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We Need You to Advocate for the Adoption Tax Credit!
What is the adoption tax credit?
The adoption tax credit, which can be claimed for eligible adoption-related expenses, has helped thousands of American families offset the high cost of adoption since the credit was established in 1997. It has made adoption a financially viable option for many parents who might not otherwise have been able to afford adoption, allowing them to provide children with loving, permanent families. With over 100,000 children in the U.S. foster care system currently eligible for adoption, and an ever increasing number of orphaned and abandoned children worldwide languishing in institutions, the continuation of the adoption tax credit is vital to providing love, safety, and permanency through adoption to as many children as possible.
History of the Adoption Tax Credit
- The adoption tax credit has historically been a non-partisan issue, and is supported by the current administration as well as a majority of members of Congress.
- Although several different bills have been introduced to establish the adoption tax credit and make it a permanent part of the U.S. tax code, Congress has never passed legislation specific to the credit itself. Instead, the adoption tax credit has been extended every year since its initial passage as part of the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996.
- In December 2010, the Tax Relief Act extended the adoption tax credit through tax year 2012; for this year, the credit is once again nonrefundable.
- The current adoption tax credit is set to sunset on December 31, 2012. If it is allowed to expire, after tax year 2012 the adoption tax credit will revert back to a maximum tax credit of $6,000 for parents adopting children with special needs, and there will be no adoption tax credit available for all other adoptive parents beginning in tax year 2013.
For the full Adoption Tax Credit Advocacy Kit, click here.Read More


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Pitney Bowes Details Exhibited Solutions at Post Expo
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Press release from the issuing companyBRUSSELS, Belgium, Oct. 7 -- Pitney Bowes Inc., provider of the world's most advanced mailing solutions for posts and businesses of all sizes, will showcase its leading edge mail and document management solutions at the 2003 POST-EXPO in Brussels, October 7 - 9, 2003. Michael J. Critelli, Chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes will co-host a dinner with the Director General of the Universal Postal Union, Thomas E. Leavey, for postal industry leaders from around the world. Pitney Bowes' Chief Marketing Officer Arun Sinha will deliver the keynote address on October 7, 2003 at 10:40 am on the importance of branding in an increasingly competitive postal environment. "Pitney Bowes is dedicated to delivering the world's most innovative solutions that help customers and posts better serve their respective markets," said Mr. Critelli. "As the postal markets in Europe become more competitive, posts are looking for ways to operate more efficiently and deliver new value-added services to their customers. As a leading mailing technology provider, we are working with the postal operators to provide an integrated, end-to-end channel that delivers enhanced customer value." POST-EXPO is an annual event that brings together top-level postal executives from more than 100 countries to participate in the World Postal Business Forum -- organized in association with the UPU, the technology forum and the technology workshops. It also provides an opportunity to see an unrivalled collection of the latest generation technology solutions that are driving the Mailing Industry forward. On stand 9190 in hall 9, Pitney Bowes will highlight the power of its IntelliLink(TM) Technology, the networked platform for its revolutionary DM Series(TM) mailing systems. The advanced DM Series(TM) provides customers with online access to valuable services and detailed mail usage data via an interactive demonstration of the lifecycle of a mail piece, including mail creation with signature confirmation requested, postage application, post processing and scanning, post delivery and scanning, and with post and customer tracking reports. Pitney Bowes will also exhibit the Olympus(TM) II MT multi-tier high-speed sorter platform as part of its integrated portfolio of inserting, sorting and software solutions for postal companies worldwide. Other products and services featured include D3(TM) Digital Document Delivery, dMail, and postinsight.pb.com. In his keynote address, Mr. Sinha will discuss how to maximize brand value in a deregulated postal environment. "A company's brand can be a significant competitive advantage and driver of intangible value," says Mr. Sinha. "In the more competitive postal marketplace, maximizing your brand becomes even more critical to business success. Companies need to invest in and manage their brands to build and protect market share and deliver shareholder value. At Pitney Bowes, we are very proud of the success of our recent brand initiative, which highlights our ability to engineer the flow of communication and reinforces our existing brand attributes, including innovation and reliability."
Industry News
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Sherry Baranek
Contributing Writer, MoldMaking Technology magazine
Contributing Writer, MoldMaking Technology magazine
The talk of the industry these days is the downturn in the economy - with the general consensus being that moldmakers are either too busy or don't have any work. There is no happy medium. With that in mind, Scott Wahl had a brilliant idea to form his own company - Stillwater, MN-based Midwest Mold Builders (MMB) - that would, in effect, broker molds to large molders and OEMs on a strictly commission basis by working with a specific group of moldmakers.
"Selling molds in this way has two distinct advantages," Wahl explains. "In today's economy there is no room for additional mark-ups in tooling. Working on a commission basis is the only answer for us because we have a much higher capture rate. If we were marking up the molds and reselling them (brokering) we would have a very low capture rate. Secondly, customers feel much more comfortable working with us when they know that we do not mark-up the tooling, and the money transfers are handled directly with the shops."
Featured Content
In the Beginning
According to Wahl, the development of MMB unofficially began more than 10 years ago when he was employed by various molders and finally at the helm of his former company - Global Tool & Engineering. "I have contracted these very same members of our group to build molds for me throughout the years - through other companies and Global Tool," he recalls. "The idea came to me about two years ago while still at Global. Many large molders and OEMs were forced to use us due to our rapid turnaround and quality of plastic injection molds and short-run molding, and we simply contracted the tooling to these outside mold builders. We were in effect brokering these molds."
After the sale of Global Tool, Wahl formed MMB last March. He then employed a full-time engineer so that the two could work together on each project. Wahl explains, "When a customer comes to us with a single mold or a package of molds, we review it and decide which shops should quote it based on our 10 years of experience with them, current shop loads, and whatever specialty the molds may require. Each shop has a niche of some sort, so almost every mold - or even customer - is a good fit for someone in the group. We'll have the shops submit the quotes directly to our customers, and we help see the project through from the beginning stages to the sampling and final shipment of the mold.
"What we have found to work well so far is the larger tooling packages," he continues. "We can easily take on a large tooling package as if we were one single shop. We simply meet with the customer, the chosen shop owners and the designers to coordinate the design and build of the molds. The molds are then built in different locations, but built as if by one shop. All are sampled, debugged and approved prior to shipping. And, since all of the shops are located close to our headquarters, customers can tour all of the shops in the course of two days. Engineers need only make one trip to this area to view a project, rather than travel all across the U.S. to single large shops."
Currently the MMB has 17 members and Wahl plans to add three to five more shops - depending on his customers' needs. "Although we have had countless offers from other shops that want to be members, we have to be very selective about who we add," he explains. "We need to have an intimate knowledge of potential shops' experience for the system to work well."
Proof of the system working well is the organization's survival in light of the current economic climate. Wahl feels that the combined resources of the organization allows it to offer many advantages that a single shop cannot - such as consistent speed and the capacity to take on large tooling projects.
Member Benefits
Advantages of belonging to MMB extend beyond mold building. "Since we represent more than 35 million dollars in annual sales, it becomes advantageous for us to seek volume discounts," Wahl says. "In return for a discount on mold materials from a vendor, that vendor becomes our preferred supplier - we use its product wherever possible instead of its competitors'. We are in the process of setting this up and have had a great response so far from several major suppliers."
Additionally, once the member companies got acquainted through MMB monthly meetings, they found out that they could use each other's resources instead of contracting work to outside vendors. "In one case, Tolerance Tool (North St. Paul, MN) needed dozens of inserts turned - requiring the use of a CNC lathe," Wahl notes. "Normally they would have contracted the job to an outside vendor. But, during one of our meetings, they found out that Lindor Tool (St. Croix Falls, WI) had a CNC lathe, and thus contracted the job to them."
Since then, the members regularly job out wire EDM, mold base construction, jig grinding and other services among each other rather than outside companies. "By the end of the year, a substantial amount of money can be kept within our group," Wahl points out. "In the case where a shop has the opportunity to do a mold package - outside of my sales scope - and they can't handle all of the molds, they simply direct the customer to another shop within our group with no division of monies. They simply expect the shop that they recomend to return the favor someday."
Tolerance Tool president Rich White also notes that belonging to MMB affords his company the opportunity to have a salesperson on staff. It would not be cost-effective for this 13-employee, plastic injection tooling manufacturer for the automotive, computer and medical industries to have a salesperson to fly to trade shows and generate leads, White says. "We just picked up our first mold from a customer we actually targeted approximately a year earlier who went with someone else," he recalls. "But, with Scott targeting them and subsequently recommending us, they liked the entire concept of MMB and went with us.
"We are excited because we could never solicit these types of customers on our own - we're just too small," White continues. "As a group, we are generating more activity. Of course, the whole industry is down - it's very tough right now, and everyone is looking at the bottom dollar. This is helping us out even more because we can be more competitive. Plus, with the volume shipping discounts Scott has set up, we can build and ship our molds across the country for less money, and pass those savings onto our customers, which makes us look even more attractive."
In agreement is MMB member Kent Smith, president of Diamond Tool & Engineering (Bertha, MN) - a precision plastic injection moldmaker for the electronic, computer, automotive and medical industries. "It's hard for small- to mid-sized shops to come together - we're all fairly independent - and this is a good way of working together to everyone's benefit," he states. "It's been great to be part of a group of tool shops that can take on large projects and be able to deliver high quality molds to our customer base and perhaps serve as an alternative to outsourcing overseas.
"Right now I'm very satisfied with the work that has come through the shop by being a part of MMB," Smith continues. "Of course, I'd like to see more, but with the current economic times, I think that we are doing really well at this point. I believe that when the mold building industry picks up, it will be even better."
Looking Ahead
As for MMB's future, Wahl would like to expose it to larger molders and OEMs. "I don't believe that the shop owners even realize the quality and speed that they produce in comparison to the other areas of the U.S.," he comments. "In my beginning years in plastics, I had molds built in many areas of the country, but always had to return to the Midwest to get the speed and quality combination we needed."
Wahl also would like to add sales reps for the Western, Southern and Southeast regions - further strengthening the company and securing its future. He'd like to repeat his success with Global Tool. "We experienced rapid growth at Global Tool & Engineering and we outsourced more than five million dollars in tooling in our third year directly to the members in this group. The company was successfully sold in 1999 after only our fourth year in business, with record sales of more than nine million dollars. This was a direct result of the speed and quality of the mold builders within our group."
The Realities of Aluminum Tooling
Using aluminum tooling instead of traditional tools steels reduces cycle time and costs, but requires up-front, open communications between moldmaker, molder, material supplier and hot runner manifold supplier.
The Keys To Quick Changeover
Reducing changeover times will eliminate waste, moving a shop closer to becoming lean.
How to Solve Common Inventory Management Problems Related to Tooling
A practical look at what to consider when purchasing client/server inventory management software and how to implement such a program, as well as why and how it can benefit mold manufacturing operations.


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Tilbury Hotel
The Tilbury Hotel, located amids the restaurants along the wharf, is quite possibly one of the most popular pubs in Sydney. The bar features an indoor area complete with a white tile bar and wood floors, but the most sought-after seats are beneath the olive and frangipani trees on the patio. Chef Bryan O'Callaghan has created a menu of Italian-influenced Australian cuisine, including such dishes as housemade fazzoletti with wild boar ragout and Cootamundra lamb rack with turnips, peas, and mint. Cocktails are available but should be passed over in favor of beers like the Coopers Pale Ale.


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Healthy eating doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, I find it's much better when meals are fairly simply, and easy to clean up. These are some of my favorite recipes - I hope you'll like them, too.
Search Recipe by Title
BBanana Chia Oatmeal
Beet and Carrot Slaw
CCantaloupe Cucumber Salad
Chili Rubbed Chicken with Avocado Salsa
Chocolate Chia Smoothie
Cinnamon Pear Smoothie
GGinger Baked Pears
KKale with Sausages and White Beans
MMediterranean Quinoa
RRainbow Stir-Fry
Raw Chocolate Pudding


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Mission Two: Dig Site part 2
Walkthrough - Mission Two: Dig Site part 2
With the two initial soldiers downed, all other Nazis in the area will be alerted to your presence. Suddenly, as you work your way forward and to the left, you'll find yourself under fire from multiple angles. Seek out the origin points of the gunfire and begin to return it in kind, as you push forward, slowly but surely. Always seek cover and never rush out ahead of where you should be. The latter technique will almost definitely ensure that you are flanked by persistent thugs. So, take it slowly and methodically, never neglecting to use cover as you take on one enemy at a time. Erik will be able to fire on enemies, too, but don't count on him taking out more than a soldier or two. His gunfire is erratic, at best.
The path towards the large wooden door leading to the truck is a linear one, and if you're lost, you can always seek out Erik, who will guide the way simply by the direction he's currently going in (you can also refer to your map). The one hazardous place you're going to encounter en route to the truck is a Nazi-occupied house on the right side of the road moving forward. Enemies with Kar98s will shoot down on the road below, so you'll need to prioritize their deaths, if possible. If you're extra brave, you can run into the house and clear it on your own, taking care of all enemies on the first floor before moving up to the second floor. Using that technique, however, is entirely up to you.
Ultimately, you'll reach the truck and be transported, in turn, to the Dig Site. It's at this point that you meet a young archaeologist, a scholar who has given away the location of a vital artifact the Nazis are now chasing after. He implores you to chase after the medallion in question, and BJ agrees. It's at this point that you'll gain control in the Dig Site for the very first time. Search the tent you're in for $100 worth of Gold (1/11), and then bail to the outside world. You'll see a lone Nazi soldier ahead of you with his back turned. Melee him when the game prompts you to, and then quietly run to your left, seeking out another, completely empty tent, with beds within. Searching won't only net you some valuable Kar98 ammunition, but it will also net you more cash. Search for Gold in between beds on the left (2/11), and Gold in between beds on the right (3/11). Both are worth $100 each.
Leave the second tent where the money and ammunition was found, and begin to press towards the far side of the dig site's entrance (the star, as always, will guide you). You'll see another soldier standing ahead with his back facing you. Shoot either him or the barrel next to him to eliminate him. Either way, other Nazi soldiers in the area will be alerted to your presence. Settle in where that second soldier was killed, using the sandbags there as cover, and return fire on the half-dozen or so Nazis that confront you. Thankfully, this will also draw out a few enemies from the cave we're about to penetrate, thinning their ranks considerably in the section ahead. When all of the enemies are downed here, scour their bodies for any needed ammunition. Also, proceed forward to a large, open-air tent, where more ammunition and grenades can be found, in addition to some Intel sitting on a table there (1/6).


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Managing Partner
Nick studied mathematics at Cambridge and began his career at Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC) in London, where he became a Chartered Accountant. After two years in New York he returned to London and joined McKinsey, serving clients primarily in financial services. As a Partner he moved back to the US to help develop McKinsey's office in New Jersey.
Since leaving McKinsey, Nick has built a strong track record in applying his financial, strategic and operational skills to help companies grow, including startups, businesses in transition, and established firms. He worked for most of this time in New York in asset management, with two stints in San Francisco applying technology to commercial real estate.
Nick is an avid runner, hiker and traveller, all of which combine well with his lifelong interest in photography.
Cyrus joined The Boston Consulting Group following a Master's degree in business economics in The Netherlands. Over the course of ten years he worked for BCG's Amsterdam and New York offices, covering multiple industries and topics, but with a specific focus on Consumer Goods and Marketing & Sales.
He joined Eden McCallum in 2016. He loves helping companies to achieve real change and create a sustainable competitive advantage, going beyond just interesting insights and beyond mainstream industry standards. After all, in today's connected world with continuous innovation, customers expect more and more from any product and service, regardless of whether it's in a traditional industry or technology driven.
Outside of work, Cyrus tries to balance his passion for good food and wine with running. He also enjoys (fast) cars, reading, and wrestling with his dogs.
Founding Partner
Liann was raised in upstate New York, but most of her career has been in Europe. Before founding Eden McCallum in 2000 with Dena, she was a consultant in McKinsey's London office, worked for Unilever in European brand management, and in business to business marketing for OSRAM, the Siemens lighting business, based in Munich. Liann holds an MBA from INSEAD and BA from Smith College.
Liann's client work spans retail, travel and leisure, consumer goods and B2B services.
She tries to hide the fact that she retains an unnatural level of interest in light bulbs and washing powder, but not that it was always her ambition to start a business.
Christopher began his career in commercial banking in the UK and Korea. After INSEAD, he spent ten years with the Mac Group/ Gemini/ CGE&Y where he was a financial services Partner. He joined Eden McCallum in 2004.
In collaboration with Merrill Lynch, Christopher authored the World Wealth Report for five years and has a particular interest in Wealth Management; he works closely with clients in the financial services and healthcare sectors.
An unapologetic francophile, Christopher is a keen, if unaccomplished, musician and props up the back cello desk of his local amateur orchestra.
Founding Partner
Dena grew up in Toronto and joined McKinsey there following her MBA; she transferred to Frankfurt, then London, where she served clients in retail and financial services and co-led McKinsey's global CRM practice.
Dena joined Condé Nast International as Director of Strategy and Planning. She and Liann founded Eden McCallum in 2000.
Dena works closely with clients in the retail, financial services, media and business to business services sectors. She holds an MBA from INSEAD, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and a BA from the University of Toronto.
Dena is an avid Boris Biker, and when not in London she can be found enjoying the Oxfordshire countryside with her family.
Director, NGO Partnership
Hilary founded our NGO Partnership in 2007 when she was a Partner at Eden McCallum working mainly with clients in the retail and private equity sectors. Now independent, Hilary continues to lead our NGO Partnership, managing our third sector client relationships, scoping and overseeing our projects and teams, and building the programme.
Hilary began her career in finance with BZW. She went on to Bain working on strategy projects across a broad range of sectors. She then moved to Cazenove Private Equity where she was responsible for making and managing investments in European technology, media and telecoms companies.
These days Hilary combines her Eden McCallum work with other, advisory roles, while also enjoying time with her young family and growing menagerie.
Monika grew up in the former Czechoslovakia, where she studied mathematics. She began her career against the backdrop of post-Iron Curtain investment into Eastern Europe.She then worked for McKinsey in the US before earning an MBA at Harvard Business School. She moved to London to rejoin McKinsey, where she worked in media and telecoms for clients in Europe and in North America.
Monika joined Eden McCallum in 2003 and works closely with clients in a broad range of sectors including media, telecoms, leisure, real estate, construction and business to business services.
She lives with her family in North London and spends much of her free time trying to keep up with her two energetic boys.
Chair of Client Service
After gaining an MBA at Harvard Business School, Orna spent 18 years with McKinsey, where she co-led their European Retail practice.
As well as working with Eden McCallum, Orna is currently Senior Independent Director and Remco Chair at Royal Mail, Deputy Chair of the National Trust and Non-Executive Director of Saga plc, and is a member of the Board of Saïd Business School. She has held directorships at HMV, Bupa, Northern Foods and Bank of Ireland UK.
Associate Partner
With a macro-economics degree from the University of Amsterdam, Joris joined BCG in Amsterdam as an Associate, where he spent three years working on projects across a range of industries before doing an MBA at Columbia University, New York.
Joris then returned to BCG, where he worked mainly for banks, insurers and pension funds, supporting growth strategies, PMI, digital strategies and organisational design. After another seven years, he left as Principal to pursue an old dream of becoming active in Amsterdam politics.
Joris served four years on the Amsterdam City Council, representing his party on urban development and city planning. He also continued consulting as an independent, and, having often worked through Eden Mc Callum, he joined the internal team in 2018.
Joris enjoys running, cycling and football (both as a player and spectator) and loves to travel with his family.
Following an engineering degree from Delft University, Heleen spent 12 years with McKinsey in Amsterdam.
After McKinsey, she went to Numico as Global Strategy Director, where she worked with global functions and countries to develop the aggressive growth strategy.
In 2008, Heleen launched the Dutch Eden McCallum office together with Marjon. With a passion for developing pragmatic strategies and performance improvement programmes, she enjoys working with clients, particularly in the consumer goods, media, industrial and services sectors.
Heleen enjoys good food and wine and has recently picked up tennis again.
Director, Benelux Operations
Following a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge and a dabble in investment banking, Anna joined OC&C as a consultant. After INSEAD, she joined McKinsey in Amsterdam, working predominantly in telecoms and financial services, before becoming Practice Manager, European Corporate Finance & Strategy Practice.
Following Eden McCallum's launch in the Netherlands in 2008, Anna spent 7 years leading our consultant-focused activities there, before switching to run Benelux operations and leading the Analyst Programme in the Netherlands.
Outside work, when not acting as chauffeur to her 3 children, Anna is a keen horsewoman, despite missing an arm, regularly representing her riding club at regional level in dressage.
Marjon initially joined McKinsey in Amsterdam, before moving abroad and spending time in McKinsey's London, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur offices.
After McKinsey, she spent some time working as a freelance consultant before starting Eden McCallum's Dutch office in 2008 with Heleen.
Marjon truly enjoys working with clients on strategy, organisation redesign and performance improvement programmes. She serves a broad range of leading Dutch clients, often in consumer-facing industries, financial services, industrial and B2B services sectors.
Marjon enjoys the company of friends and family, good food and wine and a ditto book. She plays field-hockey and golf can also often be found cheering on her three children on the hockey pitch.
Helen studied English Literature at Nottingham University and, upon leaving, joined the Civil Service focusing on issues related to the environment and transport.
Following this, Helen joined Accenture's strategy group and spent nine years working with Oil, Gas and Utility companies, particularly relating to Business Unit strategy and M&A for clients worldwide.
Helen joined Eden McCallum in 2011 and now oversees all of our consultant-focused activities.
Helen has recently ditched the gym in favour of outdoor workouts in the park and can often be spotted hanging off the monkey bars in all weathers.
Associate Partner
Jack began his consulting career with Booz & Company in 2007. Working with energy, chemicals and utilities clients across Europe and the Middle East, he focused on strategy, operations and organisation issues. He then launched an independent consulting practice where he continued his industrial focus as well as working with a number of Media and Food clients, before joining Eden McCallum in 2018.
Jack studied Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture at University College London and has an MBA from London Business School. Before his consulting career he spent a number of years designing and building passenger ships and yachts.
Outside of work Jack enjoys food and wine while burning off the calories in the great outdoors, particularly the Scottish Highlands and chasing increasingly elusive marathon goals.


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The moment of "now" is the nodal point connecting historicity with teleology, or more simply, past with future in the present.
The past is over-and-done-with unless it is represented in the moment of the now in some way.
The future is a fictional expectation unless it is represented in the moment of the now in some way.
Now is both a noun and also a verb because in human terms it is alive for us...now.
If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Excepting for the tree, if no one is around, what does it matter now in human terms?
Now does not mean not planning or not preparing for the future without the benefit of the lessons from the past.
Rather, now orients us to being fully present by fully experiencing, as receiver and giver, of said experience, like experiencing a performance as a member of the audience but also like experiencing a performance as the performer...now!
There is a powerful implication, herein, viz., that every nuance of the experiential tapestry of being fully human, of being fully alive means that we must experience the experience of our experience right now in the now of the now.
Otherwise, we may discover that everything else is now illusion, unless, of course, illusion is now our reality in the moment of the now!
Author Note: Dr. Larry B. Gelman is a Clinical Psychologist and a Personal Mentor
PMS Blog Comments Policy | PMS Copyright | PMS Disclaimer | PMS Citation Information
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How do I start my business?
If you are interested in starting a business, our team of advisors can provide you with the expertise and resources you need to make an informed decision. You can take advantage of all of our resources including:
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If you have a business plan or just an idea you want to explore further, here are a few ways we can help:
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How do I start using your services?
To get started contact your local Kansas SBDC center. If you already know that you need a business plan, take advantage of our online Business Plan Tool.
Helpful forms to review and complete before your Kansas SBDC visit include the Initial Assessment Form, request for counseling, and Summary of Money Needs forms.
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Take advantage of several online courses that can help you pull together what you need.
Online SBA courses. Free online courses covering topics ranging from successful pricing models to patents, trademarks, and copyrights to how to prepare government contract proposals and more. Courses are online and average approximately 30 minutes in length.
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Online SBDC business plan tool. Free online business plan tool that walks you through a full business plan. With the tool you'll have opportunities to ask a consultant questions as you develop your complete plan.


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Heesen is proud to announce the sale of YN 18250 Project Ayla, 50-metre semi-displacement for delivery in April 2018. The client was introduced by Abberley Luxury Yachts, a British yachting brokerage company dedicated to ensuring that chartering and owning a yacht is an exhilarating, pampered and joyful experience for its clients.
The 5000 aluminium class epitomizes Heesen's ability to create successful semi-custom superyachts highly customisable to incorporate the client's taste and lifestyle.
Created to meet the demand for shorter deliveries and to avoid compromising on quality, the 5000 aluminium platform is based on proven design and tested technology - reducing the delivery time by approximately six months. Furthermore, Heesen financial independence, allowed to begin the construction of Ayla on speculation, further shortening her delivery time.
Ayla is a full aluminium performance yacht below the 500GT threshold, with a highly efficient hard-chine hull built according to Heesen's acknowledged expertise in weight reduction. Powered by two high power-to-weight ratio MTU 2,880kW engines, Ayla will reach a maximum speed of 23 knots and will have a long range of 3.100 nautical miles at 11 knots.
Acclaimed Italian designer Cristiano Gatto - at his sixth collaboration with this Dutch shipyard - created a chic minimalist interior, a contemporary interpretation of New Deco. The extensive use of upholstery, both on vertical and horizontal surfaces, allows Ayla's new owners to choose material and colour palettes to create the atmosphere that meets their taste. The design offers comfort and cosiness thanks to the use of soft chenille fabric, while high gloss ebony and Canaletto walnut timbers confer a very luxurious feel throughout the whole interior.
Heesen Interiors fine wood-carpenters will work for the next six months to carve and sculpt this refined interior design. Heesen is one of the few shipyards in the world that still has its own interior carpentry shop.
Another yacht in the 5000 aluminium class, YN 18750, is currently under construction at the shipyard in Oss and is available for delivery in Spring 2019.


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We explore how running can improve your health and also let you indulge in your passion for the outdoors, writes Nandini Reddy.
Gyms are a great place for those looking to get in shape but they also come with a limitation of being indoors. Many people dislike being indoors and avoid going to gyms altogether. But if you still want to get healthy outdoors then running is the best option.
We have decided to explore 15 reasons that would motivate you to pick running as your go to way to stay healthy:
- Running burns 700-800 calories in an hour as per a study.
- Runners live longer than non-runners. This isn't just an empty claim, there is a whole lot of research behind this. Apparently runners out live non-runners by 20%.
- If you live in the big city then running is one thing that you will not need to commute for. That is a big plus for those of you who hate commuting to the gym.
- Running releases happy hormones and gives you a high that is equivalent to cannabis as per a study published by Experimental Technology
- You get a lot of sun when you run. So you will never run of out of Vitamin D.
- You need minimal equipment to run – the most basic being a pair of shoes, shorts and a T-shirt.
- There is no restriction on timing, so you can choose to run whenever you want
- You can stick to your exercise routine even when you travel because running is an easy exercise to follow anywhere
- It gives your heart and lungs a good workout
- Its a high impact exercise that has amazing benefits on your bones
- You are less likely to fall sick with colds and coughs when you are a runner
- It is a very meditative form of exercise that gives you alone time to introspect. Don't like being alone then its also a great way to socialize with other runners.
- Running always lifts your moods. If you are feeling dull or low then a run can always lift your mood.
- You have a variety of terrains to run – roads, trains, hills, forests, etc. It never gets boring.
- It doesn't matter if you are an athlete or a newbie, you can always take up running
Whatever you reason just get out and run.


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I'm trying to finish some of the WIPs in my sewing room. (It's getting a little crowded in here). So I turned my Everglade mini quilt into a cushion. (Pattern is Everglade by Carolyn Friedlander).
I just wanted it finished so I didn't even worry about batting and quilting. I just made some piping from the same fabric I used for the batting, followed the tutorial for the backing from Sew Mama Sew and it was done! Onto the next WIP.


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Gather all 9 clues to complete the final Weekly Challenge on Dec 16!
Hello --
I am working on a project and have a challenge that is eluding me. I have concatenated about 7 fields using a comma (,).
How do I keep a single comma to delineate, but remove any unnecessary commas. So for item 1, I want to see:
Go to Solution.
Go to Solution.
Wow! That worked! Now ask me if I understand why it worked.
This is genius! Thank you!
could the same formula be used to get rid of multiple words? I have a concatenation which ends up with OCC,OCC,,,,OCC, . I'd like to get rid of the commas (which your regex does, thank you), and I'd like to get rid of the repeating OCC. Would it be something like \w(OCC){2} in the statement instead of ,{2,}.
You're good @MarqueeCrew , very, very good!


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All projects
Penang Real Estate
The unique geography, climate, scenery, humanities, Commonwealth education, world-class medical services and convenience of living in Malaysia, attracts countless foreigners to buy, visit and live.
"The Stardom" is one of the real estate projects jointly invested by the group which locate in penang. Action club members can invest at a very low price.
The Malaysian Second Home Program is one of the benefits of the Action Club's one-stop independent service for Malaysian immigrants. The second home is a long-term visa-free, conditional permanent residency program that does not need to give up any identity, status, welfare, career or social relations of the origin. You can have a special status in Malaysia and enjoy the multiple benefits and guarantees provided by the Malaysian government.


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Tips to Convert Web Traffic to Sales
Because business companies are seeing a huge profit potential on marketing their brand and product via websites, practically all are investing on competent website developers to design an effective website for them in order to garner a substantial amount of traffic with the hope of converting the web traffic into sales. However, a business company must understand that even if it has gained a dominant presence online, it doesn't mean that the return on investment is guaranteed, but reaching out to potential customers and satisfying their needs first by way of relevant information and connecting with the potential customers on a personal level will guarantee the conversion of traffic to sales.
Connecting on a personal level
For a company's website to be able to connect effectively to the personal level of its potential customers, it must create its own blog where posted articles discuss issues relevant to the company's products and services, describing clearly the applications and benefits of the company's products and services and how these can alleviate the present problems being experienced by the viewers/potential customers and where the blog can comfortably relate to them.
Targeting the right customers with relevant web pages
Targeting the right customers through the website's web pages may begin with displaying the best-selling products/services on the home page and, with one click, potential customers should easily be transported to a category page where your similar products or services are on display, such that this funneling technique must be designed to catch the interest of the viewers in just a few minutes without waning their attention span.
How to build product awareness
Creating awareness of products that you promote is a technique that is used to let people get acquainted and know more about the company and its brand, as well as the product, so that the more awareness is being delivered to people such as using social media or email, the more trust is being built into the people who will be your potential customers.
Use an effective technique that can provide a means to turn viewers to subscribers and this is by creating an email list by following these measures: using email opt-in forms which should be visible in the website, such as placing it on sidebar, footer, header, at the end of the post; using landing page or home page; or using social media.
Look for ways to create a call to action
An effective call to action is creating the website to look like it's a real shopping experience with a page to view the items in a virtual shopping cart, such that the layout must be simple and easily negotiable with information safety walls that has the following: requirements of signing up for an account, age, basic information both personal and business, payment method and terms and conditions.


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Dell Launches Ruggedized Notebook
Dell wants to show its customers that its notebooks can be tough too.
The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker is launching on Jan. 16 its first-ever "semi-rugged" notebookthe Latitude ATG (all-terrain grade) D620which will compete for market share against well-known rugged models such as the Panasonic ToughBook and General Dynamics' Itronix GoBook.
In creating a semi-rugged notebook, Dell is looking to capture customers in public safety fields, such as policemen, firefighters, EMS (emergency medical service) workers and the military. These notebooks are also designed for workers who spend a considerable amount of time outside, including those in construction and the natural gas and oil fields.
The ATG D620 notebook, which is being produced under Dell's Latitude line of notebook PCs and will have a starting cost of $2,499, has been built to standards used by the U.S. military to resist the dangers posed by shock, vibrations, humidity and altitude, according to Dell officials.
Read the rest of this eWEEK story: "Dell Launches Ruggedized Notebook"


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What is Talking Heads?
Talking Heads is a group for people who hear, see and believe things that other people do not (such as hearing voices).
People with these experiences are seen as the experts in their own experiences. Talking Heads offers a place for people to support each other and share their experiences and knowledge. The group is based on the principles of the Hearing Voices Network. It is run by Humber NHS Foundation Trust.
Group members have agreed to treat people respectfully and keep conversations in the group confidential.
What happens at the Groups?
Some topics that have been talked about in the group are:
- What it's like to hear voices
- Coping strategies; how people manage their experiences day to day
- Helping and supporting one another at times of distress
- Medication
- Making the most of the mental health service
- Overcoming difficulties or stigma
- How family and friends may react to voices or unusual experiences
Who can come?
There are Talking Heads Groups meeting in Hull, Driffield, Goole and Pocklington.
People who have attended Talking Heads Groups have found it helpful and reassuring; realising they are not alone with their experiences. The Talking Heads group is open to anyone who hears voices, has visions and/or experiences unusual beliefs. People can come to whichever dates they choose. There is no need for a referral.
The Hull Group
Time: The Hull Talking Heads Group meets the last Tuesday of every month:
Time: 1pm-2.30pm
Venue: Kardomah 94, 94 Alfred Gelder Street, Hull
Hull Group dates for 2017:
- Tuesday 27th June 1pm-2.30pm
- Tuesday 25th July 1pm-2.30pm
- Tuesday 29th August 1pm-2.30pm
- Tuesday 26th September 1pm-2.30pm
- Tuesday 31st October 1pm-2.30pm
- Tuesday 28th November 1pm-2.30pm


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You are here
Niger: strengthening climate change resilience
In the heart of West Africa, Niger endures long periods of drought. More than US$350 million have been invested since 1980 in operational programmes, including sustainable land management.
Faced with the effects of climate change and challenges due to periods of intense drought, the Government of Niger has decided to act decisively. The goal? To help its people to fight the consequences of climate change and ensure inclusive development and growth.
Niger and its fight against the effects of climate change, particularly drought, were the subject of a round table on 15 November 2016 chaired by the Minister for Water and Sanitation, Barmou Salifou, held as a side event at COP22 in Marrakesh. The session included the screening of a film entitled "Niger taking action for the resilience of its people", that showed the degradation of the ecosystem and the responses of the authorities.
"The new strategy that the country has just adopted is based on three axes: environment, food and industry, with the goal of increased yields. Water management accounts for 44% of all large-scale project funding. The second thrust is related to the reduction of agricultural losses. Finally, the third axis relates to strengthening resilience and mustering social mobilization and a powerful drive for saving ecosystems," explained Yahaya Nazoumou, a climate change expert in the country's Ministry of Economy and Finance.
To strengthen its people's resilience to climate change, Niger sees adaptation as paramount, through actions with strong co-benefits that strengthen the resilience of ecosystems and populations and reduce GHG emissions.
"We have focused our efforts on adaptations and mitigation at the village level, with all actions focused on communities," added Mafalda Duarte, programme manager for the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), who referred to a partnership agreed with the Sahel Institute (Institut du Sahel). Ms Duarte went on to say, "We have worked on gender and youth. We have made a lot of progress in five years [...] in all, we have 4 billion CFA francs for all these projects." It is important to put the issue of climate change at the institutional level. We have a protocol for a study on the livestock sector to improve its resilience. [...] We have results on the ground, with funding of $8.3 billion, and we have mobilized to obtain a further $5 billion."
Gareth Phillips, coordinator of the CIF Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) at the African Development Bank (AfDB), explained that "AfDB is channelling PPCR funding towards two projects in Niger with co-financing from its own resources." Both projects are designed to strengthen the resilience of the population to climate change, particularly through improving hydro meteorological methods and mobilizing water resources for food production. They also have the goal of ensuring the resilience of agricultural supply chains.
"AfDB provided Niger with technical support during the design and development phases of these projects, which offer measures that could be applied in other regions of the continent," added Mr Phillips. "In addition, best practice will enable the Bank to design future climate change resilience operations in other sectors. AfDB and the CIFs will continue to support the Nigerien experience and, with CIF support, AfDB will develop a mechanism on the benefits of adaptation (the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism), that will provide a new source of funding for climate adaptation projects."
"The World Bank is supporting Niger to develop technologies and include resilience into all its policies and programmes," said the Practice Manager for Environment and Natural Resources at the World Bank, Benoît Bosquet. Bosquet added, "The programme for pastoralism and irrigation in the Sahel and Niger are part of this. We are also working on irrigation from Lake Chad, off-grid solar energy, and in addition to that, the World Bank has issued a new systematic diagnostic in which all the statistics are classified. These combined data will underpin the future strategic programme with the World Bank and the CIFs.
Climate change mitigation actions in Niger have improved access to electricity, with the goal of reaching 60% by 2030 (against 10% in 2010), thanks to rural electrification and the promotion of renewable energy. Eventually, energy efficiency will be improved by this and the Kandadji hydropower station will be developed to supply 130 MW, in addition to a 100 MW solar project.
All these projects require $8.7 billion in funding between 2020 and 2030 - 13% in unconditional funding (own funds and public aid) and 87% conditional upon access to new sources of funding. The Green Climate Fund seems a perfect fit, with its US$1.6 billion budget dedicated to adaptation measures and its $7.1 billion for mitigation actions, in addition to $1.3 billion allocated to multiple operations. Niger wishes to raise 87% of its funding needs through the Climate Investment Funds and multilateral cooperation.


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Matreya wrote:Help! I was in Krokotopia trying to advance my crafting skills, and i was told to make to Poinards of Gallantry. However... I have no clue what the recipe is or where to find it! :( HELP!!! Thank you!!
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20.1 Introduction
20.2 The Early Formulations
20.3 The Pirenne Thesis
20.4 Feudalism as Ties of Dependence
20.5 The Feudal Revolution Thesis
20.6 The Plough and the Stirrup Thesis
20.7 Feudalism as Mode of Production
20.8 The Recent State of Debate
20.9 Summary
20.10 Glossary
20.11 Exercises
The debates on feudalism cover a wide spectrum of themes ranging from the precise meaning of the term to the origins, nature and consequences of the system under survey. Although one may find the Latin word feodalis, from which the word 'feudal' has been derived, in medieval Europe, the term was employed in a strictly legal sense. It was used to connote the fief (one particular form of real property right), and not to denote a complex type of social organisation. The word 'feudalism' was popularised through the works of the eighteenth-century French philosophers, notably by Boulainvilliers and Montesquieu, who used it to indicate the parcelling out of sovereignty among a host of pretty princes and lords during the Middle Ages. However, with the progress of the French Revolution, the term practically came to be used as a general description covering the many abuses of the Ancien Régime. Since then, different meanings have been attached to the word 'feudalism' and the historians have applied the term with varying emphases and connotations, with the broad agreement that feudalism, either as a political structure or as a social formation, was the dominant system in western and central Europe at least between the tenth and the twelfth centuries.
In this Unit we will study the views of various scholars on feudalism in Europe. Beginning with the early formulations about the origin of the feudal system we will review the recent debate on it. Main views discussed in this Unit will include Henri Pirenne thesis, The Feudal Revolution thesis, the Plough and Stirrup thesis and the recent debates on it. We will also study the views which represent feudalism as ties of dependence or as mode of production.
The early historians of feudalism often emphasised the purely legalistic aspects of this system, namely fiefs, vassalage, knightly or military service and justice
by the lords (We shall discuss all these terms in the next Unit). The pioneering 5
work of F. W. Maitland, a British historian of law in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was carried out within this understanding of feudalism. According to this tradition of scholarship, the basic characteristics of feudalism in medieval Europe were fragmentation of political authority, public power in private hands, and a military system in which an essential part of the armed forces was secured through private contracts. In other words, feudalism was conceptualised as a method of government, and a way of securing the forces necessary to preserve that method of government. Drawing upon this legal and rather technical use of the term, many present-day historians think it necessary to restrict the use of 'feudalism' only to the specifically voluntary and personal bonds of mutual protection, loyalty and support among the members of the administrative, military or ecclesiastical elite in medieval Europe, to the exclusion of the involuntary obligations attached to the unfree tenures. The bonds which the term 'feudalism' excludes, according to this formulation, may be treated under a separate category of Manorialism.
However, almost all these characteristics of the medieval European political organisation appeared to have formed a sharp break from the traditions of Antiquity. As a form of the disintegration of the political authority, the origin of feudalism was therefore located in the customs and practices of the
'barbarian' Germanic tribes who engineered the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. In the early legalistic and dynastic histories the term usually carried a sense of political decline and economic retrogression. Conditions of a 'natural economy', as Max Weber argued, or those of a 'closed house-economy', as Karl Bucher put it, were said to have enveloped the feudal Europe. However, by the end of the nineteenth century most of the professional historians came to abandon such catastrophic views of the 'barbarian invasions' and began to appreciate the complexities of the transition from the ancient world to medieval civilisation. Fustel de Coulanges developed a theory of Roman origins of feudalism, which stressed the Roman precedence of the mansi and the villa, and had a significant influence on historical interpretations in his day. In the early decades of the twentieth century, many historians tended to emphasise the elements of continuity between the Germanic kingdoms and the Roman Empire, among whom the French historian Henri See, Belgian historian Otto Seeck and the Austrian historian Alfons Dopsch were particularly important.
Tracing the roots of the various forms of landholding, social classes and political structure to the organisation of the later Roman Empire, Dopsch argued that in medieval Europe, save for the temporary disturbances caused by the invasions, trades still circulated along the Roman roads, carrying not only the luxuries but also the necessities of life. For Dopsch, the towns continued to exist and innumerable local markets gave a lie to the theory of regression to natural economy. He also could not see any cultural break between the late antiquity and the middle ages: "The Germans were not enemies to destroy or wipe out Roman culture, on the contrary they preserved and developed it". Even the French historian Ferdinand Lot, who believed that the end of Antiquity had a disastrous consequence for the European civilisation, held the pace of transition to have been quite slow and observed that the continued contact and gradual fusion of the Roman and Germanic worlds enabled many Roman institutions to pass into the structure of the barbarian kingdoms.
The question of continuity with the classical world took a radically new turn between the years 1922 and 1935 when the distinguished Belgian historian Henri Pirenne began to put forward his famous thesis regarding the impact of the Islamic expansion on the development of feudalism in Europe. The thesis was divided in two distinct parts, one showing the continuation of the classical tradition in the Merovingian period, the other demonstrating the fundamental change of society in the Carolingian age. According to Pirenne, the Germanic invasions destroyed neither the Mediterranean unity of the ancient world, nor the cultural unity of the 'Romania' as it still existed in the fifth century. From the fifth to the eighth century the Syrian merchants continued to bring the spices and luxury clothes of the Orient, the wines of Ghaza, the oil of North Africa and the papyrus of Egypt to the ports of the West from those of Egypt and Asia Minor. The royal revenue was derived in the largest measure from the indirect taxes (tonlieu) on this commerce and the use of the Roman gold solidus, at once the instrument and symbol of the economic unity of the Mediterranean basin, was preserved. As the land-locked sea remained the highway of communication with the Byzantine Empire for the barbarians established in Italy, Africa, Spain and Gaul, the Mediterranean character of the ancient civilisation was not actually ruptured in the Merovingian period.
The cause of the break with the tradition of antiquity, Pirenne argued, was the rapid and unexpected advance of the Arab Muslims under the Umayyad caliphate which closed up the Mediterranean along the coast of Gaul [modern day France] about the year 650, and severed Gallic relations with Syria and Egypt, drying up the stream of commerce from Marseilles. Although the Byzantine imperial navy succeeded in repulsing the Arab offensive from the Aegean Sea, the Adriatic and the southern shores of Italy, the Tyrrhenian Sea fell completely under the domination of the Saracens. They encircled it to the south and the west through Africa and Spain, with the strategically located naval bases at the Balearic Isles, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily. The upshot of this advance was the final separation of the East from the West, and the end of the Mediterranean unity. From the beginning of the eighth century the whole economic movement in the region was directed towards Baghdad, and countries like Africa and Spain, previously important members of the Mediterranean community, were drawn into this new orbit. In Pirenne's formulation, the Mediterranean functioned no longer as a channel of commercial and intellectual communication between the east and the west, but rather as a barrier between two strikingly distinct, if not hostile, civilisations.
This was, according to Pirenne, the founding moment of feudalism in Europe. Having been thus 'bottled up', the West was forced to live upon its own resources. In the course of the eighth century, the urban life and the professional merchants disappeared, credit and contracts were no longer in use, the importance of writing decreased, gold coinage yielded to silver monometallism, and the former 'exchange economy' was substituted by an economy without markets. This was in fact an economy of regression, occupied solely with the cultivation of the soil and the consumption of its products by the owners, where payments were largely rendered in kind and each estate aimed at supplying all its own needs. The utility of the innumerable small weekly local markets was limited to satisfying the household needs of the surrounding population. While
Debates On Feudalism
a number of Jew traders were certainly engaged in long-distance trade, this was principally a spasmodic and occasional commerce in expensive commodities which only a very limited clientele could afford and consequently its effect on the entire economy was minimal. As a result of such 'commercial paralysis', the empire of Charlemagne, in striking contrast to Roman and Merovingian Gaul, was essentially a land empire. Movable wealth no longer played any significant part in economic life. The possession of land began to determine the nature and modes of social existence. The return of society to a purely agricultural civilisation was expressed in the political sphere through the disintegration of public authority in the hands of its agents, who, thanks to their territorial possessions, had become independent and considered the authority with which they were invested as a part of their patrimony. On a larger scale, again, the shattering of the Mediterranean unity restricted the papal authority to western Europe, and the conquest of Spain and Africa left the king of the Franks the master of the Christian Occident, the only temporal authority to whom the Pontiff could turn. In this sense, Pirenne wrote in a famous sentence, "Without Islam the Frankish empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mohammet, would be inconceivable."
Pirenne's thesis drew both applause and criticism. Many historians refused to admit that the growth of Islam had been so decisive a factor in the development of feudalism in Europe, particularly since there was no satisfactory evidence indicating an active Arab policy of prohibiting commerce in the Mediterranean. Pirenne was also criticised of overstating both the cultural unity of the Roman world and the role of Oriental commerce in the economic life of Merovingian Gaul. Later research emphasised the extent of trade and commerce in the Carolingian age. The studies of M. Sabbe on the commerce in precious commodities attempted to show that the Mediterranean trade was interrupted less completely than Pirenne had thought. R. S. Lopez (Birth of Europe) and F. L. Ganshof (The Carolingians and the Frankish and Feudalism) demonstrated that there was still a considerable degree of commerce in the Mediterranean ports between the eighth and the tenth centuries. However, Pirenne's work certainly inaugurated a closer scrutiny of the economic evidence, widened the field of historical inquiries and stimulated research in several new directions.
While the Pirenne thesis undeniably offered a powerful and provocative explanation of the origin of feudalism in medieval Europe, it did not concern itself very much with the definition of feudalism. By the early half of the twentieth century at least two opposing, though related, conceptualisations of feudalism were in circulation. The mainstream liberal view, springing from the legalistic school of history, tended to regard it as a body of institutions that created and regulated the exchange of obligations of obedience and service on the one hand and those of protection and maintenance on the other when one free man (known as the vassal) used to surrender himself to another free but more powerful man (known as the lord). Since the lord, in order to fulfil his obligation of maintenance, usually granted to his vassal a unit of real property known as a fief or feodalis, historians such as F. L. Ganshof and F. M. Stenton argued, the term feudalism covered no more than the institutions which involved these practices. It was precisely in this technical sense, they maintained, that
the term could be properly applied to describe the states born of the break-up of the Carolingian empire and the countries influenced by them.
On the other hand, the Marxist and especially the Soviet historians expanded the use of the term to address a more general examination of the economic structure of the concerned society. In the nineteenth century Karl Marx had already proposed an understanding of human history based on the gradual rise and fall of different modes of production which were said to have determined the general character of the social, political and ideological processes. In keeping with this formulation, they tended to characterise the system of reciprocal but unequal personal relations among members of the military elite as a mere derivative of the larger social relations of production which had to work within a mode of production marked by the absence of commodity exchange.
Largely moving away from both the restrictive legalistic view and the economic deterministic conceptualisation of 'feudalism', the French historian Marc Bloch chose to explain the phenomenon by exploring the various forms of, what he called, 'the ties between man and man'. Bloch viewed feudalism as a set of social conditions where the relations of personal protection and subordination immensely expanded as the dispersal of political authority operated through an extreme subdivision of the rights of real property. Examining the overlapping careers of family solidarity and feudalism, Bloch argued that the bond of kinship progressively tightened with the development of feudalism. The group founded on blood relationship functioned both as a springboard of help and protection for the individual (which could be most effectively mobilised in the cases of blood-feuds), as the power of the state to provide such protection declined, and as an impediment for his possession rights. There was an important aspect of economic solidarity too, since several related households frequently formed
'brotherhoods' which not only shared the same room and board and cultivated the same common fields, but were also held collectively responsible for the payment of dues and commutation of services to the seigniorial lord.
In spite of several social and regional variations, Bloch argued, the principle of a 'human nexus' where one individual rendered himself as a subordinate to another permeated the whole life of feudal society. At one level, vassalage was the form of such dependence peculiar to the members of the militarised upper classes. Both the political necessities and the 'mental climate' of the age attached great value to the exchange of protection and obedience. Since the question of salary was precluded in the overwhelmingly agrarian economy with limited money exchange, fiefs or stipendiary tenements for the vassals were in widespread use. At another, the lower orders of the society were bound by a whole group of relationships of personal dependence – servitude – which had as their common characteristics a rigorous subjection on the subordinate's part, and on that of the protector a virtually uninhibited authority, productive of lucrative revenues. Bloch did not consider the manor to have been a feudal organisation in itself, though he agreed that it had positively assisted in extending the grip of feudalism over a much larger population. Within this broad framework of the pervasive ties of dependence, Bloch located the divergences both within and between feudal societies, most notably in the forms or complexity of noble association, the extent of peasant dependency and the importance of money payments. In this sense, for Bloch the term
'feudalism' was a heuristic device for comparative studies of local phenomena, rather than as a blanket definition of the medieval social order.
Debates On Feudalism
Bloch also underscored the transformations that occurred over time within this overall structure. Arguing that the European society underwent a series of profound and widespread changes during the middle of the eleventh century, he proposed a theory of two feudal ages. While the second feudal age did not make a complete break with the first, in almost all spheres of life some qualitatively different advances were made. The evolution of the economy in this age – primarily involving demographic growth, consolidation of human settlements, development of intercommunication, increase in trade, urban growth, and amelioration of the currency situation – entailed a genuine revision of social values. Paralleling the decay or transformation of the 'classical feudalism', as it were, a sort of contraction in the size of the kindred groups as well as a loosening of the kinship bonds were in process. In the new sectors of growth and development the emergence of the individual was already being signalled. The formation of Latin Christianity, the process of linguistic assimilation, the revival of interest in Roman law and eventually the repeated enfranchisements contributed in varying proportions to this process.
While Marc Bloch's study constituted a definite breakthrough in the analysis of the medieval societies and continues to be a classic in the field, the researches it stimulated have proposed major modifications of his thesis. Historians have pointed out that while Bloch's rich description is extremely well aware of the constant though slow changes in the feudal society, there is no identification of a driving force of change or its decline. Bloch describes, but often does not account for, the inner dynamism of the social process. Bloch has also been criticised on the grounds of a loose chronology, an inflexible conception of state and a dated conception of lineage.
Taking the cue from Bloch, Georges Duby, one of the most original and influential post-war historians of medieval society, attempted to look beyond the economic to the ideological dimensions of feudal institutions. His detailed study of the political, economic, and social life in the Maconnais settlement in France from the tenth through the twelfth centuries was published in 1953 and focused a generation of historical research on what he called the "feudal revolution" of the early eleventh century. Arguing that fief never played "more than a peripheral part in what is generally known as feudalism", Duby documented how with the collapse of royal authority in the late tenth and early eleventh century, the castellans forced the lesser landlords into vassalage and imposed on all peasants a new kind of lordship – seigneurie banale – based on taxation rather than tenure. Previously, Duby argued, the obligation to work in order to feed a master fell upon slaves, but since this period, with the increased weight of the seigniorial power, this burden came to be borne by all villagers. This involved a realignment of the social functions. On the one hand, the difference between the freemen and the serfs came to be blurred as all the villagers were subjected to identical and heavier levies. On the other hand, the differences between the laymen and the clergy came to be more sharply pronounced, with the clergy strongly defending their exemption from seigniorial exactions. The bearing of arms also became a crucial marker of social distinction in this period, with the horsemen or the knights forming a lower stratum of the aristocracy. The term 'feudal revolution' signifies this entire social process, slow but unmistakable, which not only transformed the previous economy of
war and plunder, but also restructured the aristocratic family into the patrilineage and effected related changes in the domains of mental attitudes. Duby developed a fresh perspective on the question of the decline of feudalism. Unlike the Pirennean and the dominant Marxist models, which visualised the collapse of feudalism resulting from a blow from outside – either in terms of the Crusades or in relation to the increased peasant flight into the cities – Duby chose to see the decline as a slow and dynamic process which reflected the internal developments within the rural economy and society.
In his subsequent works, Duby turned to explore the ways in which the substantial growth of the rural economy after the feudal revolution accentuated the contrast between leisure and labour. His researches on the practices of family, the marriage customs, the chivalric code and the governing medieval imagination of ideal society as a sum of three distinct unequal orders (those who pray, those who fight and those who toil) attempted to elucidate the perceptions, concepts, and attitudes behind medieval institutions and practices. He called this the "imaginary" or the "mental attitudes" of the period. Focusing on the construction and function of as well as the changes in the reigning ideological models of the feudal society, Duby simultaneously mapped the social changes they were reproducing.
While much of the historiography of feudalism has now moved into Duby's perspective's shadows, his work has also generated an intense and vigorous debate among the historians. Dominique Barthelemy, in his detailed study of the feudal Vendomois society, has questioned Duby's vital methodological assumptions and argued that Duby has mistaken the change in style of documentation as the change in society itself. Theodore Evergates has pointed out that Duby's insistence on the absolute dichotomy between independent castellanies and the monarchical state has retained an old Blochian model that does not take the diverse forms of local power configurations into account. Constance Bouchard and other feminist historians have criticised Duby for underplaying the diverse ways in which the women related to the feudal revolution. His refusal to engage the secular documents, especially the royal and princely administrative registers, has also invited disapproval from many historians.
Lynn White Jr. made an important intervention in the growing debate in 1962 by strongly emphasising the role of technology in shaping the feudal societies. He argued that remarkable technological improvements in the fields of agriculture sustained and even improved the conditions of the peasantry and the artisanate even while government fell into anarchy, trade was greatly reduced, and the so-called higher realms of culture decayed. According to White, the larger medieval culture of technology was rooted in the Christian theological traditions, which greatly honoured the dignity and spiritual value of labour and encouraged the production of labour-saving machines.
At one level, White's analysis focused on the immense significance of certain technological inventions for medieval agriculture which include the use of the iron plough for tilling, the stiff-harness for equine traction, the crank in hand- querns and on rotary grindstones, the water-mill for mechanical power, marling for soil improvement and the three-field system for crop rotation. These
Debates On Feudalism
constituted, in White's words, no less than an agricultural revolution in the
Middle Ages. The development and diffusion of the northern wheeled plough
— equipped with coulter, horizontal share and mouldboard — not only greatly increased production by making the tillage of rich, heavy, badly-drained river- bottom soils possible, it also saved labour by making cross-ploughing superfluous, and thus produced the typical northern strip-systems of land division, as distinct from the older block-system dictated by the cross-ploughing necessary with the lighter Mediterranean plough. Moreover, this heavy plough needed such power that peasants pooled their oxen and ploughed together, thus laying the basis for the manor which was the medieval co-operative agricultural community. The effects of the heavy plough were supplemented and greatly enhanced in the later eighth century by the invention of the three- field system in the late eighth century. Under the two-field system the peasants' margin of production was insufficient to support a work-horse; under the three- field system the horse displaced the ox as the normal plough and draft animal of the northern plains. The traditional yoke-system of harness which neither allowed the horse to exert its full force in pulling the plough nor enabled the ancients to tie up one animal in front of another was immensely improved by the sudden and almost simultaneous appearance of the horseshoe, the tandem harness and the new horse-collar in the late ninth or early tenth century. We shall take up these issues in greater details in Unit 23. Here we pause to observe that according to White, through the shift from the ox and the two-field system to the horse and the three-field system, the northern peasantry was able to increase labour productivity by the later Middle Ages.
At another level, White claimed that the invention of the stirrup and the horse- shoe played a significant role in shaping the military organisation of feudal society. The stirrup not only saved the horsemen from fatigue, it also increased the effectiveness of his charge by giving him a better seat and allowing him a vastly improved footing from which to hurl his lance or swing his sword, mace, or battle-axe. White went into great detail to show that the stirrup had not been in general use in western Europe until the Carolingian Franks adopted it for their heavy shock combat cavalry in the eighth century. This cavalry was effective and expensive in equal proportions and hence, he argued, it led the early Carolingians to reorganise their realm along feudal lines so as to support mounted fighters in much greater numbers than even before. "The requirements of the new mode of warfare which the stirrup made possible found expression in a new form of western European society dominated by an aristocracy of warriors endowed with land so that they might fight in a new and highly specialised way."
White has been criticised by later historians for isolating the technical improvements from the larger social and economic processes that marked the period. In this sense, Hilton and Sawyer argued, White's thesis retained a strong content of technical determinism. In a similar vein, Perry Anderson argued that the simple existence of technological innovations was no guarantee of their widespread utilisation. Pointing out that a gap of some two or three centuries separates their initial sporadic appearance and their constitution into a distinct and prevalent system, he criticised White for overlooking the internal dynamic of the mode of production itself. The stirrup thesis was also challenged by several military historians who pointed out that it did not explain the effective use of heavily armoured cavalry without using stirrups outside France long
before 700 AD or the continued use of armoured cavalry with stirrups outside France after 700 AD but without "feudalism". Most importantly, many historians have questioned White's fundamental assumption that the Franks were the first to exploit the stirrup. The individual works of Ian Heath, Philip Barker and David Nicolle have credited the Byzantine Empire and the Arab caliphate with its devising, and the Avars and the Lombards with its introduction to Europe, thereby disputing the proposed correspondence between the stirrup and feudalism.
It has already been mentioned that within the Marxist tradition the importance of the forces and relations of economic production were consistently emphasised since the other aspects of the feudal society were considered as reflections and expressions of this complex. Although feudalism had continued to be analysed as a mode of production dominated by land and a natural economy within this tradition for long, the theory was fully developed and worked out in the work of the British historian Perry Anderson in 1978. It is important to mention that the different use of Marxian perspective has produced a variety of historical perspectives. While in France Guy Bois's intensive study of the village of Lournand not only confirmed Duby's findings on the small scale but also extended Duby's thesis into an intriguing argument concerning the dialectical role of economy and productive relations during the period between the Germanic invasions and the first millennium, in the context of late feudal England the Marxist historians like Dobb, Brenner and Hilton have argued in differing ways.
Anderson's analysis contradicted the conventional characterisation of feudalism as an economy of regression or an era of decline and disintegration. Maintaining that feudalism was a more advanced system of enhancing agricultural productivity and the agrarian surplus than the classical slave mode of production, he argued that there were several structural contradictions within feudalism whose overall consequences were to drive the whole agrarian economy forward. The class of feudal lords extracted the surplus from the peasants or the primary producers in various forms of labour services, rents in kind or customary dues. This form was expressed through the politico-legal relations of compulsion of which serfdom was the most general form. Its necessary result was a juridical amalgamation of economic exploitation with political authority; in Marxist terminology it is known as extra-economic coercion. The peasant was subjected to the jurisdiction of his lord. At the same time, the property rights of the lord over his land were not absolute. His right in land was mediated at both ends through a lord who was his superior to whom he owed military (among other) obligations, and a vassal who was subordinate to him, who in turn owed him services and dues of various kinds. The chain of such dependent tenures linked to military service extended upwards to the summit of the system – in most cases, a monarch – who at least in principle held all lands as his domain. The consequence of such a system was that political sovereignty was never focused on a single centre. Anderson contended that while the functions of the State were thus disintegrated in a vertical allocation downwards, at each level the political and the economic relations were integrated. In this way, according to him, the parcellisation of sovereignty was constitutive of the whole feudal mode of production.
Debates On Feudalism
Returning to the early debates about the genesis of feudalism, Anderson chose to see the phenomenon as a 'synthesis' of elements released by the concurrent dissolution of primitive-communal and slave modes of production. In the real historical scene, he insisted, the mode of production never existed in a pure state anywhere in Europe. The concrete social formations of medieval Europe were always composite systems, in which other modes of production survived and intertwined with feudalism proper. Following the Soviet historians Liublinskaya, Gutnove and Udaltsova, Anderson advanced a three-fold zone- wise typology of feudalism. i) The first zone comprised of northern France and its neighbouring regions. In this 'core region of European feudalism', which roughly corresponded to the homeland of the Carolingian Empire, Anderson saw a 'balanced synthesis' of the Roman and the Germanic elements. ii) The second zone that lay to the south of the core region included Provence, Italy and Spain. Here, especially in Italy, the Roman legacy was much more dominant in the recombination of barbarian and ancient modes of production. Hence, the Roman legal conceptions of property as free, heritable and alienable, qualified feudal landed norms from the very beginning. The rural society was considerably heterogeneous, combining manors (mostly in Lombardy and north Italy), free-hold peasants (principally in central Italy), latifundia (particularly in south Italy) and urban landowners in different regions. Precisely for the survival of the classical traditions, the municipal political organisation could also flourish in the area from the tenth century onwards. iii) In the third zone, lying to the north and east of the core region and consisting of Germany, Scandinavia and England, the influence of the Roman rule was either superficial or non-existent. Consequently, in these places an allodial peasantry strongly held on to its communal institutions which remarkably slowed down the pace of the transition towards feudalism. As a result, serfdom was not introduced into Saxony until the late twelfth century, and in fact, it was never properly established in Sweden at all. It was only due to the persistence of these older local traditions, Anderson argued, that a full-blooded feudalism arrived in Germany as late as the 12th century, while the Norman conquerors had to systematically implant from above an imported model of centralised feudalism in England.
Emphasising the dynamic character of the feudal economy, Anderson argued that the lords and the peasants were objectively engaged in a conflictual process which in the ultimate instance tended to stimulate productivity at both ends. On the one hand, the lord sought to maximise labour services on his manor as well as dues in kind from the peasant strips, and net productivity on the noble demesnes remained substantially higher than on the peasant plots. On the other hand, the direct role of the lord in managing and supervising the process of production declined as the surplus itself grew. As a combined effect of peasant resistance, improvements in technical equipment and the customary nature of the feudal dues, a margin was created in the course of time for the results of improved productivity to accrue to the direct producer. Similarly, in characteristic opposition to the argument of urban decline in medieval Europe, Anderson claimed that although the largest medieval towns never rivalled in scale those of the ancient world, their function within the social formation was an advanced one. Because of this qualitative leap, a dynamic opposition between an urban economy of increasing commodity exchange and a rural economy of natural exchange was possible only in the feudal mode of production. The contradiction between feudalism's own rigorous tendency to a decomposition
of sovereignty and the class unity of the nobility also proved to be fruitful to the extent it provided, Anderson argued, the objective condition for the political autonomy of the towns in the later middle ages.
However, the very progress of medieval agriculture, according to Anderson, began to incur its own penalties from the middle of the thirteenth century when the forces of production tended to stall and recede within the existent relations of production. Here he substantially modified the older Marxian thesis which attempted to explain the demise of the feudal system in terms of developments extraneous to the medieval dynamic. Anderson argues, both in agriculture and mining a technical barrier was reached at which exploitation became unviable or even detrimental. The 'basic motor of rural reclamation', which had driven the whole feudal economy forward for three centuries, eventually overreached this objective limit of the forces of production. As the population grew while yields fell, the seigneurial income progressively decreased. In order to compensate the decline in the revenue, the lords increasingly engaged themselves in warfare and plunder which in turn, aided by the waves of pestilence, resulted in a devastating scarcity of labour. The lords responded to the crisis by trying to reinforce harsher servile conditions that unleashed a desperate class struggle on the land. One of the fundamental contradictions of the regime – the dual articulation of the feudal mode of production in the urban and the rural sectors — now developed to a point where the former, structurally sheltered by the parcellisation of sovereignty in the medieval polity, could decisively influence the outcome of the class struggle in the latter. The towns, which increasingly came to perceive the runaway serfs as a positive labour input for urban manufacture, had already contributed to the slow but steady process of commutation of dues into money rents. Now they actively assisted the process of the dissolution of serfdom. Thus the particular mode of production crumbled because it had begun to impede the expansion of society's productive capacity. Far from the general crisis in the feudal mode of production worsening the conditions of the direct producers in the countryside, it ended by ameliorating and emancipating it.
Anderson's discussion has been criticized for being too schematic. While he insists on the 'catastrophic collision' or class struggle as the driving force which brings about both feudal society and its demise, his concentration on this single aspect leaves out the larger and more diverse picture of the feudal societies.
The debate on feudalism is far from being closed. In fact, in the recent years the debate on feudalism has taken another interesting turn. In a 1974 essay Elizabeth Brown has severely criticised the unthinking use of the term
'feudalism' to describe heterogeneous phenomena in medieval Europe and argued that attention must be paid to the shifting meanings of the key jargons (like fief and vassal) as well as to the diverse social realities they represented. Building on the work of Brown, the historian Susan Reynolds has questioned the validity of not only the term 'feudalism', but also the system it claims to represent. Reynolds argued that the previous historians had been too ready to read back the eleventh and the twelfth century legal terminology onto the much more variegated ninth and tenth century societies. This had ended up creating
Debates On Feudalism
a 'feudal world' which simply did not exist, or which, at most, described only small parts of France for short periods. The enormity of the claim has predictably led to a re-evaluation of the existent historical literature on feudalism.
We hope this Unit has familiarised you with the views of various scholars and with the debates on feudalism. You must have noticed how scholars have tried to define feudalism, trace its origins and analyse it as a political structure and social formation. In early formulation feudalism was conceptualised as a method of government and a way of securing the forces necessary to preserve that method of government.
Pirenne felt that the disruption of trade in Europe greatly contributed to the development of feudalism. Marc Bloch examined the feudalism from the point of view of ties of dependence and argued that the bond of kinship progressively tightened with the development of feudalism. Duby called the rise of "feudalism as feudal revolution" which altered the entire social process. Lynn White Jr. put forward the view that the technology played a crucial role in shaping the feudal society. Perry Anderson considered feudalism as a more advanced system of generating agricultural productivity and agrarian surplus than the classical slave mode of production. He argued that it took the whole agrarian economy forward. The view of these and many other scholars will be further referred to in the next three Units also where we will discuss forms and structures, phases and decline of feudalism.
Allod : A piece of land owned and cultivated entirely by a single family which neither enjoyed labour services of others nor rendered them to any lord. It could however employ wage labour. The produce of the allod belonged entirely to the family. It represented an alternative form of economic production in the heart of the feudal economy.
Avars : Inhabitants of eastern Asia later migrated into the plains of Tisza after their state was destroyed by Turkoman tribes.
Boulainvillers : Eighteenth century French philosopher
Carolingian : A Frankish ruling dynasty which rose to power in the 7th Century. It gradually replaced Merovingian. Under Charlemagne it embraced most of the former territory of Roman Empire in the West. The empire dissolved by the end of
9th century.
Castellan : The regional lords in the feudal period who were also the custodians of their castles.
Charlemagne : Charles the Great king of the Franks (771 – 814)
established a vast empire embracing the Roman
territories in the West. In 800 he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III.
Crusades : Holy Wars fought in defence of Christendom and church. Mainly fought against Muslims between
11th & 13th Century.
Labour dues : Also called 'obligations'; imposed upon enserfed peasants to cultivate the demesne land, the produce of which went to the lord's stores; however, the produce of the tenement, also cultivated by the same peasants, went to their own households. The labour dues took away half the peasants' labour. Besides there were some other dues as well. None of these were paid for.
Latifundium : Large agricultural estate in the Roman world, (pl.latifundia) usually worked on by slave labour; most latifundia were sheep and cattle ranches, and
some grew olives and grapes.
Lombards (Lombardy) : One of the Germenic people who were conquerors of Italy in 6th c. natives of Lombardy in Northern Italy
Manse (pl. mansi) : A unit of land cultivated by one peasant family's labour, whether it belonged to the lord or the peasant himself. This was the unit of measurement of labour dues.
Merovingian : The original Frankish royal family named after the legendry Merovech Clovis who was the first Merovingian king to control large parts of Gaul. Lost control by 7th century.
Mode of Production : A term used usually, but not exclusively, by the Marxist scholars to refer to the method of producing the necessities of life prevailing at a particular stage of history corresponding to particular relations of production like master- slave, lord-serf relations; according to Marx and Engels, this determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.
Montesquieu : French philosopher (1689-1755). He studied political and social institutions. The Spirit of Laws is his most famous work.
Natural Economy : An economy where production, consumption and exchanges occur without the mediation of money; moreover, the exchanges are reduced to a strict minimum so that the system becomes almost synonymous with a closed economy. In
1930 Dopsch borrowed this term from Bruno Hildebrand to describe the economic situation of feudal Europe.
Debates On Feudalism
Saracenes : Nomads of Syrian and Arabian desert.
Seignior/Lord : Feudal lord, person of high rank in feudal system.
Stipendiary Tenements : Lands or rents given by a superior on a stipend or allowance
Strip system of land : Cultivated land was divided into strips, scattered
Division all over the village; the best strips were reserved for the lord.
Tenures : Form of right or title under which landed property is held.
Three field system : In this system of cultivation a field was divided into three parts. One part was taken up for cultivating autumn crops, the second part for spring crops and the third was left fallow in rotation.
Two-field system : In this system of cultivation one part of the field was taken up for cultivation while the second part was left fallow.
Vendomois Society : Although the term refers to different kinds of Villa buildings with very different functions, the Roman villa usually means a large country estate,
usually luxurious and expansive retreat from the city.
1) Write a brief note on Pirenne's thesis about the rise of Feudalism in Europe.
2) What, according to Marc Bloch, were the ties of dependence in feudalism?
3) What do you understand by feudal revolution?
4) What was the role of technology in shaping society? Comment with reference to the view of Lynn White Jr.
5) Give a brief account of the concept of feudalism as a mode of production.


text:
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