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Fall Of The Roman Empire

Fall of the Roman Empire

:For the book see The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For the movie see The Fall of the Roman Empire Decline of the Roman Empire is a historical term of periodization which describes the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The term was first used and coined by Edward Gibbon in the 18th century in his famous book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but he was not the first, and not the last, to speculate on why and when the Empire collapsed. It remains one of the greatest historical questions, and has a tradition rich in scholarly interest. In 1984, German Professor Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories on why Rome fell. The traditional date of the Fall of the Roman Empire is September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed. However, many historians question this date, and use other benchmarks to describe the "Fall". Why the Empire fell seems to be relevant to every new generation, and a seemingly endless supply of theories are discussed on why (or if at all) it happened.

Mainstream theories

Influential theories and theorists include:
- Edward Gibbon placed the blame on a loss of civic virtue among the Roman citizens. They gradually outsourced their duties to defend the Empire to barbarian mercenaries who eventually turned on them. Gibbon considered that Christianity had contributed to this, making the populace less interested in the worldly here and now and more willing to wait for the rewards of heaven.
- Henri Pirenne published the "Pirenne Thesis" in the 1920s which remains influential to this day. It holds that the Empire continued, in some form, up until the time of the Arab conquests in the 7th century, which disrupted Mediterranean trade routes, leading to a decline in the European economy.
- Historians of Late Antiquity, a field pioneered by Peter Brown, have turned away from the idea that the Roman Empire "fell". They see a "transformation" occurring over centuries, with the roots of Medieval culture contained in Roman culture and focus on the continuities between the classical and medieval world. Thus it was a gradual process with no clear break.
- Historians such as Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the Roman Empire itself was a rotten system from its inception, and that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of its institutions. The Romans had no budgetary system. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. Meanwhile the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded.
- The historian Vegetius theorised and has recently been supported by the historian Arther Ferrill that the Roman Empire declined and as a result fell, due to a combination of increasing contact with barbarians and the subsequent 'barbarization', as well as a surge in decadence and the following lethargy. Hence, resulting in complacency and ill-discipline among the legions, making it primarily a military issue.

Historiography

Historiographically, the primary issue historians have looked at when analyzing any theory is the continued existence of the Eastern Empire (Byzantine Empire), which lasted for about a thousand years after the fall of the West. For example, Gibbon implicates Christianity in the fall of the Western Empire, yet the eastern half of the Empire, which was even more Christian than the west in geographic extent, fervor, penetration and sheer numbers continued on for a thousand years afterwards (although Gibbon did not consider the Eastern Empire to be much of a success). As another example environmental or weather changes impacted the east as much as the west, yet the east did not "fall". Theories will sometimes reflect the eras in which they are developed. Gibbon's criticism of Christianity reflects the values of the Enlightenment; his ideas on the decline in martial vigor could have been interpreted by some as a warning to the growing British Empire. In the 19th century socialist and anti-socialist theorists tended to blame decadence and other political problems. More recently, environmental concerns have become popular, with deforestation and soil erosion proposed as major factors, and epidemics such as malaria also cited. Ramsey McMullen in the 1980s suggested it was due to corruption. Ideas about transformation with no distinct fall owe much to postmodern thought, which rejects periodization concepts (see metanarrative). What is not new are attempts to diagnose Rome's particular problems, with Juvenal in the early 2nd century, at the height of Roman power, criticizing the peoples' obsession with "bread and circuses" and rulers seeking only to gratify these obsessions. One of the primary reasons for the sheer number of theories is the notable lack of surviving evidence from the 4th and 5th centuries. For example there are so few records of an economic nature it is impossible to arrive at even a generalization of how the economies operated. Thus, historians must quickly depart from available evidence and comment based on how things ought to have worked, or based on evidence from previous and later periods, or simply based on inductive reasoning. As in any field where available evidence is sparse, the historians ability to imagine the 4th and 5th centuries will play as important a part in shaping our understanding as the available evidence, and thus be open for endless interpretation.

Notes

- [http://crookedtimber.org/2003/08/25/decline-and-fall Alexander Demandt: 210 Theories], from Crooked Timber weblog entry August 25 2003. Retrieved June 2005.

References

- Alexander Demandt (1984). Der Fall Roms: Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt. ISBN 3406095984
- Edward Gibbon. [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gibbon-fall.html "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West"], from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Brief excerpts of Gibbon's theories. Category:Roman Empire Category:Western culture Category:Late Antiquity

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

::This article is about the book of this name. For the historical event see Decline of the Roman Empire The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a major literary achievement of the Eighteenth Century, was written by the English historian, Edward Gibbon. Volume I was published in 1776, and went through five printings (a remarkable feat for its time). Volume II was printed in 1781, and the final one in 1788. The original volumes were not published together, but as quartos, a common publishing practice. The books cover the period of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius from just before AD 180 to 1453 and beyond, concluding in 1590. They take as their material the behavior and decisions that led to the decay and eventual fall of the Roman Empire in the East and West, offering an explanation on why the Roman Empire fell. Often referred to as "the first modern historian", Gibbon was a precursor for the more advanced methodologies of 19th and 20th century historians regarding his objectivity and accuracy in the use of reference material. His pessimism and detached use of irony was common to the historical genre of that era. Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted the greater part of his life to this one work. Even his Autobiography Memoirs of My Life and Writings is devoted for the most part to his reflections on how the writing of the book consumed his entire life.

Outline of the work

For a comprehensive outline of the work, including chapter titles, excerpts, and a discussion of the division into volumes of the various editions, see Outline of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Gibbon's theory

The book is famous not only because it is extraordinarily well written, but also because Gibbon offers an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell. This is one of the greatest historical questions, and, because of the lack of written records from the time, one of the most difficult to answer. Gibbon was not the first to theorise on this. In fact most of his ideas are directly taken from Roman moralists of the 4th and 5th centuries who wrote about it at the time; nor would he be the last, most famously Henri Pirenne's Pirenne Thesis of the early 20th century. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue among its citizens. They had become lazy and soft, outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries, who then became so numerous and ingrained that they were then able to easily take over the Empire. Romans, he believed, had become effeminate, unwilling to live the military lifestyle. In addition Gibbon attacked Christianity. Christianity, he says, created a belief in another world, that is to say that a better life existed after death. This fostered indifference to this life among the Roman citizens who believed they would live a better life once they died, thus sapping their desire to maintain and sacrifice for the Empire. He also believed its comparative pacifism tended to sap the traditional Roman martial spirit. Finally, like other Enlightenment thinkers of his time, Gibbon held nothing but contempt for the Middle Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Priest ridden, superstitious, "dark" times, it was not until his own age of Reason and rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress forward to better times. These ideas and theories have remained influential with historians to modern times, although re-examinations of the archeological and anthropological record has shed new light on the traditional interpretations (see Late antiquity).

Gibbon's use of citations

Gibbon provides the reader with a glimpse of his thought process with extensive notes along the body of the text, a precursor to the modern use of footnotes. Gibbon's footnotes are famous for their idiosyncrasies. They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both Ancient Rome and Great Britain during the Eighteenth Century. However, these whimsical asides also serve as a literary device for Gibbon. This technique enabled Gibbon to play a dual role as a novelist and a historian with a voice of authority, comparing Ancient Rome to modern times. Gibbon's work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history. It is impartial in terms of the Enlightenment concept of reason, and viewed in this perspective, it is as much a historical culture of the eighteenth century as it is of Ancient Rome. Gibbon's citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work on Ancient Rome. What made Gibbon unique was his use of primary sources, original documents dating back to Ancient Rome. The enormous archive of detail within his asides and his obsession with noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern day historical footnoting methodology. As a writer, Gibbon could only reconstruct his version of the past through his own translations in order to present an accurate portrayal of events.

The controversial chapters in Volume I

When Volume I was first published, it was introduced in quartos. The first two were well received and widely praised. The last quarto in Volume I, especially Chapters IV and VI, were highly controversial, and Gibbon was declared "paganist". Gibbon debunked the myth of Christian martyrdom by deconstructing official Church history that had been perpetuated for centuries. Because the Roman Church had a virtual monopoly on its own history, its own Latin interpretations were considered sacrosanct, and as a result the Church's writings had rarely been questioned before. For Gibbon, however, they were secondary sources: The same Latin documents translated by someone else. Gibbon eschewed these, and never referred to them in his own history. This is why Gibbon is referred to as the "first modern historian", and thus, his interpretations were deemed pagan. According to Gibbon, Romans were far more tolerant of Christians than Christians were of one another, especially once Christianity gained the upper hand. Christians inflicted far greater casualties on Christians than were ever inflicted by the Roman Empire. Gibbon extrapolated that the number of Christians executed by other Christian factions far exceeded all the Christian martyrs who died during the three centuries of Christianity under Roman rule. This was in stark contrast to Orthodox Church history, which insisted that Christianity won the hearts and minds of people largely because of the inspirational example set by its martyrs. Gibbon proved that the early Church's custom of bestowing the title of martyr on all confessors of faith grossly inflated the actual numbers. Gibbon compares how insubstantial that number was, by comparing it to more modern terms. He compared the reigns of Diocletian, one of the most unsuccessful reigns during the Roman Empire, to the reign of Charles V in the 16th century and the electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, making the argument that both were remarkably similar. Both emperors were plagued by continuous war and compelled to excessive taxation; both were forced to resign as Emperors at a relatively young age; and both had no choice but to lead a quiet life upon their demise. Gibbon's critics were scathing in their attack on this particular line of argument. Numerous tracts were published criticising his work, and Gibbon was forced to defend his work in reply. He left London to finish the following volumes in Lausanne, where he could work in solitude.

Gibbon's legacy

Gibbon’s methodology was so accurate that, to this day, little can be found to controvert his use of primary sources for evidence. While modern historical methodology has changed dramatically, his skill in translation of his sources is considered impeccable. Contemporary historians still rely on Gibbon as a reliable secondary source to substantiate references and for citations. His literary tone in the History is out of date to modern readers, and is always described as skeptical and pessimistic. However, it mirrors both the man and more importantly, the topic of his great work: the gradual decay of a mighty empire. Since its first publication, the title has been shortened from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

References

Note: Gibbon continued to revise and change his work even after publication; the complexities of the problem are addressed in the foreword of the Womersley edition.
- In-print complete editions
- J.B. Bury, editor, 7 volumes (London:Methuen, 1909-1914), currently reprinted by AMS Press. Until the Womersley edition, this was the essential version, but now almost one hundred years old, the historical analysis commentary is not the latest. ISBN 0809592355 (v.1) ISBN 0809592363 (v.2) ISBN 0809592371 (v.3) ISBN 080959238X (v.4) ISBN 0809592398 (v.5) ISBN 0809592401 (v.6) ISBN 080959241X (v.7)
- D. Womersley, editor, 3 volumes (London:Penguin Books, 1994). The current essential version, it is the most faithful to Gibbon's original words; alas, the ancient Greek quotations are not as good as in Bury, a minor quibble for an otherwise excellent work with complete footnotes, and bibliographical information for Gibbons cryptic footnote notations, plus an index, and a copy of Vindication (1799) which Gibbon wrote in response to his description of the rise of Christianity. ISBN 0713991240
- In-print abridgements
- D. Womersley, editor, 1 volume (London:Penguin Books, 2000). Includes in complete entirety, including all footnotes, eleven of the original seventy-one chapters. ISBN 0140437649
- Hans-Friedrich Mueller, editor, 1 volume (Random House, 2003). Includes excerpts from all seventy-one chapters, it eliminates footnotes, geographic surveys, details of battle formations, long narratives of military campaigns, ethnographies and genealogies, but keeps the narrative start to finish. Based on the Rev. H.H. Milman edition of 1845 (See also Gutenburg etext edition). ISBN 0375758119
- Bibliography
- Cosgrove, Peter. Impartial Stranger: History and Intertextuality in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." 1999. Newark: Associated University Presses. ISBN 087413658X
- Gay, Peter. Style in History (1974). New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465083048
- Pocock, J.G.A. Barbarism and Religion (1999). New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521633451 (v.1) ISBN 0521640024 (v.2)

External links

- [http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/home.html The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire] from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Formatted in to chapters for easy web reading.
- [http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=375 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire] author record at Project Gutenberg. Based on the Rev. H.H. Milman edition of 1845.
- Category:Ancient Rome Category:Ancient Rome Decline ko:로마 제국 쇠망사 ja:ローマ帝国衰亡史

Historiography

Historiography is the study of the way history is and has been written. In a broad sense, history refers to the methodology and practices of writing history. In a more specific sense, it can refer to writing about rather than of history. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this latter conception can relate to the former in that the analysis usually focuses on the narrative, interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. The term can also describe a body of historical writing. For example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "medieval history written during the 1960s".

Defining historiography

Conal Furay and Michael J. Salevouris define "historiography" as "the study of the way history has been and is written--the history of historical writing... When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians." (The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide, 1988, p. 223, ISBN 0882959824) Although questions of method have concerned historians since Thucydides, many trace the modern study of historiography to E. H. Carr's 1961 work What is History? (ISBN 0333977017). Carr challenged to the traditional belief that the study of the methods of historical research and writing were unimportant. His work remains in print to this day, and is common to many postgraduate programs of study in both the United States and in Great Britain. Historiography is often political in nature. For example, much 1960s historiography focused on the exclusion of the roles of women, minorities, and labor from written histories of the USA. According to these historiographers, historians in the 1930s and 1940s had a bias towards well-connected white males. Many historians from that point onward devoted themselves to what they saw as more accurate representations of the past, casting a light on those who had been previously disregarded as non-noteworthy. The study of historiography demands a critical approach that goes beyond the mere examination of historical fact. Historiographical studies consider the source, often by researching the author, his or her position in society, and the type of history being written at the time.

Basic issues studied in historiography

Some of the common questions of historiography are:
- Who wrote the source (primary or secondary)?
- For primary sources, we look at the person in his or her society, for secondary sources, we consider the theoretical orientation of the approach for example, Marxist or Annales School, ("total history"), political history, etc.
- What is the authenticity, authority, bias/interest, and intelligibility of the source?
- What was the view of history when the source was written?
- Was history supposed to provide moral lessons?
- What or who was the intended audience?
- What sources were privileged or ignored in the narrative?
- By what method was the evidence compiled?
- In what historical context was the work of history itself written? Issues engaged in so-called critical historiography includes topics such as:
- What constitutes an historical "event"?
- In what modes does a historian write and produce statements of "truth" and "fact"?
- How does the medium (novel, textbook, film, theatre, comic) through which historical information is conveyed influence its meaning?
- What inherent epistemological problems does archive-based history contain?
- How does the historian establish their own objectivity or come to terms with their own subjectivity?
- What is the relation of historical theory to historical practice?
- What is the "goal" of history?
- What is history?

Foundation of Important historical Journals (Selection)

- 1859 Historische Zeitschrift (Germany)
- 1876 Revue Historique (France)
- 1895 American Historical Review (USA)
- 1914 Mississippi Valley Historical Review/Journal of American History (Beginning 1964) (USA)
- 1916 The Journal of Negro History
- 1929 Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations
- 1952 Past & present: a journal of historical studies (Great Britain)
- 1953 Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Germany)
- 1956 Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria (Nigeria)
- 1960 Journal of African History (Cambridge)
- 1960 Technology and culture : the international quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology (USA)
- 1975 Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft (Germany)
- 1982 Subaltern Studies (Oxford University Press)
- 1986 [http://www.stiftung-sozialgeschichte.de/ 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20.und 21. Jahrhunderts], new title since 2003: Sozial.Geschichte. Zeitschrift für historische Analyse des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. (Germany)
- 1990 [http://www.univie.ac.at/Geschichte/LHOMME/ L’Homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft] (Austria) +
- 1993 [http://www.historische-anthropologie.uni-goettingen.de/ Historische Anthropologie]

Styles of Historiography

- Annales School
- Big History
- Deconstruction
- Diplomatic history
- Feminist History
- Gender History
- Historiophoty
- Historiosophy
- History from below
- History of ideas
- Marxist analysis
- Metahistory
- Microhistory
- Numismatics
- Oral history
- Paleography
- Political history
- Postmodernism
- Prosopography
- Psychohistory
- Revisionism
- Social history
- Universal History
- World History

Relevant Literature

Philosophy of history:
- Frank Ankersmit (ed), A New Philosophy of History, 1995, ISBN 0226021009
- E. H. Carr, What is History? 1961, ISBN 039470391X
- R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1936, ISBN 0192853066
- Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History, 1969, ISBN 0631229809
- Richard J. Evans In Defence of History, 1997, ISBN 3579108642
- Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, 1991, ISBN 0415304431
- Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, 1970, ISBN 0333109414
- John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 2002, ISBN 0582772540
- W.H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History, 1951.
- Hayden White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 1987, ISBN 0801841151
- Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, 2005, ISBN 1859845134 Broad histories of historical writing:
- Michael Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0415285577
- Michael Bentley, Modern Historiography: An Introduction, 1999 ISBN 0415202671
- Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, 1994, ISBN 0226072789
- Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Polity Press, Oxford, 1992
- Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historiographical Introduction, 2002, ISBN 0130448249
- Susan Kinnell, Historiography: An Annotated Bibliography of Journal Article, Books and Dissertations, 1987, ISBN 0874361680
- Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundation of Modern Historiography, 1990, ISBN 0520078705 Regional or thematic:
- John Ernest. Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004
- Marc Ferro, Cinema and History, Wayne State University Press, 1988
- Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, Harvard UP 1998
- Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds its Past: Placing Women in History, New York: Oxford University Press 1979
- Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession 1988, ISBN 0521343283
- Roland Oliver, In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History, University of Wisconsin Press 1997
- Christopher Saunders, The making of the South African past : major historians on race and class, Totowa, N.J. : Barnes & Noble, 1988
- Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, Harvard UP 2000 Teaching History
- James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Touchstone Books 1996 Journals
- [http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/index.html Cromohs - cyber review of modern historiography]
- History and Theory
- [http://www.cisi.unito.it/stor/home.htm History of Historiography]

External links

- [http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/Bibliographies/feminist-historiography Feminist historiography 1968-1993 a bibliography]
- [http://www.galilean-library.org/int18.html Philosophy of History] introduced at The Galilean Library
- [http://www.galilean-library.org/tucker.html Scientific Historiography], explained in an interview with Aviezer Tucker at the Galilean Library
- [http://www.africawithin.com/schomburg/negro_digs.htm The Negro Digs Up His Past (1925)] by Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
- [http://concepts.essential-facts.com/Historiography_and_Historical_methods.html W Notes and Historiography Bibliography]
- [http://www.history-journals.de/journals/hjg-subject-his.html The History Journals Guide]
- Category:Historiosophy

Periodization

Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide historical time into discrete named blocks.

Introduction

Periodization is a complex problem in history. History is in fact continuous, and so all systems of periodization are to some extent arbitrary. Almost every dynamic age is an "age of transition" as the cliché has it. It is nevertheless necessary to divide up history in order to make sense of the past and to articulate changes over time. Furthermore different nations and cultures experience different histories, and so will require different models of periodization. Periodizing labels are being challenged and redefined all the time. Thus an historian may claim that there was no such thing as the Renaissance, while others will defend the concept. The reasons for this are complex. Periodizing blocks will inevitably overlap, or even seemingly contradict one another. Furthermore, certain periodizing concepts only apply under specific conditions. Some have a cultural usage (but 'the Romantic period' seems to exclude Ingres). Others refer to historical events ('the Inter-War years: 1918–1939'), yet others are defined by decimal numbering systems ('the 1960s', 'the 17th Century'). Others are named from influential or talismanic individuals ('the Victorian Era', 'the Edwardian Era', 'the Napoleonic Era').

Usage

Some of these usages will also be geographically specific. This is especially true of periodizing labels derived from individuals or ruling elites, such as the Jacksonian Era in America, the Meiji Era in Japan, or the Merovingian Period in France. Cultural terms may also have a limited reach. Thus the concept of the 'Romantic period' may be meaningless outside of Europe and European-influenced cultures. Likewise, 'the 1960s', though technically applicable to anywhere in the world according to Common Era numbering, has a certain set of specific cultural connotations in certain countries. For this reason it may be possible to say such things as 'The 1960s never occurred in Spain.' This would mean that the sexual revolution, counterculture, youth rebellion and so on never developed during that decade in Spain's conservative Roman Catholic culture and under Francisco Franco's fascist regime. Likewise it is possible to claim, as the historian Arthur Marwick has, that 'the 1960s' began in the late 1950s and ended in the early 1970s. His reason for saying this is that the cultural and economic conditions that define the meaning of the period covers more than the accidental fact of a 10 year block beginning with the number 6. This extended usage is termed the 'long 1960s'. This usage derives from other historians who have adopted labels such as the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (1789–1914) to reconcile arbitrary decimal chronology with meaningful cultural and social phases. Similarly an Eighteenth Century may run 1714–1789. Eric Hobsbawm has also argued for what he calls the 'Short Twentieth Century', encompassing the period from the First World War through to the end of the Cold War. Similar problems attend other labels. Is it possible to use the term 'Victorian' outside of Britain? It sometimes is used when it is thought that its connotations usefully describe the politics, culture and economic conditions characteristic of the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless periodizing terms often have negative or positive connotations which may affect their usage. This would include 'Victorian', which is often used negatively to suggest sexual repression, class conflict, heavy industry and so on. Other labels such as 'Renaissance' have strongly positive characteristics. As a result, these terms will sometimes be extended in meaning. Thus the 'English Renaissance' is virtually identical in meaning to the 'Elizabethan Period'. However the Carolingian Renaissance is said to have occurred during the reign of the Frankish king Charlemagne. There is a space of approximately seven hundred years between these two renaissances. Other examples include the 'American Renaissance' of the 1820s-60s, referring mainly to literature, and the 'Harlem Renaissance' of the 1920s, referring mainly to literature but also to music. Because of these various positive and negative connotations, some periods are luckier than others regarding their names, although this can lead to problems such as the ones outlined above. The conception of a rebirth of Classical Latin learning is first credited to an Italian poet Petrarch, the father of the Renaissance, a term that was not coined until the 19th century, but the conception of a rebirth has been in common use since Petrarch's time. The dominant usage of the word Renaissance refers to the cultural changes that occurred in Italy, and which culminated in the High Renaissance at around 1500. This concept applies dominantly to the visual arts, referring to the work of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Secondarily it is applied to other arts, but it is disputed whether it is useful to describe a phase in economic, social and political history. Most professional historians (defined as paying members of organizations devoted to the propagation of history in higher education, like the American Historical Association) now refer to the historical period commonly known as the Renaissance as 'the Early Modern Period'. There has been no substantive change in the courses taught or books published to correspond to the change in period nomenclature, but this in part reflects differences between social history and cultural history. The timeframe is also slightly different, in that 'Renaissance' tends to refer to events over a much longer and generally earlier period than 'Early Modern'.
Notable periods
The term Middle Ages also derives from Petrarch. He was comparing his own period to the Ancient or Classical world, seeing his time as a time of rebirth after a dark intermediate period, the Middle Ages. The idea that the Middle Ages was a 'middle' phase between two other large scale periodizing concepts, Ancient and Modern, still persists. It can be sub-divided into the Early, High and Late Middle Ages. The term Dark Ages is no longer in common use among modern scholars because of the difficulty of using it neutrally, though some writers have attempted to retain it and divest it of its negative connotations. The term 'Middle Ages' and especially the adjective medieval can also have a negative ring in colloquial use ("the barbaric treatment of prisoners in such-and-such a prison is almost medieval") but this does not carry over into academic terminology. However other terms, such as Gothic architecture, used to refer to a style typical of the High Middle Ages have largely lost the negative connotations they initially had, acquiring new meanings over time (see Gothic architecture and Goth). The Gothic and the Baroque were both named during subsequent stylistic periods when the preceding style was unpopular. The word 'Gothic' was applied as a pejorative term to all things Northern European and, hence, barbarian, probably first in the generation of Francois Rabelais. The word 'baroque' (probably) was used first in late 18th century French about the irregular natural pearl shape and later about an architectural style perceived to be 'irregular' in comparison to the highly regular Neoclassical architecture of that time. Subsequently these terms have become purely descriptive, and have largely lost negative connotations. However the term 'Baroque' as applied to art (for example Rubens) refers to a much earlier historical period than when applied to music (Händel, Bach). This reflects the difference between stylistic histories internal to an art form and the external chronological history beyond it. In many cases people living through a period are unable to identify themselves as belonging to the period that historians may later assign to them. This is partly because they are unable to predict the future, and so will not be able to tell whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a period. Another reason may be that their own sense of historical development may be determined by religions or ideologies that differ from those used by later historians. It is important to recognise the difference between self-defined historical periods, and those which are later defined by historians. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a general belief that culture, politics and history were entering a new era - that the new century would also be a new era in human experience. This belief was repeated at the beginning of the 21st century, though in a very different way. Other cultural and historical phases have only been described many years, or even centuries, later.
Origins of Periodization
The origins of periodization is very old and first became part of the Western tradition in the myths of Ancient Greece and The Bible. Virgil spoke of a distant Golden Age and recurrent cycles of history. The Bible outlines a narrative of history from Creation to the End of time. One Biblical periodization scheme commonly used in the Middle Ages was Saint Paul's theological division of history in to three ages: the first before the age of Moses (under nature); the second under Mosaic law (under law); the third in the age of Christ (under grace). But perhaps the most widely discussed periodization scheme of the Middle Ages was the Six Ages of the World, where every age was a thousand years counting from Adam to the present, with the present time (in the Middle Ages) being the sixth and final stage.
Periodization of Origins
It's easy to confuse the Origins of Periodization with the Periodization of Origins. The Periodization of Origins is an attempt to classify time periods in the distant past for which there is no direct record. As stated in the introduction above, any sort of periodization is subject to qualifications and contentions which should not be taken lightly. Periodization of Origins has its own challenges apart from, say, a periodization which relies on text, which are subtle and philosophically complex. One tactic for Periodization of the distant past, as in Anthropology, is to rely on events, such as the invention of some tool or the origins of language, which are known to exist, but about which little is known in detail.
See also

- Cultural movement
- Exponential timeline
- List of time periods
References

- Lawrence Besserman, ed., The Challenge of Periodization : Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, 1996, ISBN 0815321031. See Chapter 1 for an overview of the postmodernism position on Periodization. Category:History by period

Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737 (O.S.) (May 8, 1737 (N.S.)) - January 16, 1794) was arguably the most influential historian since the time of Tacitus. His magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, is a groundbreaking work whose influence endures to this day.

Life

Gibbon was born in Putney, then a town by the river Thames, near London, England. His grandfather had made and lost the family fortune in the South Sea Bubble. Gibbon was the only child, and he described himself as "a weakly child" in his memoirs. His mother died when he was 10 years old, after which he attended Kingston Grammar School, staying at the boarding house of his favorite "Aunt Kitty", followed by Westminster School at the age of 11. At the age of 14, he was sent by his father to Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, where he enrolled as a gentleman-commoner. Gibbon was ill-suited to the college atmosphere and later wrote of his 14 months there as "the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." The most memorable event of his time at Oxford was his conversion to Roman Catholicism on June 8, 1753. Religious controversies raged on the Oxford campus, and while their intellectual standards were sometimes described as bleak, obsolete, and barren, the 16 year-old Gibbon was not immune to this controversial religious trend and he later remarked, with his flair for sarcastic understatement, "from my childhood, I had been fond of religious disputation". Within weeks of his conversion, the elder Gibbon removed the younger from Oxford, and sent him to M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist pastor and private tutor in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he remained for five years, a time which would have a profound impact upon Gibbon's later character and life. He quickly reconverted back to Protestantism, but more importantly, his time in Lausanne enriched Gibbon's immense aptitude for scholarship and erudition. In addition, he met the one romance in his life: the pastor's daughter, a young woman named Suzanne Curchod, who would later be the wife of Jacques Necker, the French finance minister, and mother of Mme de Staël. Once again, his father intruded in his son's life by vetoing the marriage proposal and demanding the young Gibbon's immediate return to England. Gibbon would write: "I sighed like a lover, I obeyed like a son." Upon his return to England, Gibbon published his first book, Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature in 1758. From 1759 to 1763, Gibbon spent four years in service with the Hampshire militia. Later that year, he embarked on a Grand Tour to Europe, which included a visit to Rome. It was here, in 1764, that Gibbon first conceived the idea of writing about the history of the Roman Empire:

It was on the fifteenth of October, in the gloom of evening, as I sat musing on the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were chanting their litanies in the temple of Jupiter, that I conceived the first thought of my history. (Memoirs of My Life, ed. Georges A. Bonnard [New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1966], p. 304)

By 1772, his father died, and after tending to the estate, which was by no means in good condition, there was nevertheless enough for Gibbon to settle comfortably in London. He began writing his history in 1773 and the first quarto of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in 1776. Gibbon suffered from a malady now believed to be hydrocele testis, according to the Merck Manual. This condition caused his testicles to swell with fluid to extraordinary proportions. Gibbon underwent numerous procedures to have the fluid removed during his later years, but as his condition worsened, it became both more painful and an embarrassment. His doctor, who actually measured the contents, once drew five quarts of liquid from the protuberance. This chronic inflammation caused Gibbon great physical discomfort in a time when men wore close-fitting breeches. He refers to this indirectly in his Memoirs, with comments: "I can recall only fourteen truly happy days in my life," and "I am never so content when writing in solitude." Personal hygiene during the Eighteenth Century was optional at best; for Gibbon, it was marginal by any standard. The social humiliation Gibbon endured as a result of his hygiene and his protuberance is chronicled. In an age when a man's stature was measured not merely by the "cut of his breeches," but by his riding, Gibbon was a lonely figure. In one incident, he bent down on one knee to propose to a lady of society. She demurred, "Sir, please, stand up." Gibbon replied: "Madam, I cannot."

Assessment

Gibbon's literary art, the sustained excellence of his style, his piquant epigrams and his brilliant irony, would perhaps not secure for his work the immortality which it seems likely to enjoy, if it were not also marked by an accuracy of judgment which has rarely been equalled. Churchill memorably noted, I set out upon Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated by both the story and the style. I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end. Churchill later went on to mimic Gibbon's prose style, although at a marginally less elevated level. Unusually for the 18th century, Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible. I have always endeavoured, he says, to draw from the fountainhead; my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend. In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians. Gibbon's verdict on the history of the Middle Ages is contained in the famous sentence, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion. It is important to understand clearly the criterion that he applied, because it is frequently misunderstood. He was a son of the 18th century, had studied Locke and Montesquieu with sympathy, and few seem to have appreciated more keenly than he did, the human advantages of political liberty and the freedom of an Englishman. In short, the criterion by which Gibbon judged civilization and progress was the measure in which the happiness of men is secured, and of that happiness, he considered political freedom to be an essential precondition. Decline and Fall has had its detractors too, almost invariably in the form of religious commentators and religious historians who detested his querying not only of official church history, but also of the saints and scholars of the church, their motives and their accuracy. In particular, the Fifteenth Chapter, which documents the reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, was particularly vilified and resulted in the banning of the book in various countries until quite recently, with Ireland, for example, lifting the ban on sale in the early 1970's. Despite this official opposition, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains surprisingly popular and arguably one of the finest histories in the English language.

Influence on other writers

The subject of Gibbon's writing as well as his ideas and style have influenced other writers. Besides his influence on Churchill, which has been discussed earlier in this article, Gibbon was also a model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of The Foundation Trilogy. The title of the Rise and Fall has been used by other writers:
- Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959), William Shirer
- The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler (1961), William Shirer
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1989), Paul Kennedy
- The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism Paul Kennedy
- The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery Paul Kennedy

Works by Gibbon

- Essai sur l’étude de la littérature (1761).
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Volume I, 1776; Volumes II and III, 1781; Volumes IV, V, and VI, 1788).
- A vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (1779).
- Mémoire justificatif pour servir de réponse à l’exposé, &c de la cour de France (1779).
- Memoirs of My Life (1796, at the beginning of the posthumous Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq. published two years after the author's death by his friend and literary executor John Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield); cf. Georges A. Bonnard's critical edition (1966).

External links

- [http://50.1911encyclopedia.org/G/GI/GIBBON_EDWARD.htm Extensive Biography in 1911 Encyclopedia]
- [http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~zimm/gibho1.html Edward Gibbon, Historian of the Roman Empire - Part 1 : The Man and his Book]
- [http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~zimm/gibho2.html Edward Gibbon, Historian of the Roman Empire - Part 2 : A closer look at The Decline and Fall]
- [http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran28.index.html Tom Moran's Edward Gibbon page]
-

18th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar. European history scholars will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th century as 1715-1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution.

Events

- 1701-14: War of the Spanish Succession
- 1703: Saint Petersburg founded by Peter the Great. Russian capital until 1918.
- 1707: Act of Union passed merging the Scottish and the English Parliaments, thus establishing The Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1707: After Aurangzeb's death, the Mughal Empire enters a long decline.
- 1715: Louis XIV dies
- 1718: City of New Orleans founded by the French in North America
- 1720: The South Sea Bubble
- 1721: Robert Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister of Great Britain (de facto).
- 1721: Treaty of Nystad signed, ending the Great Northern War.
- 1722: Afghans conquer Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty.
- 1722: Kangxi Emperor of China dies.
- 1733-38: War of the Polish Succession
- 1735-99: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversees a huge expansion in territory.
- 1736: Nadir Shah assumes title of Shah of Persia and founds the Afsharid dynasty. Rules until his death in 1747.
- 1739: Nadir Shah defeats the Mughals and sacks Delhi.
- 1740: Frederick the Great crowned King of Prussia.
- 1740-48: War of the Austrian Succession
- 1741: Russians begin settling the Aleutian Islands.
- 1747: Ahmad Shah founds the Durrani Empire in modern day Afghanistan.
- 1750: peak of the Little Ice Age
- 1755: The Lisbon earthquake
- 1756-63: Seven Years' War fought among European powers in various theaters around the world.
- 1757: Battle of Plassey signals the beginning of British rule in India.
- 1760: George III becomes King of Britain.
- 1762-96: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.
- 1763-66: Pontiac's Rebellion in North America
- 1766-99: Anglo-Mysore Wars
- 1767: Burmese conquer the Ayutthaya kingdom.
- 1768: Gurkhas conquer Nepal.
- 1768-1774: Russo-Turkish War
- 1769: Spanish missionaries establish the first of 21 missions in California.
- 1772-95: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase Poland from the map for 123 years.
- 1775-82: First Anglo-Maratha War
- 1775-83: American Revolution
- 1779-1879: Cape Frontier Wars between British and Boer settlers and the Xhosas in South Africa
- 1785-95: Northwest Indian War between the United States and Native Americans
- 1787: Freed slaves from London found Freetown in present-day Sierra Leone.
- 1788: First European settlement established in Australia at Sydney.
- 1789: George Washington elected President of the United States. Serves until 1797.
- 1789-99: The French Revolution
- 1791-1804: The Haitian Revolution
- 1792-1815: The Great French War starts as the French Revolutionary Wars which lead into the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1792: New York Stock & Exchange Board founded.
- 1793: Upper Canada bans slavery.
- 1795: Pinckney's Treaty between the United States and Spain grants the Mississippi Territory to the US.
- 1796: British eject Dutch from Ceylon.
- 1796-1804: White Lotus Rebellion in China.
- 1797: Napoleon's invasion and partition of the Republic of Venice ends over 1,000 years of independence for the Serene Republic.
- 1798: Irish Rebellion against British Rule
- 1798-1800: Quasi-War between the United States and France.
- 1799: Napoleon stages a coup d'état and becomes dictator of France.
- 1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

Significant people

- Ueda Akinari (Japanese writer)
- Queen Anne (British monarch)
- Marie Antoinette (French royalty and symbol of anti-Revolutionary ire)
- Benedict Arnold, considered a traitor by many people on both sides (United States and Britain) of the American Revolutionary War.
- Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)
- Pierre Beaumarchais (French writer)
- Jeremy Bentham (English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (general and first consul of France)
- François Boucher (French painter)
- Edmund Burke (British statesman and philosopher who supported the American Revolution)
- Robert Burns (Scottish poet)
- Catherine the Great (Russian Tsaritsa)
- James Cook (British navigator)
- Denis Diderot (French writer and philosopher)
- Leonhard Euler (mathematician)
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French painter)
- Benjamin Franklin (American revolutionary, inventor, printer, and diplomat)
- Frederick the Great (Prussian monarch)
- Thomas Gainsborough (painter)
- King George III (British monarch)
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (German composer)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer)
- Thomas Gray (British writer)
- George Frideric Handel (German composer)
- Alexander Hamilton (American revolutionary, lawyer, and statesman)
- Joseph Haydn (Austrian composer)
- William Hogarth (painter and engraver)
- David Hume (philosopher)
- Thomas Jefferson (American revolutionary, philosopher, and statesman)
- Samuel Johnson (British writer and literary critic)
- Immanuel Kant (philosopher)
- Wolfgang von Kempelen (Hungarian scientist, pioneer in experimental phonetics)
- John Law (Scottish economist)
- Louis XIV of France (monarch)
- Louis XV of France (monarch)
- Louis XVI of France (monarch)
- James Madison (American revolutionary, writer, and statesman)
- Maria Theresa of Austria (Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia)
- Michikinikwa (Miami tribe chief and war leader)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)
- Thomas Paine (British intellectual and philosopher who advocated for the American Revolution)
- Philip II, Duke of Orléans (Regent of France)
- Alexander Pope (British poet)
- Francis II Rákóczi (prince of Hungary and Transylvania, leader of the Hungarian freedom war)
- Jean-Philippe Rameau (French composer and music theorist)
- Sir Joshua Reynolds (painter)
- Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary leader and dictator)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French writer and philosopher)
- Friedrich Schiller (German writer)
- John Small, Sr (Hambledon cricketer; the first great batsman)
- Adam Smith (Scottish economist and philosopher)
- Laurence Sterne (British writer)
- Edward "Lumpy" Stevens (Surrey cricketer; the first great bowler)
- Jonathan Swift (Anglo-Irish satirist)
- Tecumseh (Revolutionary)
- Voltaire (French writer and philosopher)
- George Washington (American revolutionary general and first president)
- John Wesley (Founder of Methodism, Anglican clergyman, English reformer, scholar, theologian and writer) See Founding Fathers of the United States

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

List of 18th century inventions
- Industrial Revolution begins
- The Encyclopédie by the Encyclopedists
- The English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson
- Economics by Adam Smith
- Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.
- Vitus Bering discovered Alaska.
- James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean and discovered many Pacific Islands.
- Wahhabism by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab

Decades and years

- Category:Centuries Category:Industrial Revolution Category:Romanticism ko:18세기 ja:18世紀 th:คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 18

1984

:For George Orwell's novel, see Nineteen Eighty-Four. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation). 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

- January 1 - Brunei becomes a fully independent state.
- January 1 - AT&T is broken up into 24 independent units.
- January 5 - Richard Stallman starts developing GNU.
- January 7 - Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- January 9 - Clara Peller is featured in the "Where's the Beef?" commercial campaign for Wendy's for the first time.
- January 10 - The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
- January 23 - Hollywood Hulk Hogan defeats The Iron Sheik to win the WWF Championship, thus beginning Hulkamania.
- January 23 - Pop star Michael Jackson's scalp is seriously burned by pyrotechnics during filming of a Pepsi commercial.
- January 24 - The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.

February

- February 1 - Medicare comes into effect in Australia.
- February 2 - Melbourne newspaper The Age publishes phone taps incriminating an unknown judge.
- February 3 - Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the tenth space shuttle mission.
- February 6 - A bomb blast wrecks the Belrose Sydney home of high court judge Richard Gee. High Court Judge, Justice Lionel Murphy is named in Parliament as the judge referred to in the Age tapes as published on February 2.
- February 7 - Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
- February 9 - Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dies.
- February 13 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- February 18 - Vatican and Italian government sign new concordant changing Roman Catholic as the official religion.
- February 26 - United States Marines pull out of Beirut,Lebanon.
- February 29 - Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement.

March

- March 5 - Iran accuses Iraq of the use of chemical weapons - UN condemns the use on March 30.
- March 5 - Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the Sikh holy spot.
- March 6 - Twelve month long strike in British coal industry begins See UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985).
- March 14 - Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and three others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the UVF.
- March 16 - The CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists Islamic Jihad and later dies in captivity.
- March 22 - Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges were later dropped as completely unfounded.
- March 23 - Sarah Tisdall, the young British civil servant who told The Guardian newspaper that cruise missiles were coming to Britain, is sentenced to six months imprisonment.
- March 24 - Wran Government re-elected in NSW for a 4th term.

April

- April 4 - President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
- April 12 - Palestinian gunmen take Israeli bus number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus freeing the hostages (1 hostage, 2 hijackers killed). 2 other hijackers were captured and then killed in secret service interrogations, causing a major scandal and secret service upheaval (Kav 300 affair).
- April 13 - India launches Operation Meghdoot, as most of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir comes under Indian control.
- April 17 - WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot dead by a secluded gunman during a siege outside the Libyan Embassy in London in the event known as the 1984 Libyan Embassy Siege.
- April 19 - Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
- April 25 - End of term for Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Al-Mustain Billah ibni Almarhum Sultan Sir Abu Bakar Riayatuddin Al-Muadzam Shah as the 7th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
- April 26 - Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail, Sultan of Johor becomes the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

May

- May 2 - The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
- May 8 - The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
- May 8 - Denis Lortie kills three government employees in the National Assembly of Quebec building.
- May 11 - A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
- May 14 - The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
- May 19 - Game show contestant Michael Larson takes $100,000 in winnings from the game show Press Your Luck. It is later revealed he won the money by focusing exclusively on two squares of the Press Your Luck "Big Board."
- May 22 - Canadian heiress Helen Branch declared legally dead (she disappeared 1977)
- May 27 - Fluminense wins the Brazilian soccer league, against the Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama.

June

- June 5 - The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
- June 6 - Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikh's holiest shrine, killing an estimated 1000 people.
- June 8 - A deadly F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing nine people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
- June 8 - The film Ghostbusters is released into theaters -- becoming a summer blockbuster hit with the song "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr. becoming a Top 40 hit.
- June 20 - The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE.
- June 22 - The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Sanliurfa.
- June 22 - Inaugural flight of Virgin Atlantic.
- June 27 - France beat Spain 2-0 to win Euro 84.
- June 30 - John Turner becomes Canada's seventeenth prime minister. Hurray!

July-August

- July 9 - Lightning sets fire to York Minster.
- July 10 - British custom officials open a wooden crate of diplomatic post due to an unpleasant smell and find the body of Alhaji Umaru Dikko, former transportation minister of Nigeria
- July 14 - New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
- July 18 - In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprays a McDonald's restaurant with gunfire, killing 21 people before being shot dead.
- July 18 - The National Crime Authority is estabished in Australia.
- July 21 - In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in what is apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.
- July 23 - Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown, after nude photos of her appeared in "Penthouse" magazine.
- July 25 - Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
- July 28 - Opening day of the 1984 Olympics
- August 1 - Australian banks are deregulated.
- August 4 - The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
- August 16 - John De Lorean is acquitted of all eight charges of possessing and distributing cocaine.
- August 21 - Half a million people in Manila demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
- August 21 - The federal budget is first televised in Australia.
- August 30 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

September-October

- September 2 - 7 people are shot dead and 12 are wounded in a bikie shootout between rival gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in the Sydney suburb of Milperra.
- September 4 - The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney wins 211 seats in the House of Commons, forming the largest majority government in Canadian history
- September 5 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
- September 5 - Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
- September 17 - Brian Mulroney becomes Canada's eighteenth prime minister.
- September 26 - United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
- September 4 - The Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends television series was first broadcasted on ITV.
- October 5 - Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger (41-6).
- October 11 - Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
- October 12 - The PIRA attempts to assassinate the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
- October 19 - Polish secret police arrests Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest, because of his support of the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
- October 31 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots soon broke out in New Delhi, and some 2,700 innocent Sikhs were killed.

November

- November 2 - Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
- November 6 - Ronald Reagan defeats Walter F. Mondale in the U.S. presidential election with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% victory in 1972. Reagan carries 49 states and Mondale manages to win only his home state of Minnesota by a mere 3,761 vote margin and the District of Columbia.
- November 19 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
- November 25 - 36 of Britain and Ireland's top pop musicians gathered in a Notting Hill studio to form Band Aid and recorded the song "Do They Know It's Christmas" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
- November 26 - Fmr NSW Corrective Services Minister Rex Jackson appears in court on conspiracy charges for the early release of prisoners.
- November 28 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
- November 30 - The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese from North and East Sri Lanka, and 127 are killed.

December

- December 1 - The first half of the Manila LRT opens from Baclaran to Central Terminal.
- December 2 - Bob Hawke's government is re-elected in Australia with a reduced majority.
- December 3 - Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 2,000 people outright and injures anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
- December 3 - British Telecom privatised.
- December 19 - The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom signs the Sino-British Joint Declaration which concerns the future of Hong Kong.
- December 22 - Four African-American youths, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey, board an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City. They attempt to rob Bernhard Hugo Goetz, who shoots them. The event starts a national debate about urban crime, which was a plague in 1980s America.
- December 22 - In Malta, prime minister Dom Mintoff resigns. Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici succeeds him.
- December 28 - A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985
- December 31 - Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

Unknown dates

- Ethiopian famine begins.
- A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia was signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo in December 1984. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounced its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.

Births

January-April

- January 1 - Keyra Augustina, model
- January 2 - Lauren Bush, model
- January 3 - Maya Ababadjani, actress
- January 3 - Charlotte Marshall, model
- January 4 - Mey Vidal
- January 5 - Tiffany Teen
- January 12 - Chaunte Howard
- January 13 - Eleni Ioannou, Greek martial artist (d. 2004)
- January 15 - Reena Kumari
- January 15 - Megan Quann, swimmer
- January 19 - Zakia Mrisho Mohamed
- January 25 - Ines Cudna, model
- January 26 - Rebecca Ritters, actress
- January 26 - Kelly Stables, actress
- January 26 - Luo Xuejuan, swimmer
- January 29 - Natalie du Toit, South African swimmer
- January 30 - Tan Xue
- January 31 - Ashley Blue
- February 10 - Kim Hyo Jin, Korean actress
- February 12 - Alexandra Dahlström, actress
- February 25 - Xing Huina, Chinese athlete
- February 28 - Karolina Kurkova, model
- March 20 - Christy Carlson Romano, actress
- March 20 - Marcus Vick, American football player
- March 20 - Nomura Yuka, Japanese actress
- March 28 - Nikki Sanderson, British actress
- April 3 -