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Raubritter
A robber baron or robber knight (german: Raubritter) was an unscrupulous feudal landowner who, protected by his fief's legal status, imposed high taxes and tolls out of keeping with the norm without authorization by some higher authority. Some resorted to actual banditry. The German term for robber barons, ''Raubritter'' (robber knights), was coined by Friedrich Bottschalk in 1810.Klaus Graf, "Feindbild und Vorbild: Bemerkungen zur stadtischen Wahrnehmung des Adels", ''ZGO'' 141 (1993), pp. 121–154, at 138 Some robber barons violated the custom under which tolls were collected on the Rhine either by charging higher tolls than the standard or by operating without authority from the Holy Roman Emperor altogether. During the period in the history of the Holy Roman Empire known as the Great Interregnum (1250–1273), the number of such tolling stations exploded in the absence of Imperial authority. Medieval robber barons most often imposed high or unauthorized tolls on rivers or ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robber Baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a derogatory term of social criticism originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared as early as the August 1870 issue of ''The Atlantic Monthly'' magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who purportedly used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors. The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).Worth Robert Miller, ''Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of the third-party movement in the 1890s '' (2011) p. 13 Usage The term robber baron derives from the ''Raubritter'' (''robber knights'') ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Stephen Of England
Stephen (1092 or 1096 – 25 October 1154), often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death in 1154. He was Count of Boulogne ''jure uxoris'' from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England. Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France as the fourth son of Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois, and Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. His father died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother. Placed into the court of his uncle Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands. He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Ade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rent-seeking
Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth without creating new wealth by manipulating the social or political environment. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline. Attempts at capture of regulatory agencies to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their uncorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior. Description The term rent, in the narrow sense of economic rent, was coined by the British 19th-century economist David Ricardo, but rent-seeking only became the subject of durable interest among economists and political scientists more than a century later after the publication of two influential papers on the topic by Gordon Tullock in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pillars Of The Earth
''The Pillars of the Earth'' is a historical novel by British author Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. Set in the 12th century, the novel covers the time between the sinking of the ''White Ship'' and the murder of Thomas Becket, but focuses primarily on the Anarchy. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory and village against the backdrop of historical events of the time. Before this novel was published, Follett was known for writing in the thriller genre. ''The Pillars of the Earth'' became his best-selling work. It was made into an 8-part miniseries in 2010, and a video game in 2017. The book was listed at no. 33 on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book". The book was selected in the United States for Oprah's Book Club in 2007. It is the fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Follet
Kenneth Martin Follett, (born 5 June 1949) is a British author of thrillers and historical novels who has sold more than 160 million copies of his works. Many of his books have achieved high ranking on best seller lists. For example, in the US, many reached the number-one position on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list, including ''Triple'' (1979), ''The Key to Rebecca'' (1980), ''Lie Down with Lions'' (1985), ''A Dangerous Fortune'' (1993), '' World Without End'' (2007), ''Fall of Giants'' (2010), ''Winter of the World'' (2012), and '' Edge of Eternity'' (2014).New York Times List of Number One Best Sellers Early life and education Follett was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales. He was the first child of Martin Follett, a tax inspector, and Lavinia (Veenie) Follett, who went on to have two more children, Hannah and James. Barred from watching films and television by his Plymouth Brethren parents, he developed an early interest in reading but remained an indifferen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basic Books
Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history. History Basic Books originated as a small Greenwich Village-based book club marketed to psychoanalysts. Arthur Rosenthal took over the book club in 1950, and under his ownership it soon began producing original books, mostly in the behavioral sciences. Early successes included Ernest Jones's ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud'', as well as works by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. Irving Kristol joined Basic Books in 1960, and helped Basic to expand into the social sciences. Harper & Row purchased the company in 1969. In 1997, HarperCollins announced that it would merge Basic Books into its trade publishing program, effectively closing the imprint and ending its publishing of serious academic books. That same year, Bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tragedy Of The Anticommons
The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a commons does not emerge, even when general access to resources or infrastructure would be a social good. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it. The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures, including patent thickets and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations. The term originally appeared in Michael Heller's 1998 article of the same name and is the thesis of his 2008 book. The model was formalized by James M. Buchanan and Yong Yoon. In a 1998 ''Science'' article, Heller and Rebecca S. Eisenberg, while not disputing the role of patents in general in motivating invention and disclosure, argue that b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Heller (law Professor)
Michael A. Heller is a Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School. He concentrates on property law. Heller coined the term ''"tragedy of the anticommons"'' while working as a law professor at University of Michigan Law School in a 1998 ''Harvard Law Review'' article entitled "The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets". Heller is a graduate of the Quaker Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, Harvard College, and Stanford Law School. He worked as a summer associate at the Washington, DC white shoe law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP. From 1994-2002, Heller taught at the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 2002. Heller has focused on private property laws and international property dilemmas, publishing such articles as "The Liberal Commons" (with Hanoch Dagan), in the ''Yale Law Journal'' in 2001, and "A Property Theory Perspective on Russian Enterprise Reform," in ''Assessing The Rule of Law ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the ''Chronicle'' was still being actively updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the ''Chronicle'' is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Anarchy
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1138 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I, who drowned in the sinking of the ''White Ship'' in 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. In the initial years of civil war, neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage; the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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