So, in 1752 the Gregorian calendar was adopted and the Julian calendar was given the boot.
How did that come about? How did it go over? Were people missing appointments all over the place? Was the world a sufficiently underdeveloped place that people didn’t notice when the date shifted around by 10 or so days? Was there a vote or did Grogor (??) just decide his calendar was best?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Pope Gregor XIII (after a lot of arguing back and forth with astronomers) decreed this reform, which was adopted by Catholic European countries as early as 1582 (for Spain, Portugal, and parts of Italy) or within a few years after that. Most Protestant countries resisted this “Papist dictate” until around 1700. Former Ottoman Empire countries like Greece, Romania, and Turkey didn’t climb on board until the 1920’s.
Sure people noticed it, and it was quite a headache for a while to have to keep track of dates in “new style” (Gregorian) versus “old style” (Julian) depending when and where you were talking about. The fact that some countries didn’t bother to conform to the “new style” for another couple-few centuries indicates that many people thought the change wasn’t worth bothering with.
The act of 1752 to which you refer certainly involved a vote, since it took place in Great Britain and Britain had a Parliament. You can read the text of the law here–note that it addresses many of the practical considerations such as contract dates, rents, 21st birthdays, and so forth. The change was certainly thoroughly discussed and very controversial, although I’ve never seen the Parliamentary yeas and nays.
Keep in mind that the 1752 act also changed Britain over to the convention of beginning the year in January rather than mid-March, as well as adopting the Gregorian calendar. “Old Style” dates in January and February were different years as well as being 11 days apart. George Washington was born Feb 22, 1732 (Feb 11, 1731 old style) for instance. Starting the year in January was another convention that was adopted piecemeal in various locations over an even longer time frame than the Gregorian calendar. Resolving calendar dates from historical sources is a non-trivial task.
Wowsers. It probably shouldn’t, but this totally blows my mind.
So, am I to assume that trade between countries using different date systems was minimal, or were people just not that bothered by having packages arive 24 hours, or 2 weeks later ('cus, of course FedEx was around in those times…)
Are there any countries that currently use a calendar different than the “regular” one? I know that the Chinese celebrate New Year on a rotating basis that has nothing much to do with the Gregorian calendar.
This is really fascinating.
One of the main reasons for revising the calender was the difficulty they were having fixing the date of Easter . This explains it.
Nah, it wasn’t that much different from communicating with societies that use a different calendar today (see below). You just had to specify whether you were using “old style” or “new style” dates, and keep an eye open for any other differences between your correspondent’s calendar and yours.
AFAIK, all countries today use the Gregorian calendar at least as an alternative system, for international and business purposes etc. Probably the most common non-Gregorian “official” calendar is some variant of the Islamic lunar calendar, which is officially recognized in several Muslim countries.
Ethiopia has a calendar with a distinctly non-Gregorian background, which is several years ‘behind’ ours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_calendar
Forgot an important point here. No, actually, during the early modern period when the calendar change was happening in Europe, global trade was actually expanding like crazy-mad. This was the period of major development of European colonialism, remember. Gregorian-calendar countries were trading not just with Julian-calendar ones, but with societies using the Islamic calendar, the Persian solar calendar, the multitudinous variations of the Hindu calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar, and a host of others. Different date systems didn’t slow them down at all!
Scholars did spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out how different calendars worked and what the rules for converting dates between them were. But this had long been a feature of astronomical and calendric texts (e.g., in the Islamic world, which also developed a global trade empire somewhat earlier), so it was pretty much s.o.p.
The current situation, where everybody in business or government worldwide can pretty much be counted on to use the same calendar system, is what’s unusual in human history, not the Babel-diversity of a bunch of different systems.
Not long ago, I came across a 19th century book, seemingly written for businessmen planning to trade with India. A whole chapter was devoted to the various monetary systems in use in various Indian cities…clearly, complex calculations such as dealing with octal currencies was not out of the ordinary, and certainly wouldn’t have been in medieval Europe. Figuring out which calendar was being used would be simple in comparison.
Wow. This is really wild stuff.
Ok, so lets say that I want to order a crate of oranges (whatever) from a supplier in Ethiopia. I call him up and say I need the oranges by March 15th, and he then does the mental gymnastics required to figure out that’s about August 10th or something, and ship the goods.
So, why was the Gregorian calendar sort of defaulted on - I mean, with the exception of a few Islamic countries, and Ethiopa, it sounds like the big G is the one currently in favour. Is it “better” than other calenders, or did it just sort of fall into acceptance?
Man, this really freaks me out. Sort of like the rumour I heard that some Islamic countries set the clock to midnight at sunset each night (or something).
The Gregorian calendar is a good solar year calendar that will not require an adjustment for several thousand years.
However, the current widespread usage probably owes as much to European (especially British) trade hegemony over the world in the 19th and 20th centuries as it does to its practical nature.
Huh.
So - why have a calendar at all? I mean, with months and whatnot. Why not just determine the number of hours it takes for the earth to rotate the sun, and base things on that, instead of trying to stuff those numbers into an imperfect calendar?
I can see it now -
“Boss, when is the report due?”
“Alice - it’s due when we’re 74 degrees past Mercury!”
The imperfections are because a calendar has to fuse together two things which are fundamental to our perception of the world. Obviously day and night are pretty important, but also the seasons are significant, for everything from agriculture to seafaring. Plus the added complication of religions making calculations of dates.
Trouble is, the rate at which the earth spins on its axis and the rate at which it orbits the sun don’t coincide neatly (it would be spooky if they did!). So a calendar has to either gradually go out of sync, or include all sorts of minor adjustments.
Could you expand on this a little? Like what would make it spooky?
You need to remember that in those days (18th century and earlier) people were not as caught up with “time sensitive” shipments as we are now. You ordered something, and it got there when it got there.
Consider the fact that your letter ordering something from a merchant in Ethiopia may take weeks or months to get to him, then he packages up your oranges and sends them by camel to a port city where they are put on a ship, and then transported by some other means to get to you. You would be lucky to get your box of oranges in less than six months.
You can’t look at international commerce in the 18th century through 21st century glasses.
Things which have no physical reason to coincide doing so would be spooky. One does not like coincidences. If they DID we would have to spend a lot of effort trying to find a relationship between them.
So they don’t coincide *at all?[/] - like not even a little bit?
See, I find THAT kind of spooky.
The forces that produced planetary rotation and orbit are vaguely connected but mostly independent. Having our day/night rotation and our yearly orbit coincide would be like flipping a coin and having it land on edge in such a way that the coin was perfectly balanced on that edge. It’s not impossible, it’s just so highly improbable that anyone who knows anything about the natural world would find it pretty darn weird.
Well, how much is a little bit? Sure, they approximately coincide…as in, the period we call a “year” contains approximately 365.25 of the periods we call a “day”. But not exactly.
They don’t match up with any nice, convenient, round-number ratio like 360.0000 days per year, and they never did (unless you’re a Velikovskian or something).