Calendars and control of time
There are many calendars around in the world, some with a great deal of historical weight attached to them. Hindu nationalists, for instance, sometimes look to establish the primacy of India in world history by pointing out that their system dates in tens of thousands of years. In the Middle east, Jews and Muslims both contend in dates, and both insist on the 'CE' rather than 'AD' denomination of western time. The October Revolution in Russia was in November, famously, on the Western calendar; and the French revolutionaries sought to decimalise time.
The most successful innovation of recent years, however, was the adoption by almost all of Western Europe just before its Imperial explosion of the Gregorian calendar. This seeks to adjust for the fact that a year on earth is 365.25422 days or thereabouts by the introduction of leap years, but in a complicated way does so better than the Julian calendar it replaced.
Lots of class-based nonsense about the reaction of the British working class is talked and written about this latter replacement, by the way. When Parliament replaced the old calendar (having overcome an orgy of anti-catholicism, since Gregorian calendars were associated with the church), it typically adjusted the rules so employers and business tax payers could continue to behave as though the old system still operated. hence, tax was collected and business years based on an April-to-April basis, adjusted by about ten days. Holidays were adjusted. But wages and rent were still on the old calendar in some areas.
This had the effect of depriving some workers of money, or time, or long planned and traditional breaks, so in some areas they rioted. The Metropolitan press in embryo (it was only 1752) and the 'polite and commercial' classes lauded by some historians laughed at the stupid workers, and the idea emerged that they actually thought they had lost ten days. The thick Jessies. Actually, they were legitimately complaining about their livelihood and their treatment.
The rural fields of England are full of this sort of thing. Read Cobbett's Rural Rides for a full taste of the backwash of enclosure, which created all those pretty fields by chucking rural workers off of them with prejudice.
The Ethiopians, lost and away in the Horn of Africa below the desert, were largely free of this drive to create a new calendar. After all, they had not even adopted the Julian one. Instead, they held to a surviving ancient Egyptian one, and viewed it as part of national identity.
They had always had something of a mystery about them. For instance, after the fall of the Crusader Kingdom, popes and western generals fell for a mysterious fantasy that 'Prester John', a timeless priest-king, would come forth with the armies of King David to wipe out Islam according to an old arabic prophesy, and deliver the Christian west from the consequences of the crusades. Thus, when Genghis Khan and the Mongols hit europe and Islam together around 1222, they were at first elated then terrified.
One can't help thinking of modern ultra-christians grabbing at Nostradamus, or the Malachy prophecies, or revelation, or the Talmud code to justify activities in the middle east.
Anyway, one effect of all this was to again isolate Ethiopia. When the European Empires began seriously to contend in the Indian ocean, pressure was again put on it to change and 'modernise'. Since, however, Ethiopians (Abyssinian is derived from an arab term and refers to a large ethnic group, a bit like people calling Britain or the UK 'England' in the nineteenth century) were a proud and stable civilisation, they did not do so. They were also so strategically important that no one power was crazy enough to attack; until the 1930s.
As part of a long campaign, the Fascists of Italy did so, culminating in a 1935 war that saw them occupy and destroy historic abyssinia. When Ethiopia was restored, they almost alone of all the 140-odd post colonial peoples to re-emerge in the twentieth century, kept their calendar as a political statement.
It works by adding a thirteenth month of extra days to balance the not-quite-quarter day built into Earth's rotation around the sun, and typically starts on September 11, as this year, when on September 11 the Twentieth Egyptian Coptic Ethiopian century will enter its last year. Then, on September 11 2001--next year--the twenty first century begins. I put that up yesterday because I thought it was quite poignant. Odd that in a country with an ark-of-the-covenant cult at Axum, you can go back to before these mad days....
There are many calendars around in the world, some with a great deal of historical weight attached to them. Hindu nationalists, for instance, sometimes look to establish the primacy of India in world history by pointing out that their system dates in tens of thousands of years. In the Middle east, Jews and Muslims both contend in dates, and both insist on the 'CE' rather than 'AD' denomination of western time. The October Revolution in Russia was in November, famously, on the Western calendar; and the French revolutionaries sought to decimalise time.
The most successful innovation of recent years, however, was the adoption by almost all of Western Europe just before its Imperial explosion of the Gregorian calendar. This seeks to adjust for the fact that a year on earth is 365.25422 days or thereabouts by the introduction of leap years, but in a complicated way does so better than the Julian calendar it replaced.
Lots of class-based nonsense about the reaction of the British working class is talked and written about this latter replacement, by the way. When Parliament replaced the old calendar (having overcome an orgy of anti-catholicism, since Gregorian calendars were associated with the church), it typically adjusted the rules so employers and business tax payers could continue to behave as though the old system still operated. hence, tax was collected and business years based on an April-to-April basis, adjusted by about ten days. Holidays were adjusted. But wages and rent were still on the old calendar in some areas.
This had the effect of depriving some workers of money, or time, or long planned and traditional breaks, so in some areas they rioted. The Metropolitan press in embryo (it was only 1752) and the 'polite and commercial' classes lauded by some historians laughed at the stupid workers, and the idea emerged that they actually thought they had lost ten days. The thick Jessies. Actually, they were legitimately complaining about their livelihood and their treatment.
The rural fields of England are full of this sort of thing. Read Cobbett's Rural Rides for a full taste of the backwash of enclosure, which created all those pretty fields by chucking rural workers off of them with prejudice.
The Ethiopians, lost and away in the Horn of Africa below the desert, were largely free of this drive to create a new calendar. After all, they had not even adopted the Julian one. Instead, they held to a surviving ancient Egyptian one, and viewed it as part of national identity.
They had always had something of a mystery about them. For instance, after the fall of the Crusader Kingdom, popes and western generals fell for a mysterious fantasy that 'Prester John', a timeless priest-king, would come forth with the armies of King David to wipe out Islam according to an old arabic prophesy, and deliver the Christian west from the consequences of the crusades. Thus, when Genghis Khan and the Mongols hit europe and Islam together around 1222, they were at first elated then terrified.
One can't help thinking of modern ultra-christians grabbing at Nostradamus, or the Malachy prophecies, or revelation, or the Talmud code to justify activities in the middle east.
Anyway, one effect of all this was to again isolate Ethiopia. When the European Empires began seriously to contend in the Indian ocean, pressure was again put on it to change and 'modernise'. Since, however, Ethiopians (Abyssinian is derived from an arab term and refers to a large ethnic group, a bit like people calling Britain or the UK 'England' in the nineteenth century) were a proud and stable civilisation, they did not do so. They were also so strategically important that no one power was crazy enough to attack; until the 1930s.
As part of a long campaign, the Fascists of Italy did so, culminating in a 1935 war that saw them occupy and destroy historic abyssinia. When Ethiopia was restored, they almost alone of all the 140-odd post colonial peoples to re-emerge in the twentieth century, kept their calendar as a political statement.
It works by adding a thirteenth month of extra days to balance the not-quite-quarter day built into Earth's rotation around the sun, and typically starts on September 11, as this year, when on September 11 the Twentieth Egyptian Coptic Ethiopian century will enter its last year. Then, on September 11 2001--next year--the twenty first century begins. I put that up yesterday because I thought it was quite poignant. Odd that in a country with an ark-of-the-covenant cult at Axum, you can go back to before these mad days....
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