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Avantel

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

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Avantel is a telecommunications company based in Mexico City.

Avantel was founded in October 1994 by Mexican investors partnered with Banamex and MCI (acquired by Verizon Communications) after the deregulation of the communications industry in Mexico. Avantel initiated operations in August 1996 and Francisco Gil Díaz became CEO in 1997, position he kept in 2000 to join the cabinet of Vicente Fox, president of Mexico as his Secretary of Finance.

Initially a long distance phone company, Avantel has increased it services to provide internet services becoming the first company of its kind in Mexico that built a network exclusively for Internet traffic. The company also offers Voice over IP for residential customers and toll free numbers, voice and data networks for business customers.

On December 4th, 2006 Axtel announced the closing of its acquisition of Avantel. The purchase of Avantel consolidates Axtel as the second integrated telecoms company in Mexico.

Creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Main article: Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 which inaugurated the Empire’s dualist structure in place of the former unitary Austrian Empire (1804–67) originated at a time when Austria had declined in strength and in power — both in the Italian Peninsula (as a result of the Austro–Sardinian War of 1859) and among the states of the German Confederation (where it had been replaced by Prussia as the dominant German-speaking power following the Austro–Prussian War of 1866). Other factors in the constitutional changes included continued Hungarian dissatisfaction with rule from Vienna and increasing national consciousness on the part of other nationalities of the Austrian Empire. Hungarian dissatisfaction grew partially from Austria’s suppression, with Russian support, of the Hungarian liberal revolution of 1848–49. However, dissatisfaction with Austrian rule had grown for many years within Hungary, and had many other causes.

In the effort to shore up support for the monarchy, Emperor Franz Joseph began negotiations for a compromise with the Hungarian nobility to ensure their support. In particular, Magyar leaders demanded and received the Emperor’s coronation as King of Hungary, and the establishment of a separate parliament at Budapest with the powers to enact laws for the lands of the Hungarian crown (the lands of St. Stephen), which would preserve the political dominance of the Hungarian nobility.

Governmental structure

Three distinct elements ruled The Austro-Hungarian Empire:

the Hungarian government
the “Austrian” or Cisleithanian government
common foreign and military policy under the monarch

Hungary and Austria maintained separate parliaments, each with its own prime minister. Linking/co-ordinating the two fell to a government under a monarch, wielding power absolute in theory but limited in practice. The monarch’s common government had responsibility for the army, for the navy, for foreign policy, and for the customs union.

Within Cisleithania and Hungary certain regions, such as Galicia and Croatia enjoyed special status with their own unique governmental structures.

A common Ministerial Council ruled the common government: it comprised the three ministers for the joint responsibilities (joint finance, military, and foreign policy), the two prime ministers, some Archdukes and the monarch. Two delegations of representatives, one each from the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments, met separately and voted on the expenditures of the Common Ministerial Council, giving the two governments influence in the common administration. However, the ministers ultimately answered only to the monarch, and he had the final decision on matters of foreign and military policy.

Overlapping responsibilities between the joint ministries and the ministries of the two halves caused friction and inefficiencies. The armed forces suffered particularly from overlap. Although the unified government determined overall military direction, the Austrian and Hungarian governments each remained in charge of “the quota of recruits, legislation concerning compulsory military service, transfer and provision of the armed forces, and regulation of the civic, non-military affairs of members of the armed forces”. Needless to say, each government could have a strong influence over common governmental responsibilities. Each half of the Dual Monarchy proved quite prepared to disrupt common operations to advance its own interests.

Relations over the half-century after 1867 between the two halves of the Empire (in fact the Cisleithan part contained about 57% of the combined realm’s population and a rather larger share of its economic resources) featured repeated disputes over shared external tariff arrangements and over the financial contribution of each government to the common treasury. Under the terms of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, an agreement, renegotiated every ten years, determined these matters. Each build-up to the renewal of the agreement saw political turmoil. The disputes between the halves of the empire culminated in the mid-1900s in a prolonged constitutional crisis—triggered by disagreement over the language of command in Hungarian army units, and deepened by the advent to power in Budapest (April 1906) of a Hungarian nationalist coalition. Provisional renewals of the common arrangements occurred in October 1907 and in November 1917 on the basis of the status quo.

Ethnic relations

Article 19 of the Austro-Hungarian constitution stated:

The implementation of this principle led to several disputes since everything depended on the decision as to which language could be regarded as landesüblich or customary. The Germans, the traditional bureaucratic, capitalist and cultural elite, demanded the recognition of their language as a customary language in every part of the empire. While Italian was regarded as an old “culture language” (Kultursprache) by German-speaking intellectuals and had always been granted equal rights as an official language of the Empire, they had particular difficulties in accepting the Slavic languages as equal to German. On one occasion Count A. Auersperg (Anastasius Grün) entered the diet of Carniola carrying what he claimed to be the whole corpus of Slovene literature under his arm to provide evidence that the Slovene language could in his view not be substituted for German as a medium of higher education.

Religions in Austria-Hungary, from the 1881 edition of Andrees Allgemeiner atlas

“Distribution of Races in Austria–Hungary” from the Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1911

The same map of the same atlas, published in the post-World War I 1926 edition

Austria-Hungary 1914, physical

Nevertheless the following years saw an emancipation of several languages at least in the Cisleithanian part of the Empire. In a series of laws from 1867 and onwards, the Croatian language was raised to equality with the hitherto officially dominating Italian language in Dalmatia. From 1882 there was a Slovene majority in the diet of Carniola and in the capital Laibach (Ljubljana), thereby replacing German as the dominant official language. Polish was introduced instead of German in 1869 in Galicia as the normal language of government. The Poles themselves systematically disregarded the large Ukrainian minority in the country, and Ukrainian was not granted the status of an official language.

The language disputes were most fiercely fought in Bohemia where the Czechs formed a majority and wanted to reestablish the equal status for their language. Czech was a single language of administration in Bohemia until 1627, but it was suppressed and gradually replaced with German during the process of forcible Germanization in the 17th and 18th century. German-speakers lost their majority in the Bohemian diet in 1880 and their dominating position in the cities of Prague and Pilsen (while retaining a slight numerical majority in the city of Brno (Brünn)) and found themselves in an unfamiliar minority position. The old Charles University in Prague hitherto dominated by the German-speakers was divided into a German and a Czech part in 1882.

At the same time, Magyar dominance faced challenges from the local majorities of Romanians in Transylvania and in the eastern Banat, of Slovaks in today’s Slovakia, of Croats and Serbs in the crownlands of Croatia and of Dalmatia (today’s Croatia), in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the provinces known as the Vojvodina (today’s northern Serbia). The Romanians and the Serbs also looked to union with their fellow-nationalists in the newly-founded states of Romania (1859–78) and Serbia.

Though Hungary’s leaders showed on the whole less willingness than their Austrian counterparts to share power with their subject minorities, they granted a large measure of autonomy to the kingdom of Croatia in 1868, paralleling to some extent their own accommodation within the Empire the previous year. Croatian government, in spite of nominal autonomy, was in fact an economic and administrative arm of Hungary, which the Croatians resented.

Language was one of the most contentious questions in Austro-Hungarian politics. All governments faced difficult and divisive hurdles in sorting out the languages of government and of instruction. Minorities wanted to ensure the widest possibility for education in their own language as well as in the “dominant” languages of Hungarian and German. On one notable occasion, that of the so-called “Ordinance of April 5, 1897″, the Austrian Prime Minister Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni gave Czech equal standing with German in the internal government of Bohemia, leading to a crisis because of nationalist German agitation throughout the Empire. In the end Badeni was dismissed.

The Hungarian minority act from 1868 gave the minorities (Slovaks, Romanians, Serbs etc.) individual (and not also community) rights to use their language in offices, schools (although in practice often only in those founded by them and not by the state), at courts and in municipalities (if 20% of the deputies demanded it). Although already the act XVII from 1879 prescribed the teaching of the Hungarian language as a school subject, in 1900 there were still 1340 schools among the 3343 non-Hungarians where the teaching of the Hungarian (the official language of the state) was unsuccessful. From Juny 1907 (lex Apponyi) all the public and private schools in Hungary were obliged to teach the Hungarian language in such an extent that after the fourth class the pupils could express them fluently in Hungarian (which was rather impossible by the standards of the time and led to the closing of several minority, mostly Slovak schools, although it was far less violent than the politics of the new-founded states and their strong anti-Hungarian sentiment which was expressed in the banning of Hungarian in schools, municipalities and offices).

It was not rare for the two kingdoms to divide spheres of influence. According to Misha Glenny (The Balkans, 1804–1999), the Austrians responded to Hungarian badgering of Czechs by supporting the Croatian national movement in Zagreb.

Emperor Franz Joseph himself was very well aware that he reigned in a multi-ethnic country and spoke fluent German, Hungarian, Czech, and, to some degree, also Polish and Italian.

The situation of Jews in the kingdom, who numbered about 2 million in 1914, was ambiguous. Antisemitic parties and movements existed, but Vienna did not initiate pogroms or implement official antisemitic policies. This was mainly out of fear that such ethnic violence could ignite other ethnic minorities and result in violence that could spin out of control. The majority of Jews lived in small towns of Galicia and rural areas in Hungary, Bohemia, although there were large communities in Vienna, Budapest (called Judapest by Karl Lueger), Prague and other large cities.

Common languages in Cisleithania

Census December 31 1910
Land	Most common language		Other languages (more than 2%)
Bohemia	63.2%	Czech	36.8%	German
Dalmatia	96.2%	Croatian and Serbian	2.8%	Italian
Galicia	58.6%	Polish	40.2%	Ukrainian
Lower Austria	95.9%	German	3.8%	Czech
Upper Austria	99.7%	German
Bucovina	38.4%	Ukrainian	34.4%	Romanian	21.2%	German	4.6%	Polish
Carinthia	78.6%	German	21,2%	Slovene
Carniola	94.4%	Slovene	5.4%	German
Salzburg	99.7%	German
Silesia	43.9%	German	31.7%	Polish	24.3%	Czech
Styria	70.5%	German	29.4%	Slovene
Moravia	71.8%	Czech	27.6%	German
Tyrol	57.3%	German	42.1%	Italian
Küstenland	37.3%	Slovene	34.5%	Italian	24.4%	Croatian	2.5%	German
Vorarlberg	95.4%	German	4.4%	Italian

Note that some languages are considered dialects of more widely-spoken languages. For example, Rusyn was counted as “Ukrainian” in the census, and Rhaeto-Romance languages were counted as “Italian”.

Economy

A twenty-crown banknote of the Dual Monarchy

The Austro-Hungarian economy changed dramatically during the existence of the Dual Monarchy. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The capitalist way of production spread throughout the Empire during its fifty-year existence replacing medieval institutions. Economic growth centred around Vienna, the Austrian lands (areas of modern Austria), the Alpine lands, and the Bohemian lands. In the later years of the nineteenth century rapid economic growth spread to the central Hungarian plain and to the Carpathian lands. As a result of this pattern wide disparities of development existed within the Empire. In general the western areas became more developed than the east. By the early 20th century most of the Empire had started to experience rapid economic growth. The GNP per capita grew roughly 1.45% per year from 1870 to 1913. That level of growth compared very favourably to that of other European nations such as Britain (1.00%), France (1.06%), and Germany (1.51%). However, the Empire’s economy as a whole still lagged considerably behind the economies of other powers, as it had only begun sustained modernization much later. Britain had a GNP per-capita almost 70% larger than the Habsburg Empire, while Germany’s stood almost 100% higher than the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s. Nonetheless, these large discrepancies hide different levels of development within the Empire.

Rail transport expanded rapidly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its predecessor state, the Habsburg Empire, had built a substantial core of railways in the west originating from Vienna by 1841. At that point the government realized the military possibilities of rail and began to invest heavily in their construction. Pozsony (Bratislava), Budapest, Prague, Kraków, Graz, Laibach (Ljubljana), and Venice became linked to the main network. By 1854 the Empire had almost 2000 kilometres of track, about 60 to 70% of it in state hands. At that point the government began to sell off large portions of track to private investors to recoup some of its investments and because of the financial strains of the 1848 Revolution and of the Crimean War.

From 1854 to 1879 private interests conducted almost all rail construction. What would become Cisleithania gained 7,952 track kilometres, and Hungary built 5,839 track kilometres. During this time many new areas joined the railway system and the existing rail networks gained connections and interconnections. This period marked the beginning of widespread rail transportation in Austria-Hungary, and also the integration of transportation systems in the area. Railways allowed the Empire to integrate its economy far more than previously possible, when transportation depended on rivers.

After 1879 the Austro-Hungarian government slowly began to re-nationalize the rail network, largely because of the sluggish pace of development during the worldwide depression of the 1870s. Between 1879 and 1900 more than 25,000 km of railways were built in Cisleithania and Hungary. Most of this constituted “filling in” of the existing network, although some areas, primarily in the far east, gained rail connections for the first time during this period. The railroad reduced transportation costs throughout the Empire, opening new markets for products from other lands of the Dual Monarchy. See Imperial Austrian State Railways for details.

Military

Main article: Austro-Hungarian Army

Main article: Austro-Hungarian Navy

Main article: Austro-Hungarian Air Force

Foreign policy

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, in creating a semi-independent Hungary, entailed the rise of an assertive Magyar identity within the Empire. The Slav minorities found themselves at the mercy of Magyar nationalism, far less liberal in many ways than the policy previously followed by Vienna. After the agreement of 1867 the Imperial foreign minister was obliged to take account of the views on the minister-president of Hungary; besides Germanisation the Hungarians were most concerned about the threat of Pan Slavism. Here Russia was perceived as the immediate threat, with Serbia as its “Trojan Horse” in the Balkans. No individual represented this view more clearly than Count Gyula Andrássy Jr.,son of first minister-president of Hungary and then himself the Imperial foreign minister.

Set against this general background it is also important to remember that, by the late 1860s, Austrian ambitions in both Italy and Germany had been choked off by the rise of new national powers. Only the Balkans were left as a field for potential expansion. The whole Empire was thus drawn into a new style of diplomatic brinkmanship, first conceived of by Andrássy, centering on the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a predominantly Slav area still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. It was a dangerous game to play in a dangerous place. A road was thus mapped out, with a terminus at Sarajevo in 1914.

On the heels of the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878; this was sanctioned by the Treaty of Berlin. In order to counter Russia’s interests in the Balkans, an alliance was concluded with Germany in October 1879. The Empire eventually annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding under the control of the finance ministry rather than attaching it to either territorial government. This led some in Vienna to contemplate combining Bosnia and Herzegovina (originally Bosnien und Hercegowina) with Croatia to form a third component of the Empire, uniting its southern Slav regions under the domination of Croatians.

The Great War

Coat of Arms of Austria–Hungary to emphasize the unity of the Empire

The deaths of Franz Joseph’s brother, Maximilian (1867), and only son, Rudolf, made the Emperor’s nephew, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the crown. On June 28, 1914, he visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serb militants of the nationalist group Mlada Bosna, supplied by the Serbian militant group Black Hand, ambushed Franz Ferdinand’s convoy and assassinated him.

The Empire’s military spending had not even doubled since the 1878 Congress of Berlin, while German spending had risen fivefold, and British, Russian and French threefold. The Empire had previously lost ethnically Italian areas to Piedmont due to nationalist movements sweeping through Italy, and many Austro-Hungarians felt the threat of losing the southern territories inhabited by Slavs to Serbia as imminent. Serbia had recently gained a significant amount of territory in the Second Balkan War of 1913, causing much distress in government circles in Vienna and Budapest. Some members of the government, such as Conrad von Hötzendorf had wanted to confront the resurgent Serbian nation for some years. The leadership of Austria-Hungary, especially Count Leopold von Berchtold, backed by its ally Germany, decided to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt: using the assassination as an excuse, they presented a list of ten demands called the July Ultimatum expecting Serbia would never accept. When Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands but only partially accepted the remaining one, Austria-Hungary declared war.

These events brought the Empire into conflict with Serbia and over the course of July and August 1914, caused the start of World War I, as Russia mobilized in support of Serbia, setting off a series of counter-mobilizations. Italy initially remained neutral, although it had an alliance with Austria–Hungary. In 1915 it switched to the side of the Entente powers, hoping to gain territory from Austria–Hungary.

General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff during the war. Under his command, Austro-Hungarian troops were involved in much of the fighting in the Great War.

At the start of the war, the army was divided in two, the smaller part attacked Serbia while the larger part fought against the massive Russian army. The 1914 invasion of Serbia was a disaster. By the end of the year the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory and had lost 227,000 men (out of a total force of 450,000 men); see Serbian Campaign (World War I).

On the Eastern front, things started out equally badly. The Austro-Hungarian Army was defeated at the Battle of Lemberg and the mighty fort city of Przemysl was besieged (it would fall in March 1915).

In May 1915, Italy joined the Allies and attacked Austria-Hungary. The bloody but indecisive fighting on the Italian front would last for the next three and a half years. It was only this front that the Austrians proved effective in war, managing to hold back the numerically superior Italian armies in the Alps.

In the summer, the Austro-Hungarian Army, working under a unified command with the Germans, participated in the successful Gorlice–Tarnow Offensive.

Later in 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Army, in conjunction with the German and Bulgarian armies, conquered Serbia.

In 1916, the Russians focused their attacks on the Austrian-Hungarian army in the Brusilov Offensive, recognizing the numerical inferiority of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The Austrian armies took massive losses (losing about 1 million men) and never recovered. The huge losses of men and material inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to the causes of their communist revolution of 1917. The Austro-Hungarian war effort became more and more subordinate to the direction of German planners, as it did with the standard soldiers. The Austrians saw the German army positively, but by 1916 the general belief in Germany was that they were “shackled to a corpse.” Supply shortages, low morale, and the high casualty rate seriously affected the operational abilities of the army, as well as the fact the army was of multiple ethnicity, all with different race, language and customs.

The last two successes for the Austrians: the Conquest of Romania and the Caporetto Offensive, were German-assisted operations. Due to the fact that the empire had become more and more dependent on German assistance, the majority of its people, not of Hungarian or Austrian ethnicity, became aware of the empire’s destabilization.

Dissolution of the Empire in 1918

A humorous “obituary” of the Austrian Empire, published in Kraków in late 1918. Click on the image for a translation.

As it became apparent that the Allied Powers of the British Empire, France, Italy and the United States would win World War I, nationalist movements which had previously been calling for a greater degree of autonomy for various areas, started pressing for full independence.

As one of his Fourteen Points, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the nationalities of the empire have “freest opportunity to autonomous development.” In response, Karl I agreed to reconvene the Imperial parliament and allow for the creation of a confederation with each national group exercising self-governance. However, the nationalities no longer trusted Vienna, and were now dead-set on independence.

On October 14, 1918 Foreign Minister Baron István Burián von Rajecz asked for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. In an apparent attempt to demonstrate good faith, Karl I issued a proclamation two days later transforming Austria into a federal union of four components—German, Czech, South Slav and Ukrainian. The Poles were granted full independence with the purpose of joining their ethnic brethren in Russia and Germany in a Polish state, and Trieste was to receive a special status.

It was all for naught; four days later, on October 18, Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs. Therefore, Lansing said, autonomy was no longer enough, and Washington couldn’t deal on the basis of the Fourteen Points anymore. In fact, a Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on October 14, and the leaders of the South Slav community had already declared in favor of uniting with Serbia in a large South Slav state.

The Lansing note was, in effect, the death certificate for Austria-Hungary. National councils formed in the empire’s provinces had already begun acting more or less as the provisional governments of independent countries. With defeat in the war imminent, Czechoslovakia declared independence on October 28, and on October 29, the southern Slav areas declared the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The Hungarian government terminated the personal union with Austria on October 31, officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. There was now nothing left of the Habsburg realm except its Alpine and Danubian provinces.

Facing an impossible situation, the last Habsburg emperor-king, Karl I (styled Károly IV in Hungary), issued a statement on November 11 in which he renounced the right to participate in Austrian affairs of state. On November 13, he issued a similar proclamation for Hungary. However, he did not abdicate, in the event the people of either state recalled him.

In Austria and Hungary, separate republics were declared at the end of the war in November. The Treaty of Saint Germain (between the victors of World War I and Austria) and the Treaty of Trianon (between the victors and Hungary) regulated the new borders of Austria and Hungary.

A monarchist revival in Hungary after a short-lived communist government after the Romanian invasion of 1919 resulted in the restoration of the Hungarian monarchy (March 1920), with the royal powers entrusted to a regent, the naval hero Admiral Miklós Horthy. Ill-prepared attempts by Karl to regain the throne in Budapest (March, October 1921) collapsed when the initially wavering Horthy, who had received threats of intervention from the Allied powers and neighboring countries, refused his cooperation. Subsequently the British took custody of Karl and removed him and his family to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died the following year.

New states

Austria–Hungary and new states that emerged in 1918. Empire of Austria in 1914 Kingdom of Hungary in 1914 Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1914 Border of Austria–Hungary in 1914 Borders in 1914 Borders in 1920

The following successor states were formed (entirely or in part) from the former Habsburg lands:

Austria
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (joined with the Kingdom of Serbia on 1 December 1918 to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia)
Poland

Some Austro-Hungarian lands were also ceded to Romania, Ukraine and Italy. Liechtenstein, which had formerly looked to Vienna for protection, formed a customs and defence union with Switzerland, and adopted the Swiss currency instead of the Austrian. In April 1919 Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria, voted by a large majority to join Switzerland; however both the Swiss and the Allies disregarded this result.

Territorial legacy

**Austria–Hungary**
Kingdoms and countries of Austria–Hungary: Cisleithania: 1. Bohemia, 2. Bukovina, 3. Carinthia, 4. Carniola, 5. Dalmatia, 6. Galicia, 7. Küstenland, 8. Lower Austria, 9. Moravia, 10. Salzburg, 11. Silesia, 12. Styria, 13. Tyrol, 14. Upper Austria, 15. Vorarlberg; Transleithania: 16. Kingdom of Hungary, 17. Croatia-Slavonia; Austrian-Hungarian Condominium: 18. Bosnia and Herzegovina

The following present-day countries and parts of countries were located within the boundaries of Austria-Hungary when the empire was dissolved:

Empire of Austria (Cisleithania)

Austria (with the exception of Burgenland)
Czech Republic (with the exception of Hlu?ínsko area)
Slovenia (with the exception of Prekmurje)
Italy (autonomous regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and small portions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia)
Croatia (Dalmatia, Istria)
Poland (voivodeships of Lesser Poland, Subcarpathia, Silesia with the exception of the area of Katowice)
Ukraine (oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ternopil, and most of the oblast of Chernivtsi)
Romania (county of Suceava)
Montenegro (bay of Boka Kotorska, the coast and the immediate hinterland around cities of Budva, Petrovac and Sutomore)

Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania)

Hungary
Slovakia
Austria (Burgenland)
Slovenia (Prekmurje)
Croatia (Slavonia, Central Croatia, southern parts of the pre-1918 Baranya and Zala counties - today’s Croatian part of Baranja and Me?imurje county)
Ukraine (oblast of Zakarpattia)
Romania (region of Transylvania and Partium)
Serbia (autonomous province of Vojvodina and parts of the present-day Belgrade metropolitan region)
Bosnia and Herzegovina (the villages of Zavalje, Mali sko?aj and Veliki sko?aj including the immediate surrounding area western of the city of Biha?)

Austrian-Hungarian Condominium

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Montenegro (Sutorina - western part of the Municipality of Herceg-Novi between present borders with Croatia (SW) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (NW), Adriatic coast (E) and the township of Igalo (NE))
Raška region/Sandzak of Serbia and Montenegro under effective Austro-Hungarian occupation while formally part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912

Other parts of Europe had been part of the Habsburg-monarchy once but left it even before its dissolution in 1918. Prominent examples are the regions of Lombardia and Veneto in Italy, most of Belgium and Serbia and parts of northern Switzerland and south-western Germany.

Flags and heraldry of Austria-Hungary

Flags

Although Austria-Hungary did not have a common national flag, a common naval ensign and a common civil ensign (the latter was introduced in 1869) did exist.

Naval ensign

Civil ensign

The colours of the House of Habsburg were used as flag of the Austrian part. The Hungarian part used a red-white-green Tricolour defaced with the Hungarian coat of arms.

Flag of the Austrian part

Flag of the Hungarian part

Coat of arms

The double-headed eagle of the Habsburg-Lorrain dynasty was used as coat of arms of the common institutions of Austria-Hungary between 1867 and 1915. In 1915 a new one was introduced, which combined the coat of arms of the two parts of the empire and that of the dynasty.

Common small coat of arms (until 1915)

Common small coat of arms (1915–1918)

Common medium coat of arms (until 1915)

Common medium coat of arms (1915–1918)

Additionally each of the two parts of Austria-Hungary had their own coat of arms.

Small coat of arms of the Austrian part (1915–1918)

Medium coat of arms of the Austrian part (1915–1918)

Medium coat of arms of the Hungarian part (until 1915)

Medium coat of arms of the Hungarian part (1915–1918)

References

^ Anstalt G. Freytag & Berndt (1911). Geographischer Atlas zur Vaterlandskunde an der österreichischen Mittelschulen. Vienna: K. u. k. Hof-Kartographische. “Census December 31st 1910”
^ Good, David. The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire
^ Primary Documents: Austrian Ultimatum to Serbia, 23 July 1914 Updated - 24 May, 2003
^ Hungarian foreign ministers from 1848 to our days

Jászi, Oszkár The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Macartney, Carlile Aylmer The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918, New York, Macmillan 1969.
Mark Cornwall (ed.) The Last Years of Austria–Hungary in Exeter Studies in History. University of Exeter Press, Exeter. 2002. ISBN 0-85989-563-7
Sked Alan The Decline And Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918, London: Longman, 1989.
Taylor, A.J.P. The Habsburg monarchy, 1809–1918 : a history of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, London: Penguin Books in assoc. with Hamish Hamilton, 1964, 1948
Geographischer Atlas zur Vaterlandskunde an der österreichischen Mittelschulen. (ed.: Rudolf Rothaug), K. u. k. Hof-Kartographische Anstalt G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna, 1911.

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Robert Hare (psychologist)

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

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Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Dr. Robert D. Hare is a researcher renowned in the field of criminal psychology. He is professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia where his studies centered on psychopathology and psychophysiology. He developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), used to diagnose cases of psychopathy and also useful in predicting the likelihood of violent behavior. He advises the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center (CASMIRC) and consults for various British and North American prison services.

Dr. Hare has spent over 35 years researching psychopathy and is the developer of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), and a co-author of its derivatives, the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV), the P-Scan, the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV), and the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). He is also a co-author of the Guidelines for a Psychopathy Treatment Program. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, with demonstrated reliability and validity, is rapidly being adopted worldwide as the standard instrument for researchers and clinicians. The PCL-R and PCL:SV are strong predictors of recidivism, violence and response to therapeutic intervention. They play an important role in most recent risk-for-violence instruments. The PCL-R was reviewed in Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook (1995), as being the “state of the art” both clinically and in research use. In 2005, the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook review listed the PCL-R as “a reliable and effective instrument for the measurement of psychopathy and is considered the ‘gold standard’ for measurement of psychopathy.

1 Bibliography
- 1.1 Books
2 See also
3 External links

Bibliography

Books

Psychopathy: Theory and Research (1970) ISBN 978-0471351474
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (1993, reissued 1999) ISBN 978-0671732615
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2006), with Paul Babiak

TV works

Pathar Shomoy
Bohubrihi
Aaj Rabibar

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Wang Yun

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Wang Yun
Portrait of Wang Yun from a Qing Dynasty edition of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Minister over the Masses
Born	137
Died	192
Names
Simplified Chinese	??
Traditional Chinese	??
Pinyin	Wáng Yún
Wade-Giles	Wang Yun
Courtesy name	Zishi (??)

Wang Yun (137 – 192) was the Minister over the Masses under Emperor Xian during the late Eastern Han Dynasty of China. During Wang Yun’s time, the emperors were mere puppets under the power of eunuchs and warlords. In 192, Wang Yun plotted and successfully staged Lü Bu’s assassination of Dong Zhuo, the tyrannical warlord in power. However, Dong Zhuo’s former subjects soon led a coup, in which Wang Yun along with most of his family were executed.

In the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms Wang Yun was the adoptive father of the possibly fictional Diaochan, whom he used to seduce both Lü Bu and Dong Zhuo. The subsequent rift that arose between the foster father and son eventually saw the death of Dong Zhuo by the hands of Lü Bu.

1 Life
2 Wang Yun in Romance of the Three Kingdoms
3 References
4 See also

Life

According to Book of Later Han, Wang Yun came from Qi County (??, south of present day Taiyuan, Shanxi). His family had many members who had served as administrative officials in the regional government for generations. Wang Yun himself was an official at the age of 19, and became the Inspector of Yuzhou (????) at the time of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. However, later he failed in the power struggle with the eunuch Zhang Rang. He had to abandon his position and hide himself in countryside. After the death of Zhang Rang, warlord He Jin came into power, and Wang Yun was promoted to the Gentleman of the Household and later to the Intendant of Henan (???).

In 190, the capital Luoyang fell into chaos following the death of He Jin and a bloody clash between the powerful eunuch faction and government officials. Dong Zhuo, a warlord from Liangzhou (??) managed to take control of the situation and eventually placed in the throne a puppet emperor whom he held in his power. At the end of the eunuch riot era, Wang Yun was the Minister over the Masses (??) and the Director of Imperial Secretariat (???).

Dong Zhuo’s subsequent tyrannical and cruel behavior aroused the wrath of many. Wang Yun then colluded with several other court officials in a plot to assassinate Dong Zhuo. The plan received a huge boost when the conspirators managed to recruit the help of Dong Zhuo’s own foster son Lü Bu. Bringing along a dozen men, Lü Bu cornered Dong Zhuo outside the palace gate and delivered the fatal blow himself.

After the death of Dong Zhuo, rumors spread that the court intended to execute all his former troops from Liangzhou. When a royal decree of pardon was not issued, former subjects of Dong Zhuo, Li Jue and Guo Si, led a coup and defeated Lü Bu.

Before Lü Bu relinquished from the capital, he sought out Wang Yun and asked the minister to join him. Wang Yun, however, refused to leave the young emperor behind. The rebels soon seized Wang Yun along with many of his family members, who were then executed openly in the city center. Many of his brother’s family managed to escape, and one of them, his nephew Wang Ling, was a Grand Commandant under Cao Cao.

Wang Yun in Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Wang Yun gives himself to the rebel leaders. Print from a Qing Dynasty edition of the novel.

The classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong, was a romanticization of the events that occurred before and during the Three Kingdoms era. Luo Guanzhong delineated an elaborate and cunning scheme for Wang Yun’s plot to eliminate Dong Zhuo. It involved two stratagems from the Thirty-Six Strategies: the Strategem of Beautiful Women (???) and the Strategem of Combining Tactics (???).

In Chapter 8, Wang Yun was contemplating a plot to assassinate Dong Zhuo late one night when he heard a girl grieving in his garden. Tracing the sound, he found Diaochan, a song girl who was brought up in his household but whom he had been treating like his own daughter. An idea then struck Wang Yun to use Diaochan to plant the seed of dissension between Dong Zhuo and his foster son, Lü Bu.

Inviting Lü Bu over one night, Wang Yun asked Diaochan to serve wine to the guest. Lü Bu was immediately seized by the girl’s beauty. Well aware of this, Wang Yun then promised to marry Diaochan to the mighty warrior.

A few days later, however, Wang Yun laid a feast for Dong Zhuo and repeated the feat. Like Lü Bu, Dong Zhuo could not lift his eyes off the beautiful Diaochan, who also displayed her prowess in song and dance. Dong Zhuo then brought Diaochan home and made her his concubine.

When Lü Bu heard this the next morning, he headed for Dong Zhuo’s bedroom and peeped in through the window. There he saw Diaochan sitting up grooming her hair while Dong Zhuo was still asleep. Aware of Lü Bu’s presence, Diao Chan then put up a sorrowful expression and pretended to wipe tears off her eyes with a handkerchief.

A similar incident recurred about a month later, but this time Dong Zhuo woke up in time to see Lü Bu staring fixedly at Diaochan. Lü Bu was then shoved away and forbidden to come into the house.

Then one day, while Dong Zhuo was holding a conversation with Emperor Xian, Lü Bu stole to his foster father’s residence and met with Diaochan in the Fengyi Pavilion (???). Weeping, Diaochan pled with Lü Bu to rescue her from Dong Zhuo. Placing his halberd aside, Lü Bu held Diao Chan in his arms and comforted her with words.

Right then, Dong Zhuo returned to find the duo in the pavilion. The startled Lü Bu turned to flee. Dong Zhuo grabbed the halberd and gave chase. Being too obese, Dong Zhuo could not catch up with the agile Lü Bu. He then hurled the halberd at Lü Bu but the latter fended it off and got away.

After he had calmed down, Dong Zhuo took the counsel of his advisor Li Ru and decided to marry Diaochan to Lü Bu in order to consolidate support from the powerful warrior. When Dong Zhuo told Diaochan of the plan, however, she wailed and threatened to kill herself. Dong Zhuo then gave up the idea.

On the other hand, Lü Bu was becoming increasingly displeased with Dong Zhuo. This displeasure was further heightened by Wang Yun, who suggested subtly that Lü Bu take over Dong Zhuo. Lü Bu attempted weakly to argue for Dong Zhuo’s paternal relationship to himself, but Wang Yun dismissed it, saying, “His name is Dong and yours is Lü. Where was the paternal feeling when he threw the halberd at you?” Upon hearing this, Lü Bu made up his mind to kill Dong Zhuo.

After Dong Zhuo’s death, his former subjects Li Jue and Guo Si led a coup and surrounded Emperor Xian and Wang Yun at the Xuanping Gate (???). To ensure the safety of the emperor, Wang Yun then gave himself up to the rebel leaders, who jointly slew him.

References

Chen Shou (2002). San Guo Zhi. Yue Lu Shu She. ISBN 7-80665-198-5.
Luo Guanzhong (1986). San Guo Yan Yi. Yue Lu Shu She. ISBN 7-80520-013-0.
Lo Kuan-chung; tr. C.H. Brewitt-Taylor (2002). Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0-8048-3467-9.

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Titan (game)

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Titan is a fantasy board game for two to six players, designed by Jason McAllister and David A. Trampier. It was first published in 1980 by Gorgonstar, a small company created by the designers. Soon afterward, the rights were licensed to Avalon Hill, which made several minor revisions and published the game for many years. Titan went out of print in 1998, when Avalon Hill was sold and ceased operations. A new edition of Titan, with artwork by Kurt Miller and Mike Doyle is expected to be shipped by Canadian publisher Valley Games after July 2008.

Each player controls an army of mythological creatures such as gargoyles, unicorns, and griffons, led by a single titan. The titan is analogous to the king in chess in that the death of a titan eliminates that player and his entire army from the game. The player controlling the last remaining titan wins the game.

1 Gameplay
2 Strategy
3 Contents
4 References
5 External links

Gameplay

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	Brush		Desert
	Hills		Jungle
	Marsh		Mountains
	Plains		Swamp
	Tower		Tundra
	Woods

The main game board is comprised of 96 interlocking hexes, each with a specified terrain type.

Each player’s army is organized into “legions” of one to seven creature tokens stacked face down. The legions move according to die roll, subject to restrictions marked on the board–Most board spaces can only be entered or exited from certain directions. No two legions may occupy the same hex on the game board.

If a legion moves into a hex which is occupied by an enemy legion, the two legions must fight to the death on a tactical map specific to that terrain. The terrain usually gives a battle advantage to creatures native there.

Each time a legion moves, it may recruit one additional creature if the territory to which it moves is native to at least one creature already in the legion. For example, centaurs may recruit in the plains and woods, ogres may recruit in the marsh and hills, etc.

Each creature may recruit its own kind, but multiple weak creatures may be eligible to recruit more powerful creatures. For example, one ogre in the marsh or hills may recruit only another ogre, but two ogres in the marsh may recruit a troll, while three ogres in the hills may recruit a minotaur.

The victor of each battle is awarded points based on strength of the creatures vanquished. For each hundred points a player earns, he is awarded an angel, a strong creature which can teleport from its own legion to aid an attacking legion in future battles. Also, for each one hundred points a player earns, his titan becomes stronger in battle. Finally, at four hundred points, a player’s titan gains the ability to teleport on a roll of six, attacking any enemy legion regardless of position.

Strategy

The Titan rules offer incentives for movement and attack. While players in a game like Risk may choose to wall themselves in as much as possible and build their forces, a player can only build their armies in Titan by moving to new terrain to recruit creatures. This can lead to situations where a player has to balance the risk of moving into a dangerous area versus the gain of a powerful addition to their army.

Designer McCallister writes of the critical importance of blocking–Arranging one’s legions in a defensive position to prevent another player from easy movement of recruiting. There are a variety of general strategies players use to traverse the map with their legions. One example of this is what McCallister calls “the caravan”, which is keeping legions following each other on the outer ring of map spaces where they can protect and support each other. Given that the outer ring is not the most desirable place for recruiting, the Caravan is usually used as a short term strategy for protecting forces until a better recruiting area can be found.

Writer Gerald Lientz emphasizes that the main strategic rule of movement is to keep one’s enemies in front of you at all times–Since the movement system often allows movement in one direction but not another, the worst situation a player can find oneself in is where an opponent can follow one’s legions with no risk of retaliation.

Unlike many wargames, players are not allowed to examine opposing enemy forces (they are hidden under legion markers) until they engage them in battle. This secrecy allows opportunities for deception and bluffing.

Other key strategy decisions that occur in Titan include:

Whether to split a legion into two legions for faster recruiting, or keep it unified for more effective fighting.
Whether to recruit creatures which are better at fighting, or creatures which have more potential for further recruiting.
Whether to risk losses in attacking in exchange for the potential benefits.
Whether to defend against an attack in hopes of inflicting maximum damage, or concede, thereby halving the points the attacker gains.
Whether to use the titan as a powerful attacker, or shield it against any possible danger.
Whether to hide a weak legion in favorable terrain, or keep moving it in order to keep recruiting.
Whether to move a legion to a hex where it may recruit, but will be forced by the movement restrictions to move in an unfavorable direction on the next turn.
Whether to grow a moderately weak legion, or sacrifice it to divert an enemy legion

The game does not appear to be designed for casual play, with moderately complex rules and potentially long play time (the game box claims a typical length of 2-12 hours),

Titan has a huge number of game pieces to play with. Many players like to add additional characters, usually of even more power than the standard characters, also some such variants can drastically change the balance of the game. Here is a complete list of everything that is originally included with the game:

1 Masterboard (22″L x 16″W x 3mmH)
1 Law Of Titan Rule Book
4 Playing Dice (Standard Die size for most board games)
6 Battlelands Sheets (11 areas and 1 rule sheet (8 1/2″ x 11″))
8 Character sheets (Each character sheet holds 49 pieces that are 1″L x 1″W x 2mmH)
1 Hit Counter Sheet

The updated Valley Games edition of the game includes hardback battleboards instead of battlelands sheets.

References

^ “750 Special”. Valley Games. Retrieved on 2008-07-18.
^ ^a ^b ^c McCallister, Jason (1983). “The Giver of the Law - Titan Design Notes”. The General 20 (2). Retrieved on 2008-08-11.
^ Lientz, Gerald (1983). “A Game Player’s Fantasy”. The General 20 (2). Retrieved on 2008-08-11.

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Marijanci

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

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Marijanci

Marijanci (Croatia)

Marijanci’ is a municipality in Osijek-Baranja county, Croatia. There are 2,719 inhabitants, 97% who are Croats. (2001 census)

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v • d • e Municipalities of Osijek-Baranja County

Cities and towns	Osijek · Beli Manastir · Beliš?e · Donji Miholjac · ?akovo · Našice · Valpovo

Municipalities	Antunovac · Bilje · Bizovac · ?eminac · ?epin · Darda · Donja Moti?ina · Draž · Drenje · ?ur?enovac · Erdut · Ernestinovo · Feri?anci · Gorjani · Jagodnjak · Kneževi Vinogradi · Koška · Levanjska Varoš · Magadenovac · Marijanci · Petlovac · Petrijevci · Podgora? · Podravska Moslavina · Punitovci · Satnica ?akova?ka · Semeljci · Strizivojna · Šodolovci · Trnava · Viljevo · Viškovci · Vladislavci · Vuka

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