The History of Cricket

Cricket history is particularly murky and vague as to the exact origins of the game, it is believed to have been born in England in the late middle ages.

Edward III banned a game similar to cricket in 1369, 'pila baculorea' or 'club ball' as it was known, as he saw it as being a distraction to his war effort.

Derek Birley in his wonderful book, 'A Social History of English Cricket' suggests the game came to England with the French during the time of the Norman Invasion, that their word 'criquet' was the dialect name for a variation of club ball, the game Edward the III had sought to eradicate.

There is record of the word 'creag' as a derivative of the word creaget in 1299-1300 in the Royal Wardrobe Accounts, for the then Prince Edward the II to play 'creag' and other games.

There is no evidence that creag was the same as criquet, the links are too tenuous and games rarely appear in any records of this time unless the aristocracy were playing them or trying to have them eradicated as being morally degenerate.

Cricket is first recorded as a game played by schoolboys in Guildford in the sixteenth century and is found recorded in an Italian -English dictionary in 1598.

Gambling, the Aristocracy and Working Classes

The game by 1611 was being played by adults, it is recorded that two men were prosecuted for playing cricket instead of attending church.

On a similar theme, in 1628 ten men were fined for playing cricket rather than attending church service, they also had to make a confession to the congregation as way of penance.

As the game continued to evolve amongst the working classes and the aristocracy, gambling became central to its growth.

The aristocracy in particular, had seen in it, a game with the obvious attributes to bet on its outcomes. Teams were assembled under the patronage of Aristocrats and purses were put up for 'great matches'.

In 1696, ' a great match at Cricket was played in Sussex, they were eleven of a side, and they played for fifty guineas apiece'.

The game had been growing both within the english upper classes and as a genuine recreational past time for rural workers in the southern counties of England.

The composite teams that were beginning to be assembled for 'great matches' during this period of the early 1700's, were crossing the class divides; as the purses played for encouraged the nobility that were patronizing the teams, to employ the best players that could be found.

Thus, rural workers who had become adept at the game were being employed to play as 'hands' for the aristocracy and were travelling for their employ.

At this time London, particularly North London, can lay claim to being the cradle of the game as matches staged in Islington at White Conduit Field had a 'field keeper' for cricket and the Angel Inn as part of its amenities.

In 1718 a match at White Conduit Field brought cricket into the law courts after a dispute between the two teams.

The other area to lay claim to the 'Cradle of Cricket' was Hambledon in Hampshire, where the matches staged at the Broad Down of Halfpenny were where cricket began to ' assume that truly skilful and scientific character which it now possesses.'

The men of Hambledon were immortalised in the writing of John Nyren, who captured the spirit of the club, its segregation between the classes and its rich and varied club life.

The game continued to spread through England as the provincial towns grew with industrialization, with the first recorded game in Yorkshire played in the 1750's.

The Laws of the Game

By 1744 the Laws of Cricket had been codified and in 1788 the laws were revised by the Marylebone Cricket Club, they covered the length of the pitch, the distance between creases, wicket size, and ball weight.

After 1760 the game saw the evolution of over arm bowling, replacing under arm bowling as the main way to deliver the ball. The game began to see the use of various lengths utilised by bowlers and the development of the craft of batting, as batters sought to respond to new bowling techniques.

The 'Straight Bat' was introduced as part of this counter to new bowling techniques, the old bent 'hockey stick' style of bat went out of fashion.

See the pictures here from a display at the Lords Museum that show the bats evolution

The Global Spread of Cricket

Cricket began to spread with Britains' Imperialist ambitions, the Navy and Army were instrumental in its spread into the Colonies, with games being recorded in North America in the 1700's.

In the 1800's cricket had reached the West Indies and India, by 1788 at the inception of colonization in Australia the game was played and in the 19th century cricket had reached and was being played in South Africaand New Zealand.

The first International match was staged in New York in 1844 between Canada and the United States. In 1868 an Australian Aboriginal side toured England and by 1877 England played their first match against Australia to begin the games oldest rivalry.

In 1882 England lost to Australia, a mock obituary was written for English cricket and two Melbourne ladies burnt a bail and presented it to the England cricket captain in an urn.

Thus began the Ashes,the games longest running saga as the two sides play off every two years for the fabled urn.

In 1889 South Africa became the third test nation.

In 1900 cricket made its one and only appearance at the Olympics, England played France and won. Although interestingly, it looks as if cricket may be re-admitted to the Olympics in its shortest form, 20 20 cricket.

By 1909 the Imperial Cricket Conference was formed to administrate the game, primarily from an English perspective, with England, South Africa and Australia being its founder members.

India, the West Indies and New Zealand saw them become Test playing nations before the second WW, Pakistan joining after.

Affiliate nations like Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, Zimababwe and Bangladesh have become Test playing nations toward the end of the twentieth century.

Crises in Cricket

The Twentieth Century saw major crises in cricket, initially in the bodyline series in 1932 -33 between Australia and England.

Englands' method of countering the genius of Don Bradman lead them to bowl to a leg side field with short pitched bowling. The Australians deemed this 'not cricket' and against the spirit of the game. It was an event of such proportions that Australia threatened to take political action they were so disturbed by it.

Then in the 1970's the D'Oliveira Affair blew South Africa from the international cricket stage for over twenty years, as they refused to receive the England team with the Cape Coloured Basil D'Oliveira in it.

Its racist policies saw it cast into the wilderness only to return after the release of Nelson Mandela and the institution of multi racial cricket.

The 1960's and 70's saw the introduction of single innings games, with the first class sides in England playing limited over cricket, these proved hugely popular and cricket saw its first One Day International in 1971 between England and Australia.

In the mid 1970's an Australian Media Mogul, Kerry Packer, bought up the worlds best cricketers and set up World Series Cricket, the players played in coloured clothing. Packer took on the cricket establishment in a legal battle for the right to host and televise games and won.

World Series Cricket went a long way to professionalising the game in the 1970's and allowing the players a living wage from their profession.

Technology: Innovation or Invasion

As the One Day game developed it brought with it some of the innovations from Tennis and American football, the use of technology to bring better decision making for umpires and to highlight areas of interest for the TV audience.

Beginning with slow motion replays and specialist camera angles for Umpires, the game now has space age technology with 'Stump Cams','Hot Spots' and 'Hawk Eye', technology derived from modern warfare.

Whether technology has improved the decison making of Umpires remains to be seen, there have been breakdowns in the application of technology and its lack of uniform roll out across all international games undermines its credibility.

Twenty Twenty Cricket: Rebirth or the Death of Cricket As We Know it?

Twenty Twenty Cricket was born in England in the early 2000's, it literally exploded into new market places in cricket, it brought with it a new audience and target market.

It was spectacularly seized upon by the BCCI after the 2007 Twenty Twenty World Cup as they set up the Indian Premier League with the worlds best players, modelled on the English Premier League Football Competition.

It is now the worlds second biggest sporting event, second only to the Olympics, because of India's vast population and sub-continent marketplace.

How it grows will remain to be seen, whether it consumes itself with overkill or goes on to be the biggest growth area in cricket in the 21st century, only time will tell. 

History of Football

The contemporary history of the world's favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body.

Both codes stemmed from a common root and both have a long and intricately branched ancestral tree. A search down the centuries reveals at least half a dozen different games, varying to different degrees, and to which the historical development of football has been traced back. Whether this can be justified in some instances is disputable. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people have enjoyed kicking a ball about for thousands of years and there is absolutely no reason to consider it an aberration of the more 'natural' form of playing a ball with the hands.

On the contrary, apart from the need to employ the legs and feet in tough tussles for the ball, often without any laws for protection, it was recognised right at the outset that the art of controlling the ball with the feet was not easy and, as such, required no small measure of skill. The very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China.

This Han Dynasty forebear of football was called Tsu' Chu and it consisted of kicking a leather ball filled with feathers and hair through an opening, measuring only 30-40cm in width, into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes. According to one variation of this exercise, the player was not permitted to aim at his target unimpeded, but had to use his feet, chest, back and shoulders while trying to withstand the attacks of his opponents. Use of the hands was not permitted.

Another form of the game, also originating from the Far East, was the Japanese Kemari, which began some 500-600 years later and is still played today. This is a sport lacking the competitive element of Tsu' Chu with no struggle for possession involved. Standing in a circle, the players had to pass the ball to each other, in a relatively small space, trying not to let it touch the ground.

The Greek 'Episkyros' - of which few concrete details survive - was much livelier, as was the Roman 'Harpastum'. The latter was played out with a smaller ball by two teams on a rectangular field marked by boundary lines and a centre line. The objective was to get the ball over the opposition's boundary lines and as players passed it between themselves, trickery was the order of the day. The game remained popular for 700-800 years, but, although the Romans took it to Britain with them, the use of feet was so small as to scarcely be of consequence.

For all the evidence of early ball sports played elsewhere in the world, the evolution of football as we know it today took place in Britain. The game that flourished in the British Isles from the eighth to the 19th centuries featured a considerable variety of local and regional versions - which were subsequently smoothed down and smartened up to create the modern-day sports of association football, rugby football and, in Ireland, Gaelic football.

Primitive football was more disorganised, more violent, more spontaneous and usually played by an indefinite number of players. Frequently, games took the form of a heated contest between whole villages - through streets and squares, across fields, hedges, fences and streams. Kicking was allowed, as in fact was almost everything else. Sometimes kicking the ball was out of the question due to the size and weight of the sphere being used - in such cases, kicking was instead limited to taking out opponents.

Curiously, it was not until nine years after the rules of football had been first established in 1863 that the size and weight of the ball were finally standardised. Up to then, agreement on this point was usually reached by the parties concerned when they were arranging the match, as was the case for a game between London and Sheffield in 1866. This encounter was also the first where the duration was prearranged for 90 minutes.

Shrovetide football, as it was called, belonged in the 'mob football' category, where the number of players was unlimited and the rules were fairly vague. For instance, according to an ancient handbook from Workington in England, any means could be employed to get the ball to its target with the exception of murder and manslaughter.

One theory is that the game is Anglo-Saxon in origin. In both Kingston-on-Thames and Chester, local legend has it the game was played there for the first time with the severed head of a vanquished Danish prince. In Derby, it is said to have originated in the third century during the victory celebrations that followed a battle against the Romans. Yet there is scant evidence of the sport having been played at this time, either in Saxon areas or on the continent. Indeed prior to the Norman conquest, the only trace found of any such ball game comes from a Celtic source.

Another theory regarding its origin is that when 'mob football' was being played in the British Isles in the early centuries AD, a similar game was thriving in France, particularly in the northern regions of Normandy and Brittany. So it is possible that the Normans brought this form of the game to England with them.

Scholars have also suggested that besides the natural impulse to demonstrate strength and skill, in many cases pagan customs, especially fertility rites, provided a source of motivation for these early 'footballers'. The ball symbolised the sun, which had to be conquered in order to secure a bountiful harvest. The ball had to be propelled around, or across, a field so that the crops would flourish and the attacks of the opponents had to be warded off.

A similar significance was attached to contests between married men and bachelors that prevailed for centuries in some parts of England, and, likewise, to the game between married and unmarried women in the Scottish town of Inveresk at the end of the 17th century which, perhaps by design, was regularly won by the married women. Women's football is obviously not as new as some people think.

For all the conflicting views on the origins of the game, one thing is incontestable: football has flourished for over a thousand years in diverse rudimentary forms, in the very region which we describe as its home, Britain.

f early football generated tremendous enthusiasm among common folk in Britain, it also withstood repeated - and unsuccessful - interventions from the authorities who frowned on this often violent recreation.

As long ago as 1314 the Lord Mayor of London saw fit to issue a proclamation forbidding football within the city due to the chaos it usually caused. Infringement of this law meant imprisonment .

During the 100 Years' War between England and France from 1337 to 1453 the royal court was unfavourably disposed towards football. Kings Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V all made the game punishable by law because it prevented their subjects from practising more useful military disciplines, particularly archery.

All the Scottish kings of the 15th century deemed it necessary to censure and even prohibit football. Particularly famous was the decree proclaimed by the parliament convened by James I in 1424, which read: "That na man play at the Fute-ball". None of these efforts had much effect. The popularity of the game among the people and their obvious delight in the rough and tumble for the ball went far too deep to be uprooted.

The passion for football was particularly exuberant in Elizabethan times. An influence that may have played a part in intensifying the native popularity for the game came from Renaissance Italy, notably from Florence although Venice and other cities also produced their own brand of the sport known as Calcio. This was more organised than the English equivalent and was played by teams dressed in coloured livery at important gala events held on certain holidays in Florence.

In England the game was still as rough and lacking in refinement as ever, but it did at this time find a prominent supporter who commended if for other reasons. This supporter was Richard Mulcaster, the great pedagogue and head of the famous London schools of Merchant Taylors and St. Paul's. He pointed out that the game, if requiring a little refinement, had a positive educational value as it promoted health and strength. His belief was that it would benefit from introducing a limited number of participants per team and, more importantly, a stricter referee.

Resentment of football up to this time had been focused on its capacity for public disturbance. For example, in Manchester in 1608, the game was banned because so many windows had been smashed. In the course of the 16th century a new type of attack was launched. With the spread of Puritanism, the cry went up against 'frivolous' amusements, and sport happened to be classified as such, football in particular.

The main objection was that it supposedly constituted a violation of peace on the Sabbath. Similar attacks were made against the theatre, which strait-laced Puritans regarded as a source of idleness and iniquity. This laid the foundations for the entertainment ban on Sundays - and from then on football on that day was taboo.

This remained the case for some 300 years, until the ban was lifted once again, at first unofficially and ultimately with the formal consent of The Football Association, albeit on a rather small scale.

All told there was scarcely any progress at all in the development of football for hundreds of years. But, although the game was persistently forbidden for 500 years, it was never completely suppressed.

A change did not come about until the beginning of the 19th century when school football became the custom, particularly in the famous public schools. This was the turning point. In this new environment, it was possible to make innovations and refinements to the game.

The rules were still relatively free and easy, with no standard form of the game. Each school in fact developed its own adaptation and, at times, these varied considerably. The traditional aspects of the game remained but innovations depended for the most part on the playing ground available. If use had to be made of a paved school playground, surrounded by a brick wall, then there was simply not enough space for the old hurly-burly 'mob football'.

Circumstances such as these prompted schools like Charterhouse, Westminster, Eton and Harrow to favour a game more dependent on the players' dribbling virtuosity than the robust energy required in a scrum. On the other hand, schools such as Cheltenham and Rugby were more inclined towards the more rugged game in which the ball could be touched with the hands or even carried.

As the 19 ^th century progressed, a new attitude developed towards football. The education authorities observed how well the sport served to encourage such fine qualities as loyalty, selflessness, cooperation, subordination and deference to the team spirit. Games became an integral part of the school curriculum and participation in football compulsory. Dr Thomas Arnold, the head of Rugby School, made further advances in this direction, when in 1846 in Rugby the first truly standardised rules for an organised game were laid down.

These were in any event quite rough enough: for example, they permitted kicking an opponent's legs below the knees, with the reserve that he should not be held still while his shins were being worked on. Handling the ball was also allowed - and had been ever since the historic occasion in 1823 when William Webb Ellis, to the amazement of his own team and his opponents, made a run with the ball tucked under his arm. Many schools followed suit and adopted the rules laid down in Rugby; others, such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester, rejected this form of football, and gave preference to kicking the ball. Charterhouse and Westminster were also against handling the ball. However, they did not isolate their style as some schools did - instead they formed a nucleus from which this style of game began to spread.

Finally, in 1863, developments reached a climax. At Cambridge University, where in 1848 attempts had already been made by former pupils from the various schools to find a common denominator for all the different adaptations of the game, a fresh initiative began to establish some uniform standards and rules that would be accepted by everyone.

It was at this point that the majority spoke out against such rough customs as tripping, shin-kicking and so on. As it happened, the majority also expressed disapproval at carrying the ball. It was this that caused the Rugby group to withdraw. They would probably have agreed to refrain from shin-kicking, which was in fact later banned in the Rugby regulations, but they were reluctant to relinquish carrying the ball.

This Cambridge action was an endeavour to sort out the utter confusion surrounding the rules. The decisive meeting, however, came on 26 October 1863, when 11 eleven London clubs and schools sent their representatives to the Freemason's Tavern. These representatives were intent on clarifying the muddle by establishing a set of fundamental rules, acceptable to all parties, to govern the matches played among them. This meeting marked the birth of The Football Association. The eternal dispute concerning shin-kicking, tripping and carrying the ball was discussed thoroughly at this and consecutive meetings until eventually on 8 December the die-hard exponents of the Rugby style - led by Blackheath - took their final leave. A stage had been reached where the ideals were no longer compatible. On 8 December 1863, football and rugby finally split. Their separation became totally irreconcilable six years hence when a provision was included in the football rules forbidding any handling of the ball (not only carrying it).

From there progress was lightning-quick. Only eight years after its foundation, The Football Association already had 50 member clubs. The first football competition in the world, the FA Cup, was established in 1872. By 1888 the first league championship was under way.

International matches were being staged in Great Britain before football had hardly been heard of in Europe. The first was played in 1872 and was contested by England and Scotland. This sudden boom of organised football accompanied by staggering crowds of spectators brought with it certain problems with which other countries did not face until much later on.

Professionalism was one of them. The first moves in this direction came in 1879, when Darwin, a small Lancashire club, twice managed to draw against the supposedly invincible Old Etonians in the FA Cup, before the famous team of London amateurs finally scraped through to win at the third attempt. Two Darwin players, the Scots John Love and Fergus Suter, are reported as being the first players ever to receive remuneration for their football talent. This practice grew rapidly and the FA found itself obliged to legalise professionalism as early as 1885. This development predated the formation of any national association outside of Great Britain (namely, in the Netherlands and Denmark) by exactly four years.

After the English FA, the next oldest are the Scottish FA (1873), the FA of Wales (1875) and the Irish FA (1880). Strictly speaking, at the time of the first international match, England had no other partner association against which to play. When Scotland played England in Glasgow on 30 November 1872, the Scottish FA did not even exist - it was not founded for another three months. The team England played that day was actually the oldest Scottish club team, Queen's Park, but as today the Scottish side wore blue shirts and England white (albeit with shorts and socks in the colours of their public schools). Both teams employed what might today be considered rather attacking formations - Scotland (2-2-6), England (1-1-8) - but back then the game still retained many of the mob-football characteristics of kicking and rushing and, in tactics at least, probably more closely resembled modern-day rugby than football.

The spread of football outside of Great Britain, mainly due to the British influence abroad, started slowly, but it soon gathered momentum and rapidly reached all parts of the world.

The next countries to form football associations after the Netherlands and Denmark in 1889 were New Zealand (1891), Argentina (1893), Chile (1895), Switzerland, Belgium (1895), Italy (1898), Germany, Uruguay (both in 1900), Hungary (1901) and Finland (1907).

When FIFA was founded in Paris in May 1904 it had seven founder members: France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain (represented by Madrid FC), Sweden and Switzerland. The German Football Federation cabled its intention to join on the same day.

This international football community grew steadily, although it sometimes met with obstacles and setbacks. In 1912, 21 national associations were already affiliated to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). By 1925, the number had increased to 36, while in 1930 - the year of the first World Cup - it was 41.

Between 1937 and 1938, the modern-day Laws of the Game were set out by future FIFA President Stanley Rous. He took the original Laws, written in 1886 and subject subsequently to piecemeal alterations, and drafted them in a rational order. (They would be revised a second time in 1997.)

By the late 1930s there were 51 FIFA members; in 1950, after the interval caused by the Second World War, that number had reached 73. Over the next half-century, football's popularity continued to attract new devotees and at the end of the 2007 FIFA Congress, FIFA had 208 members in every part of the world.

The History of Great Britain

Great Britain was the dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century and played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science.
                                                                    

At its peak, the British Empire stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted in two World Wars. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and the UK rebuilding itself into a modern and prosperous European nation. As one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, a founding member of NATO, and of the Commonwealth, the UK pursues a global approach to foreign policy.

The timeline of Britain

Neolithic, Bronze & Iron Ages:  8300 BC – 42 AD 
‘Britain’ itself did not exist until around 6500 BC, when the English Channel formed separating Britain from the rest of Europe. The first settlers here were hunter-gatherers, who spent much of their lives travelling in search of food. Around 750 BC iron was introduced into Britain, which led the way for the production of sophisticated and durable tools and weapons.

Romano Britain: 43 – 1065 AD 
In 43 AD the Roman army crossed the Channel and quickly defeated any resistance from local tribes. The Romans founded Londinium (London) and built military roads throughout the country. Within ten years, Roman rule had reached far into the territories of England and Wales. The Roman way of life continued in Britain until the 5th century, after which Britons were left more or less to fend for themselves.

Anglo-Normans & Middle Ages: 1066 –1347 
In 1066 Duke William of Normandy invaded Britain and famously defeated King Harold of England, who legend has it was shot with an arrow through the eye during the Battle of Hastings. William of Normandy went on to rule England and Scotland, radically changing the class system and changing the official language to French. In 1216, Henry III was crowned king, but was unpopular throughout his rule.

Late Medieval: 1348 – 1484 
The bubonic plague – or Black Death – reached England in 1348 and quickly spread to Wales and Scotland, killing up to a third of the population by the end of 1350. The plague persistently re-emerged in Britain until the 17th century, severely affecting the country's economic balance. In order to combat the devastating effects of the plague, the ruling classes attempted to restore economic stability through parliamentary legislation.

Tudors Stuarts: 1485 – 1713 In 1485, Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated Richard III to assume sovereignty. He went on to marry Elizabeth of York – daughter of Edward IV. In 1603 Elizabeth I – the Virgin Queen – died. With Elizabeth leaving no successor, James VI, King of Scots (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), succeeded as James I, King of England, effectively making him the first King of Great Britain.

Georgians: 1714 - 1836 
After the death of Queen Anne, George I became king, whose reign saw the development of the function of prime minister. Although the term ‘prime minister’ was not used at the time, Sir Robert Walpole assumed the role typical of a prime minister thanks to his successes in developing economic growth for the country. 

Victorians: 1837 - 1900 
Victoria – the longest reigning British monarch – became Queen in 1837, aged just eighteen. During her reign, she introduced a number of constitutional changes and the spirit of these changes led to the publishing of the people's charter, which laid out six demands including universal manhood suffrage and annual parliamentary elections. The charter was continually rejected in parliament, but today five out of the six original demands are firm parts of the British constitution. 

Early 20th Century: 1901 - 1944
The early twentieth century saw advances in science  and technology that were unimaginable in previous eras. Among the ground-breaking achievements of this period were: the invention of the television by the EMI-Marconi Corporation; and subsequent founding of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC); the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming; and insights into the structure of the atom, which led to the development of nuclear weapons and energy.

Post World War II: 1945 - 2010 
In 1945 the Labour Party won their first general election, going on to form the National Health Service, which many regard as Labour’s greatest achievement. Post-war rationing continued, but the era was marked by public enthusiasm and hope for the future. Since then, Britain has faced a number of economic crises, but survives today as one of the world’s leading trade and financial centres, with advanced public services and a thriving economy.

The History of Great wall of China

Perhaps the most recognizable symbol of China and its long and vivid history, the Great Wall of China actually consists of numerous walls and fortifications, many running parallel to each other. Originally conceived by Emperor Qin Shi Huang (c. 259-210 B.C.) in the third century B.C. as a means of preventing incursions from barbarian nomads into the Chinese Empire, the wall is one of the most extensive construction projects ever completed. The best-known and best-preserved section of the Great Wall was built in the 14th through 17th centuries A.D., during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Though the Great Wall never effectively prevented invaders from entering China, it came to function more as a psychological barrier between Chinese civilization and the world, and remains a powerful symbol of the country’s enduring strength.

QIN DYNASTY CONSTRUCTION

Though the beginning of the Great Wall of China can be traced to the third century B.C., many of the fortifications included in the wall date from hundreds of years earlier, when China was divided into a number of individual kingdoms during the so-called Warring States Period. Around 220 B.C., Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, ordered that earlier fortifications between states be removed and a number of existing walls along the northern border be joined into a single system that would extend for more than 10,000 li (a li is about one-third of a mile) and protect China against attacks from the north.

Did You Know?

When Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered construction of the Great Wall around 221 B.C., the labor force that built the wall was made up largely of soldiers and convicts. It is said that as many as 400,000 people died during the wall's construction; many of these workers were buried within the wall itself.

Construction of the “Wan Li Chang Cheng,” or 10,000-Li-Long Wall, was one of the most ambitious building projects ever undertaken by any civilization. The famous Chinese general Meng Tian directed the project, and was said to have used a massive army of soldiers, convicts and commoners as workers. Made mostly of earth and stone, the wall stretched from the China Sea port of Shanhaiguan over 3,000 miles west into Gansu province. In some strategic areas, sections of the wall overlapped for maximum security (including the Badaling stretch, north of Beijing, that was later restored by the Ming dynasty). From a base of 15 to 50 feet, the Great Wall rose some 15-30 feet high and was topped by ramparts 12 feet or higher; guard towers were distributed at intervals along it.

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA THROUGH THE CENTURIES

With the death of Qin Shi Huang and the fall of the Qin dynasty, much of the Great Wall fell into disrepair. After the fall of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), a series of frontier tribes seized control in northern China. The most powerful of these was the Northern Wei dynasty (386-535 A.D.), which repaired and extended the existing wall to defend against attacks from other tribes. The Bei Qi kingdom (550–577) built or repaired more than 900 miles of wall, and the short-lived but effective Sui dynasty (581–618) repaired and extended the Great Wall of China a number of times.

With the fall of the Sui and the rise of the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Great Wall lost its importance as a fortification, as China had defeated the Tujue tribe to the north and expanded past the original frontier protected by the wall. During the Song dynasty (960-1279), the Chinese were forced to withdraw under threat from the Liao and Jin peoples to the north, who took over many areas on both sides of the Great Wall. The powerful Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1206-1368) established by Genghis Khan eventually controlled all of China, parts of Asia and sections of Europe. Though the Great Wall held little importance for the Mongols as a military fortification, soldiers were assigned to man the wall in order to protect merchants and caravans traveling along the profitable trade routes established during this period.

WALL BUILDING DURING THE MING DYNASTY

Despite its long history, the Great Wall of China as it is exists today was constructed mainly during the mighty Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Like the Mongols, the early Ming rulers had little interest in building border fortifications, and wall building was limited before the late 15th century. In 1421, the Ming emperor Yongle proclaimed China’s new capital, Beijing, on the site of the former Mongol city of Dadu. Under the strong hand of the Ming rulers, Chinese culture flourished, and the period saw an immense amount of construction in addition to the Great Wall, including bridges, temples and pagodas. The construction of the Great Wall as it is known today began around 1474. After an initial phase of territorial expansion, Ming rulers took a largely defensive stance, and their reformation and extension of the Great Wall was key to this strategy.

The Ming wall extended from the Yalu River in Liaoning Province to the eastern bank of the Taolai River in Gansu Province, and winded its way from east to west through today’s Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Gansu.

Starting west of Juyong Pass, the Great Wall was split into south and north lines, respectively named the Inner and Outer Walls. Strategic “passes” (i.e., fortresses) and gates were placed along the wall; the Juyong, Daoma and Zijing passes, closest to Beijing, were named the Three Inner Passes, while further west were Yanmen, Ningwu and Piantou, the Three Outer Passes. All six passes were heavily garrisoned during the Ming period and considered vital to the defense of the capital.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

In the mid-17th century, the Manchus from central and southern Manchuria broke through the Great Wall and encroached on Beijing, eventually forcing the fall of the Ming dynasty and beginning of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644-1912). Between the 18th and 20th centuries, the Great Wall emerged as the most common emblem of China for the Western world, and a symbol both physical–a manifestation of Chinese strength–and psychological–a representation of the barrier maintained by the Chinese state to repel foreign influences and exert control over its citizens.

Today, the Great Wall is generally recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history. In 1987, UNESCO designated the Great Wall a World Heritage site, and a popular claim that emerged in the 20th century holds that it is the only manmade structure that is visible from the moon. Over the years, roadways have been cut through the wall in various points, and many sections have deteriorated after centuries of neglect. The best-known section of the Great Wall of China–Badaling, located 43 miles (70 km) northwest of Beijing–was rebuilt in the late 1950s, and attracts thousands of national and foreign tourists every day.

The Real Story of How Israel Was Created

To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine.

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

Third, the US administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations, and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.

It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.

Let us look at the specifics.

Background of the UN partition recommendation

In 1947 the UN took up the question of Palestine, a territory that was then administered by the British.

Approximately 50 years before, a movement called political Zionism had begun in Europe. Its intention was to create a Jewish state in Palestine through pushing out the Christian and Muslim inhabitants who made up over 95 percent of its population and replacing them with Jewish immigrants.

As this colonial project grew through subsequent years, the indigenous Palestinians reacted with occasional bouts of violence; Zionists had anticipated this since people usually resist being expelled from their land. In various written documents cited by numerous Palestinian and Israeli historians, they discussed their strategy: they would buy up the land until all the previous inhabitants had emigrated, or, failing this, use violence to force them out.

When the buy-out effort was able to obtain only a few percent of the land, Zionists created a number of terrorist groups to fight against both the Palestinians and the British. Terrorist and future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later bragged that Zionists had brought terrorism both to the Middle East and to the world at large.

Finally, in 1947 the British announced that they would be ending their control of Palestine, which had been created through the League of Nations following World War One, and turned the question of Palestine over to the United Nations.

At this time, the Zionist immigration and buyout project had increased the Jewish population of Palestine to 30 percent and land ownership from 1 percent to approximately 6 percent.

Since a founding principle of the UN was “self-determination of peoples,” one would have expected to the UN to support fair, democratic elections in which inhabitants could create their own independent country.

Instead, Zionists pushed for a General Assembly resolution in which they would be given a disproportionate 55 percent of Palestine. (While they rarely announced this publicly, their stated plan was to later take the rest of Palestine.)

U.S. Officials Oppose Partition Plan

The U.S. State Department opposed this partition plan strenuously, considering Zionism contrary to both fundamental American principles and US interests.

Author Donald Neff reports that Loy Henderson, Director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, wrote a memo to the Secretary of State warning:

“...support by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the setting up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East...”

Henderson went on to emphasize:

“At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the war.”

When Zionists began pushing for a partition plan through the UN, Henderson recommended strongly against supporting their proposal. He warned that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and emphasized that it was “not based on any principle.” He went on to write:

“...[partition] would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future...”

Henderson specifically pointed out:

“...[proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race...”

Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He wrote that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.”

Henderson wasn’t exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism.

In 1947 the CIA reported that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.”

Truman Accedes to Pro-Israel Lobby

President Harry Truman, however, ignored this advice. Truman’s political advisor, Clark Clifford, believed that the Jewish vote and contributions were essential to winning the upcoming presidential election, and that supporting the partition plan would garner that support. (Truman’s opponent, Dewey, took similar stands for similar reasons.)

Truman’s Secretary of State George Marshall, the renowned World War II General and author of the Marshall Plan, was furious to see electoral considerations taking precedence over policies based on national interest. He condemned what he called a “transparent dodge to win a few votes,” which would cause “[t]he great dignity of the office of President [to be] seriously diminished.”

Marshall wrote that the counsel offered by Clifford “was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President...”

Henry F. Grady, who has been called “America’s top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War,” headed a 1946 commission aimed at coming up with a solution for Palestine. Grady later wrote about the Zionist lobby and its damaging effect on US national interests.

Grady argued that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the soviets.” He also described the decisive power of the lobby:

“I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experience had ended..... I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty”...... “in the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive.”

Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson’s biographer writes that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Another Author, John Mulhall, records Acheson’s warning:

“...to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.”

Secretary of Defense James Forrestal also tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose the Zionists. He was outraged that Truman’s Mideast policy was based on what he called “squalid political purposes,” asserting that “United States policy should be based on United States national interests and not on domestic political considerations.”

Forrestal represented the general Pentagon view when he said that “no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security.”

A report by the National Security Council warned that the Palestine turmoil was acutely endangering the security of the United States. A CIA report stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and its oil resources.

Similarly, George F. Kennan, the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, issued a top-secret document on January 19, 1947 that outlined the enormous damage done to the US by the partition plan (“Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine”).

Kennan cautioned that “important U.S. oil concessions and air base rights” could be lost through US support for partition and warned that the USSR stood to gain by the partition plan.

Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew and a legendary intelligence agent, was another who was deeply disturbed by events, noting:

“The process by which Zionist Jews have been able to promote American support for the partition of Palestine demonstrates the vital need of a foreign policy based on national rather than partisan interests... Only when the national interests of the United States, in their highest terms, take precedence over all other considerations, can a logical, farseeing foreign policy be evolved. No American political leader has the right to compromise American interests to gain partisan votes...”

He went on:

“The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict. It is to be hoped that American Zionists and non-Zionists alike will come to grips with the realities of the problem.”

The head of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, warned against the partition plan on moral grounds:

“U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter–a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of UN’s own charter.”

Merriam added that without consent, “bloodshed and chaos” would follow, a tragically accurate prediction.

An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted how Israel would be born through armed aggression masked as defense:

“...the Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN...In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.”

And American Vice Consul William J. Porter foresaw another outcome of the partition plan: that no Arab State would actually ever come to be in Palestine.

Pro-Israel Pressure on General Assembly Members

When it was clear that the Partition recommendation did not have the required two-thirds of the UN General Assembly to pass, Zionists pushed through a delay in the vote. They then used this period to pressure numerous nations into voting for the recommendation. A number of people later described this campaign.

Robert Nathan, a Zionist who had worked for the US government and who was particularly active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, “We used any tools at hand,” such as telling certain delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did not vote the right way.

Another Zionist proudly stated:

“Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations, but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance.”

Financier and longtime presidential advisor Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition. Top White House executive assistant David Niles organized pressure on Liberia; rubber magnate Harvey Firestone pressured Liberia.

Latin American delegates were told that the Pan-American highway construction project would be more likely if they voted yes. Delegates’ wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate returned hers); Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition.

Longtime Zionist Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with ten senators and Truman domestic advisor Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills were pending on the Philippines in Congress).

Before the vote on the plan, the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against partition, defending the inviolable “primordial rights of a people to determine their political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land...”

He went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a move that would place the world “back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments.”

Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the delegate voted in favor of partition.

The U.S. delegation to the U.N. was so outraged when Truman insisted that they support partition that the State Department director of U.N. Affairs was sent to New York to prevent the delegates from resigning en masse.

On Nov 29, 1947 the partition resolution, 181, passed. While this resolution is frequently cited, it was of limited (if any) legal impact. General Assembly resolutions, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not binding on member states. For this reason, the resolution requested that “[t]he Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation,” which the Security Council never did. Legally, the General Assembly Resolution was a “recommendation” and did not create any states.

What it did do, however, was increase the fighting in Palestine. Within months (and before Israel dates the beginning of its founding war) the Zionists had forced out 413,794 people. Zionist military units had stealthily been preparing for war before the UN vote and had acquired massive weaponry, some of it through a widespread network of illicit gunrunning operations in the US under a number of front groups.

The UN eventually managed to create a temporary and very partial ceasefire. A Swedish UN mediator who had previously rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis was dispatched to negotiate an end to the violence. Israeli assassins killed him and Israel continued what it was to call its “war of independence.”

At the end of this war, through a larger military force than that of its adversaries and the ruthless implementation of plans to push out as many non-Jews as possible, Israel came into existence on 78 percent of Palestine.

At least 33 massacres of Palestinian civilians were perpetrated, half of them before a single Arab army had entered the conflict, hundreds of villages were depopulated and razed, and a team of cartographers was sent out to give every town, village, river, and hillock a new, Hebrew name. All vestiges of Palestinian habitation, history, and culture were to be erased from history, an effort that almost succeeded.

Israel, which claims to be the “only democracy in the Middle East,” decided not to declare official borders or to write a constitution, a situation which continues to this day. In 1967 it took still more Palestinian and Syrian land, which is now illegally occupied territory, since the annexation of land through military conquest is outlawed by modern international law. It has continued this campaign of growth through armed acquisition and illegal confiscation of land ever since.

Individual Israelis, like Palestinians and all people, are legally and morally entitled to an array of human rights.

On the other hand, the state of Israel’s vaunted “right to exist” is based on an alleged “right” derived from might, an outmoded concept that international legal conventions do not recognize, and in fact specifically prohibit.