Round robin

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Round Robin: Depicted in the book Omoo by Herman Melville

A round robin , English round-robin , is a request and complaint, also called a petition , which has been signed by its authors and supporters in a circle so that they all appear as the same and a ranking among them cannot be made out, who would have betrayed the main initiators, sometimes disparagingly called ringleaders , in the matter. This custom dates back to the France of the 17th century back in which such petitions to the king and government for those involved were very dangerous at that time and could be paid by them with the loss of freedom and life.

history

French government officials are said to have been the first to do this by putting ribbons around them in a circle instead of signing their names from top to bottom. This type of signature was called ruban rond (literally translated band um , or loop um ) in French, which then became round robin in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area, probably due to the French sound in the oral transmission .

The round robin des Jessé de Forest from 1621

A well-known example of a round robin is the so-called application from Leyden by the French cloth merchant Jessé de Forest to the British ambassador in The Hague , asking to be allowed to settle with French and Walloon families on the east coast of North America. The petition, presented in a first request in February 1621, was ultimately granted and de Forest is now considered a co-founder of the city of New York .

Writing a round robin was particularly common among English ship crews. It can be documented for the first time in the English Navy, the Royal Navy , around 1730. But the Round Robin was also known worldwide to seafarers in the merchant navy . In his story Omoo , the American writer Herman Melville described in detail how to make a round robin on board a sailor in the South Pacific.

See also

literature

  • Herman Melville: Typee · Omoo · White Jacket , transferred from the American and with an afterword and notes by Richard Mummendey , Winkler Verlag, Munich 1970
  • George Crabb: Universal Technological Dictionary or Familiar Explanation of the Terms used in all Arts and Sciences , Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, London 1823
  • De Forest, John William The De Forests of Avesnes (and of New Netherland): A Huguenot thread in American colonial history, 1494 to the present time (New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co. 1900)

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