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Free-rider problem

In economics, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods and common pool resources do not pay for them or under-pay. Examples of such goods are public roads or public libraries or services or other goods of a communal nature. Free riders are a problem for common pool resources because they may overuse it by not paying for the good (either directly through fees or tolls or indirectly through taxes). Consequently, the common pool resource may be under-produced, overused, or degraded. Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature (a prosocial behaviour), the presence of free-riders causes cooperation to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.

The free-rider problem in social science is the question of how to limit free riding and its negative effects in these situations. Such an example is the free-rider problem of when property rights are not clearly defined and imposed. The free-rider problem is common with public goods which are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Non-excludable means that non-payers cannot be stopped from getting use of or benefits from the good. Non-rival consumption stipulates that the use of a good or service by one consumer does not reduce its availability for another consumer. These characteristics of a public good result in there being little incentive for consumers to contribute to a collective resource as they enjoy its benefits.

A free rider may enjoy a non-excludable and non-rivalrous good such as a government-provided road system without contributing to paying for it. Another example is if a coastal town builds a lighthouse, ships from many regions and countries will benefit from it, even though they are not contributing to its costs, and are thus "free riding" on the navigation aid. A third example of non-excludable and non-rivalrous consumption would be a crowd watching fireworks. The number of viewers, whether they paid for the entertainment or not, does not diminish the fireworks as a resource. In each of these examples, the cost of excluding non-payers would be prohibitive, while the collective consumption of the resource does not decrease how much is available.

Although the term "free rider" was first used in economic theory of public goods, similar concepts have been applied to other contexts, including collective bargaining, antitrust law, psychology, political science, and vaccines. For example, some individuals in a team or community may reduce their contributions or performance if they believe that one or more other members of the group may free ride.

The economic free-rider problem is equally pertinent within the realm of global politics, often presenting challenges in international cooperation and collective action. In global politics, states are confronted with scenarios where certain actors reap the benefits of collective goods or actions without bearing the costs or contributing to the efforts required to achieve these shared objectives. This phenomenon creates imbalances and hampers cooperative endeavors, particularly in addressing transnational challenges like climate change, global security, or humanitarian crises. For instance, in discussions on climate change mitigation, countries with lesser contributions to greenhouse gas emissions might still benefit from global efforts to reduce emissions, enjoying a stable climate without proportionally shouldering the costs of emission reductions. This creates a disparity between states' contributions and their gains, leading to challenges in negotiating and implementing effective international agreements. The economic free-rider problem's manifestation in global politics underscores the complexities and obstacles encountered in fostering collective action and equitable burden-sharing among nations to address pressing global issues.

Incentive
The underlying incentive which generates the free-rider problem can be explained via the application of the Prisoner's dilemma, within the context of contributing to a public good. Suppose two people were to split a contribution to a public service (such as for a police station) with society benefiting from their contribution. According to the Prisoner's dilemma, certain conclusions can be drawn from the results of this scenario. If both parties donate, they are out of pocket and society benefits. If one party doesn't pay (in the hopes that someone else will) they become a free-rider, and the other will have to cover the cost. If the other party also decides to become a free-rider and neither pay, then society receives no benefit. This demonstrates that the free-rider problem is generated by individuals' willingness to let others pay when they themselves can receive the benefit at zero cost. This is reinforced by the economic theory of rational choice, stating that humans make choices which provide them with the greatest benefit. Therefore, if a service or resource is offered for free, then a consumer will not pay for it.

Economic issues
Free riding is a problem of economic inefficiency when it leads to the underproduction or overconsumption of a good. For example, when people are asked how much they value a particular public good, with that value measured in terms of how much money they would be willing to pay, their tendency is to under-report their valuations. Goods that are subject to free riding are usually characterized by: the inability to exclude non-payers, its consumption by an individual does not impact the availability for others and that the resource in question must be produced and/or maintained. Indeed, if non-payers can be excluded by some mechanism, the good may be transformed into a club good (e.g. if an overused, congested public road is converted to a toll road, or if a free public museum turns into a private, admission fee-charging museum).

Free riders become a problem when non-excludable goods are also rivalrous. These goods, categorized as common-pool resources, are characterized by overconsumption when common property regimes are not implemented. Not only can consumers of common-property goods benefit without payment, but consumption by one imposes an opportunity cost on others. The theory of 'Tragedy of the commons' highlights this, in which each consumer acts to maximize their own utility and thereby relies on others to cut back their own consumption. This will lead to overconsumption and even possibly exhaustion or destruction of the good. If too many people start to free ride, a system or service will eventually not have enough resources to operate. Free-riding is experienced when the production of goods does not consider the external costs, particularly the use of ecosystem services.

An example of this is global climate change initiatives. As climate change is a global issue and there is no global regime to manage the climate, the benefits of reduced emissions in one country will extend beyond their own countries' borders and impact countries worldwide. However, this has resulted in some countries acting in their own self-interest, limiting their own efforts and free-riding on the work of others. In some countries, citizens and governments do not wish to contribute to the associated effort and costs of mitigation, as they are able to free-ride on the efforts of others. This free rider problem also raises questions in regards to the fairness and ethicalness of these practices, as countries most likely to suffer the consequences of climate change, are also those who typically emit the least greenhouse gases and have fewer economic resources to contribute to the efforts, such as the small island country of Tuvalu.

Theodore Groves and John Ledyard believe that Pareto-optimal allocation of resources in relation to public goods is not compatible with the fundamental incentives belonging to individuals. Therefore, the free-rider problem, according to most scholars, is expected to be an ongoing public issue. For example, Albert O. Hirschman believed that the free-rider problem is a cyclical one for capitalist economies. Hirschman considers the free-rider problem to be related to the shifting interests of people. When stress levels rise on individuals in the workplace and many fear losing their employment, they devote less of their human capital to the public sphere. When public needs then increase, disenchanted consumers become more interested in collective action projects. This leads individuals to organize themselves in various groups and the results are attempts to solve public problems. In effect this reverses the momentum of free riding. Activities often seen as costs in models focused on self-interest are instead seen as benefits for the individuals who were previously dissatisfied consumers seeking their private interests.

This cycle will reset itself because as individuals' work for public benefit becomes less praiseworthy, supporters' level of commitment to collective action projects will decrease. With the decrease in support, many will return to private interests, which with time resets the cycle. Supporters of Hirschman's model insist that the important factor in motivating people is that they are compelled by a leader's call to altruism. In John F. Kennedy's inaugural address he implored the American people to "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Some economists (for example, Milton Friedman) find these calls to altruism to be nonsensical. Scholars like Friedman do not think the free-rider problem is part of an unchangeable virtuous or vicious circle, but instead seek possible solutions or attempts at improvement elsewhere.

Assurance contracts
An assurance contract is a contract in which participants make a binding pledge to contribute to building a public good, contingent on a quorum of a predetermined size being reached. Otherwise the good is not provided and any monetary contributions are refunded.

A dominant assurance contract is a variation in which an entrepreneur creates the contract and refunds the initial pledge plus an additional sum of money if the quorum is not reached. The entrepreneur profits by collecting a fee if the quorum is reached and the good is provided. In game-theoretic terms this makes pledging to build the public good a dominant strategy: the best move is to pledge to the contract regardless of the actions of others.

Coasian solution
A Coasian solution, named for the economist Ronald Coase, proposes that potential beneficiaries of a public good can negotiate to pool their resources and create it, based on each party's self-interested willingness to pay. His treatise, The Problem of Social Cost (1960), argued that if the transaction costs between potential beneficiaries of a public good are low—that it is easy for potential beneficiaries to find each other and organize pooling their resources based upon the good's value to each of them—that public goods could be produced without government action.

Much later, Coase himself wrote that while what had become known as the Coase Theorem had explored the implications of zero-transaction costs, he had actually intended to use this construct as a stepping stone to understand the real world of positive transaction costs, corporations, legal systems and government actions: "I examined what would happen in a world in which transaction costs were assumed to be zero. My aim in doing so was not to describe what life would be like in such a world but to provide a simple setting in which to develop the analysis and, what was even more important, to make clear the fundamental role which transaction costs do, and should, play in the fashioning of the institutions which make up the economic system."Coase also wrote:"The world of zero transaction costs has often been described as a Coasian world. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the world of modern economic theory, one which I was hoping to persuade economists to leave. What I did in 'The Problem of Social Cost' was simply to shed light on some of its properties. I argued in such a world the allocation of resources would be independent of the legal position, a result which Stigler dubbed the 'Coase theorem'."Thus, while Coase himself appears to have considered the "Coase theorem" and Coasian solutions as simplified constructs to ultimately consider the real 20th-century world of governments and laws and corporations, these concepts have become attached to a world where transaction costs were much lower, and government intervention would unquestionably be less necessary.

A minor alternative, especially for information goods, is for the producer to refuse to release a good to the public until payment to cover costs is met. Author Stephen King, for instance, authored chapters of a new novel downloadable for free on his website while stating that he would not release subsequent chapters unless a certain amount of money was raised. Sometimes dubbed holding for ransom, this method of public goods production is a modern application of the street performer protocol for public goods production. Unlike assurance contracts, its success relies largely on social norms to ensure (to some extent) that the threshold is reached and partial contributions are not wasted.

One of the purest Coasian solutions today is the new phenomenon of Internet crowdfunding. Here rules are enforced by computer algorithms and legal contracts as well as social pressure. For example, on the Kickstarter site, each funder authorizes a credit card purchase to buy a new product or receive other promised benefits, but no money changes hands until the funding goal is met. Because automation and the Internet so reduce the transaction costs for pooling resources, project goals of only a few hundred dollars are frequently crowdfunded, far below the costs of soliciting traditional investors.

Introducing an exclusion mechanism (club goods)
Another solution, which has evolved for information goods, is to introduce exclusion mechanisms which turn public goods into club goods. One well-known example is copyright and patent laws. These laws, which in the 20th century came to be called intellectual property laws, attempt to remove the natural non-excludability by prohibiting reproduction of the good. Although they can address the free rider problem, the downside of these laws is that they imply private monopoly power and thus are not Pareto-optimal.

For example, in the United States, the patent rights given to pharmaceutical companies encourage them to charge high prices (above marginal cost) and to advertise to convince patients to persuade their doctors to prescribe the drugs. Likewise, copyright provides an incentive for a publisher to act like The Dog in the Manger, taking older works out of print so as not to cannibalize revenue from the publisher's own new works. Examples from the entertainment industry include Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's "vault" sales practice. Examples from the computer software industry include Microsoft's decision to pull Windows XP from the market in mid-2008 to drive revenue from the widely criticized Windows Vista operating system.

The laws also end up encouraging patent and copyright owners to sue even mild imitators in court and to lobby for the extension of the term of the exclusive rights in a form of rent seeking.

These problems with the club-good mechanism arise because the underlying marginal cost of giving the good to more people is low or zero, but, because of the limits of price discrimination those who are unwilling or unable to pay a profit-maximizing price do not gain access to the good. If the costs of the exclusion mechanism are not higher than the gain from the collaboration, club goods can emerge naturally. James M. Buchanan showed in his seminal paper that clubs can be an efficient alternative to government interventions. On the other hand, the inefficiencies and inequities of club goods exclusions sometimes cause potentially excludable club goods to be treated as public goods, and their production financed by some other mechanism. Examples of such "natural" club goods include natural monopolies with very high fixed costs, private golf courses, cinemas, cable television and social clubs. This explains why many such goods are often provided or subsidized by governments, co-operatives or volunteer associations, rather than being left to be supplied by profit-minded entrepreneurs. These goods are often known as social goods. Joseph Schumpeter claimed that the "excess profits", or profits over normal profit, generated by the copyright or patent monopoly will attract competitors that will make technological innovations and thereby end the monopoly. This is a continual process referred to as "Schumpeterian creative destruction", and its applicability to different types of public goods is a source of some controversy. The supporters of the theory point to the case of Microsoft, for example, which has been increasing its prices (or lowering its products' quality), predicting that these practices will make increased market shares for Linux and Apple largely inevitable.

A nation can be seen as a "club" whose members are its citizens. Government would then be the manager of this club. This is further studied in the theory of the state.

Non-altruistic social sanctions (common property regimes)
Often on the foundation of game theory, experimental literature suggests that free-riding situations can be improved without any state intervention by seeking to measure the effects of various forms of social sanctions. Peer-to-peer punishment, that is, when members sanction other members that do not contribute to the common pool resource by inflicting a cost on "free-riders", is considered sufficient to establish and maintain cooperation.

Social actions come at a cost to the punisher, which discourages individuals from taking action to punish the free-rider. Therefore, punishers often need to be rewarded for following through with their punishment for the resource to be effectively managed. Unlike a prisoner's dilemma where the prisoners are prohibited from communicating and strategizing, people can get together to form "common property regimes" in which the group weighs the costs and benefits of rewarding individuals for sanctioning free riders. So long as the benefits of preserving the resource outweigh the cost of communication and enforcement, members often compensate punishers for sanctioning free riders. While the outcome is not Pareto-optimal, as the group has the additional cost of paying for enforcement, it is often less costly than letting the resource deplete. In the limiting case, where the costs of bargaining and enforcement approach zero, the setup becomes Coasian as the solution approaches the Pareto-optimal solution.

Both punishment and regulation by the state work relatively badly under imperfect information, where people cannot observe the behavior of others. Often common property regimes which members establish through bargaining have more information about the specific common pool resource which they are managing than outsiders. For this reason, and because common property regimes can avoid the principal-agent problem, the specific local knowledge within common property regimes typically enables them to outperform regulations designed by outside technical experts. Nevertheless, the best performance is typically achieved when people in common property regimes consult with governments and technical experts while deciding on the rules and design of their firm, thereby combining local and technical knowledge.

Social norms
Psychologically, humans are fundamentally considered as free-riders by others only when benefits are consumed while contributions are withheld. Indicating that in all cultures free-riders are recognised, however, cultural differences exist in the degree of tolerance and how these people dealt with them. The impact of social norms on the free-rider problem differs between cultural contexts, which may lead to a variance between results in research on the free-rider problem when applied cross-culturally. Social norms impact on privately and voluntarily provided public goods; however, is considered to have some level of effect on the problem in many contexts. Social sanctioning, for example, is a norm in and of itself that has a high degree of universality. The goal of much research on the topic of social sanctioning and its effect on the free-rider problem is to explain the altruistic motivation that is observed in various societies.

Free riding is often thought of only in terms of positive and negative externalities felt by the public. The impact of social norms on actions and motivations related to altruism are often underestimated in economic solutions and the models from which they are derived.

Altruistic social sanctions
While non-altruistic social sanctions occur when people establish common property regimes, people sometimes punish free-riders even without being rewarded. The exact nature of motivation remains to be explored. Whether costly punishment can explain cooperation is disputed. Recent research finds that costly punishment is less effective in real world environments.

Other research finds that social sanctions cannot be generalized as strategic in the context of public goods. Preferences between secret sanctions (untraceable sanctions between players in the game) and standard sanctions (traceable sanctions including feedback between players in an otherwise identical environment) on free riders did not vary significantly. Rather some individuals preferred to sanction others regardless of secrecy. Other research build on the findings of behavioral economics, finds that in a dilemmatic donation game, donators are motivated by the fear of loss. In the game donators' deposits were only refunded if the donators always punish free riding and non-commitment among other individuals. Pool-punishment (everyone loses their deposit if one donator doesn't punish the free rider) provided more stable results than punishment without consideration of the consensus of the group. Individual-to-individual peer punishment led to less consistently applied social sanctions. Collectively this research, although it is experimental in nature, may prove useful when applied in public policy decisions seeking to improve free-rider problems within society.

title: Free-rider problem


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Corporate welfare

Corporate welfare is a phrase used to describe a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment for corporations.

The definition of corporate welfare is sometimes restricted to direct government subsidies of major corporations, excluding tax loopholes and all manner of regulatory and trade decisions.

Origin of term
The term "corporate welfare" was reportedly coined in 1956 by Ralph Nader.

"Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor"
Believed to have been first popularised by Michael Harrington's 1962 book The Other America in which Harrington cited Charles Abrams, a noted authority on housing.

Variations on this adage have been used in criticisms of the United States' economic policy by Joe Biden, Martin Luther King Jr., Gore Vidal,   Joseph P. Kennedy II, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dean Baker, Noam Chomsky, Robert Reich, John Pilger, Bernie Sanders, and Yanis Varoufakis.

"Privatizing profits and socializing losses"
"Privatizing profits and socializing losses" refers to the idea that corporations want to reserve financial gains for themselves and pass along losses to the rest of society, potentially through lobbying the government for assistance. This practice was criticized in the Wall Street bailout of 2008.

Background
Subsidies considered excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare. The label of corporate welfare is often used to decry projects advertised as benefiting the general welfare that spend a disproportionate amount of funds on large corporations, and often in uncompetitive, or anti-competitive ways. For instance, in the United States, agricultural subsidies are usually portrayed as helping independent farmers stay afloat. In actuality, the majority of income gained from commodity support programs has gone to large agribusiness corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland, as they own a considerably larger percentage of production.

Alan Peters and Peter Fisher, Associate Professors at the University of Iowa, have estimated that state and local governments provide $40–50 billion annually in economic development incentives, which critics characterize as corporate welfare.

Multiple economists have considered the 2008 bank bailouts in the United States to be a form of corporate welfare. U.S. politicians have also contended that zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve System to financial institutions during and after the financial crisis of 2007–2008 were a hidden, backdoor form of corporate welfare. The term gained increased prominence in 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill, singling out Amazon and Walmart in particular, to require a company with 500 or more employees to pay the full cost of welfare benefits received by its workers.

Independent
Daniel D. Huff, professor emeritus of social work at Boise State University, published a comprehensive analysis of corporate welfare in 1993. Huff reasoned that a very conservative estimate of corporate welfare expenditures in the United States would have been at least US$170 billion in 1990. Huff compared this number with social welfare: "In 1990 the federal government spent 4.7 billion dollars on all forms of international aid. Pollution control programs received 4.8 billion dollars of federal assistance while both secondary and elementary education were allotted only 8.4 billion dollars. More to the point, while more than 170 billion dollars is expended on assorted varieties of corporate welfare the federal government spends 11 billion dollars on Aid for Dependent Children. The most expensive means tested welfare program, Medicaid, costs the federal government 30 billion dollars a year or about half of the amount corporations receive each year through assorted tax breaks. S.S.I., the federal program for the disabled, receives 13 billion dollars while American businesses are given 17 billion in direct federal aid."

Huff argued that deliberate obfuscation was a complicating factor.

Good Jobs First has a Subsidy Tracker database.

United Kingdom
In 2015, Kevin Farnsworth, a senior lecturer in Social Policy at the University of York published a paper in which he claimed that the government was providing corporate subsidies of £93 billion. This amount includes the role of the government in increasing trade, tax relief for businesses that invest in new plants and machinery (estimated by Farnsworth at £20 billion), not charging fuel duty on fuel used by railways or airlines, green energy subsidies, a lower corporation tax rate for small companies, regional development grants and government procurement for businesses (which Farnsworth suggests often favours British businesses even when these are not the best value option available). However, The Register wrote that Farnsworth's figure for tax relief for investment was incorrect and that he had made mistakes in his calculations, noting that he was not an accountant. It also stated that not charging businesses taxes under certain circumstances (when the reliefs applied) was not the same as giving them a subsidy. Fuel duty is not charged on airlines due to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (a UN agency) which specifies that aeroplanes should be exempt from fuel duties.

Political discussion
In 2015, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would "strip out" the £93bn of "corporate tax relief and subsidies" Farnsworth referred to and use the proceeds for public investment. Corbyn did not say which specific policies he would change. The Guardian wrote the policy "sounds wonderful, but careful scrutiny of 'corporate welfare' shows that it includes capital allowances designed to persuade companies to invest, regional aid to boost growth in rundown parts of the UK, and subsidies to keep bus and rail routes open – none of which Corbyn would presumably like to see stopped."

Canada
The New Democratic Party in Canada picked up the term as a major theme in its 1972 federal election campaign. Its leader, David Lewis, used the term in the title of his 1972 book, Louder Voices: The Corporate Welfare Bums.

The Reform Party and its successor the Canadian Alliance were known for opposing most business subsidies, but after their merger with the Progressive Conservative party, they dropped their opposition.

India
It was observed by The Wire that the effective tax rate was low for the larger corporations which meant companies making smaller profits are competing in an unequal environment against bigger companies with substantial taxation benefits, with the gap in effective tax rates widening over the years. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi criticised this practice, saying: ""Why is it that subsidies going to the well-off are portrayed in a positive manner? Let me give you an example. The total revenue loss from incentives to corporate tax payers was over Rs 62,000 crore... I must confess I am surprised by the way words are used by experts on this matter. When a benefit is given to farmers or to the poor, experts and government officers normally call it a subsidy. However, I find that if a benefit is given to industry or commerce, it is usually an 'incentive' or a 'subvention'.""

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Corporate welfare


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Kingdom of Asturias

The Kingdom of Asturias was a kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula founded by the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius. It was the first Christian political entity established after the Umayyad conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711. In the Summer of 722, Pelagius defeated an Umayyad army at the Battle of Covadonga, in what is retroactively regarded as the beginning of the Reconquista.

The Asturian kings would occasionally make peace with the Muslims, particularly at times when they needed to pursue their other enemies, the Basques and rebels in Galicia. Thus Fruela I (757–768) fought Muslims but also defeated the Basques and Galicians, and Silo (774–783) made peace with the Muslims but not with the Galicians. Under King Alfonso II (791–842), the kingdom was firmly established with Alfonso's recognition as king of Asturias by Charlemagne and the Pope. He conquered Galicia and the Basques. During his reign, the holy bones of St James the Great were declared to be found in Galicia, in Compostela (from Latin campus stellae, literally "the field of the star"). Pilgrims from all over Europe opened a way of communication between the isolated Asturias and the Carolingian lands and beyond. Alfonso's policy consisted in depopulating the borders of Bardulia (which would turn into Castile) in order to gain population support north of the mountains. With this growth came a corresponding increase in military forces. The kingdom was now strong enough to sack the Moorish cities of Lisbon, Zamora and Coimbra. However, for centuries to come the focus of these actions was not conquest but pillage and tribute. In the summers of 792, 793 and 794 several Muslim attacks plundered Alava, and the heart of the Asturian kingdom, reaching up to the capital, Oviedo. In one of the retreats, Alfonso inflicted a severe defeat on the Muslims in the swampy area of Lutos.

When Alfonso II died, Ramiro I (842–50) staged a coup against the Count of the Palace Nepotian, who had taken the throne. After a battle on a bridge over the river Narcea, Nepotian was captured in flight, blinded and then forced into monastic life. Early in his reign, in 844, Ramiro was faced with a Viking attack at a place called Farum Brecantium, believed to be present-day Corunna. He gathered an army in Galicia and Asturias and defeated the Vikings, killing many of them and burning their ships. In 859, a second Viking fleet set out for Spain. The Vikings were slaughtered off the coast of Galicia by Count Pedro. The considerable territorial expansion of the Asturian kingdom under Alfonso III (866–910) was largely made possible by the collapse of Umayyad control over many parts of Al-Andalus at this time. Between in the year 773 the western frontier of the kingdom in Galicia was expanded into the northern part of modern-day Portugal pushing the border roughly to the Douro valley, and between 868 and 881 it expanded further south reaching all the way to the Mondego. The year 878 saw a Muslim assault on the towns of Astorga and León. The expedition consisted of two detachments, one of which was decisively defeated at Polvoraria on the river Órbigo, with an alleged loss of 13,000 men. In 881, Alfonso took the offensive, leading an army deep into the Lower March, crossing the Tagus River to approach Mérida. Then miles from the city the Asturian army crossed the Guadiana River and defeated the Umayyad army on "Monte Oxifer", allegedly leaving 15,000 Muslim soldiers killed. Returning home, Alfonso devoted himself to building the churches of Oviedo and constructing one or two more palaces for himself.

The Kingdom of Asturias transitioned into the Kingdom of León in 924, when Fruela II of Asturias became king with his royal court in León.

Indigenous background
The kingdom originated in the western and central territory of the Cantabrian Mountains, particularly the Picos de Europa and the central area of Asturias. The main political and military events during the first decades of the kingdom's existence took place in the region. According to the descriptions of Strabo, Cassius Dio and other Graeco-Roman geographers, several peoples of Celtic origin inhabited the lands of Asturias at the beginning of the Christian era, most notably:

 * in the Cantabri, the Vadinienses, who inhabited the Picos de Europa region and whose settlement gradually expanded southward during the first centuries of the modern era
 * the Orgenomesci, who dwelled along the Asturian eastern coast
 * in the Astures, the Saelini, whose settlement extended through the Sella Valley
 * the Luggones, who had their capital in Lucus Asturum and whose territories stretched between the Sella and Nalón
 * the Astures (in the strictest sense), who dwelled in inner Asturias, between the current councils of Piloña and Cangas del Narcea
 * the Paesici, who had settled along the coast of Western Asturias, between the mouth of the Navia river and the modern city of Gijón

Classical geographers give conflicting views of the ethnic description of the above-mentioned peoples. Ptolemy says that the Astures extended along the central area of current Asturias, between the Navia and Sella rivers, fixing the latter river as the boundary with the Cantabrian territory. However, other geographers placed the frontier between the Astures and the Cantabri further to the east: Julius Honorius stated in his Cosmographia that the springs of the river Ebro were located in the land of the Astures (sub asturibus). In any case, ethnic borders in the Cantabrian Mountains were not so important after that time, as the clan divisions that permeated the pre-Roman societies of all the peoples of Northern Iberia faded under similar political administrative culture imposed on them by the Romans.

The situation started to change during the Late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages, when an Asturian identity gradually started to develop: the centuries-old fight between Visigothic and Suebian nobles may have helped to forge a distinct identity among the peoples of the Cantabrian districts. Several archaeological digs in the castro of La Carisa (municipality of Lena) have found remnants of a defensive line whose main purpose was to protect the valleys of central Asturias from invaders who came from the Meseta through the Pajares pass: the construction of these fortifications reveals a high degree of organization and cooperation among the several Asturian communities, in order to defend themselves from the southern invaders. Carbon-14 tests have found that the wall dates from the period 675–725 AD, when two armed expeditions against the Asturians took place: one of them headed by Visigothic king Wamba (reigned 672–680); the other by Muslim governor Musa bin Nusayr during the Umayyad conquest, who settled garrisons over its territory.

The gradual formation of Asturian identity led to the creation of the Kingdom of Asturias after Pelagius' coronation and the victory over the Muslim garrisons in Covadonga in the early 8th century. The Chronica Albeldense, in narrating the happenings of Covadonga, stated that "Divine providence brings forth the King of Asturias".

Umayyad occupation and Asturian revolt
The kingdom was established by the nobleman Pelayo (Pelagius), possibly an Asturian noble. No substantial movement of refugees from central Iberia could have taken place before the Battle of Covadonga, and in 714 Asturias was overrun by Musa bin Nusayr with no effective or known opposition. It has also been claimed that he may have retired to the Asturian mountains after the Battle of Guadalete, where in the Gothic tradition of Theias he was elected by the other nobles as leader of the Astures. Pelayo's kingdom was initially a rallying banner for existing guerilla forces.

In the progress of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the main cities and administrative centers fell into the hands of Muslim troops. Control of the central and southern regions, such as the Guadalquivir and Ebro valleys, presented few problems for the newcomers, who used the existing Visigothic administrative structures, ultimately of Roman origin. However, in the northern mountains, urban centers (such as Gijón) were practically nonexistent and the submission of the country had to be achieved valley by valley. Muslim troops often resorted to the taking of hostages to ensure the pacification of the newly conquered territory.

After the first incursion of Tarik, who reached Toledo in 711, the Yemeni viceroy of Ifriqiya, Musa bin Nusayr, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar the following year and carried out a massive operation of conquest that would lead to the capture of Mérida, Toledo, Zaragoza and Lerida, among other cities. During the last phase of his military campaign, he reached the northwest of the Peninsula, where he gained control of the localities of Astorga and Gijón. In the latter city, he placed a small Berber detachment under a governor, Munuza, whose mission was to consolidate Muslim control over Asturias. As a guarantee of the submission of the region, some nobles – some argue that Pelayo was among them – had to surrender hostages from Asturias to Cordoba. The legend says that his sister was asked for, and a marriage alliance sought with the local Berber leader. Later on, Munuza would try to do the same at another mountain post in the Pyrenees, where he rebelled against his Cordoban Arab superiors. The Berbers had been converted to Islam barely a generation earlier, and were considered second rank to Arabs and Syrians.

The most commonly accepted hypothesis for the battle (epic as described by later Christian Asturian sources, but a mere skirmish in Muslim texts) is that the Moorish column was attacked from the cliffs and then fell back through the valleys towards present day Gijón, but it was attacked in retreat by the retinue and nearly destroyed. However, the only near-contemporary account of the events of the time, the Christian Chronicle of 754, makes no mention of the incident.

However, as is told in the Rotensian Chronicle as well as in that of Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari, Pelayo escaped from Cordoba during the governorship of al-Hurr (717–718) and his return to Asturias triggered a revolt against the Muslim authorities of Gijón. The identity of Pelayo, however, is still an open subject, and that is only one of the theories. The leader of the Astures, whose origin is debated by historians, lived at that time in Bres, in the district of Piloña, and Munuza sent his troops there under al-Qama. After receiving word of the arrival of the Muslims, Pelayo and his companions hurriedly crossed the Piloña and headed toward the narrow, easily defended valley of Mt. Auseva, taking refuge in one of its caves, Covadonga. After an attempted siege was abandoned due to the weather and the exposed position of the deep valley gorge, the troops are said to have exited through the high ports to the south, in order to continue their search-and-destroy mission against other rebels. There, the locals were able to ambush the Muslim detachment, which was nearly annihilated. The few survivors continued south to the plains of Leon, leaving the maritime districts of Asturias exposed.

The victory, relatively small, as only a few Berber soldiers were involved, resulted in great prestige for Pelayo and provoked a massive insurrection by other nobles in Galicia and Asturias who immediately rallied around him, electing him King or military Dux.

Under Pelayo's leadership, the attacks on the Berbers increased. Munuza, feeling isolated in a region increasingly hostile, decided to abandon Gijón and headed for the Plateau (Meseta) through the Mesa Trail. However, he was intercepted and killed by Astures at Olalíes (in the current district of Grado). Once he had expelled the Moors from the eastern valleys of Asturias, Pelayo attacked León, the main city in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and secured the mountain passes, insulating the region from Moorish attack. Pelayo continued attacking those Berbers who remained north of the Asturian Mountains until they withdrew, but the latter mostly deserted their garrisons in response to the wider rebellion against Arab control from Cordoba. He then married his daughter, Ermesinda, to Alfonso, the son of Peter of Cantabria, the leading noble at the still-independent Visigothic duchy of Cantabria. His son Favila was married to Froiliuba.

Recent archaeological excavations have found fortifications in Mount Homon and La Carisa (near the Huerna and Pajares valleys) dated between the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries. The Berber fortifications included watchtowers and moats of almost two meters, in whose construction and defense many hundreds may have participated. That would have required a high degree of organization and firm leadership, probably by Pelayo himself. Therefore, experts consider it probable that the construction of the defensive line was intended to prevent the reentry of Moors into Asturias through the mountain passes of Mesa and Pajares.

After Pelayo's victory over the Moorish detachment at the Battle of Covadonga, a small territorial independent entity was established in the Asturian mountains that was the origin of the kingdom of Asturias. Pelayo's leadership was not comparable to that of the Visigothic kings. The first kings of Asturias referred to themselves as "princeps" (prince) and later as "rex" (king), but the later title was not firmly established until the period of Alfonso II. The title of "princeps" had been used by the indigenous peoples of Northern Spain and its use appears in Galician and Cantabrian inscriptions, in which expressions like "Nícer, Príncipe de los Albiones" (on an inscription found in the district of Coaña) and "princeps cantabrorum" (over a gravestone of the municipality of Cistierna, in Leon). In fact, the Kingdom of Asturias originated as a focus of leadership over other peoples of the Cantabrian Coast that had resisted the Romans as well as the Visigoths and that were not willing to subject themselves to the dictates of the Umayyad Caliphate. Immigrants from the south, fleeing from Al-Andalus, brought a Gothic influence to the Asturian kingdom. However, at the beginning of the 9th century, Alfonso II's will cursed the Visigoths, blaming them for the loss of Hispania. The later chronicles on which knowledge of the period is based, all written during the reign of Alfonso III, when there was great Gothic ideological influence, are the Sebastianensian Chronicle (Crónica Sebastianense), the Albeldensian Chronicle (Crónica Albeldense) and the Rotensian Chronicle (Crónica Rotense).

During the first decades, the Asturian dominion over the different areas of the kingdom was still lax and so it had to be continually strengthened through matrimonial alliances with other powerful families from the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Thus, Ermesinda, Pelayo's daughter, was married to Alfonso, Dux Peter of Cantabria's son. Alfonso's son Fruela married Munia, a Basque princess from Alava, while his daughter Adosinda married Silo, a local chief from the area of Flavionavia, Pravia.

After Pelayo's death in 737, his son Favila (or "Fafila") was elected king. Fafila, according to the chronicles, was unexpectedly killed by a bear while hunting in one of the trials of courage normally required of the nobility of that era. However, there is no other such incident known from the long history of monarchs and others at the sport, and the case is suspiciously similar to the Roman legend of their first king, Romulus, taken by a sudden storm. The immediate consequence was that the rule of the Asturians passed to his brother-in-law, ruler of the neighboring independent domain, through a marriage alliance to Fafila's sister. The female ties and rights of inheritance were still respected, and in later cases would allow the regency or crown for their husbands too.

Pelayo founded a dynasty in Asturias that survived for decades and gradually expanded the kingdom's boundaries, until all of northwest Iberia was included by c. 775. The reign of Alfonso II from 791 to 842 saw further expansion of the kingdom to the south, almost as far as Lisbon.

Initial expansion
Favila was succeeded by Alfonso I, who inherited the throne of Asturias thanks to his marriage to Pelayo's daughter, Ermesinda. The Albeldensian Chronicle narrated how Alfonso arrived in the kingdom some time after the battle of Covadonga to marry Ermesinda. Favila's death made his access to the throne possible as well as the rise of one of the most powerful families in the Kingdom of Asturias, the House of Cantabria. Initially, only Alfonso moved to the court in Cangas de Onís, but, after the progressive depopulation of the plateau and the Middle Valley of the Ebro, where the main strongholds of the Duchy of Cantabria (e.g., Amaya, Tricio and the City of Cantabria) were located, the descendants of Duke Peter withdrew from Rioja towards the Cantabrian area and in time controlled the destiny of the Kingdom of Asturias.

Alfonso began the territorial expansion of the small Christian kingdom from its first seat in the Picos de Europa, advancing toward the west to Galicia and toward the south with continuous incursions in the Douro valley, taking cities and towns and moving their inhabitants to the safer northern zones. It eventually led to the strategic depopulation of the plateau, creating the Desert of the Duero as a protection against future Moorish attacks.

The depopulation, defended by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, is doubted today, at least concerning its magnitude. Two main arguments are used to refute it: first, the minor toponymy was preserved in multiple districts; second, there are biological and cultural differences between the inhabitants of the Cantabrian zone and those of the central Plateau. What is true is that in the first half of the eighth century there was a process of rural growth that led to the abandonment of urban life and the organization of the population in small communities of shepherds. Several causes explain this process: the definitive collapse of the Roman Mediterranean economic system from the time of the late Roman Empire due to Arab conquests, the continuous propagation of epidemics in the area, and the abandonment of al-Andalus by the Berber regiments after the revolt of 740–741. All this made possible the emergence of a sparsely populated and ill-organized area that insulated the Asturian kingdom from the Moorish assaults and allowed its progressive strengthening.

The campaigns of kings Alfonso I and Fruela in the Duero valley were probably not very different from the raids that the Astures made in the same area in the pre-Roman era. The initial Asturian expansion was carried out mainly through Cantabrian territory (from Galicia to Vizcaya) and it was not until the reigns of Ordoño I and Alfonso III that the Kingdom of Asturias could take effective possession of the territories located south of the Cantabrian Mountains.

Fruela I, Alfonso I's son, consolidated and expanded his father's domains. He was assassinated by members of the nobility associated with the House of Cantabria.

Social and political transformations
Written sources are concise concerning the reigns of Aurelio, Silo, Mauregatus and Bermudo I. Generally this period, with a duration of twenty-three years (768–791), has been considered as a long stage of obscurity and retreat of the kingdom of Asturias. This version, defended by some historians, who even named this historical phase as that of the "lazy kings", derived from the fact that, during it, there were apparently no important military actions against al-Andalus. However, there were relevant and decisive internal transformations, which provided a foundation for the strengthening and the expansion of Asturias.

First, the first internal rebellion, led by Mauregato (783–788), occurred during those years. The rebellion removed Alfonso II from the throne (although he became king again later, from 791 to 842). This initiated a series of further rebellions whose principal leaders were members of ascending aristocratic palace groups and landowners who, based on the growing economic development of the area, tried to unseat the reigning family of Don Pelayo. The important rebellions of Nepociano, Aldroito and Piniolo, during the reign of Ramiro I (842–50), are part of this process of economic, social, political and cultural transformation of the Asturian kingdom that occurred during the eighth and ninth centuries.

Second, neighboring rebellions by Basques and Galicians failed, quashed by Asturian kings. These rebels took advantage of the unrest in the central and Eastern part of Asturias, and, on occasion, provided help to one or another contender for the throne: by providing refuge to Alfonso II in Alava after his flight; the support for Nepociano's rebellion in some Asturian areas; and the adherence of Galicians to the cause of Ramiro I.

Finally, other evidence suggests important internal transformations occurred during this time. Rebellions of freedmen (serbi, servilis orico and libertini, according to the Chronicles) occurred during the reign of Aurelio I. The property relationship between master and slave broke down progressively. This fact, together with the growing role of the individual and the restricted family, to the detriment of the extended family, is another indication that a new society was emerging in Asturias at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries.

Fruela I (757–68) was succeeded by Aurelius (768–74), son of Fruela of Cantabria and Peter of Cantabria's grandson, who would establish the court in what is today the district of San Martín del Rey Aurelio, which previously belonged to Langreo. Silo (774–83) succeeded Aurelio after his death, and transferred the court to Pravia. Silo was married to Adosinda, one of the daughters of Alfonso I (and therefore, Pelayo's granddaughter).

Alfonso II was elected king after Silo's death, but Mauregato organized a strong opposition and forced the new king to withdraw to lands in Alava (his mother, Munia, was Basque), obtaining the Asturian throne. The king, despite the bad reputation attributed by history, had good relations with Beatus of Liébana, perhaps the most important cultural figure of the kingdom, and supported him in his fight against adoptionism. Legend says that Mauregato was Alfonso I's bastard son with a Moorish woman, and attributes to him the tribute of a hundred maidens. He was succeeded by Bermudo I, Aurelio's brother. He was called "the deacon", although he probably received only minor vows. Bermudo abdicated after a military defeat, ending his life in a monastery.

Recognition and later solidification
It was not until King Alfonso II (791–842) that the kingdom was firmly established, after Silo's subjugated Gallaecia and confirmed territorial gains in western Basque Country. Ties with the Carolingian Franks also got closer and more frequent, with Alfonso II's envoys presenting Charlemagne with spoils of war (campaign of Lisbon, 797). Alfonso II introduced himself as "an Emperor Charlemagne's man", suggesting some kind of suzerainty. During Alfonso II's reign, a probable reaction against indigenous traditions took place in order to strengthen his state and grip on power, by establishing in the Asturian Court the order and ceremonies of the former Visigoth Kingdom. Around this time, the holy bones of James, son of Zebedee were declared to have been found in Galicia at Iria Flavia. They were considered authentic by a contemporary pope of Rome. However, during the Asturian period, the final resting place of Eulalia of Mérida, located in Oviedo, became the primary religious site and focus of devotion.

Alfonso II also repopulated parts of Galicia, León and Castile and incorporated them into the Kingdom of Asturias while establishing influence over parts of the Basques. The first capital city was Cangas de Onís, near the site of the battle of Cavadonga. Then in Silo's time, it was moved to Pravia. Alfonso II chose his birthplace of Oviedo as the capital of the kingdom (circa 789).

Ramiro I began his reign by capturing several other claimants to the throne, blinding them, and then confining them to monasteries. As a warrior he managed to defeat a Viking invasion after the Vikings had landed at Corunna, and also fought several battles against the Moors.

When he succeeded his father Ramiro, Ordoño I (850–66) repressed a major revolt amongst the Basques in the east of the kingdom. In 859, Ordoño besieged the fortress of Albelda, built by Musa ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi, who had rebelled against Cordoba and became master of Zaragoza, Tudela, Huesca and Toledo. Musa attempted to lift the siege in alliance with his brother-in-law García Iñiguez, the king of Pamplona, whose small realm was threatened by the eastwards expansion of the Asturian monarchy. In the battle that followed, Musa was defeated and lost valuable treasures in the process, some of which were sent as a gift to Charles the Bald of Francia. Seven days after the victory, Albelda fell and, as the chronicler records, "its warriors were killed by the sword and the place itself was destroyed down to its foundations." Musa was wounded in the battle and died in 862/3; soon thereafter, Musa's son Lubb, governor of Toledo, submitted himself to the Asturian king for the rest of Ordoño's reign.

When Alfonso III's sons forced his abdication in 910, the Kingdom of Asturias split into three separate kingdoms: León, Galicia and Asturias. The three kingdoms were eventually reunited in 924 (León and Galicia in 914, Asturias later) under the crown of León. It continued under that name until incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile in 1230, after Ferdinand III became joint king of the two kingdoms.

Viking raids
The Vikings invaded Galicia in 844, but were decisively defeated by Ramiro I at Corunna. Many of the Vikings' casualties were caused by the Galicians' ballistas – powerful torsion-powered projectile weapons that looked rather like giant crossbows. Seventy of the Vikings' longships were captured on the beach and burned. A few months later, another fleet took Seville. The Vikings found in Seville a population which was still largely Gothic and Romano-Spanish. The Gothic elements were important in the Andalusian emirate. Musa ibn Musa, who took a leading part in the defeat of the Vikings at Tablada, belonged to a powerful Muwallad family of Gothic descent.

Vikings returned to Galicia in 859, during the reign of Ordoño I. Ordoño was at the moment engaged against his constant enemies, the Moors, but a count of the province, Don Pedro, attacked the Vikings and defeated them, inflicting severe losses upon them. Ordoño's successor, Alfonso III, strove to protect the coast against attacks from Vikings or Moors. In 968, Gunrod of Norway attacked Galicia with 100 ships and 8,000 warriors. They roamed freely for years and even occupied Santiago de Compostela. A Galician count of Visigothic descent, Gonzalo Sánchez, ended the Viking adventure in 971, when he launched an attack with a powerful army that defeated the Vikings in a bloody battle, and captured Gunrod, who was subsequently executed along with his followers.

Remnants of Megalithic and Celtic paganism

Although the earliest evidence of Christian worship in Asturias dates from the 5th century, evangelisation did not make any substantial progress until the middle of the sixth century, when hermits like Turibius of Liébana and monks of the Saint Fructuoso order gradually settled in the Cantabrian mountains and began preaching the Christian doctrine.

Christianisation progressed slowly in Asturias and did not necessarily supplant the ancient pagan divinities. As elsewhere in Europe, the new religion coexisted syncretically with features of the ancient beliefs. In the sixth century, bishop San Martín de Braga complained in his work De correctione rusticorum about the Galician peasants being attached to the pre-Christian cults: "Many demons, who were expelled from the heavens, settled in the sea, in the rivers, fountains and forests, and have come to be worshipped as gods by ignorant people. To them they do their sacrifices: in the sea they invoke Neptune, in the rivers the Lamias; in the fountains the Nymphs, and in the forests Diana."

In the middle of the Sella valley, where Cangas de Onís is located, there was a dolmen area dating back to the megalithic era, and was likely built between 4000 and 2000 BC. Chieftains from the surrounding regions were ritually buried here, particularly in the Santa Cruz dolmen. Such practices survived the Roman and Visigothic conquests. Even in the eighth century, King Favila was buried there, along with the bodies of tribal leaders. Although the Asturian monarchy fostered the Christianisation of this site, by constructing a church, to this day there are still pagan traditions linked with the Santa Cruz dolmen. It is said that xanas (Asturian fairies) appear to visitors, and magical properties are ascribed to the soil of the place.

According to an inscription found in the Santa Cruz church, it was consecrated in 738 and was presided by a vates called Asterio. The word vates is uncommon in Catholic documents and epitaphs, where the word presbyterus (for Christian priests) is preferred. However, vates was used in Latin to denote a poet who was clairvoyant, and according to the Ancient Greek writers Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Posidonius, the vates (ουατεις) were also one of three classes of Celtic priesthood, the other two being the druids and the bards. Some historians think that Asterio held a religious office which combined elements of paganism and Christianity, while others think he may be linked to the Brythonic refugees that settled in Britonia (Galicia) in the 6th century. The Parrochiale Suevorum, an administrative document from the Kingdom of the Suebi, states that the lands of Asturias belonged to the Britonian See, and some features of Celtic Christianity spread to Northern Spain. This is evidenced by the Celtic tonsure, which the Visigothic bishops who participated in the Fourth Council of Toledo condemned.

Still extant Galician legends relate to monks who travelled by sea to the Paradise Islands, like those of Saint Amaro, Trezenzonio or The Legend of Ero of Armenteira. These stories have many parallels with those of Brendan the navigator, Malo of Wales, and the stories of the Irish immrama.

Asturian kings promoted Christianity and did not base their power on indigenous religious traditions, unlike other medieval European kings such as Penda of Mercia or Widukind, but on Christian sacred scriptures (in particular, the books of Revelation, Ezekiel and Daniel) and the Church Fathers. These furnished the new monarchy with its foundational myths. They did not need to draft new laws since the Visigothic Code was the referential code, at least since the arrival of new influences including exiles, prisoners from the central area of al-Andalus in the 770s along with their mixed Berber-Arabic and Gothic legacy. This combined with governmental and religious ideas imported from Charlemagne's Frankish Kingdom (Alcuin-Beatus of Liébana).

Adoptionism
The foundations of Asturian culture and that of Christian Spain in the High Middle Ages were laid during the reigns of Silo and Mauregatus, when the Asturian kings submitted to the authority of the Umayyad emirs of the Caliphate of Córdoba. The most prominent Christian scholar in the Kingdom of Asturias of this period was Beatus of Liébana, whose works left an indelible mark on the Christian culture of the Reconquista.

Beatus was directly involved in the debate surrounding adoptionism, which argued that Jesus was born a man, and was adopted by God and acquired a divine dimension only after his passion and resurrection. Beatus refuted this theological position, championed by such figures as Elipando, bishop of Toledo.

The adoptionist theology had its roots in Gothic Arianism, which denied the divinity of Jesus, and in Hellenistic religion, with examples of heroes like Heracles who, after their death attained the apotheosis. Likewise, as Elipandus's bishopric of Toledo was at the time within the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba, Islamic beliefs which acknowledged Jesus as a Prophet, but not as the Son of God, influenced the formation of adoptionism. However, the adoptionist theology was opposed strongly by Beatus from his abbey in Santo Toribio de Liébana. At the same time, Beatus strengthened the links among Asturias, the Holy See, and the Carolingian Empire, and was supported in his theological struggle by the Pope and by his friend Alcuin of York, an Anglo-Saxon scholar who had settled among the Carolingian court in Aachen.

Millennialism
The most transcendental works of Beatus were his Commentaries to Apocalypse, which were copied in later centuries in manuscripts called beati, about which the Italian writer Umberto Eco said: "Their splendid images gave birth to the most relevant iconographic happening in the History of Mankind". Beatus develops in them a personal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, accompanied by quotes from the Old Testament, the Church Fathers and fascinating illustrations.

In these Commentaries a new interpretation of the apocalyptic accounts is given: Babylon no longer represents the city of Rome, but Córdoba, seat of the Umayyad emirs of al-Andalus; the Beast, once a symbol of the Roman Empire, now stands for the Islamic invaders who during this time threatened to destroy Western Christianity, and who raided territories of the Asturian Kingdom.

The prologue to the second book of the Commentaries contains the Beatus map, one of the best examples of a mappa mundi of the high medieval culture. The purpose of this map was not to represent the world cartographically, but to illustrate the Apostles' diaspora in the first decades of Christianity. Beatus took data from the works of Isidore of Seville, Ptolemy and the Bible. The world was represented as a land disc surrounded by the Ocean and divided in three parts: Asia (upper semicircle), Europe (lower left quadrant) and Africa (lower right quadrant). The Mediterranean Sea (Europe-Africa), the Nile River (Africa-Asia), the Aegean Sea, and the Bosphorus (Europe-Asia) were set as the boundaries between the different continents.

Beatus believed that the Apocalypse described in the book of Revelation was imminent, which would be followed by 1290 years of domination by the Antichrist. Beatus followed the views of Augustine of Hippo, whose work, The City of God, influenced the Commentaries which followed the premise that the history of the world was structured in six ages. The first five ones extended from the creation of Adam to the Passion of Jesus, while the sixth, subsequent to Christ, ends with the unleashing of the events prophesied in the book of Revelation. Millennialist movements were very common in Europe at that time. Between 760 and 780, a series of cosmic phenomena stirred up panic among the population of Gaul; John, a visionary monk, predicted the coming of the Last Judgment during the reign of Charlemagne. In this time the Apocalypse of Daniel appeared, a Syriac text redacted during the rule of the empress Irene of Athens, wherein wars between the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Northern peoples were prophesied. These wars would end with the coming of the Antichrist.

Events taking place in Hispania (Islamic rule, the adoptionist heresy, the gradual assimilation of the Mozarabs) were, for Beatus, signals of the imminent apocalypse. aeon. As Elipandus describes in his Letter from the bishops of Spania to their brothers in Gaul, the abbot of Santo Toribio went so far as to announce to his countrymen the coming of the End of Time on Easter of the year 800. On the dawn of that day, hundreds of peasants met around the abbey of Santo Toribio, waiting, terrified, for the fulfillment of the prophecy. They remained in there, without eating for a day and half, until one of them, named Ordonius, exclaimed: "Let us eat and drink, so that if the End of the World comes we are full!".

The prophetic and millennialist visions of Beatus produced an enduring mark in the development of the Kingdom of Asturias: the Chronica Prophetica, which was written around 880 CE, predicted the final fall of the Emirate of Córdoba, and the conquest and redemption of the entire Iberian Peninsula by king Alfonso III. Millennialist imagery is also reflected throughout the kingdom in the Victory Cross icon, the major emblem of the Asturian kingdom, which has its origins in a passage of the Revelation book in which John of Patmos relates a vision of the Second Coming. He sees Jesus Christ seated in his majesty, surrounded by clouds and affirming: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty". It is true that usage of the labarum was not restricted to Asturias, and dates back to the time of Constantine the Great, who used this symbol during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. However, it was in Asturias where the Cruz de la Victoria attained a general use: in nearly every pre-Romanesque church this icon is engraved, often accompanied with the expression "Hoc signo tuetur pius, in hoc signo vincitur inimicus", that became the royal motto of the Asturian monarchs.

Camino de Santiago
Another of the major spiritual legacies of the Asturian kingdom is the creation of one of the most important ways of cultural transmission in European history: the Camino de Santiago. The first text which mentions St. James' preaching in Spain is the Breviarius de Hyerosolima, a 6th-century document which stated that the Apostle was buried in an enigmatic place called Aca Marmarica. Isidore of Seville supported this theory in his work De ortu et obitu patrium. One hundred and fifty years later, in the times of Mauregato, the hymn O Dei Verbum rendered St. James as "the golden head of Spain, our protector and national patron" and a mention is made of his preaching in the Iberian Peninsula during the first decades of Christianity. Some attribute this hymn to Beatus, although this is still discussed by historians.

The legend of St. James gained support during the reign of Alfonso II. The period was marked by Alfonso II's reaching out to Charlemagne for military assistance and importation of similar royal ceremonies and governmental structures. Galician Pelagius the Hermit claimed to observe a mysterious brightness during several nights over the forest, in Iria Flavia diocese. Angelic songs accompanied the lights. Impressed by this phenomenon, Pelayo appeared before the bishop of Iria Flavia, Theodemir, who – after having heard the hermit – visited the location with his retinue. Legend has it that in the depths of the forest was found a stone sepulchre with three corpses, which were identified as those of St. James, son of Zebedee, and his two disciples, Theodorus and Atanasius. According to the legend, King Alfonso was the first pilgrim who had come to see the Apostle. During his travels he was guided at night by the Milky Way, which from then on acquired the name of Camino de Santiago.

The founding of the alleged St. James tomb was a formidable political success for the Kingdom of Asturias: Now Asturias could claim the honour of having the body of one of the apostles of Jesus, a privilege shared only with Asia (Ephesus) where John the Apostle was buried, and Rome, where the bodies of Saint Peter and Saint Paul rested. As of the early 12th century, Santiago de Compostela grew to become one of the three sacred cities of Christianity, together with Rome and Jerusalem. In later centuries, many Central European cultural influences travelled to Iberia through the Way of St. James, from the Gothic and Romanesque styles, to the Occitan lyric poetry.

However, the story of the "discovery" of the remains of the Apostle shows some enigmatic features. The tomb was found in a place used as a necropolis since the Late Roman Empire, so it is possible that the body belonged to a prominent person of the area. British historian Henry Chadwick hypothesized the tomb of Compostela actually hold the remains of Priscillian. Historian Roger Collins holds that the identification of the relics (at any rate nothing close to a full body) with Saint James is related to the translation of the remains found under a 6th-century church altar in Mérida, where various saint names are listed, Saint James among them. Other scholars, like Constantino Cabal, highlighted the fact that several Galician places, such as Pico Sacro, Pedra da Barca (Muxía) or San Andrés de Teixido, were already draws for pagan pilgrimage in pre-Roman times. Pagan beliefs held these places as the End of the World and as entrances to the Celtic Otherworld. After the discovery of Saint James' tomb, the gradual Christianization of those pilgrimage routes began.

Mythology
Since the Chronicles of the Asturian kingdom were written a century and a half after the battle of Covadonga, there are many aspects of the first Asturian kings that remain shrouded in myth and legend.

Although the historicity of Pelayo is beyond doubt, the historical narrative describing him includes many folktales and legends. One of them asserts that, prior to the Muslim invasion, Pelayo went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the sacred city of Christianity. However, there is no extant evidence of this.

Likewise, it is also said that the Cruz de la Victoria was at first carved in an oak's log by a lightning strike. The core of this story contains two elements of major importance in the Asturian folklore. On one hand, lightning was the ancient symbol of the Astur god Taranis, and in Asturian mythology was thought to be forged by the Nuberu, lord of clouds, rain and wind. On the other hand, the oak tree is the symbol of the Asturian royalty and in reliefs of the Abamia Church (where Pelayo was buried) leaves of that tree are shown.

The Covadonga area is also rich with astonishing stories, such as the one which is said to have happened in a shepherd village where today Lakes Enol and Ercina are situated. Mary, mother of Jesus, disguised as a pilgrim, is said to have visited that village and asked for food and shelter from every house. She was rudely rejected by every person, except for a shepherd who gave her refuge and warmly shared everything he had. On the following day, as punishment for their lack of hospitality, a flood of divine origin devastated the village, which completely covered everything except the cottage of the good shepherd. In front of him, the mysterious guest started to cry, and her tears became flowers when they reached the floor. Then the shepherd realized that the pilgrim was actually Mary.

There are also myths about the Asturian monarchy that are rooted in Jewish and Christian traditions rather than pagan ones: the Chronica ad Sebastianum tells of an extraordinary event that happened when Alfonso I died. While the noblemen were holding a wake for him, there could be heard celestial canticles sung by angels. They recited the following text of the Book of Isaiah (which happens to be the same that was read by the Mozarabic priests during the Vigil of the Holy Saturday):

"I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me."

This canticle was recited by Hezekiah, king of Judah, after his recovery from a serious illness. In these verses, the king regretted with distress his departure to sheol, the Jewish underworld, a shady place where he would not see God nor men any more.

Asturias also has examples of the king in the mountain myth. According to the tradition, it is still today possible to see king Fruela walking around the Jardín de los Reyes Caudillos (a part of the Oviedo Cathedral), and it is said that his grandson, the famous cavalier Bernardo del Carpio, sleeps in a cave in the Asturian mountains. The story tells that one day a peasant went into a certain cave to retrieve his lost cow and heard a strong voice who declared to be Bernardo del Carpio, victor over the Franks in Roncevaux. After saying he had lived alone for centuries in that cave, he told the peasant: "Give me your hand, so that I can see how strong are men today". The shepherd, scared, gave him the horn of the cow, which, when seized by the giant man, was immediately broken. The poor villager ran away terrified, but not without hearing Bernardo say: "Current men are not like those who helped me to kill Frenchmen in Roncevaux".

Legacy

This kingdom is the birthplace of an influential European medieval architectural style: Asturian pre-Romanesque. This style of architecture was founded during the reign of Ramiro I.

This small kingdom was a milestone in the fight against the adoptionist heresy, with Beatus of Liébana as a major figure. In the time of Alfonso II, the shrine of Santiago de Compostela was "found". The pilgrimage to Santiago, Camiño de Santiago, was a major nexus within Europe, and many pilgrims (and their money) passed through Asturias on their way to Santiago de Compostela.

title: Kingdom of Asturias


text:
The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as a Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards.

Setting
The Diamond Age depicts a near-future world revolutionised by advances in nanotechnology, much as Eric Drexler envisioned it in his 1986 nonfiction book Engines of Creation. Molecular nanotechnology is omnipresent in the novel's world, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products that come out of them. The book explicitly recognizes the achievements of several existing nanotechnology researchers: Feynman, Drexler, and Ralph Merkle are seen among characters of the fresco in Merkle-Hall, where new nanotechnological items are designed and constructed.

The book contains descriptions of various exotic technologies, such as the chevaline (a mechanical horse that can fold up and is light enough to be carried one-handed), and forecasts the use of technologies that are in development today, such as smart paper that can show personalized news headlines. Major cities have immune systems made up of aerostatic defensive micromachines, and public matter compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who requests them.

Matter compilers receive their raw materials from the Feed, a system analogous to the electrical grid of modern society. The Feed carries streams of both energy and basic molecules, which are rapidly assembled into usable goods by matter compilers. The Source, where the Feed's stream of matter originates, is controlled by the Victorian phyle (though smaller, independent Feeds are possible). The hierarchic nature of the Feed and an alternative, anarchic developing technology, known as the Seed, mirror the cultural conflict between East and West that is depicted in the book. This conflict has an economic element as well, with the Feed representing a centrally-controlled distribution mechanism, while the Seed represents a more flexible, open-ended, decentralized method of creation and organization.

Phyles
Society in The Diamond Age is dominated by a number of phyles, also sometimes called tribes, which are groups of people often distinguished by shared values, similar ethnic heritage, a common religion, or other cultural similarities. In the extremely globalized future depicted in the novel, these cultural divisions have largely supplanted the system of nation-states that divides the world today. Cities appear divided into sovereign enclaves affiliated or belonging to different phyles within a single metropolis. Most phyles depicted in the novel have a global scope of sovereignty, and maintain segregated enclaves in or near many cities throughout the world.

The phyles coexist much like historical nation-states under a system of justice and mutual protection, known as the Common Economic Protocol (CEP). The rules of the CEP are intended to provide for the co-existence of, and peaceful economic activity between, phyles with potentially very different values. The CEP is concerned particularly with upholding rights to personal property, being shown to provide particularly harsh punishment for harming the economic capability of another person.

"Thetes" are individuals who are not members of any phyle and are often socially disadvantaged and economically poor, being similar to second-class citizens under the CEP. In the novel, the material needs of nearly all thetes are satisfied by freely-available food and clothing, albeit of low quality; thetes without the political connections of a phyle are entitled to similarly low-quality "free justice."

The book distinguishes between the four Great Phyles: the Han (consisting of Han Chinese), Nippon (consisting of Japanese), Hindustan (a "riotously diverse collection of microtribes sintered together according to some formula we don't get") and the Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (consisting largely of Anglo-Saxons but also accepting Indians, Africans, and other members of the Anglosphere who identify with the culture).

Internally, the New Atlantis phyle is a corporate oligarchy whose "equity lords" rule the organization and its bylaws under allegiance to the vestigial British monarchy. Other phyles are less defined – some intentionally, as with the CryptNet group or the mysterious hive-mind Drummers. Over the course of the story, the Common Economic Protocol sponsors the investigation of clandestine Seed technologies in order to preserve the established order from subversion, using the justification that unrestricted access to Sources would lead to the proliferation of high tech weapons and result in anarchy.

Plot summary
The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. When she is four, Nell's older brother Harv gives her a stolen copy of a highly sophisticated interactive book, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion, in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, etc., commissioned by the wealthy Neo-Victorian "Equity Lord" Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw for his granddaughter, Elizabeth. The story follows Nell's development under the tutelage of the Primer, and to a lesser degree, the lives of Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, Neo-Victorian girls who receive other copies. The Primer is intended to steer its reader intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Lord Finkle-McGraw, and growing up to be an effective member of society. The most important quality to achieving an interesting life is deemed to be a subversive attitude towards the status quo. The Primer is designed to react to its owner's environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop.

The Diamond Age features intersecting story lines: the social downfall of the nanotech engineer designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth, who makes an unauthorized copy of the Primer for his own young daughter, Fiona, and Nell's education through her independent work with the Primer after her brother Harv steals it from Hackworth. Hackworth's crime becomes known to Dr. X, the black market engineer whose compiler Hackworth used to create the copy of the Primer, and later Lord Finkle-McGraw. Hackworth is compelled by both to advance their opposing goals. Another storyline follows actress ("ractor") Miranda Redpath, who voices most of the Primer characters who interact with Nell and effectively becomes a surrogate mother to Nell. After Miranda disappears in her quest to find Nell, her storyline continues from the point of view of her boss, Carl Hollywood.

The Diamond Age also includes fully narrated educational tales from the Primer that map Nell's individual experience (e.g. her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer's database. The story explores the role of technology and personal relationships in child development, and its deeper themes also probe the relative values of cultures.

Title
"Diamond Age" is an extension of labels for archeological time periods that take central technological materials to define an entire era of human history, such as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. Technological visionaries such as Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle, both of whom receive an honorary mention in The Diamond Age, have argued that if nanotechnology develops the ability to manipulate individual atoms at will, it will become possible to simply assemble diamond structures from carbon atoms, materials also known as diamondoids. Merkle states: "In diamond, then, a dense network of strong bonds creates a strong, light, and stiff material. Indeed, just as we named the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Steel Age after the materials that humans could make, we might call the new technological epoch we are entering the Diamond Age". In the novel, a near future vision of our world, nanotechnology has developed precisely to this point, which enables the cheap production of diamond structures.

Characters

 * Nell – The story's protagonist, from the viewpoint of the novel as a coming-of-age story. She is born to Tequila, a lower-class single mother, and, with the help of the nanotech Primer, grows up to become an independent woman and the leader of a new phyle.
 * Harv – Nell's older brother, who plays an important role in the beginning as her protector; he obtains the Primer for his sister by mugging John Percival Hackworth. Harv is forced to leave Nell when she is accepted by the Neo-Victorians, and is later bedridden by asthma caused by the inhalation of dead nanomachines ("toner") in his childhood.
 * Bud – A petty criminal and "thete", or tribeless individual, Bud is Tequila's boyfriend and Nell and Harv's father. He is obsessed with his muscular body, and possesses a cranial weapon implant (known as a "skull gun"), which he uses to mug people. When he robs a couple who are members of the powerful Ashanti phyle, he is executed for this crime early in the novel.
 * Tequila – Nell and Harv's neglectful thete mother. After Bud's death, she has a series of boyfriends who mistreat the children to varying degrees.
 * John Percival Hackworth – The novel's second protagonist. He is a Neo-Victorian nanotech engineer, and develops the code for the Primer. He makes an illicit copy of the Primer for his daughter Fiona, who is Nell's age. When his crime is detected, he is forced to become a double agent in a covert power struggle between the Neo-Victorians and the Chinese Celestial Kingdom. Hackworth is forced to spend ten years with a colony of "Drummers," using their distributed intelligence (similar but not identical to distributed artificial intelligence) for the development of a new form of nanotech, known as the Seed.
 * Fiona Hackworth – Hackworth's daughter, and his motivation for stealing a second copy of the Primer. During Hackworth's decade-long exile with the Drummers, he is able to maintain a connection with his daughter through the Primer, and when he returns she joins him, eventually choosing to stay with a surrealistic acting troupe in London.
 * Gwendolyn Hackworth – Hackworth's wife and Fiona's mother, who divorces Hackworth during his long absence.
 * Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw – A Neo-Victorian "Equity Lord" with the Apthorp conglomerate, who commissions the development of the Primer for his granddaughter Elizabeth.
 * Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw – Lord Finkle-McGraw's granddaughter. It was for her that the project to develop the Illustrated Primer was begun. However, she never became as engrossed in the stories created by the Primer as Nell, and later rebelled against her Neo-Victorian upbringing due in part to the abuse by Miss Stricken, one of her teachers. Elizabeth runs away from her wealthy aristocratic family to join the secretive CryptNet phyle. Lord Finkle-McGraw expresses satisfaction with this outcome to Carl Hollywood, deeming it akin to youthful rebellion.
 * Judge Fang – A New York-born Chinese Confucian judge who sentences Bud to death in the beginning of the book. He also investigates Hackworth's mugging by Harv and his gang. As a civil official with deep Confucian principles, his decision to let Nell keep the stolen primer is one of the pivotal plot elements that allows Nell's story to unfold. The fallout from that choice leads him to question his allegiances to the Coastal Republic (which rules Shanghai and the surrounding area), and he eventually joins the inland Celestial Kingdom.
 * Lieutenant Chang and Miss Pao – Judge Fang's assistants.
 * Dr. X. – A mysterious character who evolves from being an illicit technology specialist and hacker to being a powerful Confucian leader and nefarious force. His name comes from the fact that most westerners cannot pronounce his Chinese name; he encourages people to instead call him by the first letter of his name.
 * Constable Moore - Constable of the Dovetail community, semi-retired soldier, and Nell's adoptive father/guardian.
 * Miranda Redpath – A "ractor" (actor in interactive movies) who, by performing in the stories of Nell's Primer, effectively becomes a mother figure for Nell.
 * Carl Hollywood – A theatrical company director and Miranda's boss and adviser. He becomes more important towards the end of the novel, helping Miranda on her quest to find Nell, and aiding the escape of Coastal Republic refugees from the encroaching anti-Western Fists of the Celestial Kingdom. Nell appoints him as a trusted advisor of her new phyle.
 * Miss Matheson – The head teacher at the academy where Nell, Fiona, and Elizabeth attend. She instructs Nell to find her own path.
 * Miss Stricken – An authoritarian teacher at Miss Matheson's Academy who frequently uses corporal punishment on the students for minor infractions. During a confrontation with Nell, Stricken attempts to strike her with the ruler only to be immediately disarmed due to Nell's physical training by the Primer. This leads to her, Elizabeth and Fiona all being placed in detention, where they are forced to mindlessly copy from textbooks.

Reviews
Michael Berry of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Stephenson's world-building skills are extraordinary, and while he sometimes lets his narrative ramble or grow complicated, he can be depended upon to serve up plenty of clever extrapolations." Gerald Jonas of The New York Times: "While the final chapters of the novel veer toward the stylistic excesses that marred Snow Crash, Mr. Stephenson mostly holds to his theme." Marc Laidlaw of Wired magazine praised the characters, the setting, and called the "rich and polished, the inventiveness unceasing" but found it ultimately disappointing saying Stephenson "gave himself an enormous task and nearly succeeded in all respects, instead of "merely" most of them."

Awards
In 1996, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards.

Allusions to other works and genres

 * Charles Dickens. The novel's neo-Victorian setting, as well as its narrative form, particularly the chapter headings, suggest a relation to the work of Charles Dickens. The protagonist's name points directly to Little Nell from Dickens' 1840 novel The Old Curiosity Shop.
 * Judge Dee mysteries. The novel's character Judge Fang is based on a creative extension of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mystery series, which is based around a Confucian judge in ancient China who usually solves three cases simultaneously. The Judge Dee stories are based on the tradition of Chinese mysteries, transposing key elements into Western detective fiction.
 * The Wizard of Oz. When Nell enters the castle of King Coyote in the Primer's final challenge for her, she encounters an enormous computer apparently designed to think and placed in charge of the kingdom. The computer is named "Wizard 0.2", a typographical allusion to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In that book, the Wizard puts on a grand appearance but is later revealed to be merely a man hiding behind a curtain. In similar fashion, Wizard 0.2 creates an impressive light show as it apparently processes data, but it is revealed that the computer's decisions are in fact made by King Coyote himself.

Proposed television adaptation
In January 2007, the Sci-Fi Channel announced a planned six-hour miniseries based on The Diamond Age. According to a June 2009 report in Variety, Zoë Green had been hired to write the series, with George Clooney and Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions as executive producers on the project.

Allusions to The Diamond Age
During the early stages of its development, the Amazon Kindle e-reader was codenamed "Fiona", as a deliberate reference to the Illustrated Primer and Fiona Hackworth.

title: The Diamond Age