Word: feudality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...under League of Nation mandates, most of the Middle East was handed over to Britain and France, and frustrated Arabs wasted themselves in futile rebellions against the colonial powers. World War II did little better for the Arab nationalists. Individual states gained independence, but control was securely held by feudal monarchs or coalitions of landowners and business men who were often little more than colonial puppets. Sir Winston Churchill "invented" the state of Jordan "on a Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem." Even worse, in the Arab view, was the partition of Palestine to provide a national homeland for the Jews. Humiliation...
...feudal as such a family fief may seem, the Marzottos' benevolent paternalism is based on the modern conviction that prosperous workers are more productive. The Marzottos are rarely struck, enjoy intense worker loyalty, have forced much of Italian industry to pay higher wages by frequently raising the wages and benefits of their own workers. Valdagno's 32,000 inhabitants are so satisfied with the way things are that the village has the lowest percentage of Communist voters of any Italian industrial community -8%, v. 40% in Turin and 50% in a village only seven miles away...
...same time in Miami Beach, the feudal, feuding barons of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council (average age: 62) met at the gaudy Americana Hotel. As if aware of possible criticism, they avoided the Americana's pools, eschewed Dionysian pleasures, spent most of their time in worried huddles. At one point a reporter cornered A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany in a corridor, asked him if he thought the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had a responsibility to end national strikes. Meany's face flushed with anger; his fist closed tightly around the cane that he now carries. "We have a responsibility...
...Nigeria won its independence, it became at birth the world's most populous black state and Africa's biggest question mark. Held together in uneasy federation, the country numbered some 250 tribes and languages, three principal religions (Moslem. Christian, animist), and three big, traditionally hostile regions: the feudal, Moslem North, which claims half the entire population of Nigeria; the East, dominated by the astute, industrious Ibo tribes; and the West, richest and most advanced of all three, whose Yoruba tribesmen are Nigeria's most sophisticated citizens. As big as Texas and Oklahoma combined, with some 45 million...
...beat back religious leaders who were attempting a three-day strike. All the excitement was over the social reforms of Iran's 43-year-old king of kings, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. After years of hesitation, the Shah at last was tearing the land from Iran's feudal village owners and religious leaders, distributing it to the peasants, and forcing factory owners to give workers a 20% share of their profits...