Аннотация

Our publication is, perhaps, the first event in world historiography that aims to collect and unite information about the modern award system of all countries, to give a description of significant orders of the royal and imperial courts, to inform about prominent representatives of the medallic art, to recall those museums the collections comprised of orders and medals from every corner of the world, as well as to laud the most significant representatives of religion, auctions, show business and award business.
Certainly, the writing team selected awards with certain subjectivity, because each team member had his own aesthetic, academic and historical arguments for the inclusion of certain orders into the book. But, according to a famous literary character, 'one cannot embrace the unembraceable'.
The authors did not want to turn the book into a commonplace catalog of awards without taking into account their chronology and relevance, and that is why they carefully selected the effective honours.
Of course, the amount of information on various award systems is different. In certain countries, for example, Great Britain, the award system was formed throughout the centuries, in some African or Latin American countries, due to numerous revolutions, it acquired its modern format only in the second half of the XX century. At the same time, such a state as Andorra, despite its centuries-long independent history, began to form its own award system only in the XXI century. The authors of the book had a difficult task: to collect maximum information on the effective orders and medals of all countries, having made sense of the huddle of historical events that led to the introduction of this or that award with separation of obsolete and modern honours.
We are confident that the book will become a true pearl among award encyclopedias for all world phaleristics history researchers.