Why metals have a blast in water

It's a classic chemistry experiment: A begoggled teacher drops a bit of metal into water — and KABOOM! The mixture explodes in a bright flash. Millions of students have seen the reaction. Now, thanks to images captured with a high-speed camera, chemists can finally explain it.

The experiment only works with elements that are alkali metals. This group includes sodium and potassium. These elements show up in the first column of the periodic table. In nature, these common metals occur only in combination with other elements. And that’s because on their own, they're very reactive. So they easily undergo reactions with other materials. And those reactions may be violent.

Textbooks typically explain the metal-water reaction in simple terms: When water hits the metal, the metal releases electrons. These negatively charged particles generate heat as they leave the metal. Along the way, they also break apart the water molecules. That reaction releases atoms of hydrogen, a particularly explosive element. When the hydrogen meets the heat — ka-POW!

But that’s not the whole story, cautions chemist Pavel Jungwirth, who led the new study: “There's a crucial piece of the puzzle that precedes the explosion.” Jungwirth works at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. To find that missing puzzle piece, he turned to videos of these high-speed events.

His team slowed down the videos and examined the action, frame by frame.

In the fraction of a second before the explosion, spikes appear to grow from the smooth surface of the metal. These spikes launch a chain reaction that leads to the blast. Their discovery helped Jungwirth and his team understand how such a big blast could erupt from such a simple reaction. Their findings appear in the January 26 Nature Chemistry. 

First came doubt

Chemist Philip Mason works with Jungwirth. He knew that old textbook explanation of what caused the explosion. But it bothered him. He didn't think it told the whole story.

“I’ve been doing this sodium explosion for years,” he told Jungwirth, “and I still don’t understand how it works.”

Heat from the electrons should vaporize the water, creating steam, Mason thought. That steam would act like a blanket. If it did, that should wall off the electrons, preventing the hydrogen blast.

To probe the reaction in fine detail, he and Jungwirth set up a reaction using a mix of sodium and potassium, which is liquid at room temperature. They dropped a small glob of it into a pool of water and filmed it. Their camera captured 30,000 images per second, allowing for a very slow-motion video. (For comparison, the iPhone 6 records slow-motion video at a mere 240 frames per second.) As the researchers pored over their images of the action, they saw the metal form spikes just before the explosion. Those spikes helped solve the mystery.

When the water hits the metal, it releases electrons. After the electrons flee, positively charged atoms remain behind. Like charges repel. So those positive atoms push away from each other, creating the spikes. That process exposes new electrons to the water. These are from atoms inside the metal. The escape of these electrons from the atoms leaves behind more positively charged atoms. And they form more spikes. The reaction continues, spikes forming upon spikes. This cascade eventually builds up enough heat to ignite the hydrogen (before the steam can quash the explosion).

“It makes sense,” Rick Sachleben told Science News. He’s a chemist at Momenta Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Mass., who did not work on the new study.

Sachleben hopes the new explanation reaches chemistry classrooms. It shows how a scientist can question an old assumption and find a deeper understanding. “It could be a real teaching moment,” he says.

Power Words

(For more about Power Words, click here)

atom   The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and neutrally charged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.

chemistry  The field of science that deals with the composition, structure and properties of substances and how they interact with one another. Chemists use this knowledge to study unfamiliar substances, to reproduce large quantities of useful substances or to design and create new and useful substances. (about compounds) The term is used to refer to the recipe of a compound, the way it’s produced or some of its properties.

electron  A negatively charged particle, usually found orbiting the outer regions of an atom; also, the carrier of electricity within solids.

element  (in chemistry) Each of more than one hundred substances for which the smallest unit of each is a single atom. Examples include hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, lithium and uranium.

hydrogen  The lightest element in the universe. As a gas, it is colorless, odorless and highly flammable. It’s an integral part of many fuels, fats and chemicals that make up living tissues

molecule  An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O2), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).

particle  A minute amount of something.

periodic table of the elements  A chart (and many variants) that chemists have developed to sort elements into groups with similar characteristics. Most of the different versions of this table that have been developed over the years tend to place the elements in ascending order of their mass.

reactive   (in chemistry)  The tendency of a substance to take part in a chemical process, known as a reaction, that leads to new chemicals or changes in existing chemicals.

sodium  A soft, silvery metallic element that will interact explosively when added to water. It is also a basic building block of table salt (a molecule of which consists of one atom of sodium and two atoms of chlorine: H2O).

The Mythical conflict between science and Religion Introduction (Citations should appear in the status bar when you pass your mouse pointer over the word [NOTE]. If you cannot see anything, you will need to adjust your security settings to allow Javascript to change the status bar.) (A Romanian translation of this article kindly prepared by Alexander Ovsov is available here.  It has also been published in Estonian, kindly translated by Atko Remmel.)  ewspaper articles thrive on cliché. These are not so much hackneyed phrases but rather the useful shorthand for nuggets of popular perception that allow the journalist to immediately tune his readers to the right wavelength. Yesterday’s clichés are, of course, today’s stereotypes as any perusal of earlier writing will show. The conflict between science and religion is an acceptable cliché that crops up all over the place. In the episode of The Simpsons in which the late Stephen J Gould was a guest voice, Lisa found a fossil angel and events led to a court order being placed on religion to keep a safe distance from science. Articles in magazines and on the internet all assume that a state of conflict exists between science and religion, always has existed and that science has been winning. Most popular histories of science view all the evidence through this lens without ever stopping to think that there might be another side to the story. But let us turn from popular culture to the academy where we find a rather different picture. Let’s have a look at the comments of a few leading historians of science: John Hedley Brooke was the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. He is a leading historian of science in England and the author of Science and Religion - Some Historical Perspectives (1991). In this book, he writes of the conflict hypothesis “In its traditional forms, the thesis has been largely discredited”. [NOTE] David Lindberg is Hilldale Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is the author of many books on medieval science and also on religion. With Ronald Numbers, the current Hilldale and William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the same university, he writes “Despite a developing consensus among scholars that science and Christianity have not been at war, the notion of conflict has refused to die”. [NOTE] Steven Shapin is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.  He writes "In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the "warfare between science and religion" and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict.  However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science." [NOTE] Finally, we come to the dean of medieval science, Edward Grant, Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University who writes of that most slandered of periods, the Middle Ages, when faith was supposed to have snuffed out all forms of reason “If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18thcentury], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities”. [NOTE] So, as a theory believed by working historians, the conflict hypothesis is dead.  In this article, I want to examine two questions that follow from this. Firstly, if the conflict hypothesis has been rejected by practically every scholar in the field, why is there such a rift between academic opinion and popular perception? And secondly, what has been the real relationship between science and religion? The conflict hypothesis Science is the triumph of Western civilisation which has made all its other achievements possible. The enormity of this triumph has very often been reflected onto the historiography of science to produce a story akin to a triumphal progress. From Copernicus onwards, we are told, each generation built on the discoveries of their forerunners to produce a parade of successes with barely a backwards step. This history has been built on two assumptions: that there is something epistemologically unique about science and that reason and rationality are what causes progress in science. Scientists themselves have generally been keen on these ideas and been happy to promote them. Such has been status of science in modern society that this self description, promulgated by writers like Carl Sagan and Jacob Bronowski, has generally been respected by the general public who have been less interested in the more nuanced views historians. The myth of conflict first really got going during the Enlightenment (itself a description intended to derogate earlier eras) with the fiercely anti-clerical French philosophes. In his Discours Preliminaire, Jean d’Alembert paints a picture of men of the Renaissance finally throwing off the shackles of church domination so that rational enquiry can at last begin. This idea was carried through the nineteenth century with historians like John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. White was the most famous and successful exponent of the conflict hypothesis.  He is commonly quoted at the start of modern books on science and religion as representing the soon-to-be-debunked traditional view. It is worth briefly examining whether White was being entirely honest in his work as no one doubts that Draper was engaged in nothing more that polemic. Neither of them were professional historians and both did seem to sincerely believe in the warfare theory they were expounding. Unfortunately, this meant that they set out to prove what they already believed rather than take their conclusions from the facts. White is quite explicit about this when he writes how he felt before he began his research, “I saw... the conflict between two epochs in the evolution of human thought - the theological and the scientific.” Any such statement should immediately set off alarm bells which grow louder as we look at his work The Warfare of Science with Theology. His usual tactics are to scour the sources for some stick-in-the-mud reactionary and claim this represents the consensus of religious opinion and then find another thinker (who is usually just as faithful a Christian as the reactionary) who turned out to be right, and claim that they represent reason. Hence using anachronism and claiming obscure figures were in fact influential, he is able to manufacture a conflict where none exists. A detailed critique of his work from Lindberg and Numbers can be read here but I would like to point out a few errors in the specific area of religious persecution of scientists. White's examples of actual prosecution are few and far between which is not very surprising as the only scientist the Christian Church ever prosecuted for scientific ideas per se was Galileo and even here historians doubt that was the major reason he got into trouble. This is an embarrassment for White as he thought that in the Middle Ages especially, the Church was burning freethinkers left, right and centre. The lack of any examples of this at all is a serious problem so he is forced to draft in non-scientists or else to claim that prosecutions on non-scientific matters were scientific persecutions after all. Here are some examples: Roger Bacon has been a popular martyr for science since the nineteenth century. He was a scholastic theologian who was keen to claim Aristotle for the Christian faith. He was not a scientist in any way we would recognise and his ideas are not nearly so revolutionary as they are often painted. In chapter 12 of his book, White writes of Roger “the charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.” This is untrue. As Lindberg says “his imprisonment, if it occurred at all (which I doubt) probably resulted with his sympathies for the radical “poverty” wing of the Franciscans (a wholly theological matter) rather than from any scientific novelties which he may have proposed.” [NOTE]     In chapter 2, White informs us “In 1327 Cecco d’Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this [the doctrine of antipodes] and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at Florence.” Cecco D’Ascoli was indeed burnt at the stake in 1327 in Florence. He is the only natural philosopher in the entire Middle Ages to pay this penalty and was executed for breaking parole after a previous trial when he had been convicted of heresy for, apparently, claiming Jesus Christ was subject to the stars. This is not enough for White who claims, entirely without foundation, that Cecco met his fate partly for the scientific view that the antipodes were inhabited as well as dishonestly calling him an ‘astronomer’ rather than an ‘astrologer’ to strengthen his scientific credentials. [NOTE]     In the same chapter White claims “In 1316 Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this [the habitation of the antipodes] with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death.” We have no good evidence that d’Abano was under investigation from the inquisition at his death. However, he did gain a posthumous reputation as a sorcerer when spurious works were attributed to him. This may have led to the reports of his bones being dug up and burnt after his death. There is again, no evidence whatsoever that the antipodes debate or science had anything to do with the matter. [NOTE]     It is hard to confirm some of White’s victims existed at all. “The chemist John Barrillon was thrown into prison,” he says in chapter 12 “and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.” The great historian of science, George Sarton, with a better knowledge of the sources of anyone before or since, says this episode is ‘completely unknown’ to him. [NOTE] Needless to say, White gives no reference.     Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, is also held up as a martyr to science. White explains in chapter 13 “Vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world…. His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion.” The trouble is that hardly a word of this has any basis in historical fact. Vesalius did go on a pilgrimage and was drowned on the way back. But there is no hint he was ever prosecuted and the idea his death was hastened by those who supposed he was injuring religion is simply wrong. [NOTE]     Discussing the heliocentric system, White goes on “Many minds had received it [the doctrine of Copernicus], but within the hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have dared to utter it clearly. This new warrior was that strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was hunted from land to land, until at last he turned on his pursuers with fearful invectives. For this he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned during six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds.” In fact, we do not know the exact reasons Bruno was prosecuted but modern scholars like Frances Yates suggest it was because he was a magus who was trying to start a new neo-Platonic religion. He did believe the earth revolved around the sun but this was purely for religious reasons as he effectively worshipped it. In any case, it was incidental to his fate as were his other pseudo-scientific ideas. One would like to take the charitable view that White really believed his theory and was not making up evidence to support a position he knew to be false. Instead, he skews the evidence by accepting that which agrees with his hypothesis while being sceptical of what does not. This means that he has included falsehoods that he would have noticed if he had taken a properly objective attitude towards all his evidence. The points given above together with Numbers and Lindberg’s criticisms noted in their article are sufficient, however, to prove White’s work as utterly worthless as history. Draper, with no footnotes or references cannot even claim to give an illusion of scholarship. Colin Russell, in a recent summary of the historiography of the alleged warfare, sums up the views of modern scholarship, saying “Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship”. [NOTE] But even today, historians who should know better, like Daniel Boorstin, Charles Freeman and William Manchester, have produced popular books that wheel out all the old misconceptions and prejudices. Another reason for the myth of conflict continuing is because at the moment there is undoubtedly a conflict between one wing of Christianity and modern science.  This is the battle over evolution. Although the Catholic Church and mainline protestants long ago reconciled themselves to Darwin’s theory and modified their theology accordingly, many conservative Christians remain deeply suspicious about evolution and its alleged metaphysical implications. Unfortunately, many who are defending evolution try to widen the gap between religion and science and use it to push non-scientific but anti-religious philosophical agendas. This can be seen clearly in the work of Richard Dawkins and many writers on the internet. Some observers would claim that now science holds the whip hand it is being no less intolerant of dissent as the church supposedly once was. This would not be an accurate view as instead the argument over evolution is carried on vehemently by a small number of extremists on both sides while the rest of the community looks on rather bemused. Occasionally, it spills over in a public arena such as when pressure groups gain control of previously obscure bodies that set school curricula, but in general it does not have the slightest effect. Most of the occasions when there have been conflicts between science and religion were caused by someone seeking publicity and fame when the problem could much more easily be sorted by patient discussion. This is the case both of Galileo publishing his inflammatory popular tracts that provoked the church and John Scopes volunteering to be charged with teaching evolution. Even so, Galileo himself blamed jealous scientific rivals and professional spite for his predicament. [NOTE] The reasons for the continuing popular belief in the historical conflict can probably be summed up as follows:     The writings of an earlier generation of historians have yet to be eclipsed by modern scholarship;     Some popular writers of today continue to recycle the old myths rather than using up to date research;     A few famous events have given a misleading impression to people unfamiliar with their context;     The idea of a conflict makes for a better story than more multi-faceted truth. The real historical relationship between science and religion Through out history the real situation has been complicated and changeable.  It has not proven possible, and nor is it ever likely to, for a single theory to explain the interaction of all forms of science and all forms of religion. It is certainly true that certain science (say, neo-Darwinist theory) is in conflict with certain kinds of religion (say, literalist Christianity) but even in an environment where both are present the effect is pretty negligible. For all the sound and fury over the teaching of evolution it is difficult to make any sort of case that science in the US has been adversely effected by creationism. If it means that scientists need to explain the theory of evolution better to suspicious laymen (which is something they are usually poor at doing), creationism could even serve an occasionally useful purpose. Conversely, cosmology has found itself agreeing with religion rather more than some anti-religious thinkers would like. A hundred years ago nearly all non-religious thinkers took it for granted that the universe had always existed and always would. Despite the opposition of theologians claiming a real infinite in time was logically impossible (sometime called the Kalam cosmological argument), atheists seemed quite happy with an uncreated, eternal universe. When the Big Bang model was first suggested by the Jesuit priest Georges Le Maître, it was greeted with a certain amount of scepticism and the atheist Fred Hoyle coined the phrase ‘Big Bang’ intending it to be derogatory. His atheism also blinded him to the inadequacies of his steady state theory which one suspects he only came up with to avoid the uncomfortable metaphysical implications of a universe with a beginning. Atheist scientists have now come to terms with the big bang and adjusted their metaphysics accordingly, much like most Christians, after some debate, accepted evolution and twiddled their theology. However, it is interesting to hear today’s atheists declaring that God must have a creator when their predecessors were quite happy for the universe not to have one. All this seems to demonstrate that when it comes to science, both sides find things they do not like and both sides argue against them until the evidence becomes impossible to deny. Today popular histories do try and recognise this variety. The people we want to eulogise as the great heroes of science rarely had such clear cut views as was once thought. This has led to what I call the 'examination' school of historical writing that can sometimes read like a series of end of term report cards where the figures of the past are praised or scolded according to how much the modern writer thinks they got right. A good example of this approach is John Gribbin’s recent Science: A History 1543 - 2001 (published as The Scientists in the US) which is really just an entertaining collection of anecdotes covered in a positivist gloss. But at least he largely avoids the conflict myth and admits that neither Giordano Bruno nor the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus can be described as martyrs for science. Full-on confrontations between science and religion are reasonably rare. Even when such encounters occur, they are usually arguments between co-religionists with shared concerns about how new discoveries affect faith. We find this during the debate that followed the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species where Christians such as Asa Gray defended both the theory of evolution and Christianity’s accommodation with it. Another cause of confusion is when people seeking to attack religion seek to co-opt science onto their side. For instance, whether one is pro-life or not has nothing to do with science, but is often portrayed as such. Concerns about experiments on stem cells also arise from ethics. This leads us straight to the real conflict which is between religion and naturalism. And here the warfare is real enough. Science is partly characterised by methodological naturalism which was used by natural philosophers of the Middle Ages and fully approved by the Church. They realised, as modern naturalists do not, that it is an error of logic to assume that because science assumes naturalism to simplify and explain, it follows that science shows naturalism is true. It is not the purpose of this article to attack the naturalistic fallacy, merely to observe that many of the alleged battles between science and religion are actually being fought by proxy between naturalism and religion, with science as the weapon of both. And, as the defeats of naturalism over the big bang and spontaneous generation showed, the traffic is by no means all one way. Most academic historians, while rejecting outright conflict, would refuse to be drawn on whether or not the contribution of religion to science was broadly positive or negative citing the enormous amount of data that would have to be assimilated to give a sensible answer. Most are happy to say that the relationship has been positive in some ways and negative in others with an overall effect that is probably too subtle to be measured. While I respect that cautious view, I believe it is wrong and that a very strong case can be made for the Christian religion be a specific factor in the rise of modern science in Western Europe. This is one of the ideas that I address in my new book God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science.

The Violent Breakup of Yugoslavia

The numerous ethnic groups that comprised Yugoslavia held historical animosities towards each other stretching back in some cases hundreds of years. Yet these animosities were put aside after World War Two and under Tito's grip the nation achieved internal peace. They were not however forgotten and when nationalist politicians needed to create a power base, they merely had to promote nationalist symbols and myths, and encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities. This created a deadly snowball affect that proved unstoppable.

Yugoslavia has long been an ethnic melting point where great civilisations and religions have met. The Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War One created the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes out of territory from the Austrian and Turkish empires. The allies hoped the Kingdom's people would forge a new common identity based on their shared status as Southern Slavs. They were however divided in various other ways. Croats and Slovenes were Roman Catholic, used the Latin alphabet and orientated towards western and central Europe. In contrast Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins were under the repressive autocratic control of the Ottoman Turks, Eastern Orthodox in religion, used the Cyrillic alphabet and were less economically developed. Bosnians, though much like the Serbs had practiced Bogomilism and converted to Islam only in exchange for autonomy and protection by the Turks. The Serbs regularly rose against the Turks and were subsequently heavily repressed, thus considered the Bosnian Muslims Slavs that had sold out. During World War Two these antagonisms flared into outright slaughter as the Nazi controlled ethnically Croat Ustashe puppet regime murdered innocent Serbs, Jews and others. The regime never had majority Croatian support but this was irrelevant to Serbs in the conflicts of the 1990s even though they themselves did not have clean hands. Josip Tito and his communists suppressed discussion on the wartime genocide and earlier nationalist outrages in the process creating a powerful reservoir of suppressed memories and hatred.

Tito re-established Yugoslavia through the skilful use of fear and the credibility of communist ideology. Yugoslavs feared many things including a return to the carnage of wartime massacres, the power of the Soviet Union and some a great Serbian restoration. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) as the only substantial pan-Yugoslavian institution was thus the only force capable of allaying these fears. Fear and force did in time give way to compromise that was eventually enshrined in the 1974 Yugoslav constitution. This constitution established a collective presidency, rotating chair and dissolved a great deal of power to the republics thus weakening federal institutions. Tito himself often kept this system going by ordering republics to follow federal laws. 

Tito's death in 1980 combined with the end of Cold War rivalry and the decline of communist ideology in the rest of Europe in the 1980s lead to the severe weakening of Yugoslavia's crucial unifying factors. In addition, Yugoslavia in the 1980s increasingly suffered from an unprecedented economic crisis. This crisis was triggered by the oil shocks of the 1970s, the global recession of the 1980s and a $US20 billion foreign debt. This caused Slovenia and other relatively economically prosperous regions to push for economic and political change. Slovenia had significant economic weight as while it comprised only eight percent of the nation's population it produced 20 percent of the national GNP. Without a powerful central figure, differences between reformers and conservatives produced a deadlock at the centre during the early and mid 1980s. The economy thus continued its decline allowing conservative groups time to mobilise support.

Long significant to the Serb nation, Kosovo became the catalyst for the revival of Serbian nationalism. After a 1981 demonstration in favour of Kosovo gaining republic status the death toll of Albanian youths killed by Serb police varied widely from nine anywhere up to 1000. The Serbs balked at this demand believing they were the oppressed side in this situation. Thirty thousand Serbs and Montenegrins did flee Kosovo in the 1980s though many for economic reasons. The higher Albanian birth rate also contributed to the decline in the relative number of Serbs in Kosovo from 23 percent of the population in 1971 to 10 percent in 1989. Led by the Serbian Academy for Sciences and Arts from 1986 prominent Serbs claimed they had been the victim of consistent discrimination in Yugoslavia. Kosovo was thus raised to the position of most important problem in Serbia and frustration in the League of Communists of Serbia over the issue reached unprecedented levels.

Slobodan Milosevic promise of quick and decisive action against Albanian separatists in Kosovo won him widespread support in Serbia. Milosevic moved quickly to promote Serbs to important economic and political roles in Kosovo and by 1989-1990 Serbian control over Kosovo was complete. In his first six months of power, he also purged Serbia of rivals and moderates. Journalists, writers and editors were fired and Milosevic supporters soon controlled almost all public life in Serbia. In order to bully and overthrow the Kosovo and Vojvodina political leaderships Milosevic whipped up pro-Serb demonstrations in the previously autonomous regions. The Montenegrin leadership was also overthrown with all three being replaced by Milosevic loyalists. This gave the Serb nationalists control of four of the eight votes in the Yugoslavian federation. Serbian hardliners used the cloak of nationalism to revoke the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina thus altering the Serbian constitution and the delicate balance of power in Yugoslavia.

Slovenia and Croatia reacted angrily to this series of events. Public disagreement was not permitted between communist party members therefore it was intellectuals and the media that articulated this anger. Slovenian intellectuals protested publicly at the treatment given to the Kosovo Albanians. They did so because they feared the consequences of the Serb action had upset Slovenia's political and economic role in Yugoslavia, and would prevent movement towards its goals of democratising Yugoslavia and integrating it economically with the west. The last LCY congress in January 1990 confirmed that neither democratic nor hard-line reform could occur at the national level. The Croatian and Slovenian communist parties quickly responded by giving up their power and holding multi-party elections. 

The multi-party political system that resulted from the 1990 elections was seriously flawed. Political parties of which there were a large number lacked time and resources to develop a wide range of policies. Voters were thus denied the information they needed to make informed decisions. Additionally there was no chance to vote to maintain Yugoslavia even though 62 percent of Yugoslavs claimed Yugoslavian affiliation was very, or quite, important to them in a 1990 survey of 4,232 people. Nationalists claims that other groups would block vote successfully turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every town experienced the founding of political parties and the divisive nationalist discourse that went with them. Peer pressure to support ones ethnic group in these towns was intense. The nationalist parties did not win majorities in these elections. Because the way the elections were designed they received majorities in their republics. Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union and Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia won only 41.5% and 47% of the votes respectively but gained 56% and 78% of the seats. These parties purged, often violently, their political opponents from power and made it dangerous to be seen as or in the company of known moderates. The politicians elected in 1990 were far more nationalist than their citizens.

The Philosophies and Strategies of the Non-Violence and Black Power Movements

Black power in many ways signified everything non-violence was not, racial hatred, violence and extreme self-reliance. However the two approaches did have many similarities in their long-term objectives. Both demanded complete equality not jus in theory but in practice. Where they differed most was in the methods used to achieve this goal and the time they were prepared to wait for progress to be made.

The philosophy of non-violence was heavily rooted in religion and common sense. To succeed non-violent protest required not just the support of the majority of the black population but that population's active participation. Black churches were the only black dominated mass organisations in the south capable of rallying this level of support at the time of the civil rights movement. Religious leaders were respected by and held considerable sway over their delegations. A successful protest therefore required the active support of church leaders and more often than not adopted many of their values. When Montgomery activists wanted to organise a bus boycott they turned to their ministers for leadership. Their actions under the leadership of Martin Luther King set the tone for future peaceful civil rights protests. King preached love, self-sacrifice and the restoration of black dignity during the boycott. Blacks had to prove to northern whites that they were worthy of and being denied their constitutional rights as American citizens. This was part of a faith in liberal reform through the democratic process held by King and other proponents of non-violence. King's visit to India hardened his belief in the righteousness of massive non-violent resistance. It also ensured he and his followers choose jail time over paying bail. This use of lives and bodies to right injustice became the prevalent form of protest throughout the early to mid 1960s. Being imprisoned was a badge of respect for blacks throughout the country. The non-violence movement was built on mass participation with religious overtones.

To achieve reform the movement actively sort support from white liberals and the federal government. Often protests were initially spontaneous and focused on local or specific goals. Marches, sit-ins, freedom rides and boycotts started in this manner. These actions were reliant on the local black community wearing down the white community and especially its business sector to the point where they pressured the white authorities for change. The formation of new civil rights organisations notably King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) allowed the movement to fashion national objectives. These consisted of the achievement of federal support for segregation and the enactment of civil rights legislation. The SCLC provoked southern white violence by staging specific campaigns in racially tense cities like Birmingham and Selma. Police brutality was transmitted to the nation through the media particularly television creating great sympathy for the movement in the north. A member of congress viewed the graphic beatings in Selma as an exercise in terror. King and others used this sympathy to push for the civil rights legislation. The reverse was that moderate leaders avoided certain protests to maintain federal support. King even stopped a march in Selma midway to appease President Lyndon Johnson. Targeted mass protests were the mainstay of the non-violent civil rights movement.

Black power meant different things to different people. In terms of aims black power and the non-violent civil rights movement had much in common. Both wanted to uplift their race politically and economically. Unlike non-violence its reach was deeper fundamentally changing black culture. At black power's core were black unity, self-determination and pride in black culture. Distinctive hairstyles, soul music and soul theology were just some of the aspects made popular by the philosophy of black power. Malcolm X created the ideological basis for the black power philosophy with his constant demand for black pride and self-sufficiency. 

Proponents of black power can be split into pluralist and nationalist groups. Both focused on the unbalanced power relationship between whites and blacks. Pluralists believed the two races could live beside each other amicably in a multicultural society. Nationalists were convinced a stronger and more oppressive white culture would inevitably dominate black culture. Hence they wished to withdraw from society, some even wishing to return to Africa. Other nationalists advocated setting up a black nation state in the South or autonomous areas in America's major cities. Black power's nature as ambiguous and decentralised allowed for innovation and change.

Black power and non-violent strategy had little in common. Black power proponents often used revolutionary and violent rhetoric to awaken the masses. Retaliation was promoted if necessary to ensure hostile whites found a new level of respect for blacks. Black studies programs and the teaching of African languages were a crucial part of strengthening black identity pride. Community control of black neighbourhoods and organisations was also promoted to increase the black power base. Tenants councils, community centres and black companies were among the various devices used. These strategies gave blacks more control of their own destiny and recognised that the relative power of competing interest groups determined the nature of American society.

Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. 

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The independent research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The HANDY model was created using a minor Nasa grant, but the study based on it was conducted independently. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation: 

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both: 

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency: 

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use." 

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period. 

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation: 

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites." 

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)." 

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that: 

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation. 

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: 

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately. 

Although the study based on HANDY is largely theoretical - a 'thought-experiment' - a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative.

The Russian Civil War

The Brest-Litovsk peace agreement between Germany and Communist Russia galvanized significant portions of Russia's population to violently oppose the Bolshevik government. The White armies evolved out of this opposition and became the principal threat to the Bolshevik regime. They were however only one dimension of the Civil War as other groups and nations played important roles. The defeat of the Whites was caused primarily by their failure to enlist mass support for their cause. Geography, internal division and patriotism also contributed to their defeat.

The Whites fought on a variety of fronts against the Reds with the most important being the East, South and North Western. The principal leader for each was Admiral Kolchak, General Denikin and General Iudenich respectively. Kolchak was nominally head of the movement mainly because the allies recognised him as such. In practice the White armies were completely independent. It was also the allies namely Britain, France, Japan and the United States which lent the most support to the Whites. It was this support that allowed the Whites to become the dominant opposition to the Communists. All three armies were reasonably cohesive groups with a clear command and control structure with total numbers peaking at over 250,000 troops. It was this organised nature that made them the Reds most dangerous adversaries. Contributed to this were the White's underlying political motives for fighting. These were to restore the Provisional Government and to return Russia to the old order of the conservative ruling class. The Whites were by far the largest, most organised and best supported organisation committed to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks.

Peasant armies or Greens as they became known fought both sides in the Civil War. The White and Red armies required a large amount of conscripts and supplies for their campaigns. The easiest source for these was from rural Russia but conscription and grain requisitions badly alienated the peasants under their control. Many peasants and villages were pushed towards starvation and responded by killing the requisition squads and other officials. These outbreaks of violence quickly spread into outward rebellions with repressive measures against rebelling villages merely acting to spread the disturbances. There were 344 peasant revolts by mid 1919 and by 1920 the revolts had become widespread. These armies sometimes up to a thousand strong disrupted the supply lines and resource base's of both sides but failed to unite into a cohesive national force. Throughout the Civil War large areas of the two sides territory were engulfed by hundreds of distinct peasant revolts.

No less than eleven countries attacked Russia during the Civil War. On the whole these countries did not coordinate their activities and followed localised objectives. The Czechoslovak legion of ex prisoners of war started the Civil War in Siberia with their Railway War. Instead of allowing themselves to be disarmed the legion conquered a large stretch of territory along the Trans-Siberian railway, an area that became the basis of Kolchak's government in the East. The Czechs lost interest after World War One and minimised their role in the fighting. Britain and France invaded both Murmansk and Archangel and set up a weak White government in the North. Japan and to a lesser extent the United States and Canada invaded Russia in the Pacific. The Japanese also set up a White government under Grigorii Semenov and occupied Vladivostok until October 1922. While the allies did intervene in the Civil War they did so for their own interests and to nurture the White opposition.

Many parts of the former Tsarist Empire attempted to gain independence during the Civil War. The three Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all successfully gained independence, as did Finland and Poland. None could escape the Civil War with all a playing a part. Poland for example waged war against Soviet Russia from 1920-21 over where to draw the border between the two nations. Other border disputes occurred and many of the new State gave limited support to either the Reds or more commonly the Whites. Estonia became embroiled in the North Western battle with both Reds and Whites violating its territory. The independently minded parts of the old Russian Empire could not avoid becoming entangled in the Civil War.

Maori Strategy in the Taranaki War

Maori in the Taranaki War fought a largely defensive war. They did however have an overall strategy which they actively pursued. The British were largely unable to counter this strategy in an effective way.

The Battle of Puketakauere was the most decisive engagement in the Taranaki War. In the battle less than 200 Maori comprehensively defeated 400 British soldiers killing a minium of 30 and wounding 34. The Maori in contrast lost only five men killed. Innovative Maori fortifications were the major cause of the Maori victory. The actual pa was located on Onukukaitara hill and consisted of a small relatively simple stockade. Onukukaitara was essentially a dummy pa that attracted British attention and artillery fire. Rifle pits dug in a deep trench between the pa and the British lines were the real key to the position. The British force was split into groups with the intention of making a two pronged attack on Onukukaitara. The first division was halted a few yards from the rifle pits by a coordinated volley. The second division tried to attack Onukukaitara by way of Puketakauere hill. The British were under the understanding Puketakauere hill was not fortified. The Maori however had so skilfully concealed their entrenchments that the soldiers walked straight into an ambush. Both divisions were either forced to retreat or to flee for their lives.

The defenders of Puketakauere included Kingite soldiers from the Ngati Maniapoto tribe, "Epiha's vanguard." The battle and subsequent victory convinced the King Movement resistance in Taranaki was not futile. This realisation is likely to have been a major factor in the increase in warriors the movement sent to fight in Taranaki alluded to in the exert. The King Movement while among the most agriculturally advanced Maori tribes in the country still relied on a tribal economy to sustain themselves. Enormous strain was placed on tribes when a large percent of their work force were away fighting. The movement overcame this by establishing a shift system. Under the system parties of warriors would fight in Taranaki for a period of around two months then return home to care for their cultivations. Returning parties were replaced by fresh warriors. This helped the movement maintain a minimum of 400 warriors in Taranaki peaking at 800. 

The first aspect of the Maori strategy was to maintain a war on two fronts, to the north and south of New Plymouth. Just as important was the maintenance of a creditable threat on New Plymouth itself. When an expedition was mounted against the south Taranaki tribes, the Te Atiawa and the Waikato made a threat against the town and vice versa. This tactic also had the side effect of causing extreme overcrowding in the town as the perimeter was shrunk to make the town more defendable. Disease from the overcrowding led to a marked increase in the death rate. The second aspect of the strategy was the destruction of settler property. Houses, household goods, stock, crops and agricultural equipment were either commandeered by the Maori or destroyed. Property losses exceeded 200,000 pounds by the end of the war and 200 farms were completely destroyed. The third element of the strategy the modern pa, provided bases for the Maori warriors to carry out their plundering and raiding activities. The easily built and expendable modern pa were constructed in a flexible ring around New Plymouth and other British positions. When the Maori had the upper hand the ring was extended to within kilometres of New Plymouth. From these advanced positions the destruction of the Taranaki province could continue at an increased rate. The Maori in Taranaki had a clear strategic strategy that minimised their weaknesses and protected their fertile cultivations.

The Maori strategy effectively blocked the British from achieving their objectives in the Taranaki War. At all stages during the war the British wanted a decisive victory over the Maori. The Maori strategy effectively prevented the British from even gaining an opportunity to achieve this goal. If the British attacked a weak pa the Maori would simply abandon the pa. If the British attacked a strong pa they had to attack a garrison with intricate knowledge of the battleground entrenched in pre prepared positions.

The settlement of Taranaki had ceased to exist as a viable economic and social district by the end of the war. However the Maori did not win all the battles in the war and the end result was a stalemate. By merely fighting in the aid of another tribe the King Movement gained significant support from around the North Island. The Taranaki War made the British determined to smash the King Movement as it now presented a serious barrier to British law and order in the North Island.

The Zapatista Mexican Rebellion, its Revolutionary Objectives and Tactics

On New Years Day 1994 with ski masks and automatic rifles in hand the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) descended from the hills of Mexico's impoverished Chiapas province and commenced a unique armed struggle. The EZLN have relied heavily on sympathetic organisations, public relations and the internet to present the group's ideology to Mexicans and to people around the world. In so doing, they successfully circumvented and undermined the propaganda systems that had previously prevented large-scale peaceful movements from expressing essentially the same objectives.

The EZLN is largely an indigenous peasant based movement with some urban intellectual leadership most notably Subcommander Marcos the groups spokesperson. The organisation has its roots in Mexico's most southern and poverty-stricken province, Chiapas. A province dominated by indigenous Indian communities and largely excluded from any capitalist development. Ninety percent of indigenous households in the state are without electricity and running water. 

Democracy, freedom and justice are the EZLN's three central objectives. The democracy they envisage is consensus based, direct and participatory. Their goal of freedom is required to facilitate indigenous autonomy and self-determination. Social and economic justice, a critique of neo-liberal ideology is a key objective considered necessary to gain respect for indigenous culture and alternative ways of life. Combined they cover other more specific demands like improved housing and education and the protection of Indian culture.

Chiapas had long voted for the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in relatively larger numbers than any other Mexican state. People were mostly forced by the local landowning elites to vote in this way. This gives some clue as to the all-encompassing grip the PRI maintained on Mexican society in Chiapas. It controlled the mass media, the few schools, the unions and the peasant organisations. The only significant counter balance to the PRI was the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, the rebels combined forces with the church to help organise peasant communities and support their struggles. By working alongside with what are generally the most trusted and revered members in Mexican peasant communities the rebels were able to slowly earn the trust and support of the local peasants. Sharing the hardships and general state of hopelessness with the peasants changed the rebels own perspectives to a point where the two became inseparable. Thus the guerrilla leadership did not take up arms and then call for local support. They consulted widely and thoroughly with local communities first until a consensus in favour of armed struggle was achieved.

The Zapatistas hence practise at every step the local autonomy, democracy and justice they preach. This lack of hypocrisy undeniably helped win over the active support of the people of Chiapas. As well Marcos and other Zapatistas have used the "language of storytelling and poetry rather than political dogma" to communicate their dreams and ideas to the local population and later the world. Thirty percent of people in Chiapas are illiterate and another thirty two percent speak only their native Indian language. Storytelling was thus crucial in ensuring the guerrillas earned the support of the most deprived people in Mexico. Active and widespread participation was crucial as armed resistance has historically led to harsh elite led repression. Military and state backed terror was indeed the PRI's and the Chiapas landed elite's response. Hired guards and other paramilitary groups were entrusted by the state to terrorise the local population into subjugation and submission. The peasants responded by sending their men into the jungle in support of the guerrillas while the women folk did their best to continue their way of life in the face of military occupation. The guerrilla leadership foreseeing this response sought to create national and international support networks with any organisation that shared in part or all of the movement's vision. These networks and the support they produced created an effective shield that prevented the Mexican state following a path of complete repression against the Zapatistas.

Mexico in 1994 was firmly under the one party hegemony of the PRI. Opposition movements were uncoordinated and prone to cooptation, repression or marginalisation. Mexico's mass media were either state controlled or closely watched by the PRI state. Interlinking personal relationships amongst the elite also helped to consolidate party control. In October 1990, the Mexican government hired the largest public relations firm in the world, Burson-Marsteller to gain Mexican acceptance of the North American Free Trade Zone. In the early 1990s the Mexican state had a coordinated and successful propaganda machine at its disposal.

Economic Growth and Democratisation in North East Asia

Economic development is conducive to democratisation but is not sufficient for its achievement. For while economic growth provides people with the spare time and resources to partake in politics and also creates the demand for it, it does not automatically ensure democratisation takes place. North East Asia shows that political and economic elites must also support democratisation and this support depends much on its timing. Nevertheless South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese democracy has all followed periods of strong economic growth.

The very poor simply do not possess the resources required to take part in a democracy let alone the amount required to successfully pressure a ruling regime to democratise. When your first priority is mere survival it can be difficult to find the time for much else. Spare time brings the opportunity to take part in demonstrations and other political activity or even just keeping up with the day's political events. Uneducated and illiterate peasants have throughout history been able to mobilise and form political movements to further their causes. Localised and easily isolated these movements have however almost always lacked the national scale to achieve their goals.

National movements require modern communication technologies and an educated populace both of which are products only of economic development. Education however exemplifies how loose this relationship can be. Almost all of the North East Asian nations invested heavily in both their own education systems and in sending their students to study in western countries. Yet these educated citizens concerned themselves largely with achieving economic prosperity and not with increasing their political freedoms.

Economic growth leads to a more complex and multi-connected economy. This kind of economy breaks down class barriers by necessitating a country's people to interact more often and in more diverse ways. To support and inform economic decision makers a relatively free mass media needs to develop. This mass media can just as easily spread implicit and explicit pro-democracy messages. An implicit message could simply be reporting on a foreign democratic election. Mass media were however rarely used for explicit independent political reporting preferring to restrict their independence to economic reporting. Thus an educated and linked populace does not automatically bring about democratisation but is an important precondition.

Economic development also changes the social composition of a nation, rapidly expanding the middle class. On the eve of Taiwan's democratisation its middle class had expanded to a third of the total adult population. While arguably the middle class benefits most from economic development and thus has the largest vested interest in its continuation this does not automatically translate into support for democracy. If given the choice between continued economic growth under a mild authoritarian regime and a democratic regime which could not so easily deliver continued growth most would have little hesitation in choosing the former. It is inconclusive that conditions for economic growth are more favourably under an authoritarian regime however as corruption and wasted resources can potentially be lowered by a transparent and accountable democratic regime.

Without exception economic growth has drawn the nations of North East Asia into the world economy. This has exposed them to western ideas of democracy and to western influence. As they have all pursued paths of export led industrialisation no country was in a position to ignore western sensibilities and influence. Whether this influence came in the form of economic sanctions against China after Tiananmen Square or as a condition for economic aid its effect was and is significant. South Korea and Taiwan both made the choice to democratise partly to build distinct national identities and partly to earn the sympathy and thus continuing protection of the world. This protection has been as much economic as military with both nations closely linked to the world economy. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia decreased the ideological threat South Korea and Taiwan faced and thus allowed pro-democracy forces to shape post-authoritarian politics in these nations. International factors play an important role in prodding a nation towards democratisation.

Social mobilisation theory conceptualises this process. It states that economic development increases the desire and capability of people to participate in decision making and that this facilitates a democratic transition. This process occurs because people's orientation towards political objects is changed as their interaction with the state in the economic sphere increases. Once the state is humanised and people realise its economic policy can be influenced it is a small step to believing that it can be influenced politically. Once begun democratisation tends to develop a momentum all of its own.

Comparison of Chinese and North Korean Communism up to the 1980s

China's and North Korea's communist parties came to power at similar times, in nations though distinct with a great deal of shared history and culture. While their specific paths to power were very different the form of communism they implemented during their first two decades of rule bared great resemblances to each other. Both also conducted political experiments and developed personality cults around their leaders in this time. Only in the 1970s did the versions of communism the two practised begin to diverge dramatically.

China and Korea share long and deep rooted histories of Oriental Despotism, Confucianism and Buddhism. This history of centralised rule by an emperor lasted up to the late nineteenth century. It was destroyed in Korea and weakened in China only by foreign conquest. The resultant Japanese domination was complete in Korea and widespread in China and created lasting influences on the countries. Both combined these historical legacies with Marxism-Leninism to develop unique versions of communism. China's health system was often a mix of western medical procedures and ancient Chinese medicines. The two nations shared history of centralised rule and collective effort not only made them susceptible to communism but ensured that when they tailored it to local conditions the resulting regimes and societies were similar in nature.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Korean Workers Party (KWP) had very different though linked paths to power. The origins of both parties can be traced back to the First World War. The CCP was however able to grow much faster and was a significant force in Chinese politics from the mid 1920s. Through a long internal struggle and the allied defeat of the Japanese in World War Two the communists were able to triumph over both the Japanese and their domestic opponents the Chinese nationalists. Conversely the already communist Soviet Union occupied North Korea in the final days of the war and immediately set about developing an indigenous communist regime. Though significant numbers of Korean communists, many fighting in China during the war did exist the North Korean regime initially relied heavily on the Soviet Union and on large numbers of communist Chinese-Koreans and Soviet-Koreans. In comparison the People's Republic of China was not founded until 1949 when their internal victory was almost complete. To achieve this victory the Chinese needed to ally themselves in a united front with many non-communist elements, the petty bourgeoisie and some of the richer peasants. From this start the PRC gradually nationalised industries and collectivised agriculture. Private firms were turned into joint state and private enterprises, taxed heavily and finally bought off by paying fixed interest at increasingly nominal rates to the original owners. This gradualism allowed the Chinese economy to recover rapidly as vital people and methods of work were phased out rather than simply eliminated. Under Soviet military protection North Korea had no such restraints and acted quickly to implement core socialist policies. Due to the extensive Soviet presence these closely resembled the Stalinist practices dominant in the Soviet Union at the time.

Until the 1970s the CCP and the KWP in general espoused a similar general ideology, that of Marxism-Leninism. The communist principle of democratic centralism was applied in the two counties. Economically this meant that the state not only owned the means of production but also centralised economic planning, investment and distribution. Power was concentrated in the hands of the respective parties with all party members and party organisations expected to unconditionally support and carry out the party line. Comparable political structures were also erected in the two countries. The highest organs of state the North Korean People's Assembly and the Chinese National People's Congress were run along the same lines. In principle membership of these organs and almost all party positions were elected. In reality they were anything but as there was usually only one candidate to vote for on the ballot paper. Therefore far from representing the proletariat and peasants the parties became totalitarian regimes run by select groups of people. These groups did not allow other political ideas or ideologies to circulate except for the government line. The struggle for power within the ruling cliché was intense in both parties, resulting in factions developing and clashing. Factionalism died down only when one man in each country held absolute power, Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il Sung in North Korea.

They used this power to implement their own versions of Marxism-Leninism rationalising them as adaptations to suit local conditions. Mao developed his theories collectively termed Maoism largely before the CCP came to power. This meant they were more pragmatic than orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Once securely in power Mao felt free to attempt a number of political experiments with the aim of advancing China closer to communism. These included the Great Leap Forward in agriculture and the Cultural Revolution both extensive attacks on the last bastions of bourgeoisie society in China. Neither policy achieved positive results with economic disaster the most common outcome. Likewise once his power was consolidated Kim too set about putting into practice his theory of Juche or self-reliance. He reasoned that being surrounded by so many major powers each with histories of invading North Korea the country had little choice but to become as internally self sufficient as possible. The logical conclusion of Juche was the almost complete closing of North Korea both economically, political and culturally from the rest of the world.