Thursday, April 28, 2016

Jacob Fugger Establishes Himself: New bio by Greg Steinmetz

In this day and age, a title of almost anything boasting tales of 'The Richest Man Who Ever Lived' will catch a lot of eyes. I first noticed such a title of a book reviewed in an article in April 7, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books a couple weeks ago. I turned around and purchased the book through a vendor on amazon.com, and read the first fifty pages when I got it, hopeful I might get a sense for the tenor of this recent bio. Already I see it's in one of today's popular formats but still gives a reasonably clear sense of  the book's subtitle, 'The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger".  It's a larger, easy font, double-spaced in 250 pages. The notes are presented in a breezy, straightforward way, and there is an abundance of personalizing details of the times and places in which people lived and worked. I wish there was far more detail.

There is also a substantial and useful bibliography, as well as a captivating introduction that shows a finance titan at the top of his game emerging from a simpler, but not humble, set of morals. One was in sales and self-advancement. As the last of seven sons, the family that Jacob Fugger was born into was highly competitive. He would use that through his life. Still it surprises me some that a person of his stature in his times has had such little acknowledgement or research lately seeing how American Capitalism insists on taking the rest of the world on its ride. I wonder if this is because much of the source material is in German or that the concepts explored tend to be economic requiring 'specialised' knowledge of business. There is just this new recent title by Greg Steinmetz and one fifteen years ago by Jacob Strieder (here available on google play). But, before then, I see a lack of availability of new works on this person since the time before and between the World Wars. This is interesting in itself but distracts and will have to be looked at later.

Fugger, Steinmetz tells us,  was "headstrong, selfish, deceitful and sometimes cruel.... His boasts were good advertizing...". He could tell people how much he could provide as a loan or pay for a gem and thereby broadcast his abilities. [p. xv]
He grew up in Augsburg, born March 6, 1459 and lived on the corner where the old market met the Jewish community. [p.7] His family ran a thriving textile concern there and thru intermarriage were ensconced in the local merchant families. After an abortive trip for service at the Benedictine monastery in nearby Herrieden [p.2], Fugger was sent, still a teenager, as an apprentice to Venice. There he stayed at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Rialto [p.8]. There he learned of the things that could be bought and also the value of double-entry bookkeeping [pp.9-10].

In 1478, when Fugger was nineteen, he had to travel to Rome to help settle the affairs of his brother who had died of the plague that year. [p. 16] Rome was very turbulent then. But then, after some time in Rome apparently helping the family textile business, Jacob was sent to Austria to pursue a mining interest there. In 1485 Fugger loaned Archduke Sigmund 3000 florins. Sigmund controlled the silver mines south of Munich, near Innsbruck at Schwaz. Then again when a trade dispute in the Tyrol between the Archduke and neighboring Venice erupted in 1489, troops were sent to take some towns held by Venice. [p.19] Venice said they would not invade only if Sigmund returned Revereto and paid them 100,000 florins. But this time Sigmund's regular bankers wouldn't pay. Fugger stepped forward and said they could make a deal.

Fugger, Steinmetz says, wanted all of the output of the Schwaz mine until the principle was paid back. He insisted the mine operators cosigned the loan and that the archduke accept installments of the initial loan. But Fugger also amazingly and crucially insisted he control the state treasury. Sigmund seemingly had no choice and gave in. It was the single biggest deal of his career and drastically expanded the family business. Fugger was thirty years old. [p.21] Getting a sovereign, a duke who could change his mind if he wanted to pay back this huge loan would need some coercion. Fugger knew his man and made him coins from the silver mined which became a standard for fineness and precisionin currency that would be emulated elsewhere. [p.22] At the fair in Frankfurt that year, Fugger may have first met Maximillian, 'King of the Romans'. When Sigmund was again in debt, it was Maximillian that stepped forward and asked for the duke's other holdings to be given up in exchange for still another loan.

Fugger rarely had partners in his endeavors outside of family members. And those could be contentious. One exception was Johannes Thurzo, a metallurgist and mining engineer with water excavation techniques that greatly improved the overall process [p.29] Thurzo also had contacts in the east and was married to the Jagiello's of the new Hungarian King Ladislaus.

A rich vein of copper in the Carpathian mountains, stretching to the east, had been mined traditionally but inefficiently by Hungarian miners and interests. [p.28] Fugger saw that this needed to be properly collected and smelted and also saw that this process needed to happen somewhere where the works wouldn't just be seized by any foreign power. [p.29] He also wanted the mines which were owned by private operators. Thurzo could help make much of this happen if Fugger supplied the money which his mines in Schwaz could amply do. With Fugger's money, Thurzo 'snapped up leases' and sealed deals with the Hungarian King. [p.30]

Meanwhile a huge complex of works was constructed in Arnoldstein where Austria, Italy and Slovenia meet. From here, Fugger's eastern expansion, what he later would call the Common Hungarian Trade, began. [p.27] Maximillian took Vienna and then marched to Hungary, who could not fight both him and the Turks at the same time. Hungary signed a treaty opening the vast holdings to German traders and bankers like Fugger. The Common Hungarian Trade would be a huge money-maker for Fugger until his death thirty years later. In 1498 Fugger would use his vast copper resources to flood the market in Venice, bust up the metal cartel there and drive his co-members and competitors out of business [p.45].Fugger would also make himself the indispensable lender to Maximillian and later Charles V. But this gives away the rest of the book. Interest in the achievements and capabilities of such a character in those times should be met with a close look at his flaws, difficulties and the sometimes brutal methods he used at resolving them.

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Greg Steinmetz: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger Simon & Schuster, NY, 2015

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Sunday, April 24, 2016

Savonarola Pushes For Social Change in Florence: spring 1496

Friar Savonarola further advanced the efforts of the newly active faniculli, the brigades of youths who grew in the spring of 1496 sometimes into roaming bands of vice police. Donald Weinstein gives us a starker image of these youth who appeared dramatically at that year's Carnevale festival in Florence and beyond. The Friar also worked at curbing the excessive displays of women, exhorting them to organize and similarly police themselves. There was a great deal of negative response from all sides, Weinstein tells us, and Savonarola seemed to relent some.

Weinstein's description of the street in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, explodes the simplistic story of innocent youths beseeching alms from rich magnates and the culturally elite of Florence at the height of her glory years.
"Gangs of boys (faniculli) and young men harrassed passersby, especially women, and fought pitched battles in the streets. Gang rape was not uncommon. Policing was ineffectual-- poorly paid and barely professional. Fathers might deplore the rowdiness but used it when it served their purposes .... If grown men, sunk in their debaucheries, would respond only to harsh punishment, young people... might be rescued and enlisted ... as public police, for their parents." [p. 183]
Boys from the ages six to sixteen would be reigned in and intensively taught discipline by fra Domenico da Peschia in the city, who would then, as Savonarola told (in a sermon in December 19, 1495), form squadrons in the different quarters of the city to 'monitor personal behavior'. Quarrels would be mediated, profanity censored, silence in church enforced. The various shrines around would be maintained and kept up. Dress codes would be maintained, most of all with the squads, keeping things plain. The boys could learn to police themselves and solve their own disagreements, exact punishment, throw out incorrigibles.

Through the year and the next, Savonarola would continue to try to push for legislation to allow more freedoms and leniency to the funiculli, but the Signoria would allow the vote to go to the Great Council again and again where the proposal always would die. News of the funiculli upset everyone. Through the spring it was said that even the pope in Rome complained about this to his cardinals as a highly irresponsible teaching. But even with these wide-ranging critics, the groups of youth grew in size, and spread beyond the city.

A still more ambitious effort landed by Savonarola was in the display by these youth groups on March 27, Palm Sunday that year. They drew alms for a project that Savonarola had been given apart from the other fratres. This was the communal loan for the Monte di Pieta, an effort to make available funds for the poor. Here, Weinstein tells us this communal loan was used as economic relief from usurous loans extracted by, often, Jewish lenders. This was part of Savonarola's plan, too: to rid the city of Jewish wealth and 'corruption'. [p.73]

The women in Florence gained especial attention as well and a number of proposals were made by Savonarola and his adherents  to curb their manners. Again, Weinstein gives us a starker image of life in Florence. He quotes at length an anonymous letter addressed to Savonarola warning that summer was coming and young women would need to know how to dress.
"... [I]n warm weather it was the habit of well-dressed Florentine women to wear open-work hose and shirts that revealed "the outline of the parts that incite lust and ought to be hidden". Over these they wore a gown slit at both sides so that every slight breeze "revealed the whole person." Young women lounged about al fresco in garments like these and got up to all manners of sin." [p. 188]
Savonarola had proposed (in a sermon on March 18) the naming of good women that lived among the four quarters of the city who would select other women, who in turn could organize troops of women to patrol and censure bad behavior. But this project, as related by another letter that Weinstein delivers, devolved into ridicule and laughter in town and created more problems. The Friar returned again to the pulpit two days later, saying women could not be expected to organize themselves in this way and needed further guidance from men. Here, Weinstein suggests the lack of support of this issue in particular from the Rucellai and Bongianni families who may have convinced Savonarola to retreat. So the issue was put off. In the mean time,
"Brazen sexual display by Florentine women had long been on Savonarola's list of vices to be expunged. Women came to church to exhibit themselves to men, he complained. Like whores, their heads uncovered to display their beautiful hair, they crowded into the sanctuary so close to the priest they attracted his gaze -- instruments of the devil." [p. 188]
Some expressed the desire to set up curtains so that the priests did not have to see the laity and that the women could not gaze so intently on the clergy. This didn't come to pass either. At the end of March, the envoy at Rome, Ricciardo Becchi was reporting that the pope had set up a special counsel led by the Dominican general to look into the Friar's work. So Becchi asked the Ten and the Signoria for letters showing the high regard that the people still had for him.

The pope thought the French king might soon return to Italy. Florence, as the closest prospect of an ally to the French king was being solicited by its neighbors to therefore act as spokesperson as well. As a political calculation, if the pope wanted to form a new alliance with the King of France, then he might have to do that now through channels in Florence. In the short term it might benefit the papacy to not bring tooo much pressure on Florence or its Friar.
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quotes and pagination in Donald Weinstein: Savonarola: the rise and fall of a renaissance prophet , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011
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Friday, April 22, 2016

news April 2016

The leak of some 11 million documents relating to hidden and untaxed bank accounts in Panama has highlighted and electrified the knowledge of such tax-avoidance schemes. People slowly become aware of a practice that's existed for decades.
NPR's Planet Money showed us how easy it was to set up a shell company that could avoid paying taxes some years ago.
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The impeachment of Brazilian President Rousseff has called into question the stability of their government, the state of law and order and the very nature of what corruption is. Christiane Amanpour talks to Glenn Greenwald  to give an international audience a view of what it means.

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War in Aleppo, Syria intensifies.
The Pope and the Orthodox Patriarch visited refugees in Lesbos, Greece. Pope Francis brought three families back to Italy with him.
US Senator Bernie Sanders went to Rome to deliver some remarks on the capture of Washington, DC by big money.


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Child miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo help mine and pick out cobalt meant to be sold for use in cellphone and laptop lithium-ion batteries.

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Today in New York was the signing ceremony at the UN of the climate pact called the Paris Agreement following the agreeement drawn up there late last year.

China is investing in overland trade routes across southern Asia again.

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A series of earthquakes have struck the Pacific Rim. Two in Japan and one in Ecuador and in Peru, as well as Tonga has the entire region on edge scrambling to rescue survivors and pick up the pieces.
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This church in Tulsa, Oklahoma summed up the mood of many after the world learned of the death of the creative whirlwind known as Prince at his home in Minneapolis.

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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Henry VII Tries Diplomacy First: Early Years

England during the reign of Henry VII had foreign affairs to address as well as the many internal matters at stake. There was the matter of asserting the authority of a monarch after being crowned, as well as the familial links that needed to be proven. Then he quickly could turn to the few necessary reciprocal relations the he had to ensure and enable with other monarchs. Here again, J.D. Mackie uses the fact of the monarchy as a model for explaining the priorities and activities of that monarch. The story develops from the center of power to the outlying subjects, just as he saw power devolved from the crown to the world, in rotating spirals of focus, all making for clarity in exposition and further deepening the larger world view of Henry.

Mackie sums up the foreign policy of Henry VII this way.
"Whatever were his ethics in the matter, his abundant common sense must have shown him that a king seated uneasily upon a newly acquired and uncertain throne would be wise to keep out of war, and his movements in then field of diplomacy prove that he tried to maintain good relations with all neighbors." [p. 81]
Quickly, in October 1485 (Bosworth was a scant two months before), a truce was set with France and then extended the following year. Friendly overtures were sent to Scotland, too, and a commercial treaty with Brittany was settled by July 1486. An understanding with Maximillian of the Habsburg line, as a rather distant 'ruler' of the Netherlands, was worked over until agreed on six months later.

As a guide here, as Mackie notes, Henry still had many internal enemies and could not let treasonous characters use foreign breeding grounds to conspire against him. He also had, in some degree, to portray  'the high pretensions of his predecesors', in order to exert power. But a balance had to be struck as well with promoting economic welfare. Henry wanted to be on the side of the merchants and bankers who could support him in these projects. [p.82]

In support of these hopes, titles, marriages, and even personality traits could entwine relations, but these almost always confused things rather than settled them. Henry's new bride Elizabeth was the daughter of the last King Edward IV and could not be replaced, so a new marriage for him was unthinkable, and they still had no children. Maximilian King of the Romans agreed (March 1486) to marry Anne of Brittany, and also agreed his son Phillip should marry Anne's sister when they came of age. But this diplomacy was disprupted as the regency of France advanced into Brittany by force of arms. Called la guerre folle, the Mad War cemented Brittany as a French controlled land but it also took a couple years of fighting before Breton forces gave out. [p. 86]

Brittany had traditionally been part of Britain, it lay just across the straits, extended across the length of southern England and guarded the all-important English Channel. Henry was loathe to lose this necessary guardian along his flank. But the French Captain La Trémoille kept pressing west through 1487-8 scoring wins time after time.

Some grew impatient. The brother of the new queen's mother (also the old queen's brother) Lord Scales, Edward Woodville was one who gathered as many men as he could and sailed for the coast. He landed at St Malo and supporteed the Bretons in May 1488. But then when forces were arranged and battle was joined at St Aubin du Cormier in July, the losses were heavy on both sides. But even with a multi-national force of mercenaries aiding them, and the capture of the Duke of Orleans, the French won the day in a big way. [p.87] On August 20 the poor duke of Brittany in the treaty of Sable agreed to be considered a vasssal of France and handed over four towns to his new sovereign, the dauphin, Charles VIII. But it was not technically an English loss since Henry had not sanctioned the efforts of Lord Scales.

Henry continued to send embassies, and to seek peace, as his men were in Paris negotiating even as Scales marched in Brittany. Henry even extended his peace treaty with France that same July for another year. But as he sought peace he also talked with King Ferdinand in Aragon. This was a relationship that both wanted but for different reasons. In early 1489, Henry made new treaties with Spain, Brittany and Maximilian. Each of these are worth looking at individually as they show what little Henry had to work with and what he could accomplish on this stage. A number of sieges and additional negotiations between the combatants increased the pressure for some other outcome throughout 1489. [pp. 97-101]

Henry in this time also came to agreements with Portugal, Denmark, Florence and Venice but as the years went on he still could not come to lasting, stable agreements with Max and France. By September 1490, he had made another truce with the 'inconstant' Maximilian and against France. Christmas came that year and Henry could celebrate an alliance with Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. Early the next year, Maximilian agreed to marry Anne of Brittany. [p. 103] But Maximilian was also at war with Ladislas Jagiello of Bohemia for the crown of Hungary and had been inconstant at best in all these wranglings. With little left to turn to or run on, late in the following year, Anne had had enough of war and negotiations, and she accepted to marry the dauphin Charles of France. [p.105]

But as civil war was breaking out in the Netherlands and Maximilian tied up with that and in the East, Henry decided it was time to force the issue of Brittany. Preparations were made all through this time and, much of 1492 in England was spent in preparing troops and stores and ships. [p. 108] Henry had to move forward. Speeches were made in England before Parliament, and thousands of soldiers with their supplies were then readied and ferried from Briton across the strait. The English troops were in France for nine days, there were some skirmishes but a large balttle was not struck. Instead, the Treaty of Etaples was signed. Henry and his English forces would leave, France would keep Brittany and Anne, but agree to also pay Henry 475,000 gold crowns, and pay that at the rate of 50,000 a year. [p. 109]

To many back home this was a mark of Henry's biggest failure. He sued for peace and took a payment before testing his mettle in battle on the fields of Brittany, losing that and much prestige back home. But Henry achieved what he wanted, Mackie tells us. He knew he could not long stand a long war. There was little but land in France or Brittany left to take in spoils. A lasting peace was the real answer. Despite his allies' stated support, there were many indications that he could not trust for them to show up when he needed them. Early on, Henry could see the benefits of trade without the constant disruptions of war. [p. 111] Henry would work on this peace in these lands for the rest of his days.
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quotes and pagination from J.D. Mackie: The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558 Oxford, UK 1957
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Thursday, April 7, 2016

Bembo Gives Bollani As Warning Against More Wars, early 1496

All through the winter, and well past spring, reports of battles and sieges and losses, and some victories, fell before the Signoria in Venice for them to read and discuss and decide on. These reports came from so many places. They told so often of so many captains, representing the interests of Venice with force of arms, or cavalry or ships or money.

With so many choices before Venice, moving forward in the interests of the city always took some consideration. The year before the city had joined in league with Milan and Naples and the Pope in order to stop the King of France and send his armies out of Italy, as they understood it, for the greater good. The city also knew, if they could show dominance in general, and effectively use their resources at the right time and place, she could pick up some very useful territory. Any of which could be bargained over later, if things went that way.

Pietro Bembo, in his History of Venice gives us a speech credited to a ducal counsellor, Marco Bollani regarding the possibilities of protecting Pisa. To sum up his argument, as Bembo told it, Bollani first weighs a counter argument for advancing to this prize, comparing the advance and capture of nearby Vicenza in 1404. This expedition had established the primacy of Venice over affairs in Vicenza not forty miles away. That city had sent emissaries to ask for protection when they were 'hard pressed' by neighboring Padua. And after negotiations, that time, Vicenza surrendered to Venice.
"In what way did that surrender resemble this one? Vicenza was in close proximity and practically bordering our lands, so that the way there and access to the town could not be blocked. It was itself a free city, and not one previously subject to the rulers of Padua. When therefore the anbassadors returned with Venetian forces to support them, it was easily defended and held. Nor did Venice make any new enemies on account of Vicenza, but those same forebears of ours started war again on a fiercer footing with the Republic's traditional enemy, and brought it to a successful conclusion." [iii,14]
Genoa was the traditional enemy of Venice. Pisa was in the neighborhood of Genoa, just down the coast. But Bollani explains the two cases weren't that similar. Vicenza was near while Pisa relatively far away. There were mostly friendly cities in between who neighbored Pisa, and who would see the advance of Venetian forces, through their territory, as potentially offensive. The expense alone was hard to imagine. So, to complete his argument, Bembo has his speaker Bollani use a series of negative conditionals in order to dissuade the audience.
"... if you do not see that to gain our ends we shall have to inflict a grave injury and misfortune on a friendly people and a republic which has never provoked us in any manner; if you do not see that we will confirm by this precedent, and in a way we could not afterwards deny, the view long settled in the minds of men that we above all others are preoccupied with a passion for dominance; ...".[iii,15]
The Council of Ten knew they were in a fragile, but necessary league with Milan and the Pope, and knew they would need them in order to flush the French out of all the keeps and towns that they had taken up and down the peninsula. Making moves against or ostensibly for Pisa at this time could put this League in danger of collapsing. Venice's reputation preceded any of her actions. They had to proceed cautiously. This then is what they did. But before long it became clear to all that her long term motivations would still be at play.
"... nor can we guess with any accuracy where all this will end, so we should really be considering not so much the start of a new war as concluding those already started and quenching the flames that have set the finest and most beautiful parts of Italy alight...". [iii,15]
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p. 183 from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
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The Tentative MilePost, spring 2016

This is as good a place as any to show a bit more of the method for this collection, again. Like glue still used in the production of actual physical books -- in order to bind covers with contents, for instance -- a newer running list of topics, subjects and titles is in order. Reviews or summaries, quotes and extracts still show up according to running chronologic topic, but less of the seams and immediate contexts, the bits of string that might hold them together. There just hasn't been the time.

A number of topics older for this blog have clearly been set aside rather than superseded. Wunderli's delightful book Peasant Fires was relatively easier to give a more comprehensive 'review' because of its relatively smaller size. But its scope is huge as it looks at beliefs and practices for the personal, the public, the economic, and within and without the universal church in southern German lands of the day. A number of other sources, however, simply tell longer stories that stretch across greater extents of time.

In certain ways, for instance, these sets of topic continue here, in following the high points of the Life of Friar Girolamo Savonarola, in Italy. After the readable and persuasive Lauro Martines (2006) in his Fire In The City , a shift in emphasis will follow predominantly from a different source. Martines is partly persuasive through the use of a kind of emotional appeal where serially displayed tides of multiple contexts are lain down, all tugging and twisting events by their interpretations, in a cascade of heightened dramatic tensions. They were tense times and Savonarola was in the middle of things. Donald Weinstein's recent (2011) updated biography on Savonarola also promises to be absorbing and supply a bit more detail.

Of course, Italy wasn't alone in rethinking priorities on how the Christian religion was implemented in Europe. The Devotio Moderna was a Dutch contribution that weighed heavily on the minds of Churches, churchmen and laity all over the north. A recent (1988) collection of that material will deepen those contexts and shed light on Reformations to come. The forcefulness of Spanish interpretations both in Spain and in Rome will continue to be sources for study.

As Columbus returned from his second voyage to the americas in the spring of 1496, another Italian Amerigo Vespucci, acting as executor to the estate of an Italian merchant named Giannotti Berardi who had died in Seville, fulfilled this man's contract with the Spanish crown for twelve more ships to be fitted out to explore the Indies. Despite such eventually accepted misnomers, knowledge of the routes east and south were already circulating in some circles, but elsewhere. Stories of other explorers had already been set down in Portugal and even Rome. Poggio Bracciolini returns here with a surprising bit of lively travelogue to the actual Far East, supplied by Nicolo de Conti, and placed gently in a dialogue On the Vicissitudes of Fortune (from 1447) that I feel fortunate to have found in translation.

The extended comparisons of eyewitnesses in that New World have also noticeably been left behind. The stories from the Aztecs, the Tlaxcala, the Letters of Hernan Cortes, the True History of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the life of La Malinche, as well as the Life of Columbus recede into the background as another story develops. Those are the stories of Imperial Spain and Portugal, as the expansion of delegated, but growing, governing bodies asserted themselves, and different narratives for them take shape. One of the central examples of these was being developed by the dual Crown of Castile and Aragon. Another was in Rome, with different popes asserting the rights and preferences for different sets of national interests through this same period.

Italy tried to recover from the ravages of war brought by France and the other partisans in the mid-1490's, but only had a couple years before the French would be at it again. Cardinal della Rovere's daughter Felice then would stay in Savona, near Genoa and be married, widowed and then housed in the Palazzo della Rovere there. Caterina Sforza would defiantly stay in Forli while brutally carrying out revenge or maintaining a hostile silence. Uncle Ludovico in Milan and Maximilian in Austria would try and fail to establish and maintain order in Italy, and fail similarly at home. Henry Tudor in England would try and succeed at keeping his distance from most of the rest of Europe's troubles, while chasing down and nullifying his chief rivals nearer to home.

All across Europe trouble never seemed to cease. When it did, there was healing to do and crops to be tended (too, and also disease and plague and poverty to suffer through as well). For Venice things never really did slow down as the seasons came and went. The wars to protect Pisa and Italy against the French turned into wars at sea and overseas which began again against the Turk. And then against, and then, with, the French again. Pietro Bembo would do his best to chronicle the list of captains and victories and losses and rewards as the century wound down.

To the East there remained some Byzantine holdouts as at Mt Athos or Methoni. Or at St Catherine's at Mt Sinai. Staying put as best they could. The huge lands united by King Corvinus in Hungary became wild and untempered under the distant nominal Habsburg rule of Maximilian. For awhile. A closer look at how persuasion could and even needed to affect even the mightiest of monarchs and benefactors, looms. As does the personalizing influence that new forms of study, preaching and communication gave rise to new interpretations and ways to view the self in this ever more widening world.
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