Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Denial of genocides of Indigenous peoples" in English language version.
If the assertions of Ortiz and others regarding the habits of the Indians were fabrications, they were not fabrications without design. From the Spaniards' enumerations of what they claimed were the disgusting food customs of the Indians (including cannibalism, but also the consumption of insects and other items regarded as unfit for human diets) to the Indians' supposed nakedness and absence of agriculture, their sexual deviance and licentiousness, their brutish ignorance, their lack of advanced weaponry and iron, and their irremediable idolatry, the conquering Europeans were purposefully and systematically dehumanizing the people they were exterminating.
The United States had its own long-standing boarding schools for Native American children with a similar extent of abuse. However, the term Education for Extinction is yet to capture public attention as a human rights issue. The American indigenous dilemma is far less central to U.S. mainstream politics than in any of the other ex-British colonies. The notion of genocide, while warranted as much or more than in those other countries, is still confined to radical writers. It is intriguing, indeed, that no mainstream American historians have written about the fate of the Native Americans as genocide. (p131) Thus, the European guilt was at least a collective myopia, a deep failure to acknowledge the equality of indigenous people and the vast number and varied array of atrocities and genocides inflicted upon them. More likely this has been a willful denial of responsibility and guilt, hiding behind the structural explanation of biological agents. It is time to reverse course and acknowledge the responsibility and extent of the destruction purposefully inflicted by colonialism, although not upon all indigenous peoples, and not in similar fashion. (p138-139)
From first grade to graduate school, I was given no inkling that the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World initiated a genocide, in which the indigenous population of Hispaniola was annihilated. Or that this was just the first stage of what was presented as a benign expansion of the new nation (Louisiana "Purchase," Florida "Purchase," Mexican "Cession"), but which involved the violent expulsion of Indians, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, from every square mile of the continent, until there was nothing to do with them but herd them into reservations. (Afterword)
In contemporary extra-judicial discussions of allegations of genocide, the question of intent has become a controversial issue, providing a ready basis for denial of guilt.
Indigenous populations are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created and current borders defined. They generally maintain cultural and social identities, and social, economic, cultural and political institutions, separate from the mainstream or dominant society or culture.
Imperialist genocide against indigenous peoples was thus of two kinds. It was practiced in order to clear lands that invading settlers wished to occupy. It was also practiced as part of a strategy to seize and coerce labor that the settlers could not or would not obtain by less drastic means.
Charny offeres a definition of colonial genocide: "Genocide that is undertaken or even allowed in the course of or incidental to the purposes of achieving a goal of colonization or development of a territory belonging to an indigenous people, or any other consolidation of political or economic power through mass killing of those perceived to be standing in the way."
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)Historical distortion and denial are endemic to settler colonies. In order for the settler colony to establish a collective usable past, legitimating stories must be created and persistently affirmed as a means of naturalizing a new historical narrative. A national mythology displaces the indigenous past...Becoming the indigene required not only cleansing of the land, either through killing or removing, but sanitizing the historical record as well.
"From Lemarchand's volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor's version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been "hidden" politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power". (p2) ...the U.S. government, for most of its existence, stated openly and frequently that its policy was to destroy Native American ways of life through forced integration, forced removal, and death. An 1881 report of the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs on the "Indian question" is indicative of the decades- long policy: "There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place, to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die." (p3) "As such it is important for the peoples of the United States and Canada to recognize their shared legacies of genocide, which have too often been hidden, ignored, forgotten, or outright denied." (p3) "After all, much of North America was swindled from Indigenous peoples through the mythical but still powerful Doctrine of Discovery, the perceived right of conquest, and deceitful treaties. Restitution for colonial genocide would thus entail returning stolen territories". (p9) "Thankfully a new generation of genocide scholarship is moving beyond these timeworn and irreconcilable divisions." (p11)"Variations of the Modoc ordeal occurred elsewhere during the conquest and colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Indigenous civilizations repeatedly resisted invaders seeking to physically annihilate them in whole or in part. Many of these catastrophes are known as wars. Yet by carefully examining the intentions and actions of colonizers and their advocates it is possible to reinterpret some of these cataclysms as both genocides and wars of resistance. The Modoc case is one of them" (p120). "Memory, remembering, forgetting, and denial are inseparable and critical junctures in the study and examination of genocide. Absence or suppression of memories is not merely a lack of acknowledgment of individual or collective experiences but can also be considered denial of a genocidal crime (p150). Erasure of historical memory and modification of historical narrative influence the perception of genocide. If it is possible to avoid conceptually blocking colonial genocides for a moment, we can consider denial in a colonial context. Perpetrators initiate and perpetuate denial" (p160).
Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
The testimonies on which Raphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
Since the publication of Wolfe's (2006: 388) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, the idea that settler colonialism is 'a structure not an event' has taken root and is now foundational to scholarship in settler-colonial studies.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
[G]enocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide - such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.
The study of massacres defined here as predominantly one-sided intentional killings of five or more noncombatants or relatively poorly armed or disarmed combatants, often by surprise and with little or no quarter.
The willful maintenance of public ignorance regarding the genocidal and racist horrors against indigenous peoples that have been and are being perpetrated by many nations of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States—which contributes to the construction of a museum to commemorate genocide only if the killing occurred half a world away—is consciously aided and abetted and legitimized by the actions of the Jewish uniqueness advocates we have been discussing....and so all people of conscience must be on guard against Holocaust deniers who, in many cases, would like nothing better than to see mass violence against Jews start again. By that same token, however, as we consider the terrible history and the ongoing campaigns of genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere...
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link)To Hitchens, anyone who refused to join him in celebrating with "great vim and gusto" the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was (in his words) self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister. People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America's past, Hitchens continued, are simply reactionary since such grossly inhuman atrocities "happen to be the way history is made". And thus "to complain about them is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift". Moreover, he added, such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind, as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans has brought about "a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation".
Canada, a country with oft-recounted histories of Indigenous origins and colonial legacies, still maintains a memory block in terms of the atrocities it committed to build the Canadian state. There is nothing more comforting in a colonial history of nation-building than an erasure or denial of the true costs of colonial gains. The comforting narrative becomes the dominant and publicly consumed narrative.
I contend that the curatorial decision of the CMHR to not use the label of genocide in the title of the core gallery on Indigenous perspectives was specifically a form of interpretive denial.
The coordinator of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical (also the author of this article) held the responsibility of presenting the main findings of the report to the public. For the first time in the history of the country, an official body stated that, according to its judgment, genocide had been perpetrated at certain times in certain places during the civil war.
The colonial genocide perpetrated against Aborigines produced within the colonial society a deep and enduring ambiguity about the fate of the original Aborigines and the role of colonists in generating that fate. This ambiguity consisted of a deep-seated moral unease about what had occurred and a culture of denial that was expressed in numerous ways, but most obviously in the myth of inevitable extinction.
"From Lemarchand's volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor's version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been "hidden" politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power". (p2) ...the U.S. government, for most of its existence, stated openly and frequently that its policy was to destroy Native American ways of life through forced integration, forced removal, and death. An 1881 report of the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs on the "Indian question" is indicative of the decades- long policy: "There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place, to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die." (p3) "As such it is important for the peoples of the United States and Canada to recognize their shared legacies of genocide, which have too often been hidden, ignored, forgotten, or outright denied." (p3) "After all, much of North America was swindled from Indigenous peoples through the mythical but still powerful Doctrine of Discovery, the perceived right of conquest, and deceitful treaties. Restitution for colonial genocide would thus entail returning stolen territories". (p9) "Thankfully a new generation of genocide scholarship is moving beyond these timeworn and irreconcilable divisions." (p11)"Variations of the Modoc ordeal occurred elsewhere during the conquest and colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Indigenous civilizations repeatedly resisted invaders seeking to physically annihilate them in whole or in part. Many of these catastrophes are known as wars. Yet by carefully examining the intentions and actions of colonizers and their advocates it is possible to reinterpret some of these cataclysms as both genocides and wars of resistance. The Modoc case is one of them" (p120). "Memory, remembering, forgetting, and denial are inseparable and critical junctures in the study and examination of genocide. Absence or suppression of memories is not merely a lack of acknowledgment of individual or collective experiences but can also be considered denial of a genocidal crime (p150). Erasure of historical memory and modification of historical narrative influence the perception of genocide. If it is possible to avoid conceptually blocking colonial genocides for a moment, we can consider denial in a colonial context. Perpetrators initiate and perpetuate denial" (p160).
Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
The study of massacres defined here as predominantly one-sided intentional killings of five or more noncombatants or relatively poorly armed or disarmed combatants, often by surprise and with little or no quarter.
Canada, a country with oft-recounted histories of Indigenous origins and colonial legacies, still maintains a memory block in terms of the atrocities it committed to build the Canadian state. There is nothing more comforting in a colonial history of nation-building than an erasure or denial of the true costs of colonial gains. The comforting narrative becomes the dominant and publicly consumed narrative.
The coordinator of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical (also the author of this article) held the responsibility of presenting the main findings of the report to the public. For the first time in the history of the country, an official body stated that, according to its judgment, genocide had been perpetrated at certain times in certain places during the civil war.
The colonial genocide perpetrated against Aborigines produced within the colonial society a deep and enduring ambiguity about the fate of the original Aborigines and the role of colonists in generating that fate. This ambiguity consisted of a deep-seated moral unease about what had occurred and a culture of denial that was expressed in numerous ways, but most obviously in the myth of inevitable extinction.
...the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seized his opportunity. He told a commercial radio audience in Melbourne that the revelation that Lowitja O'Donoghue was not stolen was a "highly significant" fact, one, he implied, which vindicated his government's famous denial of the existence of the stolen generations and his even more famous refusal to apologize... It was the magazine Quadrant, however, under the editorship of Padraic McGuinness, that marshalled the troops and galvanised the disparate voices of opposition to Bringing them home into what amounted to a serious and effective political campaign.
[G]enocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide - such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.
Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
Since the publication of Wolfe's (2006: 388) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, the idea that settler colonialism is 'a structure not an event' has taken root and is now foundational to scholarship in settler-colonial studies.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
The coordinator of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical (also the author of this article) held the responsibility of presenting the main findings of the report to the public. For the first time in the history of the country, an official body stated that, according to its judgment, genocide had been perpetrated at certain times in certain places during the civil war.
The colonial genocide perpetrated against Aborigines produced within the colonial society a deep and enduring ambiguity about the fate of the original Aborigines and the role of colonists in generating that fate. This ambiguity consisted of a deep-seated moral unease about what had occurred and a culture of denial that was expressed in numerous ways, but most obviously in the myth of inevitable extinction.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link)It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide", the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal", the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
In defining genocide, Madley relies on the criteria of the United Nations Genocide Convention, which has served as the basis for the genocide trials of defendants from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and has been employed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The U.S. government officially recognizes 574 Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 states and Alaska.
The testimonies on which Raphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
"From Lemarchand's volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor's version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been "hidden" politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power". (p2) ...the U.S. government, for most of its existence, stated openly and frequently that its policy was to destroy Native American ways of life through forced integration, forced removal, and death. An 1881 report of the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs on the "Indian question" is indicative of the decades- long policy: "There is no one who has been a close observer of Indian history and the effect of contact of Indians with civilization who is not well satisfied that one of two things must eventually take place, to wit, either civilization or extermination of the Indian. Savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the two must die." (p3) "As such it is important for the peoples of the United States and Canada to recognize their shared legacies of genocide, which have too often been hidden, ignored, forgotten, or outright denied." (p3) "After all, much of North America was swindled from Indigenous peoples through the mythical but still powerful Doctrine of Discovery, the perceived right of conquest, and deceitful treaties. Restitution for colonial genocide would thus entail returning stolen territories". (p9) "Thankfully a new generation of genocide scholarship is moving beyond these timeworn and irreconcilable divisions." (p11)"Variations of the Modoc ordeal occurred elsewhere during the conquest and colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. Indigenous civilizations repeatedly resisted invaders seeking to physically annihilate them in whole or in part. Many of these catastrophes are known as wars. Yet by carefully examining the intentions and actions of colonizers and their advocates it is possible to reinterpret some of these cataclysms as both genocides and wars of resistance. The Modoc case is one of them" (p120). "Memory, remembering, forgetting, and denial are inseparable and critical junctures in the study and examination of genocide. Absence or suppression of memories is not merely a lack of acknowledgment of individual or collective experiences but can also be considered denial of a genocidal crime (p150). Erasure of historical memory and modification of historical narrative influence the perception of genocide. If it is possible to avoid conceptually blocking colonial genocides for a moment, we can consider denial in a colonial context. Perpetrators initiate and perpetuate denial" (p160).
The U.S. government officially recognizes 574 Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 states and Alaska.
Indigenous populations are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created and current borders defined. They generally maintain cultural and social identities, and social, economic, cultural and political institutions, separate from the mainstream or dominant society or culture.
Much colonization proceeded without genocidal conflict ... But the effects of colonial settlement were quite variable, dependent on a variety of factors, such as the number of settlers, the forms of the colonizing economy and competition for productive resources, policies of the colonizing power, and attitudes to intermarriage or concubinage ... Some of the annihilations of indigenous peoples arose not so much by deliberate act, but in the course of what may be described as a genocidal process: massacres, appropriation of land, introduction of diseases, and arduous conditions of labor.
Imperialist genocide against indigenous peoples was thus of two kinds. It was practiced in order to clear lands that invading settlers wished to occupy. It was also practiced as part of a strategy to seize and coerce labor that the settlers could not or would not obtain by less drastic means.
The testimonies on which Raphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
It's a grand drama in which the glimmers of enlightenment barely survive the savagery, what Yeats called "the blood-dimmed tide", the brutal establishment of slavery, the race wars with the original inhabitants that Bailyn is not afraid to call "genocidal", the full, horrifying details of which have virtually been erased.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
In defining genocide, Madley relies on the criteria of the United Nations Genocide Convention, which has served as the basis for the genocide trials of defendants from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and has been employed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
[G]enocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide - such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.
Historical distortion and denial are endemic to settler colonies. In order for the settler colony to establish a collective usable past, legitimating stories must be created and persistently affirmed as a means of naturalizing a new historical narrative. A national mythology displaces the indigenous past...Becoming the indigene required not only cleansing of the land, either through killing or removing, but sanitizing the historical record as well.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link)...the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seized his opportunity. He told a commercial radio audience in Melbourne that the revelation that Lowitja O'Donoghue was not stolen was a "highly significant" fact, one, he implied, which vindicated his government's famous denial of the existence of the stolen generations and his even more famous refusal to apologize... It was the magazine Quadrant, however, under the editorship of Padraic McGuinness, that marshalled the troops and galvanised the disparate voices of opposition to Bringing them home into what amounted to a serious and effective political campaign.
The testimonies on which Raphael Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the 'radical accumulation' of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called 'pacification', robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians' entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits.
Since the publication of Wolfe's (2006: 388) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, the idea that settler colonialism is 'a structure not an event' has taken root and is now foundational to scholarship in settler-colonial studies.
Nation state building, competing sovereign claims, the capitalist drive for land and resources fuelled by international market forces and prevalent racial ideologies can be identified as major structural factors that leads to the dispossession of indigenous lands and in many cases to the physical destruction of indigenous peoples. In this context settler colonial studies continues to work towards a theory of settler colonialism.
[G]enocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide - such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.
Genocide scholars Susan Chavez Cameron and Loan T. Phan see American Indians as having gone through the ten stages of genocide identified by Stanton. Failure to acknowledge genocide has harmful social and psychological impacts on the victims of genocide, and it leaves the perpetrators in positions of power vis-a-vis others in their societies. As Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala points out, denial or negation relating to mass crimes consists of denying scientifically proven historical facts by deliberately concealing them and spreading false and misleading information. She goes on to say that the consequences of negationism are of ethical, legal, social, and political character.
The coordinator of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical (also the author of this article) held the responsibility of presenting the main findings of the report to the public. For the first time in the history of the country, an official body stated that, according to its judgment, genocide had been perpetrated at certain times in certain places during the civil war.
Genocide scholars Susan Chavez Cameron and Loan T. Phan see American Indians as having gone through the ten stages of genocide identified by Stanton. Failure to acknowledge genocide has harmful social and psychological impacts on the victims of genocide, and it leaves the perpetrators in positions of power vis-a-vis others in their societies. As Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala points out, denial or negation relating to mass crimes consists of denying scientifically proven historical facts by deliberately concealing them and spreading false and misleading information. She goes on to say that the consequences of negationism are of ethical, legal, social, and political character.