title: Mother Goose

text: Because nursery rhymes are usually referred to as Mother Goose songs in the US, however, children's entertainments in which a medley of nursery characters are introduced to sing their rhymes often introduced her name into American titles. Early 20th century examples of these include "A dream of Mother Goose and other entertainments" by J. C. Marchant and S. J. Mayhew (Boston, 1908); "Miss Muffet Lost and Found : a Mother Goose play" by Katharine C. Baker (Chicago, 1915); "The Modern Mother Goose: a play in three acts" by Helen Hamilton (Chicago, 1916); and the up-to-the-moment "The Strike Mother Goose Settled" by Evelyn Hoxie (Franklin Ohio and Denver Colorado, 1922).


title: Mother Goose

text: In the United States there is a granite statue of a flying Mother Goose by Frederick Roth at the entrance to Rumsey Playfield in New York's Central Park. Installed in 1938, it has several other nursery rhyme characters carved into its sides. On a smaller scale, there is Richard Henry Recchia's contemporary bronze rotating statue in the Rockport, Massachusetts, public library. There Mother Goose is depicted telling the tales associated with her to two small children, with twelve reliefs illustrating such stories about its round base.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an alliance of 123 signatory countries, most being sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The primary objective of the alliance is to work for efficient consumption of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. This initiative was first proposed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech in November 2015 at Wembley Stadium (London HA9 0WS, United Kingdom), in which he referred to sunshine countries as "Suryaputra" ("Sons of the Sun"). The alliance is a treaty-based inter-governmental organization. Countries that do not fall within the Tropics can join the alliance and enjoy all benefits as other members, with the exception of voting rights.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The initiative was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India Africa Summit, and a meeting of member countries ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015. The framework agreement of the International Solar Alliance opened for signatures in Marrakesh, Morocco, in November 2016, and 102 countries have joined.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The ISA is headquartered in Haryana, India. In January 2016, Narendra Modi, and the then French President François Hollande jointly laid the foundation stone of the ISA Headquarters and inaugurated the interim Secretariat at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gwal Pahari, Gurugram, India. The Indian government has dedicated five acres of land on the NISE campus for its future headquarters; it also has contributed to the fund to build a campus and for meeting expenditures for the first five years.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The focus is on solar power utilization. The launching of such an alliance in Paris also sends a strong signal to the global communities about the sincerity of the developing nations towards their concern about climate change and to switch to a low-carbon growth path. India has pledged a target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy of which 100 GW will be solar energy by 2022 and reduction in emission intensity by 33–35% by 2030 to let solar energy reach to the most unconnected villages and communities and also towards creating a clean planet. India's pledge to the Paris summit offered to bring 40% of its electricity generation capacity (not actual production) from non-fossil sources (renewable, large hydro, and nuclear) by 2030.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The area of Earth located in between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn is called the tropical (torrid) zone. This is the part of the world in which the sun can appear directly overhead, and that more-direct exposure means that the sun's actual effect is greater here; anywhere north or south of this zone, sunlight always reaches the earth's surface at an angle and is correspondingly less intense. The sunniest countries of the world are on the African continent, ranging from Somalia- Horn of Africa-, east to Niger, west and north to Egypt.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: For India, possible additional benefits from the alliance can be a strengthening of ties with the major African countries and increasing goodwill for India among them.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The alliance is a treaty-based inter-governmental organization. The framework agreement of the International Solar Alliance opened for signatures in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2016, on the sidelines of the Marrakech Climate Change Conference (the twenty-second session of the Conference of the Parties, or COP 22). On its first day (15 November), sixteen countries signed the Agreement: India, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, the Republic of Guinea, Mali; Nauru; Niger; Tanzania; Tuvalu; Cambodia; Ethiopia; Burkina Faso; Bangladesh and Madagascar. By 17 November, Guinea Bissau, Fiji, France also signed the agreement.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: On 6 November 2017 India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with Guinea's Foreign Minister, Mamady Toure. During the course of this meeting, Mamady Toure handed over Guinea's Instrument of Accession to the India-initiated International Solar Alliance (ISA).


title: International Solar Alliance

text: Subsequently, an additional 107 countries joined the agreement, including many major countries that lie between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, including Mexico, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, India, Argentina, and Australia. A conclave started from 30 November 2015 for the sunshine grouping, called the InSPA (International Agency for Solar Policy & Application).


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The following countries are the prospective members of this alliance who have signed the framework. Countries marked with a plus have also ratified the framework. Afghanistan, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Congo, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Liberia, Luxembourg, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Oman, Paraguay, Philippines, Romania, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Thailand, and Trinidad and Tobago is the newest member of this alliance.<Br>


title: International Solar Alliance

text: Apart from these, there are 58 other members, making a total of 124 members to the alliance. Recently, Israel, United States, Greece join International Solar Alliance, membership rises to 102, Recently joined by Antigua & Barbados on 7 Jan 2022. Syria joined in February 2022 to become the 103rd member. Later Angola joined to raise the total to 104 signatories. Nepal has also joined the ISA making total membership to 105.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: The alliance has partnered with World Bank to launch Global Solar Atlas at an ISA event at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Global Solar Atlas is a free online tool that displays annual average solar power potential at any location in the world and thus identify potential sites for solar power generation. World Bank announced "This tool will help governments save millions of dollars on their own research and provide investors and solar developers with an easily accessible and uniform platform to compare resource potential between sites in one region or across multiple countries."


title: International Solar Alliance

text: Riccardo Puliti, Senior Director and Head of the World Bank's Energy & Extractives Global Practice said "The World Bank is seeing a surge of interest from our clients in solar power as a result of the dramatic cost decreases over the past few years. We hope that the Global Solar Atlas will help inform the crucial planning and investment decisions that will need to be taken over the next decade to shift to more sustainable forms of energy."


title: International Solar Alliance

text: India, with the support of France, has invited nations to facilitate infrastructure for implementation of solar projects. The alliance has committed one trillion dollars as investment, and it is committed to making the costs of solar power more affordable for remote and inaccessible communities. The alliance will endorse India in achieving its goal of generating 100 GW of solar energy and 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022. The countries shall support each other in research and development as well as other high level activities.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: It is also seen as an alliance by the developing countries to form a united front and to undertake research and development for making solar power equipment within developing countries.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: On 30 June 2016, the alliance entered into an understanding with the World Bank for accelerating mobilization of finance for solar energy. The Bank will have a major role in mobilizing more than US$1 trillion in investments that will be needed by 2030, to meet ISA's goals for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: To date 74 countries have signed and 52 countries have ratified the Framework Agreement of the ISA. With ratifications by 15 countries, the ISA will become a treaty based inter-governmental international organisation and it will be recognized by UN legally to become fully functionable.


title: International Solar Alliance

text: At the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) held in Abu Dhabi in January 2018, the government of India announced the establishment of a $350 million solar development fund to enable financing of solar projects.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem "Tiare Tahiti".


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Within months of its publication, "This Side of Paradise" became a cultural sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed the work as an amazing debut novel. The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies. It became especially popular among American college students, and the American national press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt". Overnight, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. His newfound fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and his improved financial prospects persuaded his reluctant fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him one month later.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I, and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material horrors. Fitzgerald's novel riveted the nation's attention upon the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: As a consequence of this novel, Fitzgerald became known as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced over his death. In a column for "The New York World-Telegram", critic Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death recalled "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats who were determined not to pull their weight in the boat and wanted the world to drop everything and sit down and bawl with them. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, is convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future. He attends a posh college-preparatory school and later Princeton University. He grows estranged from his eccentric mother Beatrice and becomes the protégé of Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a Catholic priest. During his sophomore year at Princeton, he returns to Minneapolis over Christmas break and encounters Isabelle Borgé, a wealthy, young debutante whom he first met as a boy. They embark upon a romantic relationship.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: While at Princeton, he deluges Isabelle with letters and poems, but she becomes disenchanted with him due to his incessant criticism. After his prom, they break up on Long Island. Following their separation, Amory graduates from his alma mater and enlists in the United States Army amid World War I. He is shipped overseas to serve in the trenches of the Western front. While overseas, he learns his mother Beatrice has died and most of his family's wealth has been lost due to a series of failed investments.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: After the armistice with Imperial Germany, Amory settles in New York City as it undergoes the birth pangs of the Jazz Age. He becomes infatuated with a cruel and narcissistic flapper named Rosalind Connage. Desperate for a job, Amory is hired by an advertising agency, but he detests the work. Due to his poverty, his relationship with Rosalind deteriorates as she prefers a rival suitor, Dawson Ryder, a man of wealth and status. A distraught Amory quits his job and goes on an alcoholic bender for three weeks until the start of prohibition in the United States.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: When Amory travels to visit an uncle in Maryland, he meets Eleanor Savage, an 18-year-old atheist. Eleanor chafes under the religious conformity and gender limitations imposed on her by contemporary society in Wilsonian America. Amory and Eleanor spend a lazy summer conversing about their love. On their final night together before Amory must return to New York City, Eleanor attempts suicide in order to prove her disbelief in any deity, and Amory realizes that he does not love her.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Returning to New York, Amory learns that the fickle Rosalind is engaged to be married to his affluent rival Dawson Ryder. A devastated Amory is further dispirited to learn that his beloved mentor Monsignor Darcy has died. Homeless, Amory wanders from New York City to his alma mater Princeton and, accepting a car ride from a wealthy man driven by a resentful chauffeur, he speaks out in favor of socialism—although he admits he is still formulating his thoughts as he is talking.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Concluding his long argument about their time's political and societal problems, Amory emphasizes his disillusionment with the current era. He announces his hope to stand alongside those who would bring forth fundamental changes to the age. The men in the car denounce his views, but upon learning that one of them was the father to one of his old friends at Princeton and that the son had died in World War I, Amory and the man reconcile, acknowledging mutual respect. It dawns on Amory that his time as a young promising Princetonian man has all been but a wasted dream, and he parts ways with his travel mates amicably.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Continuing his lonesome walk towards Princeton, Amory gradually forsakes the final obsessions about times and people that once constituted fundamental ideologies of his old self. Standing alone and musing at the sight of Princeton's gothic towers, Amory ecstatically yet somberly concludes: "I know myself . . . but that is all."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Since childhood, F. Scott Fitzgerald aspired to be a famous novelist. "Three months before I was born," he later wrote, "my mother lost her other two children...I think I started then to be a writer." While attending Princeton University, his passion for writing literature began to solidify into a career choice, and he often wrote fiction as an undergraduate.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: During his sophomore year at Princeton, Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul, Minnesota during Christmas break where the 18-year-old aspiring writer met and fell in love with 16-year-old Chicago debutante Ginevra King. They began a romantic relationship spanning several years. Although Ginevra loved him, her upper-class family belittled Scott's courtship because of his lower-class status compared to her other wealthy suitors. Rejected by Ginevra as a suitable match, a heartbroken Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Hoping to have a novel published before his deployment to Europe and his anticipated death in the trenches of World War I, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled "The Romantic Egotist". After obtaining a brief leave from the army in February 1918, Fitzgerald continued work on his unpublished manuscript at Princeton's University Cottage Club's library. Ultimately, eighty-one pages of this revised manuscript would later appear in the final version of "This Side of Paradise".


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In May 1918, Fitzgerald gave the revised manuscript to his friend Shane Leslie to deliver to Max Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City. Leslie asked the publishing company to retain the manuscript no matter what they thought of it. Although Scribner's rejected the manuscript, the impressed reviewer Max Perkins praised Fitzgerald's novitiate efforts and encouraged him to resubmit the manuscript after extensive revisions.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In June 1918, Fitzgerald was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. Attempting to rebound from his rejection by Ginevra, a lonely Fitzgerald began dating Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the affluent granddaughter of Confederate senator whose extended family owned the White House of the Confederacy. A romance soon blossomed, although Fitzgerald continued writing Ginevra, asking in vain if there was any chance of resuming their former relationship. Three days after Ginevra married a wealthy Chicago polo player, a lonely Fitzgerald professed his affection for Zelda in September 1918.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Upon his army discharge in February 1919, he moved to New York City. He then turned to writing advertising copy to sustain himself while seeking a breakthrough as an author of fiction. Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda frequently, and by March 1920, he had sent Zelda his mother's ring, and the two became officially engaged. However, as he was living in poverty in New York City, Fitzgerald could not convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, and she broke off the engagement in June 1919.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In the wake of Fitzgerald's rejection by Ginevra two years prior, his subsequent rejection by Zelda further dispirited him. Unable to earn a successful living, Fitzgerald publicly threatened to jump to his death from a window ledge of the Yale Club, and he carried a revolver daily while contemplating suicide.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In July 1919, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job and returned to St. Paul. Having returned to his hometown as a failure, Fitzgerald became a social recluse and lived on the top floor of his parents' home at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill. He decided to make one last attempt to become a novelist and to stake everything on the success or failure of a book. Abstaining from alcohol and parties, he worked day and night in his parents' home to revise "The Romantic Egotist" as "This Side of Paradise"—an autobiographical account of his Princeton years and his unfulfilling romances with Ginevra, Zelda, and others. Fitzgerald chose the new title based on a line in Rupert Brooke's poem "Tiare Tahiti", "Well this side of Paradise!...There's little comfort in the wise."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Fitzgerald sent the revised manuscript to Scribner's on September 4, 1919. Although the manuscript again impressed editor Max Perkins who wished to publish the novel immediately, senior executives at the publishing house overruled Perkins and rejected the novel on the grounds of indecency. An undeterred Perkins threatened to resign from the company unless the work was published. On September 16, Scribner's accepted the novel for publication.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Fitzgerald later recalled his euphoria upon learning his first novel would be published: "The postman rang, and that day I quit work and ran along the streets, stopping automobiles to tell friends and acquaintances about it—my novel "This Side of Paradise" was accepted for publication. That week the postman rang and rang, and I paid off my terrible small debts, bought a suit, and woke up every morning with a world of ineffable top-loftiness and promise."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: "This Side of Paradise" was published on March 26, 1920, with a first printing of 3,000 copies. The initial printing sold out in three days. Within months of its publication, the 23-year-old author's debut novel became a cultural sensation in the United States, and F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. The book went through twelve printings in 1920 and 1921 for a total of 49,075 copies. Initially, the novel did not provide a large income for Fitzgerald. Copies sold for $1.75, for which he earned 10% on the first 5,000 copies and 15% beyond that. In total, in 1920 he earned $6,200 () from the book.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: According to Fitzgerald's friend Burton Rascoe, Fitzgerald complained that "the book didn't make me as rich as I thought it would". Nevertheless, Fitzgerald's new fame due to "This Side of Paradise" enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and the author could now convince Zelda Sayre to marry him. Zelda resumed her engagement to Fitzgerald on the explicit condition that he could now pay for her privileged lifestyle. However, by the time of their wedding in April 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City proved to be tumultuous and a disappointment.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Many literary reviewers were enthusiastic about Fitzgerald's debut novel. Burton Rascoe of the "Chicago Tribune" urged readers to "make a note of the name, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is borne by a 23 year old novelist who will, unless I am much mistaken, be much heard of hereafter." Rascoe asserted that Fitzgerald's first novel bore "the impress, it seems to me, of genius. It is the only adequate study that we have had of the contemporary American in adolescence and young manhood." "The prize first novel of a decade is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise"," Fanny Butcher raved "a book which...will have a serious and far reaching effect on American literature." In his influential review of the work in "The Smart Set", critic H. L. Mencken described "This Side of Paradise" as "an amazing first novel" and heaped praise upon the young author:


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Although critics praised "This Side of Paradise" as highly original, they eviscerated its form and construction. Lillian C. Ford in the "Los Angeles Times" complained "the construction is odd and the book has two parts, the first with four chapters and the second with five. The chapters have unexpected topical divisions and when the author feels so inclined he throws his story into drama form and then again it jogs along as plain narrative."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: A critical consensus soon emerged that Fitzgerald's structural craftsmanship left much to be desired. He could write entertainingly, his detractors conceded, but he gave scant attention to form and construction. Having read and digested these criticisms of his debut novel, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose in his next work, "The Beautiful and Damned", and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Despite its widespread success with critics and readers, Princeton's faculty and older alumni reacted with hostility towards "This Side of Paradise". Although Professor Christian Gauss of French Literature publicly lauded "This Side of Paradise" as "a work of art," other Princetonians openly attacked the book in the pages of the "Princeton Alumni Weekly", much to Fitzgerald's dismay. In a public letter, Ralph Kent, a senior editor of the "Nassau Literary Review", disparaged the work as impugning Princeton's reputation due to its sordid depiction of undergraduate life. A recurrent criticism by Princetonians was that Fitzgerald's best-selling novel had fostered an unfavorable impression of their alma mater as populated by hedonistic degenerates solely interested in idle pleasures.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In a private letter to Fitzgerald dated May 27, 1920, John Grier Hibben, the president of Princeton University from 1912–1932, politely but firmly criticized Fitzgerald's depiction of the university in "This Side of Paradise":


title: This Side of Paradise

text: In response to Hibben's correspondence, Fitzgerald wrote an apologetic explanation: "I have no fault to find with Princeton that I can't find with Oxford and Cambridge. I simply wrote out of my own impressions, wrote as honestly as I could a picture of its beauty. That the picture is cynical is the fault of my temperament...I must admit however that "This Side of Paradise" does over accentuate the gaiety and country club atmosphere of Princeton. For the sake of the readers interest that part was much over-stressed, and of course the hero, not being average, reacted rather unhealthily I suppose to many perfectly normal phenomena. To that extent the book is inaccurate."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Shortly before his death, Fitzgerald recalled how his early happiness of being a published author ended "when Princeton turned on the book—not undergraduate Princeton but the black mass of faculty and alumni. There was a kind but reproachful letter from President Hibben, and a room full of classmates who suddenly turned on me with condemnation...The "Alumni Weekly" got after my book and only Dean Gauss had a good word to say or me. The unctuousness and hypocrisy of the proceedings was exasperating and for seven years I didn't go to Princeton."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: For his first novel, Fitzgerald used as his literary templates H. G. Wells' 1909 realist work "Tono-Bungay" and Sir Compton Mackenzie's 1913 novel "Sinister Street", which chronicles a young college student's coming of age at Oxford University.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Although Fitzgerald imitated the plot of these two novels, his debut work differed due to its experimental style. He discarded the stodgy narrative technique of most novels and instead unspooled the plot in the form of textual fragments, letters, and poetry intermingled together, including a passage written in a stream-of-consciousness style. This was largely a result of Fitzgerald's cobbling "The Romantic Egotist", his earlier attempt at a novel, together with assorted short stories and poems that he had composed but never published.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: This atonal blend of different fictive elements prompted cultural elites to celebrate the young Fitzgerald as a literary trailblazer whose work modernized a staid literature which had lagged "as far behind modern habits as behind modern history." Dorothy Parker later remarked that ""This Side of Paradise" may not seem like much now, but in 1920 it was considered an experimental novel; it cut new ground."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: More so than most contemporary writers of his era, Fitzgerald's authorial voice evolved and matured over time, and each of his novels represented a discernible progression in literary quality. Although he was eventually regarded as possessing "the best narrative gift of the century," this narrative gift was not perceived as immediately evident in "This Side of Paradise". Believing that prose had a basis in lyric verse, Fitzgerald initially crafted his sentences entirely by ear and, consequently, "This Side of Paradise" contains numerous malapropisms and descriptive non sequiturs which irritated readers and reviewers. Reflecting upon these copious defects, critic Edmund Wilson later argued that Fitzgerald's debut work had "almost every fault and deficiency that a novel can possibly have".


title: This Side of Paradise

text: The underlying themes of narcissism in the novel have been examined in a variety of scholarly essays. Scholar Saori Tanaka's essay on narcissism argues that "Amory comes to know himself through Beatrice and his four lovers, which are like five sheets of glass. They are his reflectors...reflecting his narcissism and the inner side."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: The first three women in the book allow Amory to dream in a narcissistic way. After participating in the war and losing his financial foundation, the last two women he meets, Rosalind and Eleanor, "make him not dream but awake" in postwar America. "With Beatrice and Isabelle, Amory activates the grandiose self," Tanaka states, "with Clara and Rosalind, he restricts narcissism, and with Eleanor, he gains a realistic conception of the self."


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Others have analyzed feminist themes in the work. Scholar Andrew Riccardo views several characters to be feminist templates. Eleanor's character serves as a "love interest, therapeutic friend, and conversational other". Highly educated in discussing poetry and philosophy, "Eleanor not only posits her desires in juxtaposition to the lingering expectations of women in her day but also serves as soothsayer to the demands which would be placed on females".


title: This Side of Paradise

text: The impact of Fitzgerald's debut novel "This Side of Paradise" upon societal mores at the time of its publication has been extensively discussed by scholars and critics. With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material horrors.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Fitzgerald riveted the nation's attention upon the hedonistic activities of their sons and daughters cavorting in the rumble seat of a Bearcat roadster and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality. Due to this thematic focus, his works became a sensation among college students, and the American national press depicted him as the standard-bearer for youth in revolt. "No generation of Americans has had a chronicler so persuasive and unmaudlin" as Fitzgerald, critic Burke Van Allen wrote in 1934, and no author was so identified with the generation recorded.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: Remarking upon the popular association between Fitzgerald and the flaming youth of the Jazz Age, Gertrude Stein wrote in her memoir "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" that the author's fiction essentially created this new generation in the public's mind. Echoing this assertion, critics John V. A. Weaver and Edmund Wilson insisted that Fitzgerald imbued the Jazz Age generation with the gift of self-consciousness while simultaneously making the public aware of them as a distinctive cohort.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: The perception of Fitzgerald as the chronicler of the Jazz Age hedonism and carefree youth led many societal figures to denounce his writings. Social conservatives such as Heywood Broun decried his use of modern slang and went so far as to claim that Fitzgerald wholly fabricated his depiction of young people engaging in drunken sprees and premarital sex. Fitzgerald publicly ridiculed such criticisms, and he opined that many pundits wished to discredit his works in order to retain their outdated conceptions of American society.


title: This Side of Paradise

text: As a result of "This Side of Paradise", Fitzgerald became regarded as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced over his death. In one column for "The New York World-Telegram", journalist Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death a few weeks prior reawakened "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats who were determined not to pull their weight in the boat and wanted the world to drop everything and sit down and bawl with them. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing."


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (, ) is the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, covering his life from early childhood through to 1921. It was written in weekly installments and published in his journal "Navjivan" from 1925 to 1929. Its English translation also appeared in installments in his other journal "Young India". It was initiated at the insistence of Swami Anand and other close co-workers of Gandhi, who encouraged him to explain the background of his public campaigns. In 1998, the book was designated as one of the "100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by a committee of global spiritual and religious authorities.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Starting with his birth and parentage, Gandhi has given reminiscences of childhood, child marriage, relation with his wife and parents, experiences at the school, his study tour to London, efforts to be like the English gentleman, experiments in dietetics, his going to South Africa, his experiences of colour prejudice, his quest for "dharma", social work in Africa, return to India, his slow and steady work for political awakening and social activities. The book ends abruptly after a discussion of the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress in 1915.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In the early 1920s Gandhi led several civil disobedience campaigns. Despite his intention that they be peaceful, on several occasions, incidents of violence broke out. The colonial authorities charged him in 1922 with incitement, and specifically of stirring up hatred against the government, and, the result was a six year term of imprisonment. He served only two years, being released early on the grounds of ill health. Soon after, in the winter of 1925 at 56, Gandhi began writing his autobiography, on the example set by Swami Anand. He serialized it in his own weekly "Navajivan" (lit. "New Life"). The autobiography was completed in February 1929.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In the book's preface, Gandhi recalled that he had actually undertaken to sketch out his autobiography as early as 1921 but had to set the work aside due to his political engagements. He took on the labour, he informs us after his fellow workers had expressed a desire that he tell them something about his background and life. Initially he refused to adopt a book format, but then agreed to write it in a serialized form with individual chapters to be published weekly.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The autobiography was written and serialized over the period from 25 November 1925 to 3 February 1929 in 166 installments, which appeared in "Navajivan". The corresponding English translations were printed in "Young India", and reprinted in "Indian Opinion" in South Africa, and in the American journal "Unity". The Hindi translation was published almost simultaneously in the Hindi edition of "Navajivan".


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The original Gujarati version was published as the "Satya Na Prayogo" (lit. "Experiments with Truth"), bearing the subtitle, "Atmakatha" (lit. "The Story of a Soul"). The English version, "An Autobiography", bore the subtitle, "Experiments with Truth".


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth, and as my life consist of nothing but experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography. But I shall not mind if every page of it speaks only of my experiments.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: "The Story of My Experiments with Truth" was first published in the United States in 1948 by Public Affairs Press of Washington, D.C.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The introduction announces a pact he made with his readership, explaining both the circumstances behind, and the motivations for, his drafting the book. There follows a chronologically structured sequence beginning with a genealogical account of his parental background. He then explores memories of his childhood and youth, his time in South Africa, followed by a narration of the activities he engaged in after his return to India. The story stops abruptly in 1921, four years before he began to compose the autobiography. The final chapter deals with the meeting of the Indian National Congress at Nagpur and his rejection of the public acclaim he had received.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The book relates how Gandhi experimented on himself as he pursued his search for truth, truth being for him a synonym for God.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: This section is written by Mahadev Desai who translated the book from Gujarati to English. In this preface Desai notes that the book was originally published in two volumes, the first in 1927 and second in 1929. He also mentions that the original was priced at 1 rupee and had a run of five editions by the time of the writing of his preface. 50,000 copies had been sold in Gujarati but since the English edition was expensive it prevented Indians from purchasing it. Desai notes the need to bring out a cheaper English version. He also mentions that the translation has been revised by an English scholar who did not want his name to be published. Chapters XXIX–XLIII of Part V were translated by Desai's friend and colleague Pyarelal Nayyar.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The introduction is officially written by Gandhi himself mentioning how he has resumed writing his autobiography at the insistence of Jeramdas, a fellow prisoner in Yerwada Central Jail with him. He mulls over the question a friend asked him about writing an autobiography, deeming it a Western practice, something "nobody does in the east". Gandhi himself agrees that his thoughts might change later in life but the purpose of his story is just to narrate his experiments with truth in life. He also says that through this book he wishes to narrate his spiritual and moral experiments rather than political.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The first part narrates incidents of Gandhi's childhood, his experiments with eating meat, smoking, drinking, stealing and subsequent atonement. There are two texts that had a lasting influence on Gandhi, both of which he read in childhood. He records the profound impact of the play "Harishchandra" and says,"I read it with intense interest...It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Another text he mentions reading that deeply affected him was "Shravana Pitrabhakti Nataka", a play about Shravan's devotion to his parents. Gandhi got married at the age of 13. In his words, "It is my painful duty to have to record here my marriage at the age of thirteen...I can see no moral argument in support of such a preposterously early marriage." Another important event documented in this part is the demise of Gandhi's father Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi wrote the book to deal with his experiment for truth. His disdain for physical training at school, particularly gymnastics has also been written about in this part.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The second part of the book details Gandhi's experiences in the Cape Colony during a period of tension between the different ethnic groups in the region. The Cape Colony was dominated by British South Africans, while the neighboring Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic were established by Boers, white settlers of Dutch descent who had migrated away from the Cape Colony further north in the early 19th century and established the two independent republics. Gandhi detailed the antagonistic relationships between the two Afrikaner republics and the Cape Colony along with his experiences of being racially discriminated while in Africa. Indians had been migrating to South Africa for decades to work on coffee and sugar plantations, and while they did not experience as much discrimination as the Black population did, numerous discriminatory legislation had been put into place, effectively transforming Indian migrants into second-class citizens. Gandhi repeatedly experienced the sting of humiliation during his long African sojourn. The incident at Maritzburg, where Gandhi was thrown off the train has become justly famous. When Gandhi, as a matter of principle, refused to leave the first class compartment, he was thrown off the train. Later, Gandhi also had difficulty being admitted to hotels, and saw that his fellow-Indians, who were mostly manual laborers, experienced even more unjust treatment.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Very soon after his arrival, Gandhi's initial bafflement and indignation at discriminatory policies turned into a growing sense of outrage and propelled him into assuming a position as a public figure at the assembly of Transvaal Indians, where he delivered his first speech urging Indians not to accept inequality but instead to unite, work hard, learn English and observe clean living habits. Although Gandhi's legal work soon start to keep him busy, he found time to read some of Tolstoy's work, which greatly influenced his understanding of peace and justice and eventually inspired him to write to Tolstoy, setting the beginning of a prolific correspondence. Both Tolstoy and Gandhi shared a philosophy of non-violence and Tolstoy's harsh critique of human society resonated with Gandhi's outrage at racism in South Africa.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Both Tolstoy and Gandhi considered themselves followers of the Sermon on the Mount from the New Testament, in which Jesus Christ expressed the idea of complete self-denial for the sake of his fellow men. Gandhi also continued to seek moral guidance in the Bhagavad-Gita, which inspired him to view his work not as self-denial at all, but as a higher form of self-fulfillment. Adopting a philosophy of selflessness even as a public man, Gandhi refused to accept any payment for his work on behalf of the Indian population, preferring to support himself with his law practice alone.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: But Gandhi's personal quest to define his own philosophy with respect to religion did not rely solely on sacred texts. At the time, he also engaged in active correspondence with a highly educated and spiritual Jain from Bombay, his friend Raychandra, who was deeply religious, yet well versed in a number of topics, from Hinduism to Christianity. The more Gandhi communicated with Raychandra, the more deeply he began to appreciate Hinduism as a non violent faith and its related scriptures. Yet, such deep appreciation also gave birth to a desire to seek inner purity and illumination, without solely relying on external sources, or on the dogma within every faith. Thus, although Gandhi sought God within his own tradition, he espoused the idea that other faiths remained worthy of study and contained their own truths.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Not surprisingly, even after his work assignment concluded, Gandhi soon found a reason to remain in South Africa. This pivotal reason involved the "Indian Franchise Bill", with which the Natal legislature intended to deprive Indians of the right to vote. No opposition existed against this bill, except among some of Gandhi's friends who asked him to stay in South Africa and work with them against this new injustice against Indians, who white South Africans disparagingly called "coolies." He found that racist attitudes had become deeply entrenched, especially in the two Boer republics, where they lived in the worst urban slums and could not own property or manage agricultural land. Even in Natal, where Indians had more influence, they were not allowed to go out after 9 p.m. without a pass, while in the Cape Colony they were not allowed to walk on the sidewalk. The new bill which prohibited Indians from voting in Natal only codified existing injustice in writing.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Although a last-minute petition drive failed to the Indian Franchise Bill from passing, Gandhi remained active and organized a much larger petition, which he sent to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, and distributed to the press in South Africa, Britain and India. The petition raised awareness of the plight of Indians and generated discussions in all three continents to the point where both the "Times of London" and the "Times of India" published editorials in support of the Indian right to the vote. Gandhi also formed a new political organization called the Natal Indian Congress (a clear reference to the Indian National Congress), which held regular meetings and soon, after some struggles with financing, started its own library and debating society. They also issued two major pamphlets, "An Appeal to Every Briton in South Africa", and "The Indian Franchise–An Appeal", which argued in favor of eliminating discriminatory legislation targeting Indians. He was also thrown off of a train in South Africa when he didn't agree to move from his first class seat which he paid for.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Though, at first, Gandhi intended to remain in South Africa for a month, or a year at most, he ended up working in South Africa for about twenty years. After his initial assignment was over, he succeeded in growing his own practice to about twenty Indian merchants who contracted him to manage their affairs. This work allowed him to both earn a living while also finding time to devote to his mission as a public figure. During his struggle against inequality and racial discrimination in South Africa, Gandhi became known among Indians all around the world as "Mahatma," or "Great Soul."


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In 1896, Gandhi made a brief return to India and returned to his wife and children. In India, he published another pamphlet, known as the Green Pamphlet, on the plight of Indians in South Africa. For the first time, Gandhi realized that Indians had come to admire his work greatly and experienced a taste of his own popularity among the people, when he visited Madras, an Indian province, where most manual laborers had originated. Although his fellow-Indians greeted him in large crowds with applause and adulation, he sailed back to South Africa with his family in December 1896.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi had become very well known in South Africa as well, to the point where a crowd of rioters awaited him at Port Natal, determined that he should not be allowed to enter. Many of them also mistakenly believed that all the dark-skinned passenger on the ship that took Gandhi to Natal were poor Indian immigrants he had decided to bring along with him, when, in reality, these passengers were mostly returning Indian residents of Natal. Fortunately, Gandhi was able to establish a friendly relationship with numerous white South Africans so the Natal port's police superintendent and his wife escorted him to safety. After this incident, local white residents began to actually regard him with greater respect.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: As Gandhi resumed his work at the Natal Indian Congress, his loyalty to the British Empire guided him to assist them in the Second Boer War, which started three years later. Because Gandhi remained a passionate pacifist, he wanted to participate in the Boer War without actually engaging in violence so he organized and led an Indian Medical Corps which served with the British Army in a number of battles, including the important Battle of Spion Kop in January 1900, a Boer victory.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: During this period, Gandhi would remain supportive of the British Empire, and believed the British Constitution deserved the loyalty of all of Britain's subjects, including Indians. Gandhi saw discriminatory policies in the Cape Colony as a temporary aberration, and perceived British rule in India as being both beneficial and benevolent.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The armed conflict between the British and Boers raged on for over three years; despite the fact that Britain had occupied both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic, thousands of Boers took to the hills to begin a guerilla campaign against the British in the countryside. Gandhi expected that the British victory would overturn discriminatory legislation in South Africa and present him with an opportunity to return to India. He wanted to attend the 1901 meeting of the Indian National Congress, whose mission was to provide a social and political forum for the Indian upper class. Founded in 1885 with aid of Briton Allan Octavian Hume, the Congress had no real political power and expressed pro-British positions. Gandhi wanted to attend its meeting nevertheless, as he was hoping to pass a resolution in support of the Indian population in South Africa. Before he left for Bombay, Gandhi promised the Natal Indian Congress that he would return to support their efforts, should they need his help.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: As Gandhi attended the 1901 Indian National Congress, his hopes came true. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, one of the most prominent Indian politicians of the time, supported the resolution for the rights of Indians in South Africa and the resolution passed. Through Gokhale, in whose house Gandhi stayed for a month, Gandhi met many political connections that would serve him later in life.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: However, his promise to always aid his friends in Natal soon prompted him to return to South Africa, when he received an urgent telegram informing him that the Boers had formed a peaceful relationship with British South Africans and now held political sway in the Cape Colony as well; the telegram also informed him that this would be a severe setback in his attempt to overturn discriminatory legislation targeting Indian South Africans/


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi travelled back to South Africa immediately and met with Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and presented him with a paper on the discriminatory policies instituted against the Indian population but Chamberlain instead rebuffed Gandhi and informed him that Indians living in South Africa would have to acceded to the will of the Afrikaners, who now were granted increased political power as a result of the formation of the Union of South Africa as a dominion.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi began to organize a fast response to this new South African political configuration. Instead of working in Natal, he now established a camp in the newly conquered Transvaal region and began helping Indians who had escaped from the war in that region, and now had to purchase overly expensive re-entry passes. He also represented poor Indians whose dwellings in a shantytown the authorities had dispossessed. Gandhi also started a new magazine, Indian Opinion, that advocated for political liberty and equal rights in South Africa. The magazine, which initially included several young women from Europe, expanded its staff around the country, increasing both Gandhi's popularity and the public support for his ideas.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: At round same time, Gandhi read John Ruskin's book "Unto This Last", which maintained that the life of manual labor was superior to all other ways of living. As he adopted this belief, Gandhi chose to abandon Western dress and habits, and he moved his family and staff to a Transvaal farm called the Phoenix, where he even gave renounced the use of an oil-powered engine and printed "Indian Opinion" by hand-wheel, and performed agriculture labor using old, manual farming equipment. He began to conceive of his public work as a mission to restore old Indian virtue and civilization, rather than fall prey to modern Western influence, which included electricity and technology.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Between 1901 and 1906, he also changed another aspect of his personal life by achieving Brahmacharya, or the voluntary abstention from sexual relations. He made this choice as part of his philosophy of selflessness and self-restraint. Finally, he also formulated his own philosophy of political protest, called Satyagraha, which literally meant "truth-force" in Sanskrit. In practice, this practice meant protesting injustice steadfastly, but in a non-violent manner.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: He put this theory into practice on September 8, 1906, when, at a large gathering of the Indian community in Transvaal, he asked the whole community to take a vow of disobedience to the law, as the Transvaal government had started an effort to register every Indian child over the age of eight, which would make them an official part of the South African population.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Setting a personal example, Gandhi became the first Indian to appear before a magistrate for his refusal to register, and he was sentenced to two months in prison. He actually asked for a heavier sentence, a request, consistent with his philosophy of self-denial. After his release, Gandhi continued his campaign and thousands of Indians burned their registration cards, crossing the Transvaal-Natal border without passes. Many went to jail, including Gandhi, who went to jail again in 1908.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi did not waiver when a South African General by the name of Jan Christian Smuts promised to eliminate the registration law, but broke his word. Gandhi went all the way to London in 1909 and gathered enough support among the members of the British government to convince Smuts to eliminate the law in 1913. Yet, the Transvaal Prime Minister continued to regard Indians as second-class citizens while the Cape Colony government passed another discriminatory law making all non-Christian marriages illegal, which meant that all Indian children would be considered born out of wedlock. In addition, the government in Natal continued to impose crippling poll tax for entering Natal only upon Indians.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In response to these strikingly unjust rules, Gandhi organized a large-scale satyagraha, which involved women crossing the Natal-Transvaal border illegally. When they were arrested, five thousand Indian coal miners also went on strike and Gandhi himself led them across the Natalese border, where they expected arrest.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Although Smuts and Gandhi did not agree on many points, they had respect for each other. In 1913, Smuts relented due to the sheer number of Indians involved in protest and negotiated a settlement which provided for the legality of Indian marriages and abolished the poll tax. Further, the import of indentured laborers from India was to be phased out by 1920. In July 1914, Gandhi sailed for Britain, now admired as "Mahatma," and known throughout the world for the success of satyagraha.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi was in England when World War I started and he immediately began organizing a medical corps similar to the force he had led in the Boer War, but he had also faced health problems that caused him to return to India, where he met the applauding crowds with enthusiasm once again. Indians continued to refer to him as "Mahatma" or "Great Soul," an appellation reserved only for the holiest men of Hinduism. While Gandhi accepted the love and admiration of the crowds, he also insisted that all souls were equal and did not accept the implication of religious sacredness that his new name carried.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In order to retreat into a life of humility and restraint, as his personal principles mandated, he decided to withdraw from public life for a while spending his first year in India focusing on his personal quest for purity and healing. He also lived in a communal space with untouchables, a choice which many of his financial supporters resented, because they believed that the very presence of untouchables defiled higher-caste Indians. Gandhi even considered moving to a district in Ahmedabad inhabited entirely by the untouchables when a generous Muslim merchant donated enough money to keep up his current living space for another year. By that time, Gandhi's communal life with the untouchables had become more acceptable.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Although Gandhi had withdrawn from public life, he briefly met with the British Governor of Bombay (and future Viceroy of India), Lord Willington, whom Gandhi promised to consult before he launched any political campaigns. Gandhi also felt the impact of another event, the passing of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who had become his supporter and political mentor. He stayed away from the political trend of Indian nationalism, which many of the members of the Indian National Congress embraced. Instead, he stayed busy resettling his family and the inhabitants of the Phoenix Settlement in South Africa, as well as the Tolstoy Settlement he had founded near Johannesburg. For this purpose, on May 25, 1915, he created a new settlement, which came to be known as the Satyagraha ashram ( derive from Sanskrit word "Satya" means "truth" ) near the town of Ahmedabad and close to his place of birth in the western Indian province of Gujarat. All the inhabitants of the ashram, which included one family of untouchables, swore to poverty and chastity.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: After a while, Gandhi became influenced by the idea of Indian independence from the British, but he dreaded the possibility that a westernized Indian elite would replace the British colonial government. He developed a strong conviction that Indian independence should take place as a large-scale sociopolitical reform, which would remove the old plagues of extreme poverty and caste restrictions. In fact, he believed that Indians could not become worthy of self-government unless they all shared a concern for the poor.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: As Gandhi resumed his public life in India in 1916, he delivered a speech at the opening of the new Hindu University in the city of Benares, where he discussed his understanding of independence and reform. He also provided specific examples of the abhorrent living conditions of the lower classes that he had observed during his travels around India and focused specifically on sanitation.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Although the Indians of the higher-castes did not readily embrace the ideas in the speech, Gandhi had now returned to public life and he felt ready to convert these ideas to actions. Facing the possibility of arrest, just like he always did in South Africa, Gandhi first spoke for the rights of impoverished indigo-cultivators in the Champaran district. His efforts eventually led to the appointment of a government commission to investigate abuses by the indigo planters.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: He also interfered whenever he saw violence. When a group of Ahmedabad mill workers went on strike and became violent, he resolved to fast until they returned to peace. Though some political commentators condemned Gandhi's behavior as a form of blackmail, the fast only lasted three days before the workers and their employers negotiated an agreement. Through this situation, Gandhi discovered the fast as one of his most effective weapons in late years and set a precedent for later action as part of satyagraha.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: As the First World War continued, Gandhi also became involved in recruiting men for the British Indian Army, an involvement which his followers had a difficult time accepting, after listening to his passionate speeches about resisting injustice in a non-violent manner. At this point, although Gandhi still remained loyal to Britain and enamored with the ideals of the British constitution, his desire to support an independent home rule became stronger. As time passed, Gandhi became exhausted from his long journey around the country and fell ill with dysentery. He refused conventional treatment and chose to practice his own healing methods, relying on diet and spending a long time bedridden, while in recovery in his ashram.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In the meantime, the unrest in India increased exponentially with news of the British victories over the Ottoman Empire during the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War. The prospect of the only major Muslim power in the world ceasing to exist was an unacceptable proposition to many Indian Muslims.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: After the end of the war, the British colonial government decided to follow the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee, which advocated the retention of various wartime restrictions in India, including curfews and measures to suppress free speech. Gandhi was still sick when these events took place and, although he could not protest actively, he felt his loyalty to the British Empire weaken significantly.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Later, when the Rowlatt Act actually became law, Gandhi proposed that the entire country observe a day of prayer, fasting, and abstention from physical labor as a peaceful protest against the injustice of the oppressive law. Gandhi's plea generated an overwhelming response as millions of Indians did not go to work on April 6, 1919.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: As the entire country stood still, the British colonial government arrested Gandhi, which provoked angry crowds to fill the streets of India's cities and, much to Gandhi's dislike, violence erupted everywhere. Gandhi could not tolerate violence so he called off his campaign and asked that everyone return to their homes. He acted in accordance with his firm belief that if satyagraha could not be carried out without violence, it should not take place at all.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Unfortunately, not all protesters shared Gandhi's conviction as ardently. In Amritsar, capital of the region known as the Punjab, where the alarmed colonial authorities had deported the local Hindu and Muslim members of the Congress, the street mobs became very violent and the colonial government summoned Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer to restore order. Dyer prohibited all public meetings and instituted public whippings for Indians who confronted the police. A crowd of over ten thousand people gathered for religious purposes, and Dyer responded with bringing his troops there and opening fire without warning. Tightly packed together, the protesters had nowhere to run from the fire, even when they threw themselves down on the ground the fire was then directed on the ground, ceasing only when Dyer's troops ran out of ammunition. Hundreds died and many more were wounded.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: This unfortunate occurrence became known as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, it outraged the British public almost as much as Indian society. The authorities in London eventually condemned Dyer's conduct, forcing him to resign in disgrace. The effect the massacre had on Indian society became even more profound as more moderate politicians, like Gandhi, now began to wholeheartedly support the idea of Indian independence, creating an intense climate of mutual hostility. After the massacre, Gandhi eventually obtained permission to travel to Amritsar and conduct his own investigation. He produced a report months later and his work on the report motivated him to contact a number of Indian politicians, who advocated for the idea of independence from British colonial rule.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: After the massacre, Gandhi attended the Muslim Conference being held in Delhi, where Indian Muslims discussed their fears that the British government would abolish the Ottoman Caliphate. Indian Muslims considered the Caliphs as heirs of Mohammed and spiritual heads of Islam. While the British government considered abolition a necessary effort to restore order after the First World War, the Muslim population of the British Empire viewed it as an unnecessary provocation. Gandhi urged them not to accept the actions of the British government. He proposed a boycott of British goods, and stated that if the British government continued to insist on the abolition of the Caliphate, Indian Muslims should take even more drastic measures of non-cooperation, involving areas such as government employment and taxes.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: During the months that followed, Gandhi continued to advocate for peace and caution, however, since Britain and the Ottomans were still negotiating their peace terms. Unlike more nationalistic politicians, he also supported the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms for India, as they laid the foundation for constitutional self-government. Eventually, other politicians who thought the reforms did not go far enough had to agree with Gandhi simply because his popularity and influence had become so great that the Congress could accomplish little without him.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: While the British government remained determined to abolish the Ottoman Caliphate, they also continued to enforce the Rowlatt Act resolutely. Even Gandhi became less tolerant towards British colonial policies and in April 1920, he urged all Indians, Muslim and Hindu, to begin a "non-cooperation" protest against British policies by giving up their Western clothing and jobs in the colonial government. As a personal example, on August 1, he returned the kasar-i-hind medal that he had received for providing medical service to wounded British soldiers during the Second Boer War. He also became the first president of the Home Rule League, a largely symbolic position which confirmed his position as an advocate for Indian Independence.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In September 1920, Gandhi also passed an official constitution for the Congress, which created a system of two national committees and numerous local units, all working to mobilize a spirit of non-cooperation across India. Gandhi and other volunteers traveled around India further establishing this new grass roots organization, which achieved great success. The new Governor-General of India Lord Reading, did not dare to interfere because of Gandhi's immense popularity.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: By 1922, Gandhi decided that the initiative of non-cooperation had to transform into open civil disobedience, but in March 1922, Lord Reading finally ordered Gandhi's arrest after a crowd in the city of Chauri Chaura attacked and assassinated the local representatives of British colonial government. Gandhi, who had never encouraged or sanctioned this type of conduct, condemned the actions of the violent crowds and retreated into a period of fasting and prayer as a response to this violent outburst. However, the colonial government saw the event as a trigger point and a reason for his arrest.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The British colonial authorities placed Gandhi on trial for sedition and sentenced him to six years in prison, marking the first time that he faced prosecution in India. Because of Gandhi's fame, the judge, C.N. Broomfield, hesitated to impose a harsher punishment. He considered Gandhi clearly guilty as charged, despite the fact that Gandhi admitted his guilt and even went as far as requesting the heaviest possible sentence. Such willingness to accept imprisonment conformed to his philosophy of satyagraha, so Gandhi felt that his time in prison only furthered his commitment and goals. The authorities allowed him to use a spinning wheel and receive reading materials while in prison, so he felt content. He also wrote most of his autobiography while serving his sentence.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: However, in Gandhi's absence, Indians returned to the jobs they had previously spurned and their every day routines. Even worse, the unity between Muslims and Hindus, which Gandhi advocated so passionately, had already begun to fall apart to the point where the threat of violence loomed large over many communities with mixed population. The campaign for Indian independence could not continue while Indians themselves suffered disunity and conflict, all the more difficult to overcome in a huge country like India, which had always suffered religious divisions, as well as divisions by language, and even caste.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi realized that the British government had lost the will and power to maintain their empire, but he always acknowledged that Indians could not rely simply on the weakening of Britain in order to achieve independence. He believed that Indians had to become morally ready for independence. He planned to contribute to such readiness through his speeches and writing, advocating humility, restraint, good sanitation, as well as an end to child marriages.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: After his imprisonment ended, he resumed his personal quest for purification and truth. He ends his autobiography by admitting that he continues to experience and fight with "the dormant passion" that lie within his own soul. He felt ready to continue the long and difficult path of taming those passions and putting himself last among his fellow human beings, the only way to achieve salvation, according to him.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: "That is why the worlds' praise fails to move me; indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions is far harder than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms,"


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi writes in his "Farewell" to the readers, a suitable conclusion for an autobiography that he never intended to be an autobiography, but a tale of experiments with life, and with truth.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: The autobiography is noted for its lucid, simple and idiomatic language and its transparently honest narration. The autobiography itself has become a key document for interpreting Gandhi's life and ideas.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In his essay "Reflections on Gandhi" (1949), George Orwell argued that the autobiography made clear Gandhi's "natural physical courage", which he saw as later confirmed by the circumstances of his assassination; his lack of feelings of envy, inferiority, or suspiciousness, the last of which Orwell thought was common to Indian people; and his lack of racial prejudice. Noting the circumstances of the book's serialisation, Orwell argues it "is not a literary masterpiece, but it is the more impressive because of the commonplaceness of much of its material." Orwell found the book to indicate that Gandhi "was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an administrator or perhaps even a businessman."


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: In a 1998 interview, Gujarati writer Harivallabh Bhayani mentioned this work as the most important work, together with Govardhanram Tripathi's "Saraswatichandra", to have emerged in Gujarat in the last 50 years.


title: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

text: Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that the three most important modern influences in his life were Leo Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You", John Ruskin's "Unto This Last", and the poet Shrimad Rajchandra (Raychandbhai).


title: Skræling

text: Skræling (Old Norse and Icelandic: skrælingi, plural skrælingjar) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the sagas, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered and fought during their expeditions there in the early 11th century.


title: Skræling

text: The word is most likely related to the Old Norse word , meaning "dried skin", in reference to the animal pelts worn by the Inuit. William Thalbitzer (1932: 14) speculated that might have been derived from the Old Norse verb , meaning "bawl, shout, or yell". In modern Icelandic, means "barbarian", whereas the Danish descendant, , means "weakling".


title: Skræling

text: The term is thought to have first been used by in his work , also called "The Book of the Icelanders", written well after the period in which Norse explorers made their first contacts with indigenous Americans. By the time these sources were recorded, was the common term Norse Greenlanders used for the Thule people, the ancestors to the modern Inuit. The Thule first arrived in Greenland from the North American mainland in the 13th century and were thereafter in contact with the Greenlanders. The "Greenlanders' Saga" and the "Saga of Erik the Red", which were written in the 13th century, use this same term for the people of the area known as Vinland whom the Norse met in the early 11th century. The word subsequently became well known, and has been used in the English language since the 18th century.


title: Skræling

text: "Kalaallit", the name of the largest ethnic group of Greenlandic Inuit, is likely derived from "skræling". In 1750, Paul Egede mentions that the Inuit used "Inuit" among themselves, but used Kalaalit when speaking to non-Inuit, stating that this was the term used by Norse settlers.


title: Skræling

text: Norse exploration of the New World began with the initial sighting of North America by an Icelander named Bjarni Herjólfsson, who spotted land after drifting off course on a journey to Greenland in 985 or 986.


title: Skræling

text: His voyage piqued the interest of later explorers including Leif Eriksson, who would explore and name the areas of Helluland, Markland and Vinland.


title: Skræling

text: Leif laid the groundwork for later colonizing efforts by establishing a foothold on Vinland, where he constructed some "large houses." Upon his return to Greenland,


title: Skræling

text: Thorvald has the first contact with the native population which would come to be known as the "skrælings". After capturing and killing eight of the natives, they were attacked beside their beached ships, which they defended:


title: Skræling

text: Thorfinn Karlsefni was the first Norse explorer to attempt to truly colonize the newly discovered Vinland, on the same site as his predecessors Thorvald and Leif Eriksson. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, he set sail with three ships and 140 men.


title: Skræling

text: Upon reaching Vinland, their intended destination, they found the now famous grapes and self-sown wheat for which the land was named. They spent a very hard winter at this site, barely surviving by fishing, hunting game inland, and gathering eggs on the island. The following summer they sailed to the island of Hop where they had the first peaceful interactions with the native people, with whom they traded. Thorfinn forbade his men to trade their swords and spears, so they mainly exchanged red cloth for pelts. They described the aboriginal inhabitants:


title: Skræling

text: Shortly thereafter, the Norsemen were attacked by natives frightened by a bull that broke loose from the Norse encampment. They were forced to retreat to a more defensible location before engaging their attackers; at the end of the battle two of his men had been slain, while "many of the natives" were killed. As with any inhabited foreign land, Thorfinn and his men realized that


title: Skræling

text: After this adventure, they returned to Greenland. Their three-year excursion would be the longest lasting known European colony in the New World, until Columbus's voyages nearly 500 years later initiated full-scale European conquest of the Americas.


title: Skræling

text: Kavdlunait (plural) was the Inuit word for foreigner or European. Compare modern Greenlandic "qallunaaq" ("Dane"), formerly spelled "ĸavdlunâĸ".


title: Commodity market

text: A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products, such as cocoa, fruit and sugar. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities. Commodity markets can include physical trading and derivatives trading using spot prices, forwards, futures, and options on futures. Farmers have used a simple form of derivative trading in the commodity market for centuries for price risk management.


title: Commodity market

text: A financial derivative is a financial instrument whose value is derived from a commodity termed an underlier. Derivatives are either exchange-traded or over-the-counter (OTC). An increasing number of derivatives are traded via clearing houses some with central counterparty clearing, which provide clearing and settlement services on a futures exchange, as well as off-exchange in the OTC market.


title: Commodity market

text: Derivatives such as futures contracts, Swaps (1970s-), Exchange-traded Commodities (ETC) (2003-), forward contracts have become the primary trading instruments in commodity markets. Futures are traded on regulated commodities exchanges. Over-the-counter (OTC) contracts are "privately negotiated bilateral contracts entered into between the contracting parties directly".


title: Commodity market

text: Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) began to feature commodities in 2003. Gold ETFs are based on "electronic gold" that does not entail the ownership of physical bullion, with its added costs of insurance and storage in repositories such as the London bullion market. According to the World Gold Council, ETFs allow investors to be exposed to the gold market without the risk of price volatility associated with gold as a physical commodity.


title: Commodity market

text: Commodity-based money and commodity markets in a crude early form are believed to have originated in Sumer between 4500 BC and 4000 BC. Sumerians first used clay tokens sealed in a clay vessel, then clay writing tablets to represent the amount—for example, the number of goats, to be delivered. These promises of time and date of delivery resemble futures contract.


title: Commodity market

text: Early civilizations variously used pigs, rare seashells, or other items as commodity money. Since that time traders have sought ways to simplify and standardize trade contracts.


title: Commodity market

text: Gold and silver markets evolved in classical civilizations. At first, the precious metals were valued for their beauty and intrinsic worth and were associated with royalty. In time, they were used for trading and were exchanged for other goods and commodities, or for payments of labor. Gold, measured out, then became money. Gold's scarcity, its unique density and the way it could be easily melted, shaped, and measured made it a natural trading asset.


title: Commodity market

text: Beginning in the late 10th century, commodity markets grew as a mechanism for allocating goods, labor, land and capital across Europe. Between the late 11th and the late 13th century, English urbanization, regional specialization, expanded and improved infrastructure, the increased use of coinage and the proliferation of markets and fairs were evidence of commercialization. The spread of markets is illustrated by the 1466 installation of reliable scales in the villages of Sloten and Osdorp so villagers no longer had to travel to Haarlem or Amsterdam to weigh their locally produced cheese and butter.


title: Commodity market

text: The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, often cited as the first stock exchange, originated as a market for the exchange of commodities. Early trading on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange often involved the use of very sophisticated contracts, including short sales, forward contracts, and options. "Trading took place at the Amsterdam Bourse, an open aired


title: Commodity market

text: venue, which was created as a commodity exchange in 1530 and rebuilt in 1608. Commodity exchanges themselves were a relatively recent invention, existing in only a handful of cities."


title: Commodity market

text: In 1864, in the United States, wheat, corn, cattle, and pigs were widely traded using standard instruments on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the world's oldest futures and options exchange. Other food commodities were added to the Commodity Exchange Act and traded through CBOT in the 1930s and 1940s, expanding the list from grains to include rice, mill feeds, butter, eggs, Irish potatoes and soybeans. Successful commodity markets require broad consensus on product variations to make each commodity acceptable for trading, such as the purity of gold in bullion. Classical civilizations built complex global markets trading gold or silver for spices, cloth, wood and weapons, most of which had standards of quality and timeliness.


title: Commodity market

text: Through the 19th century "the exchanges became effective spokesmen for, and innovators of, improvements in transportation, warehousing, and financing, which paved the way to expanded interstate and international trade."


title: Commodity market

text: Reputation and clearing became central concerns, and states that could handle them most effectively developed powerful financial centers.


title: Commodity market

text: In 1934, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began the computation of a daily Commodity price index that became available to the public in 1940. By 1952, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a Spot Market Price Index that measured the price movements of "22 sensitive basic commodities whose markets are presumed to be among the first to be influenced by changes in economic conditions. As such, it serves as one early indication of impending changes in business activity."


title: Commodity market

text: A commodity index fund is a fund whose assets are invested in financial instruments based on or linked to a commodity index. In just about every case the index is in fact a Commodity Futures Index. The first such index was the Dow Jones Commodity Index, which began in 1933. The first practically investable commodity futures index was the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, created in 1991, and known as the "GSCI". The next was the Dow Jones AIG Commodity Index. It differed from the GSCI primarily in the weights allocated to each commodity. The DJ AIG had mechanisms to periodically limit the weight of any one commodity and to remove commodities whose weights became too small. After AIG's financial problems in 2008 the Index rights were sold to UBS and it is now known as the DJUBS index. Other commodity indices include the Reuters / CRB index (which is the old CRB Index as re-structured in 2005) and the Rogers Index.


title: Commodity market

text: Cash commodities or "actuals" refer to the physical goods—e.g., wheat, corn, soybeans, crude oil, gold, silver—that someone is buying/selling/trading as distinguished from derivatives.


title: Commodity market

text: In a call option counterparties enter into a financial contract option where the buyer purchases the right but not the obligation to buy an agreed quantity of a particular commodity or financial instrument (the underlying) from the seller of the option at a certain time (the expiration date) for a certain price (the strike price). The seller (or "writer") is obligated to sell the commodity or financial instrument should the buyer so decide. The buyer pays a fee (called a premium) for this right.


title: Commodity market

text: In traditional stock market exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), most trading activity took place in the trading pits in face-to-face interactions between brokers and dealers in open outcry trading.


title: Commodity market

text: In 1992 the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol was introduced, allowing international real-time exchange of information regarding market transactions. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ordered U.S. stock markets to convert from the fractional system to a decimal system by April 2001. Metrification, conversion from the imperial system of measurement to the metrical, increased throughout the 20th century. Eventually FIX-compliant interfaces were adopted globally by commodity exchanges using the FIX Protocol. In 2001 the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (later merged into the CME group, the world's largest futures exchange company) launched their FIX-compliant interface.


title: Commodity market

text: By 2011, the alternative trading system (ATS) of electronic trading featured computers buying and selling without human dealer intermediation. High-frequency trading (HFT) algorithmic trading, had almost phased out "dinosaur floor-traders".


title: Commodity market

text: The robust growth of emerging market economies (EMEs, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China), beginning in the 1990s, "propelled commodity markets into a supercycle". The size and diversity of commodity markets expanded internationally,


title: Commodity market

text: and pension funds and sovereign wealth funds started allocating more capital to commodities, in order to diversify into an asset class with less exposure to currency depreciation.


title: Commodity market

text: In 2012, as emerging-market economies slowed down, commodity prices peaked and started to decline. From 2005 through 2013, energy and metals' real prices remained well above their long-term averages. In 2012, real food prices were their highest since 1982.


title: Commodity market

text: The price of gold bullion fell dramatically on 12 April 2013 and analysts frantically sought explanations. Rumors spread that the European Central Bank (ECB) would force Cyprus to sell its gold reserves in response to its financial crisis. Major banks such as Goldman Sachs began immediately to short gold bullion. Investors scrambled to liquidate their exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and margin call selling accelerated. George Gero, precious metals commodities expert at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Wealth Management section reported that he had not seen selling of gold bullion as panicked as this in his forty years in commodity markets.


title: Commodity market

text: The earliest commodity exchange-traded fund (ETFs), such as SPDR Gold Shares and iShares Silver Trust , actually owned the physical commodities. Similar to these are (palladium) and (platinum). However, most Exchange Traded Commodities (ETCs) implement a futures trading strategy. At the time Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia could sink into recession. He argued that "We live in a dynamic, fast-developing world. It is so global and so complex that we sometimes cannot keep up with the changes". Analysts have claimed that Russia's economy is overly dependent on commodities.


title: Commodity market

text: A Spot contract is an agreement where delivery and payment either takes place immediately, or with a short lag. Physical trading normally involves a visual inspection and is carried out in physical markets such as a farmers market. Derivatives markets, on the other hand, require the existence of agreed standards so that trades can be made without visual inspection.


title: Commodity market

text: US soybean futures do not qualify as "standard grade" if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)". They are of "deliverable grade" if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)". Note the distinction between states, and the need to clearly mention their status as GMO (genetically modified organism) which makes them unacceptable to most organic food buyers.


title: Commodity market

text: Similar specifications apply for cotton, orange juice, cocoa, sugar, wheat, corn, barley, pork bellies, milk, feed stuffs, fruits, vegetables, other grains, other beans, hay, other livestock, meats, poultry, eggs, or any other commodity which is so traded.


title: Commodity market

text: Standardization has also occurred technologically, as the use of the FIX Protocol by commodities exchanges has allowed trade messages to be sent, received and processed in the same format as stocks or equities. This process began in 2001 when the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched a FIX-compliant interface that was adopted by commodity exchanges around the world.


title: Commodity market

text: Derivatives evolved from simple commodity future contracts into a diverse group of financial instruments that apply to every kind of asset, including mortgages, insurance and many more. Futures contracts, Swaps (1970s-), Exchange-traded Commodities (ETC) (2003-), forward contracts, etc. are examples. They can be traded through formal exchanges or through Over-the-counter (OTC). Commodity market derivatives unlike credit default derivatives, for example, are secured by the physical assets or commodities.


title: Commodity market

text: A forward contract is an agreement between two parties to exchange at a fixed future date a given quantity of a commodity for a specific price defined when the contract is finalized. The fixed price is also called forward price. Such forward contracts began as a way of reducing pricing risk in food and agricultural product markets. By agreeing in advance on a price for a future delivery, farmers were able protect their output against a possible fall of market prices and in contrast buyers were able to protect themselves against a possible rise of market prices.


title: Commodity market

text: Futures contracts are standardized forward contracts that are transacted through an exchange. In futures contracts the buyer and the seller stipulate product, grade, quantity and location and leaving price as the only variable.


title: Commodity market

text: Agricultural futures contracts are the oldest, in use in the United States for more than 170 years. Modern futures agreements, began in Chicago in the 1840s, with the appearance of grain elevators. Chicago, centrally located, emerged as the hub between Midwestern farmers and east coast consumer population centers.


title: Commodity market

text: A swap is a derivative in which counterparties exchange the cash flows of one party's financial instrument for those of the other party's financial instrument. They were introduced in the 1970s.


title: Commodity market

text: Exchange-traded commodity is a term used for commodity exchange-traded funds (which are funds) or commodity exchange-traded notes (which are notes). These track the performance of an underlying commodity index including total return indices based on a single commodity. They are similar to ETFs and traded and settled exactly like stock funds. ETCs have market maker support with guaranteed liquidity, enabling investors to easily invest in commodities.


title: Commodity market

text: At first, only professional institutional investors had access, but online exchanges opened some ETC markets to almost anyone. ETCs were introduced partly in response to the tight supply of commodities in 2000, combined with record low inventories and increasing demand from emerging markets such as China and India.


title: Commodity market

text: Prior to the introduction of ETCs, by the 1990s ETFs pioneered by Barclays Global Investors (BGI) revolutionized the mutual funds industry. By the end of December 2009 BGI assets hit an all-time high of $1 trillion.


title: Commodity market

text: Gold was the first commodity to be securitised through an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the early 1990s, but it was not available for trade until 2003. The idea of a Gold ETF was first officially conceptualised by Benchmark Asset Management Company Private Ltd in India, when they filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in May 2002. The first gold exchange-traded fund was Gold Bullion Securities launched on the ASX in 2003, and the first silver exchange-traded fund was iShares Silver Trust launched on the NYSE in 2006. As of November 2010 a commodity ETF, namely SPDR Gold Shares, was the second-largest ETF by market capitalization.


title: Commodity market

text: Generally, commodity ETFs are index funds tracking non-security indices. Because they do not invest in securities, commodity ETFs are not regulated as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 in the United States, although their public offering is subject to SEC review and they need an SEC no-action letter under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. They may, however, be subject to regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.


title: Commodity market

text: The earliest commodity ETFs, such as SPDR Gold Shares and iShares Silver Trust , actually owned the physical commodity (e.g., gold and silver bars). Similar to these are (palladium) and (platinum). However, most ETCs implement a futures trading strategy, which may produce quite different results from owning the commodity.


title: Commodity market

text: Commodity ETFs trade provide exposure to an increasing range of commodities and commodity indices, including energy, metals, softs and agriculture. Many commodity funds, such as oil roll so-called front-month futures contracts from month to month. This provides exposure to the commodity, but subjects the investor to risks involved in different prices along the "term structure", such as a high cost to roll.


title: Commodity market

text: ETCs in China and India gained in importance due to those countries' emergence as commodities consumers and producers. China accounted for more than 60% of exchange-traded commodities in 2009, up from 40% the previous year. The global volume of ETCs increased by a 20% in 2010, and 50% since 2008, to around 2.5 billion million contracts.


title: Commodity market

text: Over-the-counter (OTC) commodities derivatives trading originally involved two parties, without an exchange. Exchange trading offers greater transparency and regulatory protections. In an OTC trade, the price is not generally made public. OTC commodities derivatives are higher risk but may also lead to higher profits.


title: Commodity market

text: Between 2007 and 2010, global physical exports of commodities fell by 2%, while the outstanding value of OTC commodities derivatives declined by two-thirds as investors reduced risk following a five-fold increase in the previous three years.


title: Commodity market

text: Money under management more than doubled between 2008 and 2010 to nearly $380 billion. Inflows into the sector totaled over $60 billion in 2010, the second-highest year on record, down from $72 billion the previous year. The bulk of funds went into precious metals and energy products. The growth in prices of many commodities in 2010 contributed to the increase in the value of commodities funds under management.


title: Commodity market

text: A commodities exchange is an exchange where various commodities and derivatives are traded. Most commodity markets across the world trade in agricultural products and other raw materials (like wheat, barley, sugar, maize, cotton, cocoa, coffee, milk products, pork bellies, oil, metals, etc.) and contracts based on them. These contracts can include spot prices, forwards, futures and options on futures. Other sophisticated products may include interest rates, environmental instruments, swaps, or freight contracts.


title: Commodity market

text: Energy commodities include crude oil particularly West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and Brent crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, ethanol and purified terephthalic acid. Hedging is a common practice for these commodities.


title: Commodity market

text: For many years, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, a light, sweet crude oil, was the world's most-traded commodity. WTI is a grade used as a benchmark in oil pricing. It is the underlying commodity of Chicago Mercantile Exchange's oil futures contracts. WTI is often referenced in news reports on oil prices, alongside Brent Crude. WTI is lighter and sweeter than Brent and considerably lighter and sweeter than Dubai or Oman.


title: Commodity market

text: From April through October 2012, Brent futures contracts exceeded those for WTI, the longest streak since at least 1995.