranks third after adjusting for inflation, behind Gone with the Wind and Titanic,^[201] although some reports place it ahead of Titanic. Before its release, various film critics and fan communities predicted the film would be a significant disappointment at the box office, in line with predictions made for Cameron's previous blockbuster Titanic.^[ Sony VGN-P series Battery This criticism ranged from Avatar's film budget, to its concept and use of 3-D "blue cat people".^[203][204] Slate magazine's Daniel Engber complimented the 3D effects, but criticized them for reminding him of certain CGI characters from the Star Wars prequel films and for having the "uncanny valley" effect.^[206] Sony VGN-P11Z/Q Battery The New York Times noted that 20th Century Fox executives had decided to release Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel alongside Avatar, calling it a "secret weapon" to cover any unforeseeable losses at the box-office. Box office analysts, on the other hand, estimated that the film would be a box office success.^[ Sony VGN-P11Z/R Battery "The holy grail of 3-D has finally arrived," said an analyst for Exhibitor Relations. "This is why all these 3-D venues were built: for Avatar. This is the one. The behemoth."^[208] The "cautionary estimate" was thatAvatar would bring in around $60 million in its opening weekend. Others guessed higher. Sony VGN-P11Z/W Battery There were also analysts who believed that the film's three-dimensionality would help its box office performance, given that recent 3D films had been successful.^[203] Cameron said he felt the pressure of the predictions, but that pressure is good for film-makers. "It makes us think about our audiences and what the audience wants," he stated. Sony VGN-P21S/W Battery "We owe them a good time. We owe them a piece of good entertainment."^[204] Although he felt Avatar would appeal to everyone and that the film could not afford to have a target demographic,^[204] he especially wanted hard-core science-fiction fans to see it: "If I can just get 'em in the damn theater, the film will act on them in the way it's supposed to, in terms of taking them on an amazing journey and giving them this rich emotional experience." Sony VGN-P21Z/G Battery Cameron was aware of the sentiment that Avatar would need significant "repeat business" just to make up for its budget and achieve box office success, and believed Avatar could inspire the same "sharing" reaction asTitanic. He said that the film worked because, "When people have an experience that's very powerful in the movie theatre, they want to go share it.Sony VAIO VGN-SR19XN Battery They want to grab their friend and bring them, so that they can enjoy it. They want to be the person to bring them the news that this is something worth having in their life."^[204] After the film's release and unusually strong box office performance over its first two weeks, it was debated as the one film capable of surpassing Titanic's worldwide gross, and its continued strength perplexed box office analysts.^[211] Sony VAIO VGN-SR21M/S Battery Other films in recent years had been cited as contenders for surpassing Titanic, such as 2008's The Dark Knight,^[212] but Avatar was considered the first film with a genuine chance to do so, and its numbers being aided by higher ticket prices for 3D screenings^[211] did not fully explain its success to box office analysts. Sony VAIO VGN-SR21RM/H Battery "Most films are considered to be healthy if they manage anything less than a 50% drop from their first weekend to their second. Dipping just 11% from the first to the third is unheard of," relayed Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office analysis for Hollywood.com. "This is just unprecedented," he said. "I had to do a double take. I thought it was a miscalculation."^[166] Sony VAIO VGN-SR29VN Battery Analysts predicted second place for the film's worldwide gross, but most were uncertain about it surpassing Titanic because "Today's films flame out much faster than they did whenTitanic was released."^[166] Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, believed in the film's chances of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, Sony VAIO VGN-SR31M Battery though he also believed it was too early to surmise because it had only played during the holidays. He said, "While Avatar may beat Titanic's revenue record, it will be tough, and the film is unlikely to surpass Titanic in attendance. Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the late 1990s."^[166] Cameron said he did not think it was realistic to "try to topple Titanic off its perch" Sony Vaio VGN-SR4MR/P Battery because it "just struck some kind of chord" and there had been other good films in recent years.^[213]He changed his prediction by mid-January. "It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time," he said. Though analysts have been unable to agree that Avatar's success is attributable to one primary factor, several explanations have been advanced. Sony Vaio VGN-SR4MR/S Battery First, January is historically "the dumping ground for the year's weakest films", and this also applied to 2010.^[216] Cameron himself said he decided to open the film in December so that it would have less competition from then to January.^[204]Titanic capitalized on the same January predictability, and earned most of its gross in 1998. Sony Vaio VGN-SR4MR/W Battery Additionally, Avatar established itself as a "must-see" event. Gray said, "At this point, people who are going to see Avatar are going to see Avatar and would even if the slate was strong."^[216]Marketing the film as a "novelty factor" also helped. Fox positioned the film as a cinematic event that should be seen in the theatres. Sony Vaio VGN-SR4VR/H Battery "It's really hard to sell the idea that you can have the same experience at home," stated David Mumpower, an analyst at BoxOfficeProphets.com.^[216] The "Oscar buzz" surrounding the film and international viewings helped. "Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar [tracked] similarly Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was No. 1 in all of them", Sony Vaio VGN-CS11S/P Battery and the markets "such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today" with "more screens and moviegoers" than before.^[216] According to Variety, films in 3D accumulated $1.3 billion in 2009, "a threefold increase over 2008 and more than 10% of the total 2009 box-office gross".Sony Vaio VGN-CS11S/W Battery The increased ticket price - an average of $2 to $3 per ticket in most markets - helped the film.^[216] Likewise, Entertainment Weekly attributed the film's success to 3D glasses, but also to its "astronomic word-of-mouth". Not only do some theaters charge up to $18.50 for IMAX tickets, but "the buzz" created by the new technology was the possible cause for sold-out screenings. Sony Vaio VGN-CS11Z/R Battery Gray said Avatar having no basis in previously established material makes its performance remarkable and even more impressive. "The movie might be derivative of many movies in its story and themes," he said, "but it had no direct antecedent like the other top-grossing films: Titanic (historical events), the Star Wars movies (an established film franchise), or The Lord of the Rings (literature). Sony Vaio VGN-CS11Z/T Battery It was a tougher sell " The film received mostly positive reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 83% of 286 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10.^[218] The site's consensus is that "It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S/P Battery butAvatar reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking."^[218] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film has a "universal acclaim" rating score of 83 based on 35 reviews.^[219] CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Avatar was A Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S/R Battery on an A+ to F scale. Every demographic surveyed was reported to give this rating. These polls also indicated that the main draw of the film was its use of 3D.^[220] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "extraordinary" and gave it four stars out of four. Sony Vaio VGN-CS21Z/Q Battery "Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I sawStar Wars in 1977", he said. Like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, the film "employs a new generation of special effects. "Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message".^[221] Sony Vaio VGN-CS31S/R Battery A. O. Scott of At The Moviesalso compared his viewing of the film to the first time he viewed Star Wars, and added that although "the script is a little bit obvious," it was "part of what made it work".^[222] Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film. "The King of the World sets his sights on creating another world entirely in Avatar, and it's very much a place worth visiting."^[223] Sony Vaio VGN-AW21M/H Battery Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review. "The screen is alive with more action and the soundtrack pops with more robust music than any dozen sci-fi shoot-'em-ups you care to mention" he stated.^[224] Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers awardedAvatar three and a half out of four stars and wrote in his print review, "It extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Sony Vaio VGN-AW21S/B Battery Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams."^[225] Richard Corliss of Time magazine thought that the film was, "the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures."^[226] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt the film has "powerful" visual accomplishments but "flat dialogue" and "obvious characterization".^[227] Sony Vaio VGN-AW21Z/B Battery James Berardinelli, film critic for ReelViews, praised the film and its story, giving it four out of four stars; he wrote, "In 3-D, it's immersive - but the traditional film elements - story, character, editing, theme, emotional resonance, etc. - are presented with sufficient expertise to make even the 2-D version an engrossing 2 -hour experience."^[228] Sony Vaio VGN-AW31ZS/B Battery Avatar's underlying social and political themes attracted attention. Armond White of the New York Press wrote that Cameron used villainous American characters to misrepresent facets of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism.^[229][230] Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, praised the film for its "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defense of nature".Sony Vaio VGN-AW31ZJ/B Battery Russell D. Moore in The Christian Post concluded that propaganda exists in the film and stated, "If you can get a theater full of people in Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war, then you've got some amazing special effects."^[232] Some commentators sympathetic to anarcho-primitivism have even praised the film as a manifesto for their cause. Sony Vaio VGN-CS31S/W Battery Adam Cohen of The New York Times was more positive about the film, calling its anti-imperialist message "a 22nd-century version of the American colonists vs. the British, India vs. the Raj, or Latin America vs. United Fruit".^[235] Ross Douthat of The New York Times opined that the film is Sony Vaio VGN-CS31S/T Battery "Cameron's long apologia for pantheism Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now",^[236] while Saritha Prabhu of The Tennessean called the film a misportrayal of pantheism and Eastern spirituality in general,^[237] and Maxim Osipov of The Hindustan Times, on the contrary, commended the film's message for its overall consistency with the teachings of Hinduism in the Bhagavad Gita.^[238] Sony Vaio VGN-CS31S/P Battery Annalee Newitz of io9 concluded that Avatar is another film that has the recurring "fantasy about race" whereby "some white guy" becomes the "most awesome" member of a non-white culture.^[239] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune called Avatar "the season's ideologicalRorschach blot",^[240] Sony Vaio VGN-CS31S/V Battery while Miranda Devine of The Sydney Morning Herald felt that, "It is impossible to watch Avatar without being banged over the head with the director's ideological hammer."^[241] Critics and audiences have cited similarities with other films, literature or media, describing the perceived connections in ways ranging from simple "borrowing" to outright plagiarism. Sony Vaio VGN-CS31Z/Q Battery Ty Burr of the Boston Globe called it "the same movie" as Dances with Wolves.^[242] Like Dances with Wolves, Avatar has been characterized as being a "white savior" movie, in which a "backwards" native people is impotent without the leadership of a member of the invading white culture.^[243] Parallels to the concept and use of an avatar are in Poul Anderson's 1957 novelette "Call Me Joe", Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S/W Battery in which a paralyzed man uses his mind from orbit to control an artificial body on Jupiter.^[244][245] Cinema audiences in Russia have noted that Avatar has elements in common with the 1960s Noon Universenovels by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which are set in the 22nd century on a forested world called Pandora with a sentient indigenous species called the Nave.^[246] Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S/T Battery Various reviews have compared Avatar to the films FernGully: The Last Rainforest,^[247][248] Pocahontas^[249] and The Last Samurai.^[250] NPR's Morning Edition has compared the film to a montage of tropes, with one commentator stating that Avatar was made by mixing a bunch of film scripts in a blender.^[251] Sony Vaio VGN-NW21MF Battery Some sources noted similarities to the artwork of Roger Dean, which featured fantastic images of floating rock formations and dragons.Similarities have been found between Avatar and Ursula Le Guin's novel The Word for World is Forest, with Gary Westfahl writing for Locus Online that " the science fiction story that most closely resembles Avatar has to be Ursula K. Sony Vaio VGN-NW21EF Battery Le Guin's novella "The Word for World Is Forest" (1972), another epic about a benevolent race of alien beings who happily inhabit dense forests while living in harmony with nature until they are attacked and slaughtered by invading human soldiers who believe that the only good gook is a dead gook."^[254] Sony Vaio VGN-NW21JF Battery The science fiction writer and editor Gardner Dozois said that along with the Anderson and Le Guin stories, the "mash-up" included Alan Dean Foster's 1975 novel, Midworld.^[255] Avatar received compliments from filmmakers, with Steven Spielberg praising it as "the most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars" and others calling it "audacious and awe inspiring", Sony Vaio VGN-NW21ZF Battery "master class", and "brilliant". On the other hand, Duncan Jones said: "It's not in my top three James Cameron films. [A]t what point in the film did you have any doubt what was going to happen next?".^[256] Time ranked Avatar number 3 in their list of "The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)"^[257] Sony Vaio VGN-NW31EF Battery also earning it a spot on the magazine's All-TIME 100 list,^[258] and IGN listed Avatar as number 22 on their list of the top 25 Sci-Fi movies of all time. Avatar won the 82nd Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for a total of nine, including Best Picture and Best Director.^[31] Sony Vaio VGN-CS11S/T Battery Avatar also won the 67th Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director, and was nominated for two others.^[260] At the 36th Saturn Awards, Avatar won all ten awards it was nominated for: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Music, Best Production Design and Best Special Effects. Sony Vaio VGN-CS11S/Q Battery The New York Film Critics Online honored the film with its Best Picture award.^[261] The film also won the Critics' Choice Awards of the Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Action Film and several technical categories, out of nine nominations.^[262] It won two of the St. Louis Film Critics awards: Best Visual Effects and Most Original, Innovative or Creative Film.^[263] Sony Vaio VGN-BZ11EN Battery The film also won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Production Design and Special Visual Effects, and was nominated for seven others, including Best Film and Director.^[264] The film has received numerous other major awards, nominations and honors. Sony Vaio VGN-BZ11XN Battery In July 2010, Cameron confirmed that there would be an extended theatrical re-release of the film on August 27, 2010, exclusively in 3D theaters and IMAX 3D.^[265] Avatar: Special Edition includes an additional nine minutes of footage, all of which is CG,^[266] including an extension of the sex scene^[267] and various other scenes that were cut from the original theatrical film.^[266] Sony Vaio VGN-BZ12EN Battery This extended re-release resulted in the film's run time approaching the current IMAX platter maximum of 170 minutes, thereby leaving less time for the end credits. Cameron stated that the nine minutes of added scenes cost more than $1 million a minute to produce and finish.^[2] During its 12-week re-release, Sony Vaio VGN-BZ12XN Battery Avatar: Special Edition grossed an additional $10.74 million in North America and $22.46 million overseas for a worldwide total of $33.2 million. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on April 22, 2010^[268] and in the UK on April 26.^[269] Sony Vaio VGN-BZ12XN Battery The US release was not on a Tuesday as is the norm, but was done to coincide with Earth Day.^[270] The first DVD and Blu-ray release does not contain any supplemental features other than the theatrical film and the disc menu in favor of and to make space for optimal picture and sound. Sony Vaio VGN-BZ21VN Battery The release also preserves the film's native 1.78:1 (16:9) format as Cameron felt that was the best format to watch the film.^[271] The Blu-ray disc contains DRM (BD+ 5) which some Blu-ray players might not support without a firmware update.^[272][273] Avatar set a first-day launch record in the U.S. for Blu-ray sales at 1.5 million units sold, Sony Vaio VGN-BZ21XN Battery breaking the record previously held by The Dark Knight (600,000 units sold). First-day DVD and Blu-ray sales combined were over 4 million units sold.^[274] In its first four days of release, sales of Avatar on Blu-ray reached 2.7 million in the United States and Canada - overtaking The Dark Knight to become the best ever selling Blu-ray release in the region.^{Sony VPCW11S1E/P Battery} The release later broke the Blu-ray sales record in the UK the following week.^[277] In its first three weeks of release, the film sold a total of 19.7 million DVD and Blu-ray discs combined, a new record for sales in that period.^[278] As of July 18, 2012, DVD sales (not including Blu-ray) totaled over 10.5 million units sold with$190,806,055 million in revenue.^{[279] Sony VPCW11S1E/P Battery} The Avatar Three-Disc Extended Collector's Edition on DVD and Blu-ray was released on November 16, 2010. Three different versions of the film are present on the discs: the original theatrical cut, the special edition cut, and a collector's extended cut^[3] (with the DVD set spreading them on two discs, but the Blu-ray set presenting them on a single disc). ^{Sony VPCW11S1E/T Battery} The collector's extended cut contains 6 more minutes of footage, thus making it 16 minutes longer than the original theatrical cut. Cameron mentioned, "you can sit down, and in a continuous screening of the film, watch it with the Earth opening". He stated the "Earth opening" is an additional 4 minutes of scenes that were in the film for much of its production but were ultimately cut before the film's theatrical release. ^{Sony VPCW11S1E/W Battery} The release also includes an additional 45 minutes of deleted scenes and other extras. Cameron initially stated that Avatar would be released in 3D around November 2010, but the studio issued a correction: "3-D is in the conceptual stage andAvatar will not be out on 3D Blu-ray in November."^[281] In May 2010, Fox stated that the 3D version would be released some time in 2011.^{[278] Sony VPCW12S1E/P Battery} It was later revealed that Fox had given Panasonic an exclusive license for the 3D Blu-ray version and only with the purchase of a Panasonic 3DTV. The length of Panasonic's exclusivity period is stated to last until February 2012.^[282] On October 2010, Cameron stated that the standalone 3D Blu-ray would be the final version of the film's home release and that it was, "maybe one, two years out".^{[283] Sony VPCW12S1E/T Battery} On Christmas Eve 2010, Avatar had its 3D television world premiere on Sky. On August 13, 2012, Cameron announced on Facebook that Avatar would be released globally on Blu-ray 3D.^[287] The Blu-ray 3D version was finally released on October 16, 2012. In 2006, Cameron stated that if Avatar was successful, he hoped to make two sequels to the film.^{[289] Sony VAIO VGN-NR21E/S Battery} In 2010, he said the film's widespread success confirmed that he will.^[290] The prospect of sequels was something he planned from the start, going so far as to include certain scenes in the film for future story followups.^[289][291] In August 2010, Cameron stated that his plans are to shoot both sequels in the planned trilogy back-to-back. ^{Sony VAIO VGN-NR21J/S Battery} He also mentioned, "what I'm working on primarily is the novel" and "presumably, once the novel is nailed down, work will begin in earnest on getting the sequel going."^[292] Cameron stated that they are going to widen the universe while exploring other moons of Polyphemus.^{[281] Sony VAIO VGN-NR21S/S Battery} The first sequel will focus on the ocean of Pandora but will also feature more of the rainforest from the original movie.^[293] Later in 2010, Cameron announced his intention to capture footage for this sequel at the bottom of the Mariana Trench using a deepwater submersible.^[294] In December 2011, Cameron revealed that he is writing second and third films together, ^{Sony VAIO VGN-NR21S/T Battery} but that he is just starting to design the ocean ecosystem of Pandora and the other worlds to be included in story. The storyline, although continuing the environmental theme of the first film, will not be "strident", as the film will concentrate on entertainment.^[295] The sequels will continue to follow the characters of Jake and Neytiri.^{[296] Sony VAIO VGN-NR11Z/T Battery} Cameron implied that the humans would return as the antagonists of the story. "I expect that those nasty humans didn't go away forever," he said.^[297] Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana have signed on to reprise their roles in future sequels.^[291] In February 2010, Cameron confirmed that Sigourney Weaver, who played Dr. Grace Augustine, will also be appearing in Avatar 2, stating that "no one ever dies in science fiction."^{[298] Sony VAIO VGN-NR11Z/S Battery} The sequels, to be produced by Cameron's own Lightstorm Entertainment in partnership with 20th Century Fox, were originally scheduled to be released inDecember 2014 and December 2015.^[32] During the 2011 CinemaCon in Las Vegas, James Cameron stated his intention to film the two Avatar sequels at a higher frame rate than the industry standard 24 frames per second, ^{Sony VAIO VGN-NR11S/S Battery} in order to add a heightened sense of reality.^[299] In May 2012, Cameron said that "[he was] making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4".^[300] In June 2012, actress Sigourney Weaver revealed that the three sequels were shooting simultaneously, and that she was not sure how long shooting for the movies was expected to take.^{[301] Sony VAIO VGN-NR11M/S Battery} In early September, 2012, Cameron told MTV he had a concept for a fourth movie. It would be aprequel, set 35 years before the events of the first film, that deals with the early colonisation of Pandora.^[302] That same month, while promoting the 3D Blu-ray release of Titanic, he stated that the scripts for the second and third Avatar parts are still being written, ^{Sony VAIO VGN-SR11M Battery} with both being "separate stories that have an overall arc inclusive of the first film", and the second having a clear conclusion instead of a cliffhanger to the third film. Cameron expects to start pre-production in January 2013 and release Avatar 2 in 2015. ^{Sony VAIO VGN-SR11MR Battery,Sony VAIO VGN-SR19VN Battery,Sony Vaio VGN-NR31E/S Battery}

http://www.all-keyboard.com/,http://www.keyboards-shop.com/,http://www.laptop-fan-shop.com/,http://www.laptopkeyboard-shop.com/ Avatar is a 2009 American^[7][8] epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron, and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Joel David Moore, Giovanni Ribisi and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lushhabitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system.^{Sony VGP-BPS13 Battery} The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi - a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body with the mind of a remotely located human, and is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.^{[12] Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13A/B Battery} Development of Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for the film.^[13][14] Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,^[15] but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film.^{[16] Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13B/B Battery} Work on the language of the film's extraterrestrial beings began in summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.^[17][18] Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million.^[4] Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion.^{[ Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13/S Battery} The film made extensive use of cutting edge motion capture filming techniques,^[22] and was released for traditional viewing, 3D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats), and for "4D" experiences in select South Korean theaters.^[23] Thestereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.^{[24] Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13A/S Battery} Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was internationally released on December 16 and in the United States and Canada on December 18, to positive critical reviews, with critics highly praising its groundbreaking visual effects.^[25][26][27] During its theatrical run, the film broke several box office records and became the highest-grossing film of all time^{Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13B/S Battery} , as well as in the United States and Canada,^[28] surpassing Titanic, which had held those records for twelve years.^[29] It also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion.^[30] Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director,^[31] and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. ^{Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13/Q Battery} The film's home media release went on to break opening sales records and became the top-selling Blu-rayof all time. Following the film's success, Cameron signed with 20th Century Fox to produce two sequels, making Avatar the first of a planned trilogy. By 2154, humans have severely depleted Earth's natural resources. ^{Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13A/Q Battery} The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines for a valuable mineral - unobtanium - on Pandora, a densely forested habitable moon orbiting the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system.^[11] Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to humans, is inhabited by the Na'vi, 10-foot tall (3.0 m), ^{Sony VAIO VGP-BPS13B/Q Battery} blue-skinned, sapient humanoids^[33] who live in harmony with nature and worship a mother goddess called Eywa. To explore Pandora's biosphere, scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars", operated by genetically matched humans; Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), aparaplegic former marine, replaces his deceased twin brother as an operator of one. ^{Sony VGP-BPS21 Battery} Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate replacement but accepts his assignment as a bodyguard. While protecting the avatars of Grace and scientist Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) as they collect biological data, Jake's avatar is attacked by a thanator and flees into the forest, ^{Sony VGP-BPS21A Battery} where he is rescued by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a female Na'vi. Witnessing an auspicious sign, she takes him to her clan, whereupon Neytiri's mother Mo'at (C. C. H. Pounder), the clan's spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), head of RDA's private security force, ^{Sony VGP-BPS21B Battery} promises Jake that the company will restore his legs if he gathers intelligenceabout the Na'vi and the clan's gathering place, a giant arboreal called Hometree,^[34] on grounds that it stands above the richest deposit of unobtanium in the area. When Grace learns of this, she transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. ^{Sony VGP-BPS21/S Battery} Over three months, Jake grows to sympathize with the natives. After Jake is initiated into the tribe, he and Neytiri choose each other as mates, and soon afterward, Jake reveals his change of allegiance when he attempts to disable abulldozer that threatens to destroy a sacred Na'vi site. When Quaritch shows a video recording of Jake's attack on the bulldozer to Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi),^{[35] Sony VGP-BPS21A/b Battery} and another in which Jake admits that the Na'vi will never abandon Hometree, Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed. Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage the biological neural network native to Pandora, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one final chance to convince the Na'vi to evacuate before commencing the attack. ^{Sony VGP-BPS26 Battery} While trying to warn the Na'vi, Jake confesses to being a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Seeing this, Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing Neytiri's father (the clan chief) and many others. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. ^{Sony VGP-BPL26 Battery} Pilot Trudy Chac n (Michelle Rodriguez), disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, carries them to Grace's outpost, but during the escape, Quaritch fires at them, hitting Grace. To regain the Na'vi's trust, Jake connects his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like predator feared and honoured by the Na'vi. Jake finds the refugees at the sacred Tree of Souls and pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. ^{Sony VGP-BPS26A Battery} The clan attempts to transfer Grace from her human body into her avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls, but she dies before the process can complete. Supported by the new chief Tsu'tey (Laz Alonso), who acts as Jake's translator, Jake speaks to unite the clan and tells them to gather all of the clans to battle against the RDA. ^{Sony VGP-BPS22 Battery} Noticing the impending gathering, Quaritch organizes a pre-emptive strike against the Tree of Souls, believing that its destruction will demoralize the natives. On the eve of battle, Jake prays to Eywa, via a neural connection to the Tree of Souls, to intercede on behalf of the Na'vi. During the subsequent battle, the Na'vi suffer heavy casualties, including Tsu'tey and Trudy; ^{Sony VGP-BPL22 Battery} but are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa's answer to Jake's prayer. After Jake destroys a makeshift bomber before it can reach the Tree of Souls; Quaritch escapes from his own damaged aircraft, wearing an AMP suit and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. ^{Sony VGP-BPS22A Battery} Quaritch then prepares to slit the throat of Jake's avatar, but Neytiri kills Quaritch and saves Jake from suffocation. With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, Max and a few other scientists, all humans are expelled from Pandora and sent back to Earth, after which Jake is transferred permanently into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls. ^{Sony VAIO PCG-3B1M Battery} Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program after his twin brother is killed. His military background helps the Na'vi warriors relate to him. Cameron cast the Australian actor after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down.^{[36] Sony VAIO PCG-3D1M Battery} Worthington, who was living in his car at the time,^[37] auditioned twice early in development,^[38] and he has signed on for possible sequels.^[39] Cameron felt that because Worthington had not done a major film, he would give the character "a quality that is really real". Cameron said he "has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world".^{[40] Sony VAIO PCG-3G2M Battery} Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining operation's security detail. Fiercely loyal to his military code, he has a profound disregard for Pandora's inhabitants that is evident in both his actions and his language. Lang had unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986), but the director remembered Lang and sought him for Avatar.^{[41Sony VAIO PCG-5R1M Battery}

• ^]Michael Biehn, who was in Aliens, read the script and watched some of the 3-D footage with Cameron,^[42] but was ultimately not cast in the role.

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program. She mentors Sully and is an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, having set up a school to teach them English.^{[43] Sony VAIO PCG-7162M Battery}

• Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chac n, a combat pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program who is sympathetic to the Na'vi. Cameron had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in Girlfight.^[41]

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the RDA mining operation.^{[44] Sony VAIO PCG-7181M Battery} While he is at first willing to destroy the Na'vi civilization to preserve the company's bottom line, he is reluctant to authorize the attacks on the Na'vi, doing so only after Quaritch persuades him that it is necessary, and the attacks will be humane. When the attacks are broadcast to the base, Selfridge displays discomfort at the violence. ^{Sony VAIO PCG-41112M Battery} Joel David Moore as Dr. Norm Spellman, a xenoanthropologist^[45] who studies plant and animal life as part of the Avatar Program.^[46] He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Sully and operates an avatar. Although he is expected to lead the diplomatic contact with the Na'vi, it turns out that Jake has the personality better suited to win the natives' respect. ^{Sony VAIO PCG-7153M Battery}

• Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar Program and comes to support Jake's rebellion against the RDA.

Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, the daughter of the leader of the Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the story). She is attracted to Jake because of his bravery, though frustrated with him for what she sees as his naivet and stupidity. ^{Sony VAIO PCG-71312M Battery}

• She serves as Jake's love interest.^[48] The character, like all the Na'vi, was created using performance capture, and its visual aspect is entirely computer generated.^[49] Saldana has also signed on for potential sequels.^[50]

C. C. H. Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytukan.^{[51] Sony VAIO PCG-7144M Battery}

• Wes Studi as Eytukan, the Omaticaya's clan leader, Neytiri's father, and Mo'at's mate.
• Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey, the finest warrior of the Omaticaya. He is heir to the chieftainship of the tribe. At the beginning of the film's story, he isbetrothed to Neytiri.

In 1994,^[14] director James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for Avatar, ^{Sony VAIO PCG-7191L Battery} drawing inspiration from "every single science fiction book" he had read in his childhood as well as from adventure novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard.^[13] In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of synthetic, or computer-generated, actors.^{Sony VAIO PCG-3C1M Battery ]} The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world".^[52] Visual effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which was supposed to begin production in the summer of 1997 for a 1999 release.^{[15] Sony VAIO PCG-3F1M Battery} However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years. It was revealed in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that 20th Century Fox had fronted $10 million to Cameron to film a proof-of-concept clip for Avatar, which he showed to Fox executives in October 2005.^{[53] Sony VAIO PCG-3H1M Battery} In February 2006, Cameron revealed that his film Project 880 was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier,^[54] citing the technological advances in the creation of the computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong, and Davy Jones.^[13] Cameron had chosen Avatar over his projectBattle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year. ^{Sony VAIO PCG-3J1M Battery} From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script and developed a culture for the film's aliens, the Na'vi. Theirlanguage was created by Dr. Paul Frommer, a linguist at USC.^[13] The Na'vi language has a lexicon of about 1000 words, with some 30 added by Cameron. The tongue's phonemes include ejective consonants (such as the "kx" in "skxawng") ^{Sony VAIO PCG-8141M Battery} that are found in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, and the initial "ng" that Cameron may have taken from New Zealand M ori.^[18] Actress Sigourney Weaver and the film's set designers met with Jodie S. Holt, professor of plant physiology at University of California, Riverside, to learn about the methods used by botanists to study and sample plants, and to discuss ways to explain the communication between Pandora's organisms depicted in the film.^{[56] Sony VAIO PCG-8161M Battery} From 2005 to 2007, Cameron worked with a handful of designers, including famed fantasy illustrator Wayne Barlowe and renowned concept artist Jordu Schell, to shape the design of the Na'vi with paintings and physical sculptures when Cameron felt that 3-D brush renderings were not capturing his vision,^[57] often working together in the kitchen of Cameron's Malibu home.^{[58] Sony VAIO PCG-3C2M Battery} In July 2006, Cameron announced that he would film Avatar for a mid-2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by February 2007.^[59] The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar.^[60] Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Avatar to help with the film's designs.^{[61] Sony VAIO PCG-5N2M Battery} Production design for the film took several years. The film had two different production designers, and two separate art departments, one of which focused on the flora and fauna of Pandora, and another that created human machines and human factors.^[62] In September 2006, Cameron was announced to be using his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception.^{[63] Sony VAIO PCG-5P1M Battery} Fox was wavering because of its painful experience with cost overruns and delays on Cameron's previous picture, Titanic, even though Cameron rewrote Avatar'sscript to combine several characters together and offered to cut his fee in case the film flopped.^[53] Cameron installed a traffic light with the amber signal lit outside of co-producer Jon Landau's office to represent the film's uncertain future.^[53] Sony PCG-31211T Battery In mid-2006, Fox told Cameron "in no uncertain terms that they were passing on this film," so he began shopping it around to other studios, and showed his proof-of-concept to Dick Cook (then chairman of the Walt Disney Studios).^[53] However, when Disney attempted to take over, Fox exercised its right of first refusal.^[53] Sony PCG-31311T Battery In October 2006, Fox finally agreed to commit to makingAvatar after Ingenious Media agreed to back the film, which reduced Fox's financial exposure to less than half of the film's official $237 million budget.^[53]After Fox accepted Avatar, one skeptical Fox executive shook his head and told Cameron and Landau, "I don't know if we're crazier for letting you do this, or if you're crazier for thinking you can do this "Sony PCG-51111T Battery In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling".^[66] The January 2007press release described the film as "an emotional journey of redemption and revolution" and said the story is of "a wounded former Marine, Sony PCG-81111T Battery thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival". The story would be of an entire world complete with an ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and native people with a rich culture and language.^[50] Sony PCG-81311T Battery Estimates put the cost of the film at about $280-310 million to produce and an estimated $150 million for marketing, noting that about $30 million in tax credits will lessen the financial impact on the studio and its financiers.A studio spokesperson said that the budget was "$237 million, with $150 million for promotion, end of story." Sony VPCF138FC Battery Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and deep ecology.^[67] Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid", and that he was particularly striving to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter series and the deep jungles of Pandora were visualized from Disney's 37th animated film, Tarzan.^[38] Sony VPCF219FC Battery The director has acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the films At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Emerald Forest, and Princess Mononoke, which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and with Dances With Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against.^[68][69] Sony VPCS135EC Battery In a 2007 interview with Time magazine, Cameron was asked about the meaning of the term Avatar, to which he replied, "It's an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body." Sony VPCS136EC Battery The look of the Na'vi - the humanoids indigenous to Pandora - was inspired by a dream that Cameron's mother had, long before he started work on Avatar. In her dream, she saw a blue-skinned woman 12 feet (4 m) tall, which he thought was "kind of a cool image".^[67] Also he said, "I just like blue. It's a good color plus, there's a connection to the Hindu deities,^[70] Sony VPCS138EC Battery which I like conceptually."^[71] He included similar creatures in his first screenplay (written in 1976 or 1977), which featured a planet with a native population of "gorgeous" tall blue aliens. The Na'vi were based on them.^[67] For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron applied a star-crossed love theme, and acknowledged its similarity to the pairing of Jack and Rose from his film Titanic. Sony VPCS139GC Battery Both couples come from radically different cultures that are contemptuous of their relationship and are forced to choose sides between the competing communities.^[72] He felt that whether or not the Jake and Neytiri love story would be perceived as believable partially hinged on the physical attractiveness of Neytiri's alien appearance, which was developed by considering her appeal to the all-male crew of artists.^[73] Sony VPCYA15EC Battery Though Cameron felt Jake and Neytiri do not fall in love right away, their portrayers (Worthington and Saldana) felt the characters do. Cameron said the two actors "had a great chemistry" during filming. For the film's floating "Hallelujah Mountains", the designers drew inspiration from "many different types of mountains, but mainly the karst limestone formations in China."^[75] Sony VPCYA16EC Battery According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating rocks were inspired by Mount Huang (also known as Huangshan), Guilin, Zhangjiajie, among others around the world.^[75]Director Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the design of the floating mountains.^[76] To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited Sony VPCYA25EC Battery the Noble Clyde Boudreaux^[77] oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the platform, which was later replicated on-screen with photorealistic CGI during post-production.^[78] Cameron said that he wanted to make "something that has this spoonful of sugar of all the action and the Sony VPCYA26EC Battery adventure and all that" but also have a conscience "that maybe in the enjoying of it makes you think a little bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man". He added that "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are" and that even though there are good humans within the film, Sony VPCYB15JC Battery the humans "represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future".^[79] Cameron acknowledges that Avatar implicitly criticizes the United States' role in the Iraq War and the impersonal nature of mechanized warfare in general. Sony VPCYA17GH/R Battery In reference to the use of the term shock and awe in the film, Cameron said, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America."^[80] He said in later interviews, " I think it's very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled "^[81] and, "The film is definitely not anti-American."^[82] Sony VPCCW2S8E/W Battery A scene in the film portrays the violent destruction of the towering Na'vi Hometree, which collapses in flames after a missile attack, coating the landscape with ash and floating embers. Asked about the scene's resemblance to the September 11 attackson the World Trade Center, Cameron said he had been "surprised at how much it did look like September 11".Sony VPCCW2Z1E/B Battery Principal photography for Avatar began in April 2007 in Los Angeles and Wellington, New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they're looking at," Cameron said. Sony VPCY11S1E Battery The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film.^[83] The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.^[84] In January 2007, Fox had announced that 3-Dfilming for Avatar would be done at 24 frames per second despite Cameron's strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher frame rate to make strobing less noticeable.^[85] Sony VPCY11S1E/S Battery According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures.^[86] Motion-capture photography lasted 31 days at the Hughes Aircraft stage in Playa Vista in Los Angeles.Live action photography began in October 2007 at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand, and was scheduled to last 31 days.^[ Sony VPCW1 Battery More than a thousand people worked on the production.^[87] In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent professional training specific to their characters such as archery, horseback riding, firearm use, and hand-to-hand combat. They received language and dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the film.^[89] Sony VPCW1E8R/BU Battery Before shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the Hawaiian tropical rainforests^[90] to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the soundstage.^[89] During filming, Cameron made use of his virtual camera system, a new way of directing motion-capture filmmaking. Sony VPCY11AGJ Battery The system shows the actors' virtual counterparts in their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, "It's like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale."^[91] Sony VPCY11AHJ Battery Using conventional techniques, the complete virtual world cannot be seen until the motion-capture of the actors is complete. Cameron said this process does not diminish the value or importance of acting. On the contrary, because there is no need for repeated camera and lighting setups, costume fittings and make-up touch-ups, scenes do not need to be interrupted repeatedly.^[92] Sony VPCY11AVJ Battery Cameron described the system as a "form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements".^[93] Cameron gave fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.^[66] Sony VPCY11M1E Battery Spielberg said, "I like to think of it as digital makeup, not augmented animation Motion capture brings the director back to a kind of intimacy that actors and directors only know when they're working in live theater."^[92] Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.^[94] Sony VPCY11S1E Battery To film the shots where CGI interacts with live action, a unique camera referred to as a "simulcam" was used, a merger of the 3-D fusion camera and the virtual camera systems. While filming live action in real time with the simulcam, the CGI images captured with the virtual camera or designed from scratch, are superimposed over the live action images as in augmented reality and shown on a small monitor, Sony VPCY11V9E Battery making it possible for the director to instruct the actors how to relate to the virtual material in the scene. A number of innovative visual effects techniques were used in the production of Avatar. According to Cameron, work on the film had been delayed since the 1990s to allow the techniques to reach the necessary degree of advancement to adequately portray his vision of the film.^[15][16] Sony VPCY11V9E/S Battery The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated characters, created using new motion-capture animation technologies he had been developing in the 14 months leading up toDecember 2006.^[91] Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora's jungle,^[96] Sony VPCY219FJ/S Battery a motion-capture stage or "volume" six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors' faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers.^[97] Sony VPCY21AFJ Battery According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.^[98] Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance.^[99] Sony VPCY21AGJ Battery A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them.^[100] The lead visual effects company was Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand, at one point employing 900 people to work on the film.^[101] Sony VPCY21AHJ Battery Because of the huge amount of data which needed to be stored, cataloged and available for everybody involved, even on the other side of the world, a new cloud computing and Digital Asset Management (DAM) system named Gaia was created by Microsoft especially for Avatar, which allowed the crews to keep track of and coordinate all stages in the digital processing.^[102] Sony VPCY21AVJ Battery To render Avatar, Weta used a 10,000 sq ft (930 m²) server farm making use of 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores with 104 terabytes of RAM and three petabytes of network area storage running Ubuntu Linux, Grid Engine cluster manager, and Pixar's Alfred queue management system. Sony VPCY21S1E/L Battery

http://www.all-keyboard.com/,http://www.keyboards-shop.com/,http://www.laptop-fan-shop.com/,http://www.laptopkeyboard-shop.com/ The deep sea, or deep layer,^[1] is the lowest layer in the ocean, existing below the thermocline and above the seabed, at a depth of 1000 fathoms (1800 m) or more. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter produced in the photic zone. Sony VAIO PCG-3B1M Battery For this reason scientists once assumed that life would be sparse in the deep ocean but virtually every probe has revealed that, on the contrary, life is abundant in the deep ocean. From the time of Pliny until the expedition in the ship Challenger between 1872 and 1876 to prove Pliny wrong; Sony VAIO PCG-3C1T Battery its deep-sea dredges and trawls brought up living things from all depths that could be reached. Yet even in the twentieth century scientists continued to imagine that life at great depth was insubstantial, or somehow inconsequential. The eternal dark, the almost inconceivable pressure, and the extreme cold that exist below one thousand meters were, they thought, so forbidding as to have all but extinguished life. Sony VAIO PCG-3D1M Battery The reverse is in fact true....(Below 200 meters) lies the largest habitat on earth. In 1960 the Bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench near Guam, at 35,798 feet or 6.77 miles (10,911 meters), the deepest spot in any ocean. If Mount Everest were submerged there, its peak would be more than a mile beneath the surface. Sony VAIO PCG-3G2M Battery At this great depth a small flounder-like fish was seen moving away from the bathyscaphe's spotlight. The Triestewas retired and for a while the Japanese remote-operated vehicle (ROV) Kaik was the only vessel capable of reaching this depth. It was lost at sea in 2003. In May and June 2009, the hybrid-ROV (HROV) Nereus returned to the Challenger Deep for a series of three dives to depths exceeding 10900 meters. Sony VAIO PCG-5R1M Battery It has been suggested that more is known about the Moon than the deepest parts of the ocean.^[2] Until the late 1970s little was known about the extent of life on the deep ocean floor but the discovery of thriving colonies of shrimps and other organisms around hydrothermal vents changed that. Sony VAIO PCG-7141M Battery Before the discovery of the undersea vents, it had been accepted that almost all life on earth obtained its energy (one way or another) from the sun. The new discoveries revealed groups of creatures that obtained nutrients and energy directly from thermal sources and chemical reactions associated with changes to mineral deposits. Sony VAIO PCG-7143M Battery These organisms thrive in completely lightless and anaerobic environments, in highly saline water that may reach 300 F (150 C), drawing their sustenance from hydrogen sulfide, which is highly toxic to almost all terrestrial life. The revolutionary discovery that life can exist under these extreme conditions changed opinions about the chances of there being life elsewhere in the universe. Sony VAIO PCG-7151M Battery Scientists now speculate that Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, may be able to support life beneath its icy surface, where there is evidence^[3] of a global ocean of liquid water. Natural light does not penetrate the deep ocean, with the exception of the upper parts of the mesopelagic. Sony VAIO PCG-7154M Battery Since photosynthesis is not possible, plants cannot live in this zone. Since plants are the primary producers of almost all of earth's ecosystems, life in this area of the ocean must depend on energy sources from elsewhere. Except for the areas close to the hydrothermal vents, this energy comes from organic material drifting down from the photic zone. Sony VAIO PCG-7162M Battery Because pressure in the ocean increases by about 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth, the amount of pressure experienced by many marine organisms is extreme. Until recent years, the scientific community lacked detailed information about the effects of pressure on most deep sea organisms because the specimens encountered arrived at the surface dead or dying, Sony VAIO PCG-7181M Battery and weren't observable at the pressures at which they lived. With the advent of traps that incorporate a special pressure-maintaining chamber, undamaged larger metazoan animals have been retrieved from the deep sea in good condition. Salinity is remarkably constant throughout the deep sea. There are some minor differences in salinity, but none that are ecologically significant, except in the Mediterranean & Red seas. Sony VAIO PCG-41112M Battery The two areas of greatest and most rapid temperature change in the oceans are the transition zone between the surface waters and the deep waters, the thermocline, and the transition between the deep-sea floor and the hot water flows at the hydrothermal vents. Thermoclines vary in thickness from a few hundred meters to nearly a thousand meters. Sony VAIO PCG-7153M Battery Below the thermocline, the water mass of the deep ocean is cold and far more homogeneous. Thermoclines are strongest in the tropics, where the temperature of the epipelagic zone is usually above 20 C. From the base of the epipelagic, the temperature drops over several hundred meters to 5 or 6 C at 1,000 meters. Sony VAIO PCG-71312M Battery It continues to decrease to the bottom, but the rate is much slower. Below 3,000 to 4,000 m, the water is isothermal.At any given depth, the temperature is practically unvarying over long periods of time. There are no seasonal temperature changes, nor are there any annual changes. No other habitat on earth has such a constant temperature. Sony VAIO PCG-7144M Battery Hydrothermal vents are the direct contrast with constant temperature. In these systems, the temperature of the water as it emerges from the "black smoker" chimneys may be as high as 400 C (it is kept from boiling by the high hydrostatic pressure) while within a few meters it may be back down to 2 - 4 C. Sony VAIO PCG-7191L Battery Regions below the epipelagic are divided into further zones, beginning with the mesopelagic which spans from 200 to 1000 meters below sea level, where a little light penetrates while still being insufficient for primary production. Below this zone the deep sea proper begins, consisting of the aphotic bathypelagic,abyssopelagic and hadopelagic. Sony VAIO PCG-3C1M Battery Food consists of falling organic matter known as 'marine snow' and carcasses derived from the productive zone above, and is scarce both in terms of spatial and temporal distribution. Instead of relying on gas for their buoyancy, many species have jelly-like flesh consisting mostly of glycosaminoglycans, which has very low density. Sony VAIO PCG-3F1M Battery It is also common among deep water squid to combine the gelatinous tissue with a flotation chamber filled with a coelomic fluid made up of the metabolic waste productammonium chloride, which is lighter than the surrounding water. The midwater fish have special adaptations to cope with these conditions they are small, usually being under 25 centimetres (10 in); Sony VAIO PCG-3H1M Battery they have slow metabolismsand unspecialized diets, preferring to sit and wait for food rather than waste energy searching for it. They have elongated bodies with weak, watery muscles andskeletal structures. They often have extendable, hinged jaws with recurved teeth. Sony VAIO PCG-3J1M Battery Because of the sparse distribution and lack of light, finding a partner with which to breed is difficult, and many organisms are hermaphroditic. Because light is so scarce, fish often have larger than normal, tubular eyes with only rod cells. Their upward field of vision allows them to seek out the silhouette of possible prey. Sony VAIO PCG-8141M Battery Prey fish however also have adaptations to cope withpredation. These adaptations are mainly concerned with reduction of silhouette, a form of camouflage. The two main methods by which this is achieved are reduction in the area of their shadow by lateral compression of the body, and counter illumination via bioluminescence. Sony VAIO PCG-8161M Battery This is achieved by production of light from ventral photophores, which tend to produce such light intensity to render the underside of the fish of similar appearance to the background light. For more sensitive vision in low light, some fish have a retroreflector behind the retina. Sony VAIO PCG-3C2M Battery Flashlight fish have this plus photophores, which combination they use to detect eyeshine in other fish (see Tapetum lucidum).Organisms in the deep sea are almost entirely reliant upon sinking living and dead organic matter which falls at approximately 100 meters per day.^[6] In addition, only about 1-3% of the production from the surface reaches the sea bed mostly in the form of marine snow. Sony VAIO PCG-5N2M Battery Larger food falls, such as whale carcasses, also occur and studies have shown that these may happen more often than currently believed. There are many scavengers that feed primarily or entirely upon large food falls and the distance between whale carcasses is estimated to only be 8 kilometers. Sony VAIO PCG-5P1M Battery In addition, there are a number of filter feeders that feed upon organic particles using tentacles, such as Freyella elegans.^[8] Marine bacteriophages play an important role in cycling nutrients in deep sea sediments. They are extremely abundant (between 5x10¹² and 1x10¹³ phages per square meter) in sediments around the world. Sony VAIO PCG-5S1M Battery There are a number of species that do not primarily rely upon dissolved organic matter for their food and these are found at hydrothermal vents. One example is the symbiotic relationship between the tube worm Riftia and chemosynthetic bacteria. It is this chemosynthesis that supports the complex communities that can be found around hydrothermal vents. Sony VAIO PCG-9Z1M Battery These complex communities are one of the only ecosystems on the planet that do not rely upon sunlight for the supply of energy. The deep sea is an environment completely unfriendly to humankind, and it should come as no surprise that it represents one of the least explored areas on Earth. Sony VAIO PCG-7171M Battery Pressures even in the mesopelagic become too great for traditional exploration methods, demanding alternative approaches for deep sea research. Baited camera stations, small manned submersibles and ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) are three methods utilized to explore the ocean's depths. Sony VAIO PCG-7186M Battery Because of the difficulty and cost of exploring this zone, current knowledge is limited. Pressure increases at approximately one atmosphere for every 10 meters meaning that some areas of the deep sea can reach pressures of above 1,000 atmospheres. This not only makes great depths very difficult to reach without mechanical aids, Sony VAIO PCG-81112M Battery but also provides a significant difficulty when attempting to study any organisms that may live in these areas as their cell chemistry will be adapted to such vast pressures. Deep-sea exploration is the investigation of physical, chemical, and biological conditions on the sea bed, for scientificor commercial purposes. Sony VAIO PCG-31311M Battery Deep-sea exploration is considered as a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the depths of the sea have been investigated only during comparatively recent years. The ocean depths still remain as a largely unexplored part of the planet, and form a relatively undiscovered domain. Sony VAIO PCG-8152M Battery In general, modern scientific Deep-sea exploration can be said to have begun when French scientist Pierre Simon de Laplaceinvestigated the average depth of the Atlantic ocean by observing tidal motions registered on Brazilian and African coasts. He calculated the depth to be 3,962 m (13,000 ft), a value later proven quite accurate by soundings measurement. Sony VAIO PCG-31111M Battery Later on, with increasing demand for submarine cables installment, accurate soundings was required and the first investigations of the sea bottom were undertaken. First deep-sea life forms were discovered in 1864 when Norwegian researchers obtained a sample of a stalked crinoid at a depth of 3,109 m (10,200 ft). Sony VAIO PCG-61111M Battery The British Government sent out the Challenger expedition (a ship called the HMS Challenger) in 1872 which discovered 715 new genera and 4,417 new species of marine organisms over the space of 4 years.^[1] The first instrument used for deep-sea investigation was the sounding weight, used by British explorer Sir James Clark Ross.^[2] Sony VAIO PCG-51112M Battery With this instrument, he reached a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840.^[3] The Challenger expedition used similar instruments called Baillie sounding machines to extract samples from the sea bed.^[4] In 1960, Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in the bathyscaphe Trieste into the Mariana Trench, Sony VAIO PCG-51211M Battery the deepest part of the world's oceans, to make the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).^[5] On 25 March 2012, filmmaker James Cameron descended into the deepest part of the Mariana Trench and, for the first time, is expected to have filmed and sampled the bottom. Sony VAIO PCG-51212M Battery Throughout history, scientists have relied on a number of instruments to measure, map, and observe the ocean's depths. One of the first instruments used to examine the seafloor was the sounding weight. Ancient Viking sailors took measurements of sea depth and sampled seafloor sediments with this instrument, Sony VAIO PCG-41111M Battery which consisted of a lead weight with a hollow bottom attached to a line. Once the weight reached the sea bottom and collected a sample of the seabed, the line was hauled back on board ship and measured in fathom.^[11] Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutch architect, is generally given credit for construction of the first submarine. Sony VAIO PCG-41111V Battery His submersible boat consisted of a wooden frame sheathed in animal skin. Oars, with its openings were sealed with tight-fitting leather flaps, extended out the sides to propel the craft through the water, at depths up to 4.6 meters (15 ft). Drebel tested his submarine in the Thames River in England in sometime between 1620 and 1624. Sony VAIO PCG-61412V Battery It is believed that King James I may have enjoyed a short ride in the craft.^[12] However, the nature of the deep ocean remained an unrevealed mystery until the mid-19th century. Scientists and artists alike imagined the deep sea as a lifeless soup of placid water. French author Jules Verne, Sony VAIO PCG-71112M Battery who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre, portrayed the deep ocean as contained in a bowl of static rock in his "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea". By the late 1860s, controversial modern scientific theories, the origin of life by evolution and the enormity of geologic time had created a foundation of scientific curiosity and provoked a rising interest in marine exploration. Sony VAIO PCG-81111V Battery The Royal Society ofEngland thus initiated an ambitious oceanographic mission to expand a scarce collection of existing marine data that included Charles Darwin's observations during the voyage of the HMS Beagle (1831-1836), a bathymetric chart created by U.S. Navy Lt. Matthew Maury to aid installation of the first trans-continent telegraph cables in 1858, and a few examples of deep marine creatures.^[13] Sony VAIO PCG-81111V Battery From 1872 to 1876, a landmark ocean study was carried out by British scientists aboard HMS Challenger, a sailing vessel that was redesigned into a laboratory ship. The HMS Challenger expedition covered 127,653 km (68,890 nautical miles), and shipboard scientists collected hundreds of samples, hydrographic measurements, and specimens of marine life. Sony VAIO PCG-81212M Battery They are also credited with providing the first real view of major seafloor features such as the deep ocean basins. They discovered more than 4,700 new species of marine life, including deep-sea organisms.^[14] Deep-sea exploration advanced considerably in the 1900s thanks to a series of technological inventions, Sony VAIO PCG-81212V Battery ranging from sonar system to detect the presence of objects underwater through the use of sound to manned deep-diving submersibles such as DSV Alvin. Operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Alvin is designed to carry a crew of three people to depths of 4,000 meters (13,124 ft). Sony VAIO PCG-51111M Battery The submarine is equipped with lights, cameras, computers, and highly maneuverable robotic arms for collecting samples in the darkness of the ocean's depths.^[15] However, the voyage to the ocean bottom is still a challenging experience. Scientists are working to find ways to study this extreme environment from the shipboard. Sony VAIO VPCS13X9E/B battery With more sophisticated use of fiber optics, satellites, and remote-control robots, scientists one day may explore the deep sea from a computer screen on the deck rather than out of a porthole. The sounding weight, one of the first instruments used for the sea bottom investigation, Sony VAIO VPCS12V9E/B battery was designed as a tube on the base which forced the seabed in when it hit the bottom of the ocean. British explorer Sir James Clark Ross fully employed this instrument to reach a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840.^[2][17] The sounding weights used on the HMS Challenger were slightly advanced called "Baillie sounding machine". Sony VAIO VPCS12V9E/B battery The British researchers used wire-line soundings to investigate sea depths and collected hundreds of biological samples from all the oceans except the Arctic. Also used on the HMS Challenger were dredges and scoops, suspended on ropes, with which samples of the sediment and biological specimens of the seabed could be obtained.^[2] Sony VAIO VPCF13M8E/B battery A more advanced version of the sounding weight is the gravity corer. The gravity corer allows researchers to sample and study sediment layers at the bottom of oceans. The corer consists of an open-ended tube with a lead weight and a trigger mechanism that releases the corer from its suspension cable when the corer is lowered over the seabed and a small weight touches the ground. Sony VAIO VPCF13Z0E/B battery The corer falls into the seabed and penetrates it to a depth of up to 10 m (33 ft). By lifting the corer, a long, cylindrical sample is extracted in which the structure of the seabed's layers of sediment is preserved. Recovering sediment cores allows scientists to see the presence or absence of specific fossils in the mud that may indicate climate patterns at times in the past, Sony VAIO VPCM13M1E/L battery such as during the ice ages. Samples of deeper layers can be obtained with a corer mounted in a drill. The drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution is equipped to extract cores from depths of as much as 1,500 m (4900 ft) below the ocean bottom. (See Ocean Drilling Program)^. Sony VAIO VPCM13M1E/W battery Echo-sounding instruments have also been widely used to determine the depth of the sea bottom since World War II. This instrument is used primarily for determining the depth of water by means of an acoustic echo. A pulse of sound sent from the ship is reflected from the sea bottom back to the ship, Sony VAIO VPCF22M1E battery the interval of time between transmission and reception being proportional to the depth of the water. By registering the time lapses between outgoing and returning signals continuously on paper tape, a continuous mapping of the seabed is obtained. The majority of the ocean floor has been mapped in this way. Sony VAIO VPCF11M1E/H battery In addition, high-resolution television cameras, thermometers, pressure meters, and seismographs are other notable instruments for deep-sea exploration invented by the technological advance. These instruments are either lowered to the sea bottom by long cables or directly attached to submersible buoys. Sony VAIO VPCF13M0E/B battery Deep-sea currents can be studied by floats carrying an ultrasonic sound device so that their movements can be tracked from aboard the research vessel. Such vessels themselves are equipped with state -of-art navigational instruments, such as satellite navigation systems, and global positioning systems that keep the vessel in a live position relative to a sonar beacon on the bottom of the ocean. Sony VAIO VPCYB2M1E battery Because of the high pressure, the depth to which a diver can descend without special equipment is limited. The deepest recorded made by a skin diver is 127 meters (417 ft).^[14] The deepest record made by a scuba diver is not much deeper, at 145 meters (475 ft). Sony VAIO VPCYB3V1E battery Revolutionary new diving suits, such as the "JIM suit," allows divers to reach depths up to approximately 600 meters (2,000 ft).^[20] Some additional suits feature thruster packs that boost a diver to different locations underwater.^[21] To explore even deeper depths, deep-sea explorers must rely on specially constructed steel chambers to protect them. Sony VAIO VPCY11M1E battery The American explorer William Beebe, also a naturalist from Columbia University in New York, was the designer of the first practical bathysphere to observe marine species at depths that could not be reached by a diver.^[22] The Bathysphere, a spherical steel vessel, was designed by Beebe and his fellow engineer Otis Barton, an engineer at Harvard University. Sony VAIO VPCS12L9E/B battery In 1930 Beebe and Barton reached a depth of 435 m (about 1425 ft), and 923 m (3028 ft) in 1934. The potential danger was that if the cable broke, the occupants could not return to the surface. During the dive, Beebe peered out of a porthole and reported his observations by telephone to Barton who was on the surface. Sony VAIO VPCF11S1E/B battery In 1948, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard tested a much deeper-diving vessel he invented called the bathyscaphe, a navigable deep-sea vessel with its gasoline-filled float and suspended chamber or gondola of spherical steel.^[22] On an experimental dive in the Cape Verde Islands, Sony VAIO VPCYB3V1E/R Battery his bathyscaphe successfully withstood the pressure on it at 1,402 meters (4,600 ft), but its body was severely damaged by heavy waves after the dive. In 1954, with this bathyscaphe, Piccard reached a depth of 4,000 m (13,125 ft).^[22] In 1953, his son Jacques Piccard joined in building new and improved bathyscaphe Trieste, which dived to 3,139 meters (10,300 ft) in field trials.^[22] Sony VAIO VPCF23P1E Battery The U.S. Navy acquired Trieste in 1958 and equipped it with a new cabin to enable it to reach deep ocean trenches.^[5] In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in Trieste to the deepest known point on Earth - the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, successfully making the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).^[5] Sony VAIO VPCF23N1E Battery An increasing number of occupied submersibles are now employed around the world. The American-built DSV Alvin that is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is a three-person submarine that can dive to about 3,600 m (12,000 ft) and is equipped with a mechanical manipulator to collect bottom samples.^[25] Sony VAIO VPCY21S1E/L Battery Alvin made its first test dive in 1964, and has performed more than 3,000 dives to average depths of 1,829 meters (6,000 ft). Alvin has also involved in a wide variety of research projects, such as one where giant tube worms were discovered on the Pacific Ocean floor near the Gal pagos Islands. Sony VAIO VPCY21S1E/G battery One of the first unmanned deep sea vehicles was developed by the University of California with a grant from the Alan Hancock Foundation in the early 1950s to develop a more economical method of taking photos miles under the sea with an unmanned steel high pressure 3,0000 lb sphere called a benthograph which contained a camera and strobe light. Sony VAIO VPCF24M1E battery The original benthograph built by USC was very successful in taking a series of underwater photos till it became wedged between some rocks and could not be retrieved. ^[26] ROVs, or Remote Operated Vehicles, are seeing increasing use in underwater exploration. Sony VAIO VGN-NW21EF/S Battery These submersibles are piloted through a cable which connects to the surface ship, and they can reach depths of up to 6,000 meters. New developments in robotics have also led to the creation of AUVs, or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. The robotic submarines are programmed in advance, and receive no instruction from the surface. Sony VAIO VGN-NW21JF Battery HROV combine features of both ROVs and AUV, operating independently or with a cable.^[27][28] Argo was employed in 1985 to locate the wreck of the RMS Titanic; the smaller Jason was also used to explore the ship wreck. In 1974 the Alvin (operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the (Deep Sea Place Research Center), Sony VAIO VGN-NW21MF Battery the French bathyscaphe Archim de, and the French diving saucer Cyane, assisted by support ships and the Glomar Challenger, explored the great rift valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, southwest of theAzores. About 5,200 photographs of the region were taken, and samples of relatively young solidified magma were found on each side of the central fissure of the rift valley, Sony VAIO VGN-NW21MF/W Battery giving additional proof that the seafloor spreads at this site at a rate of about 2.5 cm (about 1 in) per year (see plate tectonics,).^[29] In a series of dives conducted between 1979-1980 into the Gal pagos rift, off the coast of Ecuador, French,Italian, Mexican, and U.S. scientists found vents, nearly 9 m (nearly 30 ft) high and about 3.7 m (about 12 ft) across, Sony VAIO VGN-NW21ZF Battery discharging a mixture of hot water (up to 300 C/570 F) and dissolved metals in dark, smoke-like plumes (see hydrothermal vent,). These hot springs play an important role in the formation of deposits that are enriched in copper, nickel, cadmium,chromium, and uranium. Deep-sea fish are fish that live in darkness below the surface waters lit by the sun, Sony VAIO VGN-NW31EF/W Battery that is below the photic zone of the ocean. The lanternfish is, by far, the most common deep-sea fish. Other deep sea fish include the flashlight fish,cookiecutter shark, bristlemouths, anglerfish, and viperfish. Only about 2% of known marine species inhabit the pelagic environment. Sony VAIO VGN-NW31JF Battery This means that they live in the water column as opposed to the benthic organisms that live in or on the sea floor.^[1] Deep-sea organisms generally inhabit bathypelagic (1000m-4000m deep) and abyssopelagic (4000m-6000m deep) zones. However, characteristics of deep-sea organisms, such asbioluminescence can be seen in the mesopelagic (200m-1000m deep) zone as well. Sony VAIO VGN-NW320F/B Battery The mesopelagic zone is the disphotic zone, meaning light there is minimal but still measurable. The oxygen minimum layer exists somewhere between a depth of 700m and 1000m deep depending on the place in the ocean. This area is also where nutrients are most abundant. Sony VAIO VGN-NW320F/TC Battery Thebathypelagic and abyssopelagic zones are aphotic, meaning that no light penetrates this area of the ocean. These zones make up about 75% of the inhabitable ocean space.^[2] The zone that deep-sea fish do not inhabit is the epipelagic zone (0m-200m), which is the area where light penetrates the water and photosynthesis occurs. Sony VAIO VGN-NW35E Battery This is also known as the euphotic, or more simply as the photic zone. Because the photic zone typically extends only a few hundred meters below the water, about 90% of the ocean volume is in darkness. The deep-sea is also an extremely hostile environment, with temperatures that rarely exceed 3 C and fall as low as -1.8 C" (with the exception of hydrothermal vent ecosystems that can exceed 350 C), Sony VAIO VGN-NW380F/S Battery low oxygen levels, and pressures between 20 and 1,000 atmospheres (between 2 and 100 megapascals). In the deep ocean, the waters extend far below the epipelagic zone, and support very different types of pelagic fishes adapted to living in these deeper zones.^[4] Sony VAIO VGN-NW380F/T Battery In deep water, marine snow is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. Its origin lies in activities within the productive photic zone. Marine snow includes dead or dying plankton, protists (diatoms), fecal matter, sand, soot and other inorganic dust. Sony VAIO VGN-NW50JB Battery The "snowflakes" grow over time and may reach several centimetres in diameter, travelling for weeks before reaching the ocean floor. However, most organic components of marine snow are consumed by microbes, zooplankton and other filter-feeding animals within the first 1,000 metres of their journey, that is, within the epipelagic zone. Sony VAIO VGN-NW51FB/N Battery In this way marine snow may be considered the foundation of deep-sea mesopelagic and benthic ecosystems: As sunlight cannot reach them, deep-sea organisms rely heavily on marine snow as an energy source. Some deep-sea pelagic groups, such as the lanternfish, ridgehead, marine hatchetfish, and lightfish families are sometimes termedpseudoceanic because, Sony VAIO VGN-NW51FB/W Battery rather than having an even distribution in open water, they occur in significantly higher abundances around structural oases, notably seamounts and over continental slopes. The phenomenon is explained by the likewise abundance of prey species which are also attracted to the structures. Sony VAIO VGN-NW70JB Battery Hydrostatic pressure increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10m in depth.^[5] Deep-sea organisms have the same pressure within their bodies that is being exerted on them from the outside, so they aren't crushed by the extreme pressure. Their high internal pressure, however, results in the reduced fluidity of their membranes because molecules are squeezed together. Sony VAIO VGN-NW71FB/N Battery Fluidity in cell membranes increases efficiency of biological functions, most importantly the production of proteins, so organisms have adapted to this circumstance by increasing the proportion of unsaturated fatty acids in the lipids of the cell membranes.^[6] In addition to differences in internal pressure, Sony VAIO VGN-NW71FB/W Battery these organisms have developed a different balance between their metabolic reactions from those organisms that live in the epipelagic zone. David Wharton, author of Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments, notes "Biochemical reactions are accompanied by changes in volume. Sony VAIO VGN-NW91FS Battery If a reaction results in an increase in volume, it will be inhibited by pressure, whereas, if it is associated with a decrease in volume, it will be enhanced,".^[7] This means that their metabolic processes must ultimately decrease the volume of the organism to some degree. Sony VAIO VGN-NW91GS Battery Most fish that have evolved in this harsh environment are not capable of surviving in laboratory conditions, and attempts to keep them in captivity have led to their deaths. Deep-sea organisms contain gas-filled spaces (vacuoles). Gas is compressed under high pressure and expands under low pressure. Sony VAIO VGN-NW91VS Battery Because of this, these organisms have been known to blow up if they come to the surface.^[7] Other complications arise from nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness, which also occur in humans. Nitrogen narcosis occurs because the absorption of gases in the blood, especially nitrogen, increase at greater depths. Sony VAIO VGN-NS10E/S Battery The result is similar to drunkenness. Decompression sickness occurs when excess gases cannot be removed from the blood stream fast enough when an organism rises in the water column. The decreased pressure makes the gases expand and small bubbles of nitrogen form in the blood stream as well as tissues. Sony VAIO VGN-NS10J/S Battery The result of this can be bone damage, extreme pain, physical debilitation, and even death.^[9] This can be seen in the case of a frilled shark found in shallow waters near Japan. Frilled sharks usually live at a depth of 1,500 metres, and when this specimen was transferred to a marine park it died within a few hours.^[10][11] Sony VAIO VGN-NS10L/S Battery For this reason little is known about them, as there are limits to the amount of useful research that can be carried out on dead specimens and deep-sea exploratory equipment is very expensive. As such, many species are known only to scientists and only by scientific names. Sony VAIO VGN-NS110E/L Battery The fish of the deep-sea are among the strangest and most elusive creatures on Earth. In this deep unknown lie many unusual creatures that have yet to be studied. Since many of these fish live in regions where there is no natural illumination, they cannot rely solely on their eyesight for locating prey and mates and avoiding predators; Sony VAIO VGN-NS110E/S Battery deep-sea fish have evolvedappropriately to the extreme sub-photic region in which they live. Many of these organisms are blind and rely on their other senses, such as sensitivities to changes in local pressure and smell, to catch their food and avoid being caught. Those that aren't blind have large and sensitive eyes that can use bioluminescent light. Sony VAIO VGN-NS110E/W Battery These eyes can be as much as 100 times more sensitive to light than human eyes. Also, to avoid predation, many species are dark to blend in with their environment.^[12] Many deep-sea fish are bioluminescent, with extremely large eyes adapted to the dark. Sony VAIO VGN-NS115N/S Battery Bioluminescent organisms are capable of producing light biologically through the agitation of molecules of luciferin, which then produce photons of light. This process must be done in the presence of oxygen. These organisms are common in the mesopelagic region and below (200m and below). Sony VAIO VGN-NS11J/S Battery More than 50% of deep-sea fish as well as some species of shrimp and squid are capable of bioluminescence. About 80% of these organisms have photophores - light producing glandular cells that contain luminous bacteria bordered by dark colorings. Some of these photophores contain lenses, much like those in the eyes of humans, Sony VAIO VGN-NS130E/L Battery which can intensify or lessen the emanation of light. The ability to produce light only requires 1% of the organism's energy and has many purposes: It is used to search for food and attract prey, like the anglerfish; claim territory through patrol; communicate and find a mate; and distract or temporarily blind predators to escape. Sony VAIO VGN-NS130E/S Battery Also, in the mesopelagic where some light still penetrates, some organisms camouflage themselves from predators below them by illuminating their bellies to match the color and intensity of light from above so that no shadow is cast. This tactic is known as counter illumination.^[13] Sony VAIO VGN-NS130E/W Battery The lifecycle of deep-sea fish can be exclusively deep water although some species are born in shallower water and sink upon maturation. Regardless of the depth where eggs and larvae reside, they are typically pelagic. This planktonic - drifting - lifestyle requires neutral buoyancy. Sony VAIO VGN-NS140E/L Battery In order to maintain this, the eggs and larvae often contain oil droplets in their plasma.^[14] When these organisms are in their fully matured state they need other adaptations to maintain their positions in the water column. In general, water's density causes upthrust - the aspect of buoyancy that makes organisms float. Sony VAIO VGN-NS140E/S Battery To counteract this, the density of an organism must be greater than that of the surrounding water. Most animal tissues are denser than water, so they must find an equilibrium to make them float.^[15] Many organisms develop swim bladders (gas cavities) to stay afloat, but because of the high pressure of their environment, deep-sea fishes usually do not have this organ. Sony VAIO VGN-NS140E/W Battery Instead they exhibit structures similar to hydrofoils in order to provide hydrodynamic lift. It has also been found that the deeper a fish lives, the more jelly-like its flesh and the more minimal its bone structure. They reduce their tissue density through high fat content, reduction of skeletal weight - accomplished through reductions of size, Sony VAIO VGN-NS190J/L Battery thickness, and mineral content - and water accumulation ^[16] makes them slower and less agile than surface fish. Due to the poor level of photosynthetic light reaching deep-sea environments, most fish need to rely on organic matter sinking from higher levels, or, in rare cases, hydrothermal vents for nutrients. Sony VAIO VGN-NS190J/S Battery This makes the deep-sea much poorer in productivity than shallower regions. Also, animals in the pelagic environment are sparse and food doesn't come along frequently. Because of this, organisms need adaptations that allow them to survive. Some have long feelers to help them locate prey or attract mates in the pitch black of the deep ocean. Sony VAIO VGN-NS190J/W Battery The deep-sea angler fish in particular has a long fishing-rod-like adaptation protruding from its face, on the end of which is a bioluminescent piece of skin that wriggles like a worm to lure its prey. Some must consume other fish that are the same size or larger than them and they need adaptations to help digest them efficiently. Sony VAIO VGN-NS235J/L Battery Great sharp teeth, hinged jaws, disproportionately large mouths, and expandable bodies are a few of the characteristics that deep-sea fishes have for this purpose.^[12] The gulper eel is one example of an organism that displays these characteristics. Fish in the different pelagic and deep water benthic zones are physically structured, and behave in ways, that differ markedly from each other. Sony VAIO VGN-NS235J/P Battery Groups of coexisting species within each zone all seem to operate in similar ways, such as the small mesopelagic vertically migrating plankton-feeders, the bathypelagicanglerfishes, and the deep water benthic rattails. "^[17] Ray finned species, with spiny fins, are rare among deep sea fishes, Sony VAIO VGN-NS235J/S Battery which suggests that deep sea fish are ancient and so well adapted to their environment that invasions by more modern fishes have been unsuccessful.^[18] The few ray fins that do exist are mainly in the Beryciformes and Lampriformes, which are also ancient forms. Most deep sea pelagic fishes belong to their own orders, suggesting a long evolution in deep sea environments. Sony VAIO VGN-NS235J/W Battery In contrast, deep water benthic species, are in orders that include many related shallow water fishes. Below the epipelagic zone, conditions change rapidly. Between 200 metres and about 1000 metres, light continues to fade until there is almost none. Temperatures fall through a thermocline to temperatures between 39 F (3.9 C) and 46 F (7.8 C). Sony VAIO VGN-NS240E/L Battery This is the twilight or mesopelagic zone. Pressure continues to increase, at the rate of one atmosphere every 10 metres, while nutrient concentrations fall, along with dissolved oxygen and the rate at which the water circulates."^[4] Sonar operators, using the newly developed sonar technology during World War II, Sony VAIO VGN-NS290J/L Battery were puzzled by what appeared to be a false sea floor 300-500 metres deep at day, and less deep at night. This turned out to be due to millions of marine organisms, most particularly small mesopelagic fish, with swimbladders that reflected the sonar. These organisms migrate up into shallower water at dusk to feed on plankton. Sony VAIO VGN-NS290J/S Battery The layer is deeper when the moon is out, and can become shallower when clouds pass over the moon. This phenomenon has come to be known as the deep scattering layer.^[22] Most mesopelagic fish make daily vertical migrations, moving at night into the epipelagic zone, often following similar migrations of zooplankton, and returning to the depths for safety during the day. Sony VAIO VGN-NS50B/L Battery These vertical migrations often occur over a large vertical distances, and are undertaken with the assistance of a swimbladder. The swimbladder is inflated when the fish wants to move up, and, given the high pressures in the messoplegic zone, this requires significant energy. As the fish ascends, the pressure in the swimbladder must adjust to prevent it from bursting. Sony VAIO VGN-NS50B/W Battery When the fish wants to return to the depths, the swimbladder is deflated.^[24] Some mesopelagic fishes make daily migrations through the thermocline, where the temperature changes between 50 F (10 C) and 69 F (20 C), thus displaying considerable tolerances for temperature change.^[25] Sony VAIO VGN-NS51B/L Battery These fish have muscular bodies, ossified bones, scales, well developed gills and central nervous systems, and large hearts and kidneys. Mesopelagic plankton feeders have small mouths with fine gill rakers, while the piscivores have larger mouths and coarser gill rakers.^[4] The vertically migratory fish have swimbladders.^[18] Sony VAIO VGN-NS51B/P Battery Mesopelagic fish are adapted for an active life under low light conditions. Most of them are visual predators with large eyes. Some of the deeper water fish have tubular eyes with big lenses and only rod cells that look upwards. These give binocular vision and great sensitivity to small light signals.^[4] Sony VAIO VGN-NS51B/W Battery This adaptation gives improved terminal vision at the expense of lateral vision, and allows the predator to pick out squid, cuttlefish, and smaller fish that are silhouetted against the gloom above them. Mesopelagic fish usually lack defensive spines, and use colour to camouflage themselves from other fish. Sony VAIO VGN-NS52JB/L Battery Ambush predators are dark, black or red. Since the longer, red, wavelengths of light do not reach the deep sea, red effectively functions the same as black. Migratory forms use countershaded silvery colours. On their bellies, they often display photophores producing low grade light. Sony VAIO VGN-NS52JB/P Battery For a predator from below, looking upwards, this bioluminescence camouflages the silhouette of the fish. However, some of these predators have yellow lenses that filter the (red deficient) ambient light, leaving the bioluminescence visible. The brownsnout spookfish, a species of barreleye, is the only vertebrate known to employ a mirror, as opposed to a lens, to focus an image in its eyes.^[31][32] Sony VAIO VGN-NS52JB/W Battery Sampling via deep trawling indicates that lanternfish account for as much as 65% of all deep sea fish biomass.^[33] Indeed, lanternfish are among the most widely distributed, populous, and diverse of all vertebrates, playing an important ecologicalrole as prey for larger organisms. Sony VAIO VGN-NS70B/W Battery The estimated global biomass of lanternfish is 550 - 660 million metric tonnes, several times the entire world fisheries catch. Lanternfish also account for much of the biomass responsible for the deep scattering layer of the world's oceans. Sonar reflects off the millions of lanternfish swim bladders, giving the appearance of a false bottom.^[34] Sony VAIO VGN-NS71B/W Battery Bigeye tuna are an epipelagic/mesopelagic species that eats other fish. Satellite tagging has shown that bigeye tuna often spend prolonged periods cruising deep below the surface during the daytime, sometimes making dives as deep as 500 metres. These movements are thought to be in response to the vertical migrations of prey organisms in the deep scattering layer. Sony VAIO VGN-NS72JB/W Battery Below the mesopelagic zone it is pitch dark. This is the midnight or bathypelagic zone, extending from 1000 metres to the bottom deep water benthic zone. If the water is exceptionally deep, the pelagic zone below 4000 metres is sometimes called the lower midnight or abyssopelagic zone. Sony VAIO VGN-NS90HS Battery Conditions are somewhat uniform throughout these zones, the darkness is complete, the pressure is crushing, and temperatures, nutrients and dissolved oxygen levels are all low.^[4] Bathypelagic fish have special adaptations to cope with these conditions - they have slow metabolisms and unspecialized diets, being willing to eat anything that comes along. Sony VAIO VGN-NS92JS Battery They prefer to sit and wait for food rather than waste energy searching for it. The behaviour of bathypelagic fish can be contrasted with the behaviour of mesopelagic fish. Mesopelagic are often highly mobile, whereas bathypelagic fish are almost all lie-in-wait predators, normally expending little energy in movement.^[44] Sony VAIO VGN-NS92XS Battery The dominant bathypelagic fishes are small bristlemouth and anglerfish; fangtooth, viperfish, daggertooth and barracudina are also common. These fishes are small, many about 10 centimetres long, and not many longer than 25 cm. They spend most of their time waiting patiently in the water column for prey to appear or to be lured by their phosphors. Sony VAIO VGN-SR11M Battery What little energy is available in the bathypelagic zone filters from above in the form of detritus, faecal material, and the occasional invertebrate or mesopelagic fish.^[44] About 20 percent of the food that has its origins in the epipelagic zone falls down to the mesopelagic zone,^[22] but only about 5 percent filters down to the bathypelagic zone.^[38] Sony VAIO VGN-SR11MR Battery Bathypelagic fish are sedentary, adapted to outputting minimum energy in a habitat with very little food or available energy, not even sunlight, only bioluminescence. Their bodies are elongated with weak, watery muscles and skeletal structures. Since so much of the fish is water, they are not compressed by the great pressures at these depths. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140D Battery They often have extensible, hinged jaws with recurved teeth. They are slimy, without scales. The central nervous system is confined to the lateral line and olfactory systems, the eyes are small and may not function, and gills, kidneys and hearts, and swimbladders are small or missing. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140D/B Battery These are the same features found in fish larvae, which suggests that during their evolution, bathypelagic fish have acquired these features through neoteny. As with larvae, these features allow the fish to remain suspended in the water with little expenditure of energy.Despite their ferocious appearance, these beasts of the deep are mostly miniature fish with weak muscles, and are too small to represent any threat to humans. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140D/P Battery The swimbladders of deep sea fish are either absent or scarcely operational, and bathypelagic fish do not normally undertake vertical migrations. Filling bladders at such great pressures incurs huge energy costs. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140D/S Battery Some deep sea fishes have swimbladders which function while they are young and inhabit the upper epipelagic zone, but they wither or fill with fat when the fish move down to their adult habitat.^[47] The most important sensory systems are usually the inner ear, which responds to sound, and the lateral line, which responds to changes in water pressure. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E Battery The olfactory system can also be important for males who find females by smell.^[48]Bathypelagic fish are black, or sometimes red, with few photophores. When photophores are used, it is usually to entice prey or attract a mate. Because food is so scarce, bathypelagic predators are not selective in their feeding habits, Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E/B Battery but grab whatever come close enough. They accomplish this by having a large mouth with sharp teeth for grabbing large prey and overlapping gill rakers which prevent small prey that have been swallowed from escaping.^[45] It is not easy finding a mate in this zone. Some species depend on bioluminescence. Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E/P Battery Others are hermaphrodites, which doubles their chances of producing both eggs and sperm when an encounter occurs.^[38] The female anglerfish releases pheromones to attract tiny males. When a male finds her, he bites on to her and never lets go. When a male of the anglerfish speciesHaplophryne mollis bites into the skin of a female, Sony VAIO VGN-SR140E/S Battery he releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair to the point where the two circulatory systems join up. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.^[49] Sony VAIO VGN-SR140N/S Battery Many forms other than fish live in the bathypelagic zone, such as squid, large whales, octopuses, sponges, brachiopods, sea stars, and echinoids, but this zone is difficult for fish to live in. Sampling via deep trawling indicates that lanternfish account for as much as 65% of all deep-sea fish biomass. Sony VAIO VGN-SR165E/B Battery Indeed, lanternfish are among the most widely distributed, populous, and diverse of all vertebrates, playing an important ecologicalrole as prey for larger organisms. With an estimated global biomass of 550 - 660 million metric tons, several times the entire world fisheries catch, Sony VAIO VGN-SR165E/P Battery lanternfish also account for much of the biomass responsible for the deep scattering layer of the world's oceans. In the Southern Ocean, Myctophids provide an alternative food resource to krill for predators such assquid and the King Penguin. Although these fish are plentiful and prolific, currently only a few commercial lanternfishfisheries exist: Sony VAIO VGN-SR165E/S Battery These include limited operations off South Africa, in the sub-Antarctic, and in the Gulf of Oman. A 2006 study by Canadian scientists has found five species of deep-sea fish - blue hake, spiny eel - to be on the verge of extinction due to the shift ofcommercial fishing from continental shelves to the slopes of the continental shelves, down to depths of 1600 meters. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190EBJ Battery The slow reproduction of these fish - they reach sexual maturity at about the same age as human beings - is one of the main reasons that they cannot recover from the excessive fishing. Deep Ocean Water (DOW) is the name for cold, salty water found deep below the surface of Earth's oceans. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190EBQ Battery Ocean water differs in temperature and salinity, with warm, relatively non-salty water found at the surface, and very cold salty water found deeper below the surface layer. Deep ocean water makes up about 90% of the volume of the oceans. Deep ocean water has a very low temperature, typically from 0 C (32 F) to 3 C (37 F), and a salinity of about 3.5% (35 psu).^[1] Sony VAIO VGN-SR190EEJ/C Battery In specialized locations such as the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii NELHA ocean water is pumped to the surface from approximately 3000 feet deep for applications in research, commercial and pre-commercial activities. DOW is typically used to describe ocean water at sub-thermal depths sufficient to provide a measurable difference in water temperature. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190NAB Battery When deep ocean water is brought to the surface, it can be used for a variety of things. Its most useful property is its temperature. At the surface of the Earth, most water and air is well above 3 C. The difference in temperature is indicative of a difference in energy. Where there is an energy gradient, Sony VAIO VGN-SR190NBB Battery skillful application of science and engineering can harness that energy for productive use by humans. Assuming the source of deep ocean water is environmentally friendly and replenished by natural mechanisms, it forms a more innovative basis for cleaner energy than current fossil-fuel-derived energy. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190NDB Battery The simplest use of cold water is simply for air conditioning: using the cold water itself to cool air saves the energy that would be used by the compressors for traditional refrigeration. Another use could be to replace expensive desalination plants. When cold water passes through a pipe surrounded by humid air, condensation results. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190NEB Battery The condensate is pure water, suitable for humans to drink or for crop irrigation. Finally, via a technology called Ocean thermal energy conversion, the temperature difference can be turned into electricity. Demersal fish live and feed on or near the bottom of the sea or lakes.^[1] Sony VAIO VGN-SR190NGB Battery They occupy the sea floors and lake beds, which usually consist of mud, sand, gravel or rocks.^[1] In coastal waters they are found on or near thecontinental shelf, and in deep waters they are found on or near the continental slope or along the continental rise. They are not generally found in the deepest waters, Sony VAIO VGN-SR190PAB Battery such as abyssal depths or on the abyssal plain, but they can be found around seamounts and islands. The word demersal comes from the Latin demergere, which means to sink. Demersal fish are bottom feeders. They can be contrasted with pelagic fish which live and feed away from the bottom in the open water column. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190PCB Battery Demersal fish fillets contain little fish oil (one to four percent), whereas pelagic fish can contain up to 30 percent.Demersal fish can be divided into two main types: strictly benthic fish which can rest on the sea floor, and benthopelagicfish which can float in the water column just above the sea floor. Sony VAIO VGN-SR190PFB Battery Benthopelagic fish have neutral buoyancy, so they can float at depth without much effort, while strictly benthic fish are more dense, with negative buoyancy so they can lie on the bottom without any effort.^[2] Most demersal fish are benthopelagic.^[1] As with other bottom feeders, a mechanism to deal with substrate is often necessary. Sony VAIO VGN-SR19VN Battery With demersal fish the sand is usually pumped out of the mouth through the gill slit. Most demersal fish exhibit a flat ventral region so as to more easily rest their body on the substrate. The exception may be the flatfish, which are laterally depressed but lie on their sides. Sony VAIO VGN-SR19VN Battery Also, many exhibit what is termed an "inferior" mouth, which means that the mouth is pointed downwards; this is beneficial as their food is often going to be below them in the substrate. Those bottom feeders with upward-pointing mouths, such as stargazers, tend to seize swimming prey. Sony VAIO VGN-SR19VRN Battery Benthic fish, sometimes called groundfish, are denser than water, so they can rest on the sea floor. They either lie-and-wait as ambush predators, maybe covering themselves with sand or otherwise camouflaging themselves, or move actively over the bottom in search for food.^[3] Benthic fish which can bury themselves include flatfish and stingrays. Sony VAIO VGN-SR19XN Battery Flatfish are an order of ray-finned benthic fishes which lie flat on the ocean floor. Examples are flounder, sole, turbot, plaice, and halibut. The adult fish of many species have both eyes on one side of the head. When the fish hatches, one eye is located on each side of its head. Sony VAIO VGN-SR19XN Battery But as the fish grows from the larval stage, one eye migrates to the other side of the body as a process of metamorphosis. The flatfish then changes its habits, and camouflages itself by lying on the bottom of the ocean floor with both eyes facing upwards.^[4] The side on which the eye migrates depends on the species, so some species end up with both eyes on their left side, and others on the right. Sony VAIO VGN-SR210J/S Battery Flounder ambush their prey, feeding at soft muddy area of the sea bottom, near bridge piles, docks, artificial and coral reefs. Their diet consists mainly of fish spawn, crustaceans, polychaetes and small fish. The great hammerhead swings its head in broad angles over the sea floor to pick up the electrical signatures of stingrays buried in the sand. Sony VAIO VGN-SR21M/S Battery It then uses its "hammer" to pin down the stingray. Some fishes don't fit into the above classification. For example, the family of nearly blind spiderfishes, common and widely distributed, feed on benthopelagic zooplankton. Yet they are strictly benthic fish, since they stay in contact with the bottom. Sony VAIO VGN-SR21RM/H Battery Their fins have long rays they use to "stand" on the bottom while they face the current and grab zooplankton as it passes by.^[7] The bodies of benthic fish are adapted for ongoing contact with the sea floor. Swimbladders are usually absent or reduced, and the bodies are usually flattened in one way or another. Sony VAIO VGN-SR21RM/S Battery Benthopelagic fish inhabit the water just above the bottom, feeding on benthos and zooplankton.^[13] Most demersal fish are benthopelagic.^[1] Deep sea benthopelagic teleosts all have swimbladders. The dominant species, rattails and cusk eels, have considerable biomass. Other species include deep sea cods (morids), deep sea eels, halosaurs and notacanths.^[14] Sony VAIO VGN-SR220J/B Battery Benthopelagic sharks, like the deep sea squaloid sharks, achieve neutral buoyancy with the use of large oil-filled livers.^[2]Sharks adapt well to fairly high pressures. They can often be found on slopes down to about 2000 metres, scavenging on food falls such as dead whales. However, the energy demands of sharks are high, since they need to swim constantly and maintain a large amount of oil for buoyancy. Sony VAIO VGN-SR220J/H Battery These energy needs cannot be met in the extreme oligotrophic conditions that occur at great depths.^[2] Shallow water stingrays are benthic, and can lie on the bottom because of their negative buoyancy. Deep sea stingrays are benthopelagic, and like the squaloids have very large livers which give them neutral buoyancy.^[2] Sony VAIO VGN-SR240J/B Battery Benthopelagic fish can be divided into flabby or robust body types. Flabby benthopelagic fishes are like bathypelagic fishes; they have a reduced body mass, and low metabolic rates, expending minimal energy as they lie and wait to ambush prey.^[15] An example of a flabby fish is the cusk-eel Acanthonus armatus, Sony VAIO VGN-SR240N/B Battery a predator with a huge head and a body that is 90 percent water. This fish has the largest ears (otoliths) and the smallest brain in relation to its body size of all known vertebrates.^[17] Deepwater benthopelagic fish are robust, muscular swimmers that actively cruise the bottom searching for prey. Sony VAIO VGN-SR290JTH Battery They often live around features, such as seamounts, which have strong currents.^[17] Commercial examples are the orange roughy and Patagonian toothfish. The edge of the continental shelf marks the boundary where the shelf gives way to, and then gradually drops into abyssaldepths. Sony VAIO VGN-SR290JTJ Battery This edge marks the boundary between coastal, relatively shallow, benthic habitats, and the deep benthic habitats. Coastal demersal fishes live on the bottom of inshore waters, such as bays and estuaries, and further out, on the floor of the continental shelf. Deep water demersal fish live beyond this edge, mostly down the continental slopesand along the continental rises which drop to the abyssal plains. Sony VAIO VGN-SR290JTQ Battery This is the continental margin, constituting about 28% of the total oceanic area.^[18] Other deep sea demersal fish can also be found around seamounts and islands. The term bathydemersal fish is sometimes used instead of "deep water demersal fish". Bathydemersal refers to demersal fish which live at depths greater than 200 metres. Sony VAIO VGN-SR290JVB/C Battery The term epibenthic is also used to refer to organism that live on top of the ocean floor, as opposed to those that burrow into the seafloor substrate. However the terms mesodemersal, epidemersal, mesobenthic and bathybenthic are not used. Coastal demersal fish are found on or near the seabed of coastal waters between the shoreline and the edge of the continental shelf, Sony VAIO VGN-SR290JVH/C Battery where the shelf drops into the deep ocean. Since the continental shelf is generally less than 200 metres deep, this means that coastal waters are generally epipelagic. The term includes demersal reef fish and demersal fish that inhabit estuaries, inlets and bays. Young mangrove jacks, a sought after eating and sport fish, dwell in estuaries around mangrove roots, Sony VAIO VGN-SR290NTB Battery fallen trees, rock walls, and any other snag areas where smaller prey reside for protection. When they mature, they migrate into open waters, sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the coast to spawn. Stargazers are found worldwide in shallow waters. Sony VAIO VGN-SR29VN/S Battery They have eyes on top of their heads and a large upward-facing mouth. They bury themselves in sand, and leap upwards to ambush benthopelagic fish and invertebrates that pass overhead. Some species have a worm-shaped lure growing out of the floor of the mouth, which they wiggle to attract prey. Stargazers arevenomous and can deliver electric shocks. Sony VAIO VGN-SR29XN/S Battery They have been called "the meanest things in creation."Other examples of coastal demersal fish are cod, plaice, monkfish and sole. Deep water demersal fish occupy the benthic regions beyond the continental margins. On the continental slope, demersal fishes are common. Sony VAIO VGN-SR2RVN/S Battery They are more diverse than coastal demersal fish, since there is more habitat diversity. Further out are the abyssal plains. These flat, featureless regions occupy about 40 percent of the ocean floor. They are covered with sediment but largely devoid of benthic life (benthos). Sony VAIO VGN-SR390NAB Battery Deep sea benthic fishes are more likely to associate with canyons or rock outcroppings among the plains, where invertebrate communities are established. Undersea mountains (seamounts) can intercept deep sea currents, and cause productive upwellings which support benthic fish. Undersea mountain ranges can separate underwater regions into different ecosystems. Sony VAIO VGN-SR390NAH Battery Rattails and brotulas are common, and other well established families are eels, eelpouts, hagfishes, greeneyes, batfishes andlumpfishes.^[26] The bodies of deep water demersal fishes are muscular with well developed organs. In this way they are closer to mesopelagic fishes than bathypelagic fishes. Sony VAIO VGN-SR41M/P Battery In other ways, they are more variable. Photophores are usually absent, eyes and swimbladdersrange from absent to well developed. They vary in size, and larger species, greater than one metre, are not uncommon. Deep sea demersal fish are usually long and narrow. Many are eels or shaped like eels. Sony VAIO VGN-SR41M/S Battery This may be because long bodies have long lateral lines. Lateral lines detect low-frequency sounds, and some demersal fishes have muscles that drum such sounds to attract mates.^[27] Smell is also important, as indicated by the rapidity with which demersal fish find traps baited with bait fish. Sony VAIO VGN-SR49VN/H Battery The main diet of deep sea demersal fish is invertebrates of the deep sea benthos and carrion. Smell, touch and lateral line sensitivities seem to be the main sensory devices for locating these.^[3] Like coastal demersal fish, deep sea demersal fish can be divided into benthic fish and benthopelagic fish, Sony VAIO VGN-SR51B/P Battery where the benthic fish are negatively buoyant and benthopelagic fish are neutrally buoyant.^[3] The availability of plankton for food diminishes rapidly with depth. At 1000 metres, the biomass of plankton is typically about 1 percent of that at the surface, and at 5000 metres about 0.01 percent.^[14] Sony VAIO VGN-SR51B/S Battery Given there is no sunlight, energy enters deep water zones as organic matter. There are three main ways this happens. Firstly, organic matter can move into the zone from the continental landmass, for example, through currents that carry the matter down rivers, then plume along the continental shelf and finally spill down the continental slope. Sony VAIO VGN-SR51MF Battery Other matter enters as particulate matter raining down from the overhead water column in the form of marine snow, or as sinking overhead plant material such as eelgrass, or as "large particles" such as dead fish and whales sinking to the bottom. A third way energy can arrive is through fish, Sony VAIO VGN-SR51MF/P Battery such as vertically migrating mesopelagic fishes that can enter into the demersal zone as they ascend or descend. The demersal fish and invertebrates consume organic matter that does arrive, break it down and recycle it. A consequence of these energy delivery mechanisms is that the abundance of demersal fish and invertebrates gradually decrease as the distance from continental shorelines increases.^[28] Sony VAIO VGN-SR51MF/S Battery Although deep water demersal fish species are not generally picky about what they eat, there is still some degree of specialisation. For example, different fish have different mouth sizes, which determines the size of the prey they can handle. Some feed mostly on benthopelagic organisms. Sony VAIO VGN-SR51MF/W Battery Others fed mostly on epifauna(invertebrates on top of the seafloor surface, also called epibenthos), or alternatively on infauna (invertebrates that burrow into the seafloor substrate). Infauna feeders can have considerable sediment in their stomachs. Scavengers, such as snubnosed eels and hagfish, also eat infauna as a secondary food source. Sony VAIO VGN-SR51MR Battery Some feed on carrion. Cameras show that when a dead fish is placed on the bottom, vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers appear very quickly. If the fish is large, some scavengers burrow in and eat it from the inside out. Some fish, such as grenadiers, also appear and start feeding on the scavenging inverebrates andamphipods. Sony VAIO VGN-SR59VG Battery Other specialization is based on depth distribution. Some of the more abundant upper continental slope fish species, such as cutthroat eel andlongfinned hake,^[31] mainly feed on on epipelagic fish. But generally, the most abundant deep water demersal fish species feed on invertebrates. Sony VAIO VGN-SR59VG/H Battery At great depths, food scarcity and extreme pressure limits the ability of fish to survive. The deepest point of the ocean is about 11,000 metres. Bathypelagic fishes are not normally found below 3,000 metres.^[33] It may be that extreme pressures interfere with essential enzyme functions.^[34] Sony VAIO VGN-SR70B/S Battery The deepest-living fish known, the strictly benthic Abyssobrotula galatheae, eel-like and blind, feeds on benthic invertebrates. A living example was trawled from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench in 1970 from a depth of 8,370 metres (27,453 ft).Sony VAIO VGN-SR72B/P Battery In 2008, a shoal of 17 hadal snailfish, a species of deep water snailfish, was filmed by a UK-Japan team using remote operated landers at depths of 7.7 km (4.8 mi) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific. The fish were 30 centimetres long (12 in), and were darting about, using vibration sensors on their nose to catch shrimps. Sony VAIO VGN-SR72B/S Battery The team also reported that the appearance of the fish, unlike that of most deep sea fish, was surprisingly "cute", and that they were surprised by how active the fish were at these depths. Black sea bass inhabit US coasts from Maine to NE Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and are most abundant off the waters of New York. Sony VAIO VGN-SR73JB/S Battery They are found in inshore waters (bays and sounds) and offshore in waters up to a depth of 130 m (425'). They spend most of their time close to the sea floor and are often congregated around bottom formations such as rocks, man-made reefs, wrecks, jetties, piers, and bridge pilings. Sony VAIO VGN-SR74FB/S Battery Black sea bass are sought after recreational and commercial fish, and have been overfished.^[43] Grouper are often found around reefs. They have stout bodies and large mouths. They are not built for long-distance or fast swimming. They can be quite large, and lengths over a meter and weights up to 100 kg are not uncommon. Sony VAIO VGN-SR90FS Battery They swallow prey rather than biting pieces off it. They do not have many teeth on the edges of their jaws, but they have heavy crushing tooth plates inside the pharynx. They lie in wait, rather than chasing in open water. They are found in areas of hard or consolidated substrate, and use structural features such as ledges, Sony VAIO VGN-SR90NS Battery rocks, and coral reefs ( as well as artificial reefs like wrecks and sunken barges) as their habitat. Their mouth and gills form a powerful sucking system that sucks their prey in from a distance. They also use their mouth to dig into sand to form their shelters under big rocks, jetting it out through their gills. Sony VAIO VGN-SR90S Battery Their gill muscles are so powerful that it is nearly impossible to pull them out of their cave if they feel attacked and extend those muscles to lock themselves in. There is some research indicating that roving coral groupers (Plectropomus pessuliferus) sometimes cooperate with giant morays in hunting.^[44] Sony VAIO VGN-SR90US Battery Deepwater benthopelagic fish are robust, muscular swimmers that actively cruise the bottom searching for prey. They often live around features, such asseamounts, which have strong currents.^[17] Commercial examples are the orange roughy and Patagonian toothfish. Sony VAIO VGN-SR91NS Battery Because these fish were once abundant, and because their robust bodies are good to eat, these fish have been commercially harvested. Sony VAIO VGN-SR91PS Battery,Sony VAIO VGN-SR91S Battery,Sony VAIO VGN-SR91US Battery

http://www.all-keyboard.com/,http://www.keyboards-shop.com/,http://www.laptop-fan-shop.com/,http://www.laptopkeyboard-shop.com/ The history of the United Kingdom as a unified sovereign state began with the political union of the kingdoms of England, which the husos Wales, and Scotland into a new kingdom called Great Britain. On this new state the historian Simon Schamasaid "What began as a hostile merger would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world... it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history." SONY PCGA-BP1N battery A further Act of Union in 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The early years of the unified kingdom of Great Britain were marked by Jacobite risings which ended with defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. Later, in 1763, victory in the Seven Years War led to the dominance of the British Empire, which was to be the foremost global power for over a century and grew to become the largest empire in history. SONY PCG-5G2L battery As a result, the culture of the United Kingdom, and its industrial, political, constitutional, educational and linguistic legacy, is widespread. In 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Ireland effectively seceded from the United Kingdom to become the Irish Free State; a day later, Northern Ireland seceded from the Free State and became part of the United Kingdom. SONY PCG-5G3L battery As a result, in 1927 the United Kingdom changed its formal title to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,"^[2] usuallyshortened to the "United Kingdom", the "UK" or "Britain". Former parts of the British Empire became independent dominions. In the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union and the US joined Britain as allied powers, Britain and its Empire fought a successful war against Germany, Italy and Japan. SONY PCG-F305 battery The cost was high and Britain no longer had the wealth or the inclination to maintain an empire, so it granted independence to most of the Empire. The new states typically joined the Commonwealth of Nations.^[3] The United Kingdom has sought to be a leading member of the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, yet since the 1990s large-scale devolution movements in Northern Ireland, SONY PCG-5J1L battery Scotland and Wales have brought into question the future viability of this constantly evolving political union. The united kingdom of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707, as a result of the political union of the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland. SONY PCG-5J2L battery The terms of the union had been agreed in the Treaty of Unionthat was negotiated the previous year and then ratified by the parliaments of Scotland and England each approving Acts of Union.^[4] Although previously separate states, England and Scotland had shared monarchs since 1603 when James VI of Scotland become James I of England on the death of the childless Elizabeth I, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. SONY PCG-5K2L battery The Treaty of Union enabled the two kingdoms to be combined into a single kingdom with the two parliaments merging into a single parliament of Great Britain. Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714, had favoured deeper political integration between the two kingdoms and became the first monarch of Great Britain. SONY PCG-5G2M battery The union was valuable to England from a security standpoint, since it meant that Scotland lost the possibility to choose a different monarch on her death, reducing the chance of a European power using Scotland as a route to invading England. Although now a single kingdom, certain aspects of the former independent kingdoms remained separate, in line with the terms in the Treaty of Union: SONY PCG-5L1L battery Scottish and English law remained separate, as did the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and theAnglican Church of England. England and Scotland also continued to have divergent systems of education. The creation of Great Britain happened during the War of the Spanish Succession, in which just before his death in 1702 William III had reactivated the Grand Alliance against France. SONY PCG-6S2L battery His successor, Anne, continued the war. The Duke of Marlborough won a series of brilliant victories over the French, England's first major battlefield successes on the Continent since the Hundred Years War. France was nearly brought to its knees by 1709, when King Louis XIV made a desperate appeal to the French people. Afterwards, his general Marshal Villars managed to turn the tide in favour of France. SONY PCG-6S3L battery A more peace-minded government came to power in Great Britain, and the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt in 1713-1714 ended the war. Queen Anne died in 1714, and the Elector of Hanover, George Louis, became king as George I (1714-1727). He paid more attention to Hanover and surrounded himself with Germans, making him an unpopular king, SONY PCG-6V1L battery However he did build up the army and created a more stable political system in Britain and helped bring peace to northern Europe.^[5][6] Jacobite factions seeking a Stuart restoration remained strong; they instigated a revolt in 1715-1716. The son of James II planned to invade England, but before he could do so, John Erskine, Earl of Mar, launched an invasion from Scotland, which was easily defeated.^[7] SONY PCG-6W1L battery George II (1727-1760) enhanced the stability of the constitutional system, with a government run by Sir Robert Walpoleduring the period 1730-42.^[8] He built up the first British Empire, strengthening the colonies in the Caribbean and North America. In coalition with the rising power Prussia, defeated France in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), and won full control of Canada.^[9] SONY PCG-7111L battery George III reigned 1760-1820; he was born in Britain, never visited Hanover, and spoke English as his first language. Frequently reviled by Americans as a tyrant and the instigator of the American War of Independence, he was insane off and on after 1788 as his eldest son served as regent.^[10] SONY PCG-71511M battery The last king to dominate government and politics, his long reign is noted for losing the first British Empire with a loss in the American Revolution, as France sought revenge for its defeat in the Seven Years War by aiding the Americans. The reign was notable for the building of a second empire based in India, SONY PCG-6W3L battery Asia and Africa, the beginnings of the industrial revolution that made Britain an economic powerhouse, and above all the life and death struggle with the French, the French Revolutionary Wars 1793-1802, ending in a draw and a short truce, and the epicNapoleonic Wars (1803-1815), ending with the decisive defeat of Napoleon. SONY PCG-7113L battery The era was prosperous as entrepreneurs extended the range of their business around the globe. The South Sea Bubble was a business enterprise that exploded in scandal. The South Sea Company was a private business corporation set up in London ostensibly to grant trade monopolies in South America. SONY PCG-7133L battery Its actual purpose was to renegotiate previous high-interest government loans amounting to 31 million through market manipulation and speculation. It issued stock four times in 1720 that reached about 8,000 investors. Prices kept soaring every day, from 130 a share to 1,000, with insiders making huge paper profits. The Bubble collapsed overnight, ruining many speculators. SONY PCG-7Z1L battery Investigations showed bribes had reached into high places even to the king. Robert Walpole managed to wind it down with minimal political and economic damage, although some losers fled to exile or committed suicide. From 1700 to 1850, Britain was involved in 137 wars or rebellions. SONY PCG-7Z2L battery It maintained a relatively large and expensive Royal Navy, along with a small standing army. When the need arose for soldiers it hired mercenaries or financed allies who fielded armies. The rising costs of warfare forced a shift in government financing from the income from royal agricultural estates and special imposts and taxes to reliance on customs and excise taxes and, after 1790, an income tax. SONY PCG-8Y1L battery Working with bankers in the City, the government raised large loans during wartime and paid them off in peacetime. The rise in taxes amounted to 20% of national income, but the private sector benefited from the increase in economic growth. The demand for war supplies stimulated the industrial sector, particularly naval supplies, munitions and textiles, which gave Britain an advantage in international trade during the postwar years. SONY PCG-8Y2L battery The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the ceding of SONY PCG-8Z2L battery New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. SONY PCG-8Z1L battery The British victory over France in the Seven Years War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.^[17] During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of opposition to Parliament's repeated attempts to tax American colonists without their consent. SONY PCG-7112L battery Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War began. In 1776 the Patriots expelled royal officials anddeclared the independence of the United States of America. After capturing a British invasion army in 1777, the US formed an alliance with France (and in turn Spain aided France), evening out the military balance. SONY PCG-6W2L battery The British army controlled only a handful of coastal cities. 1780-81 was a low point for Britain. Taxes and deficits were high, government corruption was pervasive, and the war in America was entering its sixth year with no apparent end in sight. The Gordon Riots erupted in London during the spring of 1781, in response to increased concessions to Catholics by Parliament. SONY PCG-5K1L battery In October 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army atYorktown, Virginia. The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, formally terminating the war and recognising the independence of the United States. The loss of the Thirteen Colonies, at the time Britain's most populous colonies, marked the transition between the "first" and "second" empires,in which Britain shifted its attention to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. SONY PCG-5J4M battery Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the oldmercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success. SONY PCG-7181M battery During its first 100 years of operation, the focus of the British East India Company had been trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie fran aise des Indes orientales, SONY PCG-5P4L battery during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The British, led by Robert Clive, defeated the French and their Indian allies in the Battle of Plassey, leaving the Company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, SONY PCGA-BP1U battery either ruling directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the Indian Army, 80% of which was composed of native Indian sepoys. On 22 August 1770, James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia^[22] while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, SONY PCGA-BP2E battery presented evidence to the government on the suitability ofBotany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. At the threshold to the 19th century, Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. SONY PCGA-BP2EA battery The British government had somewhat mixed reactions to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, and when war broke out on the Continent in 1792, it initially remained neutral. But the following January, Louis XVI was beheaded. This combined with a threatened invasion of the Netherlands by France spurred Britain to declare war. SONY PCGA-BP2NX battery For the next 23 years, the two nations were at war except for a short period in 1802-1803. Britain alone among the nations of Europe never submitted to or formed an alliance with France. Throughout the 1790s, the British repeatedly defeated the navies of France and its allies, but were unable to perform any significant land operations. SONY PCGA-BP2NY battery An Anglo-Russian invasion of the Netherlands in 1799 accomplished little except the capture of the Dutch fleet. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened invasion of Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun. SONY PCGA-BP2V battery On 1 January 1801, the Great Britain and Ireland joined to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.Events that culminated in the union with Ireland had spanned several centuries. Invasions from England by the ruling Normansfrom 1170 led to centuries of strife in Ireland and successive Kings of England sought both to conquer and pillage Ireland, imposing their rule by force throughout the entire island. SONY PCGA-BP3T battery In the early 17th century, large-scale settlement by Protestant settlers from both Scotland and England began, especially in the province of Ulster, seeing the displacement of many of the native Roman Catholic Irish inhabitants of this part of Ireland. Since the time of the first Norman invaders from England, Ireland has been subject to control and regulation, firstly by England then latterly by Great Britain. SONY PCGA-BP4V battery After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Roman Catholics were banned from voting or attending the Irish Parliament. The new English Protestant ruling class was known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Towards the end of the 18th century the entirely Protestant Irish Parliament attained a greater degree of independence from the British Parliament than it had previously held. SONY PCGA-BP51 battery Under the Penal Laws no Irish Catholic could sit in the Parliament of Ireland, even though some 90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. This ban was followed by others in 1703 and 1709 as part of a comprehensive system disadvantaging the Catholic community, and to a lesser extent Protestant dissenters. SONY PCG-6W1M battery In 1798, many members of this dissenter tradition made common cause with Catholics in a rebellion inspired and led by the Society of United Irishmen. It was staged with the aim of creating a fully independent Ireland as a state with a republican constitution. Despite assistance from France the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was put down by British forces. SONY PCG-6S4M battery Possibly influenced by the War of American Independence (1775-1783), a united force of Irish volunteers used their influence to campaign for greater independence for the Irish Parliament. This was granted in 1782, giving free trade and legislative independence to Ireland. However, the French revolution had encouraged the increasing calls for moderate constitutional reform. SONY PCGA-BP51A battery The Society of United Irishmen, made up of Presbyterians from Belfast and both Anglicans and Catholics in Dublin, campaigned for an end to British domination. Their leader Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98) worked with the Catholic Convention of 1792 which demanded an end to the penal laws. Failing to win the support of the British government, SONY PCG-5J1M battery he travelled to Paris, encouraging a number of French naval forces to land in Ireland to help with the planned insurrections. These were slaughtered by government forces, but these rebellions convinced the British under Prime Minister William Pitt that the only solution was to end Irish independence once and for all. SONY PCGA-BP52 battery The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was brought about by the Act of Union 1800, creating the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". The Act was passed in both the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland, dominated by theProtestant Ascendancy and lacking representation of the country's Roman Catholic population. SONY PCGA-BP52A battery Substantial majorities were achieved, and according to contemporary documents this was assisted by bribery in the form of the awarding of peerages and honours to opponents to gain their votes.^[25] Under the terms of the merger, the separate Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were abolished, and replaced by a united Parliament of the United Kingdom. SONY PCGA-BP71 battery Ireland thus became an integral part of the United Kingdom, sending around 100 MPs to the House of Commons at Westminster and 28 representative peers to the House of Lords, elected from among their number by the Irish peers themselves, except that Roman Catholic peers were not permitted to take their seats in the Lords. SONY PCGA-BP71A battery Part of the trade-off for the Irish Catholics was to be the granting of Catholic Emancipation, which had been fiercely resisted by the all-Anglican Irish Parliament. However, this was blocked by King George III, who argued that emancipating the Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath. The Roman Catholic hierarchy had endorsed the Union. However the decision to block Catholic Emancipation fatally undermined the appeal of the Union. SONY VGP-BPL1 battery During the War of the Second Coalition (1799-1801), Britain occupied most of the French and Dutch colonies (the Netherlands had been a satellite of France since 1796), but tropical diseases claimed the lives of over 40,000 troops. When the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain was forced to return most of the colonies. SONY VGP-BPL2 battery The peace settlement was in effect only a ceasefire, and Napoleon continued to provoke the British by attempting a trade embargo on the country and by occupying the German city of Hanover (a fief of the British crown). In May 1803, war was declared again. Napoleon's plans to invade Britain failed due to the inferiority of his navy, SONY PCG-5K2M battery and in 1805, Lord Nelson's fleet decisively defeated the French and Spanish at Trafalgar, which was the last significant naval action of the Napoleonic Wars. The series of naval and colonial conflicts, including a large number of minor naval actions, resembled those of the French Revolutionary Wars and the preceding centuries of European warfare. SONY PCG-5K1M battery Conflicts in the Caribbean, and in particular the seizure of colonial bases and islands throughout the wars, could potentially have some effect upon the European conflict. The Napoleonic conflict had reached the point at which subsequent historians could talk of a "world war". Only the Seven Years' War offered a precedent for widespread conflict on such a scale. SONY VGP-BPL4 battery In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat of the United Kingdom by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. The United Kingdom's army remained a minimal threat to France; the UK maintained a standing army of just 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, SONY VGP-BPL5A battery whereas France's army exceeded a million men in addition to the armies of numerous allies and several hundred thousandnational guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary. Although the Royal Navy effectively disrupted France's extra-continental trade both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions SONY VGP-BPS2 battery it could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. In addition, France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the United Kingdom. Many in the French government believed that cutting the United Kingdom off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it. SONY VGP-BPS3 battery Though the French designed the Continental System to achieve this, it never succeeded in its objective. The United Kingdom possessed the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade to its possessions from its rapidly expanding new Empire. SONY PCG-5L2M battery Britain's naval supremacy meant that France could never enjoy the peace necessary to consolidate its control over Europe, and it could threaten neither the United Kingdom nor British colonies outside the continent. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent. SONY PCG-5J5M battery The Duke of Wellington and his army of British and Portuguese gradually pushed the French out of Spain and in early 1814, as Napoleon was being driven back in the east by the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, Wellington invaded southern France. After Napoleon's surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned, SONY VGP-BPS4 battery but when he escaped back into France in 1815, the British and their allies had to fight him again. The armies of Wellington and Von Blucher defeated Napoleon once and for all at Waterloo. Simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. SONY VGP-BPS5 battery A central event in American history, it was little noticed in Britain, where all attention was focused on the struggle with France. The British could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814. American frigates also inflicted a series of embarrassing defeats on the British navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe. SONY VGP-BPS5A battery A stepped-up war effort that year brought about some successes such as the burning of Washington D.C., but many influential voices such as the Duke of Wellington argued that an outright victory over the US was impossible. Peace was agreed to at the end of 1814, but not before Andrew Jackson, unaware of this, SONY VGP-BPS8 battery won a great victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 (news took several weeks to cross the Atlantic before the advent of steam ships). The Treaty of Ghent subsequently ended the war. As a result, the Red River Basin was ceded to the US, and the Canadian border (now fixed at the 49th parallel) completely demilitarised by both countries, although fears of an American conquest of Canada persisted through the 19th century. SONY PCG-8Y2M battery Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars a very different country than it had been in 1793. As industrialisation progressed, society changed, becoming more urban and less rural. The postwar period saw an economic slump, and poor harvests and inflation caused widespread social unrest. Europe after 1815 was on guard against a return of Jacobinism, SONY PCG-7Z1M battery and even liberal Britain saw the passage of the Six Acts in 1819, which proscribed radical activities. By the end of the 1820s, along with a general economic recovery, many of these repressive laws were repealed and in 1828 new legislation guaranteed the civil rights of religious dissenters. SONY PCG-6W2M battery A weak ruler as regent (1811-20) and king (1820-30), George IV let his ministers take full charge of government affairs, playing a far lesser role than his father, George III. The principle now became established that the king accepts as prime minister the person who wins a majority in the House of Commons, whether the king personally favors him or not. SONY PCG-8Z2M battery His governments, with little help from the king, presided over victory in the Napoleonic Wars, negotiated the peace settlement, and attempted to deal with the social and economic malaise that followed.^[27] His brother William IV ruled (1830-37), but was little involved in politics. His reign saw several reforms: SONY PCG-8Z1M battery the poor law was updated, child labour restricted, slavery abolished in nearly all the British Empire, and, most important, the Reform Act 1832 refashioned the British electoral system.^[28] There were no major wars until the Crimean War of 1853-56.^[29] While Prussia, Austria, and Russia, as absolute monarchies, tried to suppress liberalism wherever it might occur, the British came to terms with new ideas. SONY PCG-8Y3M battery Britain intervened in Portugal in 1826 to defend a constitutional government there and recognising the independence of Spain's American colonies in 1824.British merchants and financiers, and later railway builders, played major roles in the economies of most Latin American nations.Sony PCG-61211M battery The British intervened in 1827 on the side of the Greeks, who had been waging a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire since 1824. The Whig Party recovered its strength and unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the reform of the electoral system, the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the Catholics. Sony PCG-71213M battery Catholic emancipation was secured in the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholics in Britain.^[32] The Whigs became champions of Parliamentary reform. They made Lord Grey prime minister 1830-1834, and the Reform Act of 1832 became their signature measure. Sony PCG-71311M battery It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "rotten borough" and "pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families), and instead redistributed power on the basis of population. It added 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales. The main effect of the act was to weaken the power of the landed gentry, Sony PCG-71212M battery and enlarge the power of the professional and business middle-class, which now for the first time had a significant voice in Parliament. However, the great majority of manual workers, clerks, and farmers did not have enough property to qualify to vote. The aristocracy continued to dominate the government, the Army and Royal Navy, and high society.^[32] Sony PCG-71313M battery After parliamentary investigations demonstrated the horrors of child labour, limited reforms were passed in 1833. Chartism emerged after the 1832 Reform Bill failed to give the vote to the working class. Activists denounced the 'betrayal' of the working class and the 'sacrificing' of their 'interests' by the 'misconduct' of the government. Sony VAIO PCG-31111M battery In 1838, Chartists issued the People's Charter demanding manhood suffrage, equal sized election districts, voting by ballots, payment of MPs (so poor men could serve), annual Parliaments, and abolition of property requirements. Elites saw the movement as pathological, so the Chartists were unable to force serious constitutional debate. Sony VAIO PCG-31112M battery Historians see Chartism as both a continuation of the 18th century fight against corruption and as a new stage in demands for democracy in an industrial society.^[33]In 1832 Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The government purchased the slaves for 20,000,000 (the money went to rich plantation owners who mostly lived in England), and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands. Sony VAIO PCG-31113M battery Prime Ministers of the period included: William Pitt the Younger, Lord Grenville, Duke of Portland, Spencer Perceval, Lord Liverpool, George Canning, Lord Goderich, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel. The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901 which signified the height of the BritishIndustrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Sony VAIO PCG-31114M battery Scholars debate whether the Victorian period as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians actually begins with the passage ofReform Act 1832. The era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period. Sony VAIO PCG-31111V battery Victoria became queen in 1837 at age 18, after a difficult childhood under the control of her mother. Her long reign saw Britain reach the zenith of its economic and political power. Exciting new technologies such as steam ships, railroads, photography, and telegraphs appeared, making the world much faster-paced. Britain again remained mostly inactive in Continental politics, and it was not affected by the wave of revolutions in 1848. Sony VAIO PCG-31112V battery The Great London Exhibition of 1851 clearly demonstrated Britain's dominance in engineering and industry; that lasted until the rise of the United States and Germany in the 1890s. Using the imperial tools of free trade and financial investment,^[35] it exerted major influence on many countries outside Europe, especially in Latin America and Asia. Thus Britain had both a formal Empire based on British rule and an informal one based on the British pound. Sony VAIO PCG-31113V battery One nagging fear was the possible collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was well understood that a collapse of that country would set off a scramble for its territory and possibly plunge Britain into war. To head that off Britain sought to keep the Russians from occupying Constantinople and taking over the Bosporous Straits, as well as from threatening India via Afghanistan.^[37] Sony VAIO PCG-31114V battery In 1853, Britain and France intervened in the Crimean War against Russia. Despite mediocre generalship, they managed to capture the Russian port of Sevastopol, compelling Tsar Nicholas I to ask for peace.^[38] A second Russo-Ottoman war in 1877 led to another European intervention, although this time at the negotiating table. Sony VAIO PCG-GRS100 battery The Congress of Berlin blocked Russia from imposing the harsh Treaty of San Stefano on the Ottoman Empire.^[39] Despite its alliance with the French in the Crimean War, Britain viewed the Second Empire of Napoleon III with some distrust, especially as the emperor constructed ironclad warships and began returning France to a more active foreign policy. Sony VAIO PCG-41111M battery But after Napoleon's downfall in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he was allowed to spent his last years exiled in Britain. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), British leaders personally disliked American republicanism and favoured the more aristocratic Confederacy, as it had been a major source of cotton for textile mills. Prince Albert was effective in defusing a war scare in late 1861. Sony VAIO PCG-41112M battery The British people, who depended heavily on American food imports, generally favoured the United States. What little cotton was available came from New York, as the blockade by the US Navy shut down 95% of Southern exports to Britain. In September 1862, during the Confederate invasion of Maryland, Britain (along with France) contemplated stepping in and negotiating a peace settlement, Sony VAIO PCG-41111V battery which could only mean war with the United States. But in the same month, US president Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. Since support of the Confederacy now meant support for slavery, there was no longer any possibility of European intervention.^[40] Sony VAIO PCG-NV100 battery Meanwhile the British sold arms to both sides, built blockade runners for a lucrative trade with the Confederacy, and surreptitiously allowed warships to be built for the Confederacy. The warships caused a major diplomatic row that was resolved in the Alabama Claims in 1872, in the Americans' favour. Sony VAIO PCG-V505 battery In 1867, Britain united most of its North American colonies as the Dominion of Canada, giving it self-government and responsibility for its own defence, but Canada did not have an independent foreign policy until 1931. Several of the colonies temporarily refused to join the Dominion despite pressure from both Canada and Britain; the last one, Newfoundland, held out until 1949. Sony VAIO PCG-Z1A battery The second half of the 19th century saw a huge expansion of Britain's colonial empire in Asia and Africa. In the latter continent, there was talk of the Union Jack flying from "Cairo to Cape Town", which only became a reality at the end of World War I. Having possessions on six continents, Britain had to defend all of its empire with a volunteer army, for it was the only power in Europe to have no conscription. Sony VAIO PCG-Z1A battery Some questioned whether the country was overstretched, and in 1905 the British foreign minister said that the "empire resembles a huge, gouty giant with its fingers and toes extended all over the globe, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream." Sony VAIO PCG-3C1M battery The rise of the German Empire since 1871 posed a new challenge, for it (along with the United States) threatened to take Britain's place as the world's foremost industrial power. Germany acquired a number of colonies in Africa and the Pacific, but Chancellor Otto von Bismarck succeeded in achieving general peace through his balance of power strategy. Sony VAIO PCG-3F1M battery When William II became emperor in 1888, he discarded Bismarck, began using bellicose language, and planned to build a navy to rival Britain's.^[42] Ever since Britain had taken control of South Africa from the Netherlands in the Napoleonic Wars, it had run afoul of the Dutch settlers who further away and created two republics of their own. Sony VAIO PCG-3H1M battery The British imperial vision called for control over the new countries and the Dutch-speaking "Boers" (or "Afrikaners") fought back in the War in 1899-1902. Outgunned by a mighty empire, the Boers waged a guerilla war, which gave the British regulars a difficult fight, but weight of numbers, superior equipment, and often brutal tactics eventually brought about a British victory. Sony VAIO PCG-3J1M battery The war had been costly in human rights and was widely criticised by Liberals in Britain and worldwide. However, the United States gave its support. The Boer republics were merged into Union of South Africain 1910; it had internal self-government but its foreign policy was controlled by London and was an integral part of the British Empire. Sony VAIO PCG-8141M battery Part of the agreement which led to the 1800 Act of Union stipulated that the Penal Laws in Ireland were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. However King George III blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican Church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell, and the death of George III, Sony VAIO VGN-S battery led to the concession of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament. O'Connell then mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the Repeal of the Act of Union. When potato blight hit the island in 1846, much of the rural population was left without food because cash crops were being exported to pay rents. SONY PCG-7113M battery British politicians such as the Prime Minister Robert Peel were at this time wedded to the economic policy of laissez-faire, which argued against state intervention of any sort. While enormous sums were raised by private individuals and charities (American Indians^[who?] sent supplies, while Queen Victoriapersonally gave the present-day equivalent 70,000), SONY PCG-7112M battery lack of adequate action let the problem become a catastrophe. The class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out in what became known in Britain as 'The Irish Potato Famine' and in Ireland as the Great Hunger. Most Irish people elected as their MPs Liberals and Conservatives who belonged to the main British political parties (note: the poor didn't have a vote at that time). SONY PCG-8Z3M battery A significant minority also elected Unionists, who championed the cause of the maintenance of the Act of Union. A former Tory barrister turned nationalist campaigner, Isaac Butt, established a new moderate nationalist movement, the Home Rule League, in the 1870s. After Butt's death the Home Rule Movement, or the Irish Parliamentary Party as it had become known, Sony VAIO PCG-8161M battery was turned into a major political force under the guidance of William Shaw and in particular a radical young Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell. The Irish Parliamentary Party dominated Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed. Sony VAIO PCG-3C2M battery Parnell's movement proved to be a broad church, from conservative landowners to the Land League which was campaigning for fundamental reform of Irish landholding, where most farms were held on rental from large aristocratic estates. Parnell's movement campaigned for 'Home Rule', by which they meant that Ireland would govern itself as a region within the United Kingdom, SONY PCG-7122M battery in contrast to O'Connell who wanted complete independence subject to a shared monarch and Crown. Two Home Rule Bills (1886 and 1893) were introduced by Liberal Prime MinisterEwart Gladstone, but neither became law, mainly due to opposition from the House of Lords. The issue divided Ireland, for a significant unionist minority(largely though by no means exclusively based in Ulster), SONY PCG-7121M battery opposed Home Rule, fearing that a Catholic-Nationalist parliament in Dublin would discriminate against them and would also impose tariffs on industry; while most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, six counties in Ulster were the location of heavy industry and would be affected by any tariff barriers imposed. SONY VAIO PCG-7192M battery The Queen gave her name to an era of British greatness, especially in the far-flung British Empire with which she identified. She played a small role in politics, but became the iconic symbol of the nation, the empire, and proper, restrained behaviour.^[46] Her strength lay in good common sense and directness of character; SONY VAIO PCG-7194M battery she expressed the qualities of the British nation which at that time made it preeminent in the world. As a symbol of domesticity, endurance and Empire, and as a woman holding the highest public office during an age when middle- and upper-class women were expected to beautify the home while men dominated the public sphere, SONY VAIO PCG-7195M battery Queen Victoria's influence has been enduring. Her success as ruler was due to the power of the self-images she successively portrayed of innocent young woman, devoted wife and mother, suffering and patient widow, and grandmotherly matriarch. Disraeli and Gladstone dominated the politics of the late 19th century, Britain's golden age of parliamentary government. SONY VAIO PCG-7196M battery They long were idolized, but historians in recent decades have become much more critical, especially regarding Disraeli.^[48][49] Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), prime minister 1868 and 1874-80, remains an iconic hero of the Conservative Party. He was typical of the generation of British leaders who matured in the 1830s and 1840s. SONY VAIO PCG-7191V battery He was concerned with threats to established political, social, and religious values and elites; he emphasized the need for national leadership in response to radicalism, uncertainty, and materialism.^[50] He is especially known for his enthusiastic support for expanding and strengthening the British Empire in India and Africa as the foundation of British greatness, SONY VAIO PCG-21211M battery in contrast to Gladstone's negative attitude toward imperialism. Gladstone denounced Disraeli's policies of territorial aggrandizement, military pomp, and imperial symbolism (such as making the Queen Empress of India), saying it did not fit a modern commercial and Christian nation. Disraeli drummed up support by warnings of a supposed Russian threat to India that sank deep into the Conservative mindset. SONY VAIO PCG-21212M battery Disraeli's old reputation as the "Tory democrat" and promoter of the welfare state fell away as historians showed he that Disraeli had few proposals for social legislation in 1874-80, and that the 1867 Reform Act did not reflect a vision Conservatism for the unenfranchised working man.^[51] However he did work to reduce class anatagonism, for as Perry notes, SONY VAIO PCG-21212V battery "When confronted with specific problems, he sought to reduce tension between town and country, landlords and farmers, capital and labour, and warring religious sects in Britain and Ireland in other words, to create a unifying synthesis." William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) was the Liberal counterpart to Disraeli, Sony VGN-NR11S Battery serving as prime minister four times (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, and 1892-94). His financial policies, based on the notion of balanced budgets, low taxes and laissez-faire, were suited to a developing capitalist society but could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. SONY VAIO PCG-21213V battery Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, he was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to British workers and lower middle class. The deeply religious Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics with his evangelical sensibility and opposition to aristocracy. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria, who strongly favoured Disraeli), SONY VAIO PCG-21214V battery and his heavy-handed control split the Liberal party. His foreign policy goal was to create a European order based on cooperation rather than conflict and mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by the Germans with a Bismarckiansystem of manipulated alliances and antagonisms. Sony VAIO PCG-5N2M battery Historians portray Conservative prime Minister Lord Salisbury (1830-1903) as a talented leader who was an icon of traditional, aristocratic conservatism.^[54] Robert Blake considers Salisbury "a great foreign minister, [but] essentially negative, indeed reactionary in home affairs".Professor P.T. Marsh's estimate is more favourable than Blake's, Sony VAIO PCG-5P1M battery he portrays Salisbury as a leader who "held back the popular tide for twenty years."^[56] Professor Paul Smith argues that, "into the 'progressive' strain of modern Conservatism he simply will not fit."^[57] Professor H.C.G. Matthew points to "the narrow cynicism of Salisbury".^[58] One admirer of Salisbury, SONY VAIO PCG-81212M battery Maurice Cowling largely agrees with the critics and says Salisbury found the democracy born of the 1867 and 1884 Reform Acts as "perhaps less objectionable than he had expected succeeding, through his public persona, in mitigating some part of its nastiness." The Victorian era is famous for the Victorian standards of personal morality. Sony Vaio VGN-CR13/R Battery Historians generally agree that the middle classes held high personal moral standards (and usually followed them), but have debated whether the working classes followed suit. Moralists in the late 19th century such as Henry Mayhewdecried the slums for their supposed high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births. SONY PCG-8113M battery However new research using computerized matching of data files shows that the rates of cohabitation were quote low under 5% for the working class and the poor. By contrast in 21st century Britain, nearly half of all children are born outside marriage, and nine in ten newlyweds have been cohabitating. SONY PCG-8112M battery Prime Ministers from 1900 to 1945: Marquess of Salisbury, Arthur Balfour, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Henry Asquith, David Lloyd George, Andrew Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. SONY VAIO PCG-81111V battery Queen Victoria died in 1901 and her son Edward VII became king, inaugurating the Edwardian Era, which was characterised by great and ostentatious displays of wealth in contrast to the sombre Victorian Era. With the advent of the 20th century, things such as motion pictures, automobiles, and aeroplanes were coming into use. SONY VAIO PCG-81211V battery The new century was characterised by a feeling of great optimism. The social reforms of the last century continued into the 20th with the Labour Partybeing formed in 1900. Edward died in 1910, to be succeeded by George V, who reigned 1910-36. Scandal-free, hard working and popular, George V was the British monarch who, with Queen Mary, SONY VAIO PCG-51111V battery established the modern pattern of exemplary conduct for British royalty, based on middle-class values and virtues. He understood the overseas Empire better than any of his prime ministers and used his exceptional memory for figures and details, whether of uniforms, politics, or relations, to good effect in reaching out in conversation with his subjects.^[61] SONY VAIO PCG-51111M battery The era was prosperous but political crises were escalating out of control. Dangerfield (1935) identified the "strange death of liberal England" as the multiple crisis that hit simultaneously in 1910-1914 with serious social and political instability arising from the Irish crisis, labor unrest, the women's suffrage movements, and partisan and constitutional struggles in Parliament. SONY VAIO PCG-51112M battery At one point it even seemed the Army might refuse orders dealing with Northern Ireland.^[62]No solution appeared in sight when the unexpected outbreak of the Great War in 1914 put domestic issues on hold. McKibben argues that the political party system of the Edwardian era was in delicate balance on the eve of the war in 1914. SONY VAIO PCG-51211M battery The Liberals were in power with a progressive alliance of Labour and, off and on, Irish Nationalists. The coalition was committed to free trade (as opposed to the high tariffs the Conservatives sought), free collective bargaining for trades unions (which Conservatives opposed), an active social policy that was forging the welfare state, and constitutional reform to reduce the power of the House of Lords. SONY VAIO PCG-51212M battery The coalition lacked a long-term plan, because it was cobbled together from leftovers from the 1890s. The sociological basis was non-Anglican religion and non-English ethnicity rather than the emerging class conflict emphasized by Labour. After a rough start Britain under David Lloyd George successfully mobilised its manpower, SONY PCG-7134M battery womanpower, industry, finances, Empire and diplomacy, in league with the French and Americans, to defeat the Germans and Turks. Most Britons eagerly supported the war, but the Irish were restless and plotted a rebellion in 1916. The economy grew about 14% from 1914 to 1918 despite the absence of so many men in the services; by contrast the German economy shrank 27%. SONY PCG-7131M battery The War saw a decline of civilian consumption, with a major reallocation to munitions. The government share of GDP soared from 8% in 1913 to 38% in 1918 (compared to 50% in 1943).^[68][69] The war forced Britain to use up its financial reserves and borrow large sums from the US. The spark that set off the war came in June 1914, when the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire declared war on Serbia. Sony VAIO PCG-5N1M battery The system of alliances caused a local conflict to engulf the entire continent. Britain was part of the Triple Entente with France and Russia, which confronted the Central Powers of Germany, Austria and Italy. Following the assassination Austria attacked Serbia, which was allied to Russia. Russia then mobilized its army, leading Germany to enter into war against Russia. Sony VAIO PCG-5S1M battery France could not afford a mobilized Germany on its border, and it mobilized. Germany declared war on France. Britain was neutral at first as the Liberal government had a pacifist tendency, but it was committed to defending Belgium, which Germany invaded. Britain declared war on Germany and its allies. Sony VAIO PCG-9Z1M battery The romantic notions of warfare that everyone had expected faded as the fighting in France bogged down into trench warfare. Along the Western Front the British and French launched repeated assaults on the German trench lines in 1915-1916, which killed and wounded hundreds of thousands, but failed to make gains of even a mile. Sony VAIO PCG-7171M battery By 1916, volunteering falling off, the government imposed conscription in Britain (but not in Ireland) to keep up the strength of the Army. Industry turned out munitions in large quantities, with many women taking factory jobs. The Asquith government proved ineffective but when David Lloyd George replaced him in December 1916 Britain gained a powerful and successful wartime leader. Sony VAIO PCG-7186M battery The navy continued to dominate the seas, fighting the German fleet to a draw in the only great battle, the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Germany was blockaded and was increasingly short of food. It tried to fight back with submarines, despite the risk of war by the powerful neutral power the United States. The waters around Britain were declared a war zone where any ship, neutral or otherwise, was a target. Sony VAIO PCG-81112M battery After the liner Lusitania was sunk in May 1915, drowning over 100 American passengers, protests by the United States led Germany to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. With victory over Russia in 1917 Germany now calculated it could finally have numerical superiority on the Western Front. Planning for a massive spring offensive in 1918, it resumed the sinking of all merchant ships without warning. Sony VAIO PCG-31111M battery The US entered the war alongside the Allies (without actually joining them), and provided the needed money and supplies to keep them going. the u-boats were defeated by a convoy system across the Atlantic. On other fronts, the British, French, Australians, and Japanese occupied Germany's colonies. Sony VAIO PCG-31311M battery Britain fought the Ottoman Empire, suffering defeats in theGallipoli Campaign) and in Mesopotamia, while arousing the Arabs who helped expel the Turks from their lands. Exhaustion and war weariness were growing worse in 1917, as the fighting in France continued with no end in sight. The German spring offensives of 1918 failed, Sony VAIO PCG-8152M battery and with the arrival of the American in summer at the rate of 10,000 a day the Germans realized they were being overwhelmed. Germany agreed to an armistice actually a surrender on 11 November 1918. The war had been won by Britain and its allies, but at a terrible human and financial cost, creating a sentiment that wars should never be fought again. Sony VAIO PCG-8131M battery The League of Nations was founded with the idea that nations could resolve their differences peacefully, but these hopes were unfounded. The harsh peace settlement imposed on Germany would leave it embittered and seeking revenge. Victorian attitudes and ideals that had continued into the first years of the 20th century changed during World War I. Sony VAIO PCG-7148L battery The army had traditionally never been a large employer in the nation, with the regular army standing at 247,432 at the start of the war.^[70] By 1918, there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force, newly formed from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), was about the same size of the pre-war army. Sony VAIO PCG-7151L battery The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation," and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front. Following the war, Britain gained the German colony of Tanganyika and part of Togoland in Africa. Sony VAIO PCG-7152L battery It also was granted League of Nations mandates over Palestine, which was turned into a homeland for Jewish settlers, and Iraq, created from the three Ottoman provinces in Mesopotamia. The latter became fully independent in 1932. Egypt, which had been a British protectorate since 1882, became independent in 1922, although the British remained there until 1952. Sony VAIO PCG-7153L battery Lloyd George said after victory that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with trams being electrified long before many houses. Sony VAIO PCG-7154L battery TheRepresentation of the People Act 1918 gave women householders the vote, but it would not be until 1928 that equal suffrage was achieved. Labour did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. In 1912, the House of Lords managed to delay a Home Rule bill passed by the House of Commons. Sony VAIO PCG-7161L battery It was enacted as the Government of Ireland Act 1914. During these two years the threat of religious civil war hung over Ireland with the creation of the Unionist Ulster Volunteers opposed to the Act and their nationalist counterparts, the Irish Volunteers supporting the Act. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 put the crisis on political hold. Sony VAIO PCG-7162L battery A disorganized Easter Rising in 1916 was brutally suppressed by the British, which had the effect of galvanizing Catholic demands for independence. Prime Minister David Lloyd George failed to introduce Home Rule in 1918 and in the December 1918 General Election Sinn F in won a majority of Irish seats. Sony VAIO PCG-7171L battery Its MPs refused to take their seats at Westminster, instead choosing to sit in the First D il parliament in Dublin. A declaration of independence was ratified by D il ireann, the self-declared Republic's parliament in January 1919. An Anglo-Irish War was fought between Crown forces and the Irish Republican Army between January 1919 and June 1921. Sony VAIO PCG-7172L battery The war ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 that established the Irish Free State.^[71] Six northern, predominantly Protestant counties became Northern Ireland and have remained part of Britain ever since, despite demands of the Catholic minority to unite with the Republic of Ireland.^[72] Sony VAIO PCG-7173L battery Britain officially adopted the name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927. The Lloyd-George coalition fell apart in 1922. Conservative Stanley Baldwin as leader of the Conservative Party (1923-37) and as Prime Minister in 1923-24, 1924-29, and again in 1935-37 dominated British politics. Sony VAIO PCG-7174L battery His mixture of strong social reforms and steady government proved a powerful election combination, with the result that the Conservatives governed Britain either by themselves or as the leading component of the National Government. He was the last party leader to win over 50% of the vote (in the general election of 1931). Sony VAIO PCG-7181L battery Baldwin's political strategy was to polarize the electorate so that voters would choose between the Conservatives on the right and the Labour Party on the left, squeezing out the Liberals in the middle.^[74] The polarization did take place and while the Liberals remained active under Lloyd George, they won few seats and were a minor factor until they joined a coalition with the Conservatives in 2010. Sony VAIO PCG-7182L battery Baldwin's reputation soared in the 1920s and 1930s, but crashed after 1945 as he was blamed for the appeasement policies toward Germany, and as admirers of Churchill made him the Conservative icon. Since the 1970s Baldwin's reputation has recovered somewhat.^[75] Labour won the 1923 election, but in 1924 Baldwin and the Conservatives returned with a large majority. Sony VAIO PCG-7183L battery McKibbin finds that the political culture of the interwar period was built around an anti-socialist middle class, supported by the Conservative leaders, especially Baldwin. Taxes rose sharply during the war and never returned to their old levels. A rich man paid 8% of his income in taxes before the war, and about a third afterwards. Much of the money went for the dole, the weekly unemployment benefits. Sony VAIO PCG-7184L battery About 5% of the national income every year was transferred from the rich to the poor. Taylor argues most people "were enjoying a richer life than any previously known in the history of the world: longer holidays, shorter hours, higher real wages."^[77] The British economy was lackluster in the 1920s, with sharp declines and high unemployment in heavy industry and coal, especially in Scotland and Wales. Sony VAIO PCG-7185L battery Exports of coal and steel fell in half by 1939 and the business community was slow to adopt the new labor and management principles coming from the US, such as Fordism, consumer credit, eliminating surplus capacity, designing a more structured management, and using greater economies of scale.^[ Sony VAIO PCG-381L battery For over a century the shipping industry had dominated world trade, but it remained in the doldrums despite various stimulus efforts by the government. With the very sharp decline in world trade after 1929, its condition became critical.^[79] Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill put Britain back on the gold standard in 1925, which many economists blame for the mediocre performance of the economy. Sony VAIO PCG-382L battery Others point to a variety of factors, including the inflationary effects of the World War and supply-side shocks caused by reduced working hours after the war.^[80] By the late 1920s, economic performance had stabilised, but the overall situation was disappointing, for Britain had clearly fallen behind the United States and other countries as an industrial power. Sony VAIO PCG-383L battery There also remained a strong economic divide between the north and south of England during this period, with the south of England and the Midlands fairly prosperous by the Thirties, while parts of south Wales and the industrial north of England became known as "distressed areas" due to particularly high rates of unemployment and poverty. Despite this, the standard of living continued to improve as local councils built new houses to let to families rehoused from outdated slums, Sony VAIO PCG-384L battery with up to date facilities including indoor toilets, bathrooms and electric lighting now being included in the new properties. The private sector enjoyed a housebuilding boom during the 1930s. During the war trade unions were encouraged and their membership grew from 4.1 million in 1914 to 6.5 million in 1918. They peaked at 8.3 million in 1920 before relapsing to 5.4 million in 1923.Sony VAIO PCG-391L battery Coal was a sick industry; the best seams were being exhausted, raising the cost. Demand fell as oil began replacing coal for fuel. The 1926 general strike was a nine-day nationwide walkout of 1.3 million railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers, iron workers and steelworkers supporting the 1.2 million coal miners who had been locked out by the owners. Sony VAIO PCG-393L battery The miners had rejected the owners' demands for longer hours and reduced pay in the face of falling prices.^[84] The Conservative government had provided a nine-month subsidy in 1925 but that was not enough to turn around a sick industry. To support the miners the Trades Union Congress (TUC), an umbrella organization of all trades unions, called out certain critical unions. Sony VAIO PCG-394L battery The hope was the government would intervene to reorganize and rationalize the industry, and raise the subsidy. The Conservative government had stockpiled supplies and essential services continued with middle class volunteers. All three major parties opposed the strike. The Labour Party leaders did not approve and feared it would tar the party with the image of radicalism, Sony VAIO PCG-3A1L battery for the Cominterm in Moscow had sent instructions for Communists to aggressively promote the strike. The general strike itself was largely non-violent, but the miners' lockout continued and there was violence in Scotland. It was the only general strike in British history, for TUC leaders such as Ernest Bevin considered it a mistake . Sony VAIO PCG-3A2L battery Most historians treat it as a singular event with few long-term consequences, but Pugh says it accelerated the movement of working-class voters to the Labour Party, which led to future gains.^[85][86] The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 made general strikes illegal and ended the automatic payment of union members to the Labour Party. Sony VAIO PCG-3A3L battery That act was largely repealed in 1946. The coal industry, used up the more accessible coal as costs rose output fell from 2567 million tons in 1924 to 183 million in 1945.^[87] The Labour government nationalised the mines in 1947. The Great Depression originated in the United States in late 1929 and quickly spread to the world. Sony VAIO PCG-3A4L battery Britain had never experienced the boom that had characterized the US, Germany, Canada and Australia in the 1920s, so its bust appeared less severe.^[88] Britain's world trade fell in half (1929-33), the output of heavy industry fell by a third, employment profits plunged in nearly all sectors. At the depth in summer 1932, registered unemployed numbered 3.5 million, and many more had only part-time employment. Sony VAIO PCG-41112L battery Experts tried to remain optimistic. John Maynard Keynes, who had not predicted the slump, said, "'There will be no serious direct consequences in London. We find the look ahead decidedly encouraging."^[89] Doomsayers on the left such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, J.A. Hobson, and G.D.H. Sony VAIO PCG-51211L battery Cole repeated the dire warnings they had been making for years about the imminent death of capitalism, only now far more people paid attention.^[90] Starting in 1935 the Left Book Club provided a new warning every month, and built up the credibility of Soviet-style socialism as an alternative.^[91] Sony VAIO PCG-51311L battery Particularly hardest hit by economic problems were the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales; unemployment reached 70% in some areas at the start of the 1930s (with more than 3 million out of work nationally) and many families depended entirely on payments from local government known as the dole. Sony VAIO PCG-51312L battery In 1936, by which time unemployment was lower, 200 unemployed men made a highly publicized march from Jarrow to London in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor. Although much romanticized by the Left, the Jarrow Crusade marked a deep split in the Labour Party and resulted in no government action.^[92] Sony VAIO PCG-51411L battery Unemployment remained high until the war absorbed all the job seekers. George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time. Vivid memories of the horrors and deaths of the World War made Britain and its leaders strongly inclined to pacifism in the interwar era. Sony VAIO PCG-51412L battery The challenge came from dictators, first Benito Mussolini of Italy, then Adolf Hitler of a much more powerful Nazi Germany. The League of Nations proved disappointed supporters; it was unable to resolve any of the threats posed by the dictators. British policy was to "appease" them in the hopes they would be satiated. Sony VAIO PCG-51511L battery By 1938 it was clear that war was looming, and that Germany had the world's most powerful military. The final act of appeasement came when Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler's demands at the Munich Agreement of 1938.Instead of satiation Hitler menaced Poland, and at last Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dropped appeasement and stood firm in promising to defend Poland. Sony VAIO PCG-51513L battery Hitler however cut a deal with Joseph Stalin to divide Eastern Europe; when Germany did invade Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war; the British Commonwealth followed London's lead. Britain, along with the dominions and the rest of the Empire, declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, after the German invasion of Poland. Sony VAIO PCG-5N2L battery After a quiet period of "phoney war", the French and British armies collapsed under German onslaught in spring 1940. The British with the thinnest of margins rescued its main army from Dunkirk (as well as many French soldiers), leaving all their equipment and war supplies behind. Winston Churchill came to power, promising to fight the Germans to the very end. Sony VAIO PCG-5N4L battery The Germans threatened an invasion which the Royal Navy was prepared to repel. First the Germans tried to achieve air supremacy but were defeated by the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain in late summer 1940. Japan declared war in December 1941, and quickly seized Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and Burma, and threatened Australia and India. Sony VAIO PCG-5P2L battery Britain formed close bonds with the Soviet Union (starting in 1941) and the United States (starting in 1940), with the US giving $40 billion in munitions through Lend Lease; Canada also gave aid. (The American and British aid did not have to be repaid, but there were also loans that were repaid.) Sony VAIO PCG-5P4L battery The war years saw great improvements in working conditions and welfare provisions, which arguably paved the way for the postwar welfare state. Infant, child, and maternity services were expanded, while the Official Food Policy Committee (chaired by the deputy PM and Labour leader Clement Attlee) approved grants of fuel and subsidised milk to mothers and to children under the age of five in June 1940. Sony VAIO PCG-5R1L battery A month later, the Board of Education decided that free school meals should become more widely available. By February 1945, 73% of children received milk in school, compared with 50% in July 1940. Free vaccination against diphtheria was also provided for children at school.^[95] In addition, Sony VAIO PCG-5R2L battery the Town and Country Planning Act 1944 gave consideration to those areas damaged in bombing raids and enabled local authorities to clear slums, while the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act passed that same year made 150 million available for the construction of temporary dwellings.^[96] To improve conditions for elderly persons, supplementary pensions were introduced in 1940, and in 1943, Sony VAIO PCG-5S1L battery there were further improvements in rates and conditions for those in receipt of supplementary pensions and unemployment assistance. Food prices were stabilised in December 1939, initially as temporary measure, but made permanent in August 1940, while both milk and meals were provided at subsidised prices, or free in those cases of real need.^[97] Sony VAIO PCG-5S2L battery In July 1940, increased Treasury grants led to an improvement in the supply of milks and meals in schools, with the number of meals taken doubled within a year and increased school milk by 50%. By 1945, roughly 33% of all children ate at school compared with one in thirty in 1940, while those taking milk increased from about 50% to roughly 75%.Sony VAIO PCG-5S3L battery In 1940, a national milk scheme was launched which provided a pint of milk at about half price for all children under the age of five, and for expectant or nursing mothers. The take up rate was such that by 1944 95% of those eligible participated in the scheme. The government's general food policy that priority groups like young children and mothers were not just entitled to essentials like milk, Sony VAIO PCG-5T2L battery but actually received supplies as well. Evacuation during the course of the war also revealed to more prosperous Britons the extent of deprivation in society. As noted by one historian, evacuation became "the most important subject in the social history of the war because it revealed to the whole people the black spots in its social life."^[98] Sony VAIO PCG-5T3L battery An Emergency Medical Service was introduced which provided free treatment to casualties (a definition which included war evacuees), while rationing led to significant improvements in the diets of poor families. As noted by Richard Titmuss, "The families in that third of the population of Britain who in 1938 were chronically undernourished had their first adequate diet in 1940 and 1941 ... Sony VAIO PCG-5T4L battery [after which] the incidence of deficiency diseases, and notably infant mortality, dropped dramatically."^[99] The media called it a "people's war" a term that caught on and signified the popular demand for planning and an expanded welfare state.^[100] The Royal family played major symbolic roles in the war. Sony VAIO PCG-61111L battery They refused to leave London during the Blitz and were indefatigable in visiting troops, munition factories, dockyards, and hospitals all over the country. Princess Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS a part of the army) and repaired trucks and jeeps.^[101] All social classes appreciated how the royals shared the hopes, fears and hardships of the people. Sony VAIO PCG-61112L battery Britain was a winner in the war, but it lost India in 1947 and nearly all the rest of the Empire by 1960. It debated its role in world affairs and joined theUnited Nations in 1945, NATO in 1949, where it became a close ally of the United States. After a long debate and initial rejection, it joined the European Unionin 1973. Sony VAIO PCG-61411L battery Prosperity returned in the 1950s and London remained a world center of finance and culture, but the nation was no longer a major world power. The end of the war saw a landslide victory for Clement Attlee and the Labour Party. They were elected on a manifesto of greater social justice with left wing policies such as the creation of a National Health Service, Sony VAIO PCG-71111L battery an expansion of the provision of council housing and nationalisation of the major industries. Britain faced severe financial crises, and responded by reducing her international responsibilities and by sharing the hardships of an "age of austerity."^[104]Large loans from the United States and Marshall Plan grants helped rebuild and modernize its infrastructure and business Sony VAIO PCG-7141L battery practices. Rationing and conscriptiondragged on into the post war years, and the country suffered one of the worst winters on record.^[105] Nevertheless, morale was boosted by events such as the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and the Festival of Britain. As the country headed into the 1950s, rebuilding continued and a number of immigrants from the remaining British Empire, Sony VAIO PCG-7142L battery mostly the Caribbean and the Indiansubcontinent, were invited to help the rebuilding effort. As the 1950s wore on, Britain lost its place as a superpower and could no longer maintain its largeEmpire. This led to decolonisation, and a withdrawal from almost all of its colonies by 1970. Events such as the Suez Crisis showed that the UK's status had fallen in the world. Sony VAIO PCG-81113L battery The 1950s and 1960s were, however, relatively prosperous times after the Second World War, and saw the beginning of a modernisation of the UK, with the construction of its first motorways for example, and also during the 1960s a great cultural movement began which expanded across the world. Sony VAIO PCG-81114L battery Unemployment was relatively low during this period and the standard of living continued to rise with more new private and council housing developments taking place and the number of slum properties diminishing. The postwar period also witnessed a dramatic rise in the average standard of living,^[107] Sony VAIO PCG-81115L battery as characterised by a 40% rise in average real wages from 1950 to 1965.^[108] Earnings for men in industry rose by 95% between 1951 and 1964, while during that same period the official workweek was reduced and five reductions in income tax were made.^[109] Those in traditionally poorly-paid semi-skilled and unskilled occupations saw a particularly marked improvement in their wages and living standards. As summed up by R. J. Unstead, Sony VAIO PCG-81214L battery "Opportunities in life, if not equal, were distributed much more fairly than ever before and\ the weekly wage-earner, in particular, had gained standards of living that would have been almost unbelievable in the thirties."^[110] Between 1951 and 1963, wages rose by 72% while prices rose by 45%, enabling people to afford more consumer goods than ever before.^[111] Sony VAIO PCG-81312L battery The rising affluence of the Fifties and Sixties was underpinned by sustained full employment and a dramatic rise in worker's wages. In 1950, the average weekly wage stood at 6.8s, compared with 11.2s.6d in 1959. As a result of wage rises, consumer spending also increased by about 20% during this same period, while economic growth remained at about 3%. Sony VAIO PCG-8131L battery In addition, food rations were lifted in 1954 while hire-purchase controls were relaxed in the same year. As a result of these changes, large numbers of the working classes were able to participate in the consumer market for the first time.^[112] The significant real wage increases in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to a rapid increase in working-class consumerism, Sony VAIO PCG-8141L battery with British consumer spending rising by 45% between 1952 and 1964.^[113] In addition, entitlement to various fringe benefits was improved. In 1955, 96% of manual labourers were entitled to two weeks' holiday with pay, compared with 61% in 1951. By the end of the 1950s, Britain had become one of the world's most affluent countries, Sony VAIO PCG-8152L battery and by the early Sixties, most Britons enjoyed a level of prosperity that had previously been known only to a small minority of the population.^[114] For the young and unattached, there was, for the first time in decades, spare cash for leisure, clothes, and luxuries. In 1959, Queen magazine declared that "Britain has launched into an age of unparalleled lavish living." Sony VAIO PCG-8161L battery Average wages were high while jobs were plentiful, and people saw their personal prosperity climb even higher. Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan claimed that "the luxuries of the rich have become the necessities of the poor." Levels of disposable income rose steadily,^[115] with the spending power of the average family rising by 50% between 1951 and 1979, and by the end of the Seventies, 6 out of 10 families had come to own a car.^[116] Sony VAIO PCG-9131L battery "Keynesian economic management enabled British workers to enjoy a golden age of full employment which, combined with a more relaxed attitude towards working mothers, led to the spread of the two-income family. Inflation was around 4 per cent, money wages rose from an average of 8 a week in 1951 to 15 a week by 1961, Sony VAIO PCG-9Z1L battery home-ownership spread from 35 per cent in 1939 to 47 per cent by 1966, and the relaxation of credit controls boosted the demand for consumer goods."^[117] By 1963, 82% of all private households had a television, 72% a vacuum cleaner, 45%a washing machine, and 30% a refrigerator. In addition, as noted by John Burnett, Sony VAIO PCG-9Z2L battery "What was equally striking was that ownership of such things had spread down the social scale and the gap between professional and manual workers had considerably narrowed." A study of a slum area in Leeds (which was due for demolition) found that 74% of the households had a T.V., 41% a vacuum, and 38% a washing machine. Sony VAIO VPCF11C4E/B battery In another slum area, St Mary's in Oldham (where in 1970 few of the houses had fixed baths or a hot water supply and half shared outside toilets), 67% of the houses were rated as comfortably furnished and a further 24% furnished luxuriously, with smart modern furniture, deep pile carpeting, and decorations. Sony VAIO VPCF11C5E battery The provision of household amenities steadily improved during the second half of the Twentieth Century. From 1971 to 1983, households having the sole use of a fixed bath or shower rose from 88% to 97%, and those with an internal WC from 87% to 97%. In addition, the number of households with central heating almost doubled during that same period, from 34% to 64%. Sony VAIO VPCF11D4E battery By 1983, 94% of all households had a refrigerator, 81% a colour television, 80% a washing machine, 57% a deep freezer, and 28% a tumble-drier.^[118] Between 1950 and 1970, however, Britain was overtaken by most of the countries of the European Common Market in terms of the number of telephones, refrigerators, television sets, cars, Sony VAIO VPCF11M1E/H battery and washing machines per 100 of the population (although Britain remained high in terms of bathrooms and lavatories per 100 people). Although the British standard of living was increasing, the standard of living in other countries increased faster.^[119] In addition, while educational opportunities for working-class people had widened significantly since the end of the Second World War, Sony VAIO VPCF11S1E/B battery a number of developed countries came to overtake Britain in some educational indicators. By the early 1980s, some 80% to 90% of school leavers in France and West Germany received vocational training, compared with 40% in the United Kingdom. By the mid-1980s, over 80% of pupils in the United States and West Germany and over 90% in Japan stayed in education until the age of eighteen, Sony VAIO VPCF22J1E battery compared with barely 33% of British pupils.^[120] In 1987, only 35% of 16-18-year-olds were in full-time education or training, compared with 80% in the United States, 77% in Japan, 69% in France, and 49% in the United Kingdom. Sony VAIO VPCF22L1E battery,Sony VAIO VPCF22M1E battery,Sony VAIO VPCF22S1E battery