Biography of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Vallabhbhai Patel (31 October 1875 – 15 December 1950), commonly known as Sardar Patel, was a Gandhian Indian independence activist, lawyer and statesman who served as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India from 1947 to 1950. He was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, who played a significant role in the Indian independence movement and India's political integration. In India and elsewhere, he was often called Sardar meaning "chief". He acted as the Home Minister during the political integration of India and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.

Patel was born in Nadiad city (present-day Kheda district, Gujarat) and raised in the countryside of the state of Gujarat. He was a successful lawyer. One of Mahatma Gandhi's earliest political lieutenants, he organised peasants from Kheda, Borsad and Bardoli in Gujarat in non-violent civil disobedience against the British Raj, becoming one of the most influential leaders in Gujarat. He was appointed as the 49th President of Indian National Congress. Under the chairmanship of Patel "Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy" resolution was passed by the Congress. Patel's position at the highest level in the Congress was largely connected with his role from 1934 onwards (when the Congress abandoned its boycott of elections) in the party organisation. Based at an apartment in Bombay, he became the Congress's main fundraiser and chairman of its Central Parliamentary Board, playing the leading role in selecting and financing candidates for the 1934 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi and for the provincial elections of 1936. While promoting the Quit India Movement, Patel made a climactic speech to more than 100,000 people gathered at Gowalia Tank in Bombay on 7 August 1942. Historians believe that Patel's speech was instrumental in electrifying nationalists, who up to then had been sceptical of the proposed rebellion. Patel's organising work in this period is credited by historians with ensuring the success of the rebellion across India.

As the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel organised relief efforts for partition refugees fleeing to Punjab and Delhi from Pakistan and worked to restore peace. Besides those provinces that had been under direct British rule, approximately 565 self-governing princely states had been released from British suzerainty by the Indian Independence Act 1947. Patel, together with Jawaharlal Nehru and Louis Mountbatten persuaded almost every princely state to accede to India.

Patel's commitment to national integration in the newly independent country earned him the sobriquet "Iron Man of India". He is also remembered as the "patron saint of India's civil servants" for playing a pioneering role in establishing the modern All India Services system. The Statue of Unity, the world's tallest statue which was erected by the Indian government at a cost of US$420 million, was dedicated to him on 31 October 2018 and is approximately 182 metres (597 ft) in height.

Early life and background

Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, one of the six children of Jhaverbhai Patel and Ladba, was born in Nadiad, Gujarat. Patel's date of birth was never officially recorded; Patel entered it as 31 October on his matriculation examination papers. He belonged to the Patidars, specifically the Leva Patel community of Central Gujarat; although after his fame, both Leva Patel and Kadava Patidar have claimed him as one of their own.

Patel travelled to attend schools in Nadiad, Petlad, and Borsad, living self-sufficiently with other boys. He reputedly cultivated a stoic character. A popular anecdote recounts that he lanced his own painful boil without hesitation, even as the barber charged with doing it trembled. When Patel passed his matriculation at the relatively late age of 22, he was generally regarded by his elders as an unambitious man destined for a commonplace job. Patel himself, though, harboured a plan to study to become a lawyer, work and save funds, travel to England, and become a barrister. Patel spent years away from his family, studying on his own with books borrowed from other lawyers, passing his examinations within two years. Fetching his wife Jhaverba from her parents' home, Patel set up his household in Godhra and was called to the bar. During the many years it took him to save money, Patel – now an advocate – earned a reputation as a fierce and skilled lawyer. The couple had a daughter, Maniben, in 1903 and a son, Dahyabhai, in 1905. Patel also cared for a friend suffering from the Bubonic plague when it swept across Gujarat. When Patel himself came down with the disease, he immediately sent his family to safety, left his home, and moved into an isolated house in Nadiad (by other accounts, Patel spent this time in a dilapidated temple); there, he recovered slowly.

Patel practised law in Godhra, Borsad, and Anand while taking on the financial burdens of his homestead in Karamsad. Patel was the first chairman and founder of "Edward Memorial High School" Borsad, today known as Jhaverbhai Dajibhai Patel High School. When he had saved enough for his trip to England and applied for a pass and a ticket, they were addressed to "V. J. Patel", at the home of his elder brother Vithalbhai, who had the same initials as Vallabhbhai. Having once nurtured a similar hope to study in England, Vithalbhai remonstrated his younger brother, saying that it would be disreputable for an older brother to follow his younger brother. In keeping with concerns for his family's honour, Patel allowed Vithalbhai to go in his place.

In 1909 Patel's wife Jhaverba was hospitalised in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to undergo major surgery for cancer. Her health suddenly worsened and, despite successful emergency surgery, she died in the hospital. Patel was given a note informing him of his wife's demise as he was cross-examining a witness in court. According to witnesses, Patel read the note, pocketed it, and continued his cross-examination and won the case. He broke the news to others only after the proceedings had ended. Patel decided against marrying again. He raised his children with the help of his family and sent them to English-language schools in Bombay. At the age of 36, he journeyed to England and enrolled at the Middle Temple in London. Completing a 36-month course in 30 months, Patel finished at the top of his class despite having had no previous college background.

Culture of India

Indian culture is the heritage of social norms and technologies that originated in or are associated with the ethno-linguistically diverse nation of India, pertaining to the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and the Republic of India post-1947. The term also applies beyond India to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to India by immigration, colonisation, or influence, particularly in South Asia and Southeast Asia. India's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food, and customs differ from place to place within the country.

Indian culture, often labelled as a combination of several cultures like Indian Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs and others, has been influenced by a history that is several millennia old, beginning with the Indus Valley Civilisation, Vedic period and other early cultural eras. India has one of the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world. The British Raj further influenced Indian culture, including through the widespread introduction of the English language, which resulted in a local English dialect and influences on other Indian languages.

Many elements of Indian culture, such as Indian religions, mathematics, philosophy, cuisine, languages, dance, music, and movies have had a profound impact across the Indosphere, Greater India, and the world.

Religious culture

Indian-origin religions Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are all based on the concepts of dharma and karma. Ahimsa, the philosophy of nonviolence, is an important aspect of native Indian faiths whose most well-known proponent was Shri Mahatma Gandhi, who used civil disobedience to unite India during the Indian independence movement – this philosophy further inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel during the American civil rights movement. Foreign-origin religion, including Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are also present in India, as well as Zoroastrianism and Bahaʼí Faith.

India has 28 states and 8 union territories with different cultures and is the most populated country in the world. The Indian culture, often labeled as an amalgamation of several various cultures, spans across the Indian subcontinent and has been influenced and shaped by a history that is several thousand years old. Throughout the history of India, Indian culture has been heavily influenced by Dharmic religions. Influence from East/Southeast Asian cultures onto ancient India and early Hinduism, specifically via Austroasiatic groups, such as early Munda and Mon Khmer, but also Tibetic and other Tibeto-Burmese groups, had noteworthy impact on local Indian peoples and cultures. Several scholars, such as Professor Przyluski, Jules Bloch, and Lévi, among others, concluded that there is a significant cultural, linguistic, and political Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic) influence on early India, which can also be observed by Austroasiatic loanwords within Indo-Aryan languages and rice cultivation, which was introduced by East/Southeast Asian rice-agriculturalists using a route from Southeast Asia through Northeast India into the Indian subcontinent. They have been credited with shaping much of Indian philosophy, literature, architecture, art and music. Greater India was the historical extent of Indian culture beyond the Indian subcontinent. This particularly concerns the spread of Hinduism, Buddhism, architecture, administration and writing system from India to other parts of Asia through the Silk Road by the travelers and maritime traders during the early centuries of the Common Era. To the west, Greater India overlaps with Greater Persia in the Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains. Over the centuries, there has been a significant fusion of cultures between Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and various tribal populations in India.

India is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and other religions. They are collectively known as Indian religions. Indian religions are a major form of world religions along with Abrahamic ones. Today, Hinduism and Buddhism are the world's third and fourth-largest religions respectively, with over 2 billion followers altogether, and possibly as many as 2.5 or 2.6 billion followers. Followers of Indian religions – Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists make up around 80–82% population of India.

India is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse nations in the world, with some of the most deeply religious societies and cultures. Religion plays a central and definitive role in the lives of many of its people. Although India is a secular Hindu-majority country, it has a large Muslim population. Except for Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Lakshadweep, Hindus form the predominant population in all 28 states and 8 union territories. Muslims are present throughout India, with large populations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam; while only Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep have majority Muslim populations. Christians are other significant minorities of India.

Partition of India

The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wide non-Muslim (mostly Hindu and Sikh) or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the end of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.

With the partition of British India and withdrawal of the British from the Indian subcontinent, the Indian Independence Act provided that the princely states were released from their subsidiary alliances and other obligations to the British, while the British withdrew from their obligations to the states, leaving the rulers to decide whether to accede to India or Pakistan or to remain independent outside both. Sardar Patel said in a speech in January 1948, "On the lapse of Paramountcy, every Indian State became a separate independent entity." The political integration of the princely states into the two new dominions was begun by many accessions in August 1947, but mostly it followed on later. Critically, the rulers of the states of Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, and others, chose independence.

The partition displaced between 12 and 20 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises associated with the mass migration and population transfer that occurred across the newly constituted dominions; there was large-scale violence, with disputed estimates of the loss of life before, at the time of, or following the partition. As of 2009, the estimates still varied between two hundred thousand and two million. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues Indo-Pakistani relations to the present.

The term partition of India does not cover the earlier separations of Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from the administration of British India. It does not cover the incorporation of the enclaves of French India into India during the period 1947–1954, or the annexation of Goa and other districts of Portuguese India by India in 1961. Other contemporaneous political entities in the region in 1947, such as Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives, were unaffected by the partition.

The secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 was a later partition of Pakistan, and not of India.

Partition of Bengal: 1905

The Bengal Presidency was a large administrative unit in British India. In 1905, Viceroy of India Lord Curzon split it into the Muslim-majority province of Eastern Bengal and Assam and the Hindu-majority province of Bengal. The partition of Bengal—which had been contemplated by previous colonial administrations, though never acted upon—transformed nationalist politics.

Bengalis were upset at the prospect of being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas. They felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness. The pervasive protests against Curzon's decision predominantly took the form of the Swadeshi ('buy Indian') campaign, involving a boycott of British goods. Sporadically, but flagrantly, the protesters also took to political violence, which involved attacks on civilians. The violence was ineffective, as most planned attacks were either prevented by the British or failed. The rallying cry for both types of protest was the slogan Bande Mataram (Bengali, lit. 'Hail to the Mother'), the title of a song by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, which invoked a mother goddess, who stood variously for Bengal, India, and the Hindu goddess Kali. The unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcutta's English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. The religious stirrings of the slogan and the political outrage over the partition were combined as young men, in such groups as Jugantar, took to bombing public buildings, staging armed robberies, and assassinating British officials. Since Calcutta was the imperial capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became known nationally.

The overwhelming, predominantly-Hindu protest against the partition of Bengal, along with the fear of reforms favouring the Hindu majority, led the Muslim elite of India in 1906 to the new viceroy Lord Minto, asking for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded representation in proportion to their share of the total population, reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This would result in the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca in December 1906. Although Curzon by now had returned to England following his resignation over a dispute with his military chief, Lord Kitchener, the League was in favor of his partition plan. The Muslim elite's position, which was reflected in the League's position, had crystallized gradually over the previous three decades, beginning with the 1871 Census of British India, which had first estimated the populations in regions of Muslim majority. For his part, Curzon's desire to court the Muslims of East Bengal had arisen from British anxieties ever since the 1871 census, and in light of the history of Muslims fighting them in the 1857 Rebellion and the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

In the three decades since the 1871 census, Muslim leaders across North India had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups. The Arya Samaj, for example, had not only supported the cow protection movement in their agitation, but also—distraught at the census' Muslim numbers—organized "reconversion" events for the purpose of welcoming Muslims back to the Hindu fold. In the United Provinces, Muslims became anxious in the late-19th century as Hindu political representation increased, and Hindus were politically mobilized in the Hindi–Urdu controversy and the anti-cow-killing riots of 1893. In 1905, Muslim fears grew when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to leadership positions in the Congress, and the Congress itself rallied around the symbolism of Kali. It was not lost on many Muslims, for example, that the bande mataram rallying cry had first appeared in the novel Anandmath in which Hindus had battled their Muslim oppressors. Lastly, the Muslim elite, including Nawab of Dacca, Khwaja Salimullah, who hosted the League's first meeting in his mansion in Shahbag, were aware that a new province with a Muslim majority would directly benefit Muslims aspiring to political power.

Biography of Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. Vivekananda was a major figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world during the late 19th century, and is credited with raising interfaith awareness and elevating Hinduism to the status of a major world religion.

Vivekananda showed an early inclination towards religion and spirituality. At the age of 18, he met Ramakrishna and became his devoted disciple, and later took up the vows of a sannyasin (renunciate). Following Ramakrishna’s death, Vivekananda travelled extensively across the Indian subcontinent as a wandering monk, gaining first-hand knowledge of the often harsh living conditions endured by the Indian masses under then British India, he sought a way to alleviate their suffering by establishing social services but lacked capital. In 1893, he travelled to the United States to participate in the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, where he delivered a landmark speech beginning with the words "Sisters and brothers of America.". His powerful message introduced Hindu spiritual thought and advocated for both religious tolerance as well as universal acceptance. The speech made a profound impression; an American newspaper described him as "an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament".

Following his success in Chicago, Vivekananda lectured widely across the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe, disseminating the essential principles of Hindu philosophy. He established the Vedanta Society of New York and the Vedanta Society of San Francisco (now the Vedanta Society of Northern California), both of which became the foundations for later Vedanta Societies in the West. In India, he founded the Ramakrishna Math, a monastic order for spiritual training, and the Ramakrishna Mission, dedicated to social services, education, and humanitarian work.

Vivekananda is widely regarded as one of the greatest modern Indian thinkers. He was a prominent philosopher, social reformer, and the most successful proponent of Vedanta philosophy abroad. He played a crucial role in the Hindu revivalist movement and contributed significantly to the rise and development of Indian nationalism in colonial India. Celebrated as a patriotic saint, his birth anniversary is observed in India as National Youth Day.

Early life (1863–1888)

Vivekananda was born as Narendranath Datta (name shortened to Narendra or Naren) in an aristocratic Bengali Kayastha family in his ancestral home at 3 Gourmohan Mukherjee Street in Calcutta, the capital of British India, on 12 January 1863 during the Makar Sankranti festival. He was one of nine siblings. His father, Vishwanath Datta, was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court. Durgacharan Datta, Narendra's grandfather was a Sanskrit and Persian scholar who left his family and became a monk at age twenty-five. His mother, Bhubaneswari Devi, was a devout housewife. The progressive, rational attitude of Narendra's father and the religious temperament of his mother helped shape his thinking and personality. Narendranath was interested in spirituality from a young age and used to meditate before the images of deities such as Shiva, Rama, Sita, and Hanuman. He was fascinated by wandering ascetics and monks. Narendra was mischievous and restless as a child, and his parents often had difficulty controlling him. His mother said, "I prayed to Shiva for a son and he has sent me one of his demons".

Education

In 1871, at the age of eight, Narendranath enrolled at Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's Metropolitan Institution, where he went to school until his family moved to Raipur in 1877. In 1879, after his family's return to Calcutta, he was the only student to receive first-division marks in the Presidency College entrance examination. He was an avid reader in a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, religion, history, social science, art and literature. He was also interested in Hindu scriptures, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas. Narendra was trained in Indian classical music, and regularly participated in physical exercise, sports and organised activities. He studied Western logic, Western philosophy and European history at the General Assembly's Institution (now known as the Scottish Church College). In 1881, he passed the Fine Arts examination, and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884. Narendra studied the works of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Baruch Spinoza, Georg W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin. He became fascinated with the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer and corresponded with him. He translated Spencer's book Education (1861) into Bengali. While studying Western philosophers, he also learned Sanskrit scriptures and Bengali literature.

William Hastie (the principal of Scottish Church College, Calcutta, from where Narendra graduated) wrote of him: "Narendra is really a genius. I have travelled far and wide but I have never come across a lad of his talents and possibilities, even in German universities, among philosophical students. He is bound to make his mark in life". He was known for his prodigious memory and speed reading ability, and a number of anecdotes attest to this. Some accounts have called Narendra a shrutidhara (a person with a prodigious memory).

East India Company

The East India Company was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed for Indian Ocean trade, initially with the East Indies (which included the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.

Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies," the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, gemstones, and later opium. The company also initiated the beginnings of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent.

The company eventually came to rule large areas of the Indian subcontinent, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Under this government-like rule, the company used torture to extract taxes, reduced much of the population to poverty and enacted policies that resulted in the Great Bengal famine of 1770, during which 10 million people starved to death.

Company-ruled areas in the region gradually expanded after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, and by 1858 most of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, along with Lower Burma, was either ruled by the company or princely states closely tied to the company by treaties. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of present-day Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Myanmar in the form of the new British Raj. The company subsequently experienced recurring problems with its finances, despite frequent government intervention. The company was dissolved in 1874 under the terms of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act enacted one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of the British Empire had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies.

History

In 1577, Francis Drake set out on an expedition from England to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. Sailing in the Golden Hind, he achieved this, and then sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1579, known then only to the Spanish and Portuguese. Drake eventually sailed into the East Indies and came across the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, and met Sultan Babullah. In exchange for linen, gold, and silver, the English obtained a large haul of exotic spices, including cloves and nutmeg. Drake returned to England in 1580 and became a hero; his circumnavigation raised an enormous amount of money for England's coffers, and investors received a return of some 5,000 per cent. Thus started an important element in the eastern design during the late sixteenth century.

With England at war with Spain and Portugal in 1585, trade was now cut off, and Queen Elizabeth I resorted to privateering. Soon after Thomas Cavendish's circumnavigation in 1587 and the Spanish Armada's defeat the following year, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships and cargoes laid the foundation for further privateering to even more distant zones of the conflict. London merchants presented a petition to Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean, and beyond with the Spice Islands of particular interest. The aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of far-eastern trade. Elizabeth granted her permission and in 1591, James Lancaster in the Bonaventure with two other ships, financed by the Levant Company, sailed from England around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea, becoming the first English expedition to reach India that way. Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594.

The biggest prize that galvanised English trade was the seizure of a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus, by Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592. When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel ever seen in England and she carried chests of jewels, pearls, gold, silver coins, ambergris, cloth, tapestries, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, benjamin (a highly aromatic balsamic resin used for perfumes and medicines), red dye, cochineal and ebony. Equally valuable was the ship's rutter (mariner's handbook) containing vital information on the China, India, and Japan trade routes.

In 1596, three more English ships sailed east but all were lost at sea. A year later however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, with his companions, had made a remarkable nine year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia. Fitch was consulted on Indian affairs and gave even more valuable information to Lancaster.

Education

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, however learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

Formal education is commonly divided formally into such stages as preschool or kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and then college, university, or apprenticeship.

A right to education has been recognized by some governments and the United Nations.In most regions, education is compulsory up to a certain age.Education began in prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. In pre-literate societies, this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be readily learned through imitation, formal education developed. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom.

Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements published in 1607

Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE 476.

In China, Confucius (551–479 BCE), of the State of Lu, was the country's most influential ancient philosopher, whose educational outlook continues to influence the societies of China and neighbours like Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Confucius gathered disciples and searched in vain for a ruler who would adopt his ideals for good governance, but his Analects were written down by followers and have continued to influence education in East Asia into the modern era.