This volume is a collection of the best essays of Professor Benjamin Miller on the subjects of international and regional security.
The book analyses the interrelationships between international politics and regional and national security, with a special focus on the sources of international conflict and collaboration and the causes of war and peace. More specifically, it explains the sources of intended and unintended great-power conflict and collaboration. The book also accounts for the sources of regional war and peace by developing the concept of the state-to-nation balance. Thus the volume is able to explain the variations in the outcomes of great power interventions and the differences in the level and type of war and peace in different eras and various parts of the world. For example, the book’s model can account for recent outcomes such as the effects of the 2003 American intervention in Iraq, the post2011 Arab Spring and the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine. The book also provides a model for explaining the changes in American grand strategy with a special focus on accounting for the causes of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Finally, the book addresses the debate on the future of war and peace in the twenty-first century.
This book will be essential reading for students of international security, regional security, Middle Eastern politics, foreign policy and IR.
Benjamin Miller is Professor of International Relations at the University of Haifa, Israel. Among his publications are When Opponents Cooperate (2002), States, Nations and Great Powers (2007) and Regional Peacemaking and Conflict Management (co-editor, Routledge 2015).
Routledge Global Security Studies
Series Editors: Aaron Karp and Regina Karp
Global Security Studies emphasizes broad forces reshaping global security and the dilemmas facing decision-makers the world over. The series stresses issues relevant in many countries and regions, accessible to broad professional and academic audiences as well as to students, and enduring through explicit theoretical foundations.
The Evolution of Military Power in the West and Asia
Security policy in the post-Cold War era
Edited by Pauline Eadie and Wyn Rees
Regional Peacemaking and Conflict Management
A comparative approach
Edited by Carmela Lutmar and Benjamin Miller
Nonproliferation Policy and Nuclear Posture
Causes and consequences for the spread of nuclear weapons
Edited by Neil Narang, Erik Gartzke and Matthew Kroenig
Global Nuclear Disarmament
Strategic, political, and regional perspectives
Edited by Nik Hynek and Michal Smetana
Nuclear Terrorism
Countering the threat
Edited by Brecht Volders and Tom Sauer
Stable Nuclear Zero
The vision and its implications for disarmament policy
Edited by Sverre Lodgaard
Nuclear Asymmetry and Deterrence
Theory, policy and history
Jan Ludvik
International and Regional Security
The causes of war and peace
Benjamin Miller
US Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East
The realpolitik of deceit
Bernd Kaussler and Glenn P. Hastedt
‘In this timely book, Benjamin Miller, a leading world scholar of regions and peace has compiled his three decades long scholarly articles on war, peace and regional and international order with updates and additional materials. A valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the challenging questions of our times.’
– T.V. Paul, McGill University, Canada
‘International and Regional Security provides easy access to Benjamin Miller’s most influential articles on great power conflict and cooperation, international/ regional/domestic sources of regional conflict, and interventionist grand strategies. This excellent and well-organized collection belongs on the bookshelf of all serious scholars of peace and security.’
– Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University, USA
‘This collection of first-rate essays by Benjamin Miller should be widely read among students of international politics. He not only offers fascinating insights on the causes of cooperation and conflict among states, but few scholars are as adept as Miller at making causal arguments that synthesize both domestic and international factors in sophisticated and interesting ways.’
– John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago, USA
‘Benjamin Miller’s continuing stress on regional analysis is a great antidote for all of the people promoting universal generalizations and behavior. To this prescription, add Miller’s consistent stress on multi-level explanations (from intervening hegemons to ethno-nationalist groups) and theory building to account for variations in war and peace and you come away with a winning combination.’
– William R. Thompson, Indiana University, USA
‘Benjamin Miller’s pioneering work integrating global and regional causes of war and peace is crucially relevant for understanding current developments from Ukraine to Syria to the South China Sea. This volume presents some of Miller’s signature works, bookended new essays that frame his research project and push it toward new frontiers. Readers looking for a rich yet rigorous framework for making sense of a complex and challenging new array of inter and intra-state conflicts should reach for this excellent collection.’
– William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College, USA
InternatIonal and regIonal SecurIty
The Causes of War and Peace
Benjamin Miller
First published 2017 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Benjamin, 1953– author.
Title: International and regional security / Benjamin Miller.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. |
Series: Routledge global security studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026590 | ISBN 9781138187245 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138187252 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315643281 (ebook)
Classification: LCC JZ5588. M53 2016 | DDC 355/.031—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026590
ISBN: 978-1-138-18724-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-18725-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64328-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
To the five women in my life: my mother Zunia, my aunt Zipora, my sister Eti, my wife Liora and my daughter Adi.
Preface
This book overviews my research in the last three decades or so. The Introduction outlines the key themes of my work thus far. Chapters 2 to 8 reproduce some of my published articles. Chapter 9 presents my future research agenda on war and peace in the 21st century.
One of the major privileges provided by an academic life is getting the opportunity to teach and to do research in many places. I was fortunate enough to get the chance to spend extended time periods in quite a few American and Israeli universities, and also in a Canadian university. All these places were exciting in many senses, but the most important aspect was meeting so many wonderful friends and colleagues. Thus, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank a few of these people. This list is definitely not exhaustive and I apologize in advance if I forgot to mention quite a few people which fully deserve my gratitude.
The key starting stage of my academic life was the graduate school of Political Science at UC Berkeley. I would like to acknowledge the great help of my dissertation committee—Professors Aaron Wildavsky, George W. Breslauer, William Brinner and, above all, the great inspiration provided by the committee chair Professor Kenneth Waltz. Ken was always extremely supportive and helpful. His immense influence on my work has persisted even when I partly departed from a purely neo-realist analysis. Inspired by his teaching and research, I have tried to address big questions and to look for relatively parsimonious answers. Even though numerous people were helpful during the dissertation stage, I must acknowledge specifically Professors Ernst Hass, Nelson Polsby, Steven Spiegel, and Alexander George, and also Dennis Ross and my friends and colleagues Ronnie Lipschutz, Jeff Kopstein, Clay Moltz, and Jim Goldgeier. Hugh and Sunny Dewitt were the perfect host family and we are very grateful for that.
Following the studies at Berkeley, I have spent two fellowship years at Cambridge, MA. This exciting period would not have been possible without the support of Professor Samuel Huntington at Harvard and Professor Barry Posen at MIT. In addition, Steven Van Evera, Peter Katzenstein, Roger Smith, Bob Art, Stanley Hoffmann, Richard Betts, Chaim Kaufmann, Mike Desch, Bob Powell, Robert Jervis, Jack Snyder, Ted Hoff, Steve Weber, Ed Rhodes, Jonathan Shimsoni, Catherine Gjerdingen, and Saadia Tuval provided useful comments on the various drafts of revisions of the dissertation into a book manuscript and into journal articles.
When I moved back to Israel and started teaching at the department of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, numerous colleagues and students were extremely helpful on various article drafts and on the revisions toward the book – When Opponents Cooperate: Great Power Conflict and Collaboration in World Politics (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1995; 2nd paperback ed., 2002). Among these supportive individuals are Professors Raymond Cohen, Hillel Frisch, Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Uri Bialer, Nissan Oren, Galia Golan, Yair Evron, Emanuel Adler, Elie Podeh Sasson Sofer, Avraham Sela, Arie Kacowicz, Galia Press Bar-Nathan, Zeev Maoz, and Dan Horowitz. Among my former graduate students, I would like to note the great help of Uri Reznick (who also became my collaborator), Boaz Atzili, Yoav Gercheck, Ram Erez, Oded Lowenheim, and especially Korina Kagan. Korina was relentless in providing extremely smart and insightful advice—both on the substantive content as well as on editing numerous drafts. I appreciate her help very much.
Professor Aaron Frieberg made possible a stimulating fellowship year at the Center for International Studies at Princeton University in the mid-1990s. Professors Michael Doyle, George Downs, Robert Gilpin and Jack Levy of Rutgers University, and also World Politics editor Ilene Cohen were very helpful with regard to various revisions of numerous article drafts. I’m especially glad to note that my wonderful friendship with Professor Bill Wohlforth started in that year.
During a two-year teaching period at Duke University in the early 2000s, quite a few colleagues provided great comments and suggestions on various article drafts as well on the early drafts of my book manuscript – States, Nations and the Great Powers: the Sources of Regional War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Professors Peter Feaver, Bob Keohane, Joe Grieco, Hein Goemens, Chris Gelpi, Bruce Jentleson, Don Horowitz, Allan Kornberg, and also Dale Copeland of the University of Virginia went much beyond the call of duty in being very helpful with my research and also in developing great friendship which made our stay at Duke such a lovely two years for my family and myself.
When I moved to the University of Haifa, I was welcomed by a cheerful group of colleagues: Professors Uri Bar-Joseph, Michael Gross, Ben Mor, Zach Levey, Ranan D. Kuperman, and also Sammy Smooha, Asad Ghanem, and Gabi Ben-Dor, later joined by Brenda Sheffer, Udi Eran, Avi Ben-Zvi, Tali
Dingott-Alkopher, and Carmela Lutmar, and also Doron Navot, Daphna Canetti, Aviad Rubin, and Israel Waismel-Manor. My friend and colleague Professor Avi Kober was very helpful in many senses, including the numerous scholarly comments he provided on various papers and chapters. Some of my graduate students were extremely helpful as Research Assistants: Sharon Mankovitz, Erez Shoshani, Zvika Kaplan, and Ariel Kabiri. A few others became eventually collaborators, notably Dov Levin, Moran Mandelbaum, Ilai Saltzman, and Ziv Rubinovitz.
My following extended visits to North American universities included the University of Colorado, Boulder; Princeton University; Dartmouth College; and McGill University. I would like especially to acknowledge the contributions of Professors Andreas Wimmer, Tom Christensen, and Mark Bessinger of Princeton; Bill Wohlforth, Steve Brooks, Ben Valentino, Brian D. Greenhill, Jeff A. Friedman, John Carey, Jenny Lind, and Daryl Press of Dartmouth College; TV Paul, John A. Hall, and Michael Brecher of McGill; and Norrin Ripsman of Concordia; Melissa Willard-Foster of the University of Vermont; Jeff Taliaferro of Tufts; Charles Lipson and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago; Nuno Monteiro of Yale; Patrick M. Morgan of UC, Irvine; and Bill Thompson of Indiana University.
The Senior Editor at Routledge, Andrew Humphrys and the Senior Editorial Assistant, Hannah Ferguson, were always happy to help in the different stages of the transformation of this manuscript into a book. I would like to thank them for their patience and professionalism.
The following colleagues were kind enough to provide specific, detailed comments on the new chapters of this book: Dov Levin, Ziv Rubinovitz, Ariel Kabiri, Carmela Lutmar, Norrin Ripsman, Avi Kober, and Melissa WillardFoster. I would like to thank them for the great comments and suggestions.
I would like to thank the following institutions for their very generous financial support in the various stages of the research and writing of this book: the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University and its director, Prof. Mark R. Bessinger; the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and its chair, Prof. John Carey; the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; and, last but not least, the Israel Institute and its president, Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, and the executive director, Dr. Ariel Ilan Roth.
Finally, I owe a huge debt to members of my close family for their unlimited dedication, care, help, and love: foremost my late mother and father, Zunia and Zvi Miller, who brought me up as an Israeli patriot with a strong commitment to universal human values; my late aunt and uncle, Ziproa and Yitzhak Sarfi, who provided crucial help and support; my sister, Eti, who always cares and loves; and my wife, Liora, and my daughter, Adi, who not only persistently delivered unlimited love, but were always also willing to provide useful and insightful comments on my scholarly work in the many difficult moments which I experienced along the way.
Permissions and acknowledgements
The author and publishers would like to thank the following for granting permission to reproduce material in this work:
Benjamin Miller, “Explaining Great Power Cooperation in Conflict Management.” World Politics, vol. 45, no. 1 (October 1992), pp. 1–46. Copyright Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Benjamin Miller, “The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 38, no. 2 (March 2001), pp. 199–225. Reprinted with permissions by SAGE
Benjamin Miller, “Between the Revisionist and the Frontier State: Regional Variations in State War-Propensity.” Special Issue on Regionalism of the Review of International Studies, vol. 35 (2009), pp. 85–119. Copyright Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Benjamin Miller, “Does Democratization Pacify the State? The Cases of Germany and Iraq.” International Studies Quarterly (September 2012), vol. 56, issue 3, pp. 455–469. Copyright 2012 International Studies Association. Reprinted with permission of Wiley.
Benjamin Miller, “The Concept of Security: Should it be Redefined?” Special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 24, no. 2 ( June 2001), pp. 13–42. Reprinted with permission of Taylor & Francis. www.tandfonline.com
Benjamin Miller, “Democracy Promotion: Offensive Liberalism Vs. the Rest (of IR Theory).” Millennium, volume 38, issue 3 (Special Issue on Liberalism, May 2010), pp. 561–591. Reprinted with permissions by SAGE.
Benjamin Miller, “Explaining Changes in US Grand Strategy: 9/11, The Rise of Offensive Liberalism and the War in Iraq.” Security Studies, vol. 19 (March 2010), pp. 26–65. Reprinted with permission of Taylor & Francis. www.tandfonline.com
Benjamin Miller, “State of Imbalance: Why Countries Break Up.” on-line Snapshot, Foreign Affairs ( July 3 2014). Reproduced by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (Snapshot, July 3, 2014). Copyright (2002–2012) by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. www.ForeignAffairs.com
1 IntroductIon: the Key themeS of my WorK
Some major revisionist challenges to the international order have emerged in three different regions in the past few years: Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine; Chinese claims in the South China Sea and its efforts to take control of large parts of it; and the violent non-state challenges to the Middle East state-system.
There are distinctive regional elements in each of the cases, which shape security in the whole region and not only the dyadic relations emphasized so much in the literature. Still, these developments have major repercussions for the international system, while international politics affects also the regional processes. This demonstrates the relevance of this book’s subject, which analyzes the links between international and regional affairs. Moreover, a key component of my work, to be presented below, provides an integrated explanation of these three emerging challenges to the territorial integrity norm.
How did I come to be interested in these subjects of international and regional security?
I was born and raised in Israel. My childhood – like that of many other children in the region – was under the shadow of quite a few wars, infiltrations by Arab terrorist groups, and retaliatory activities by Israel. Naturally, I became interested in questions of conflict and security. My concern with questions of war and peace was dramatically reinforced during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As a young draftee I was a member of a tank company which was air-lifted from our training in the Negev desert in the South of Israel to reinforce the IDF (Israel Defense Force) on the northern front – in the Golan Heights – just a day before the start of the Syrian attack. Following almost a day of fierce fighting, I found myself in a small – and quite exposed – bunker with a few other soldiers surrounded by a massive Syrian force. We were left behind the advancing Syrian forces and it took almost two long days until the IDF re-occupied the area. Unfortunately, thirty-four young soldiers died
in the battles around this small hill. I continued to fight, taking part in the Israeli counter-invasion of Syria later in the war. Toward the end of the war I became an ad-hoc “expert” on Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the region, giving informal – and quite dilettante – “explanations” to my fellow troops on the chances for an extended cease-fire.
It was the first time I was exposed to the international politics of the Middle East. Partly inspired by this experience, a few years later I joined the diplomatic cadet course of the Israeli Foreign Service. After serving as a member of the Israeli delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York City, I headed to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. The other “real-world” experience came a bit later while I served in the reserves in the Strategic Planning department of the IDF.
Readers might ask why did I resign from the secure career in the Foreign Service and instead preferred a very insecure academic path? Indeed, I was tenured in the Foreign Ministry at the age of 26 and got a tenure at Hebrew University just about 15 years or so later (following graduate school, a few post-docs and the tenure track at the University). Moreover, I liked the exciting and challenging opportunities offered by serving my country overseas. The reason for the career change was more attraction than disenchantment. Studying in a leading American university, especially UC Berkeley, looked to me like a great intellectual challenge. While I couldn’t be sure that I’d land eventually in a good academic job after completing my PhD, I believed that it would be more fulfilling for me to develop an independent understanding of world affairs under the greater intellectual autonomy offered by academia than under the much greater constraints on one’s intellectual freedom in government service. On the whole, I was not disappointed. Indeed, numerous difficulties emerged along the demanding scholarly road. Yet, I was compensated by a thrilling journey of getting to know many wonderful colleagues from all over the world, visiting exciting places and, yes, working long hours, trying to overcome quite a few scholarly challenges.
Building on my earlier experiences, the graduate studies at Berkeley, especially my dissertation work under the late Professor Kenneth Waltz, inspired me to think theoretically on some of the key questions of international politics. I focused initially on the sources of international conflict and cooperation. The conceptual inspiration for addressing these – and related – issues was sharpened even further when an opportunity for a two-year fellowship landed for me in Cambridge, MA, following my graduate studies at Berkeley, first in the late Samuel Huntington’s Olin Fellowships in National Security at Harvard University and later with the Defense and Arms Control Program at MIT. Over the years I was also privileged to visit – as a Research Fellow or a Visiting Professor – a few other great US and Canadian universities: Princeton (twice); Duke; the University of Colorado, Boulder; McGill University; and Dartmouth College.
All these academic endeavors as well as conversations with a lot of leading –and emerging – scholars have clarified the depth of the theoretical debate, especially the realist-liberal divide and also the level-of-analysis question. Both realist and liberal
theories as well as the different levels of analysis seemed to provide powerful explanations of international phenomena such as conflict and cooperation. But how can all these theories be right if their theoretical claims are so different from each other? One idea which came to mind was to conceive of creative ways for bridging this divide. The key question then becomes how can a scholarly synthesis be formed building upon the insights of both (or more) competing theoretical camps while still advancing an overall parsimonious explanation? In other words, the explanation should include a minimal number of causal factors while providing a more satisfactory account of the phenomenon to be explained than the existing accounts.
The need for a synthesis becomes clear as we present in the following lines a brief sample of great variations between patterns of conflict and cooperation in a certain period and also transitions between discord and collaboration in different periods. Thus, my work introduces the conditions under which competing theories are more applicable. In this sense, in contrast to the traditional paradigmatic approaches in the field, my research focuses not on the question of whether a particular theoretical approach is applicable, but when. Some of my other contributions include a number of new conceptual typologies in war and peace and grand strategy and especially the explanation of the variations they address. Accordingly, I’ll present my key novel theory of the state-to-nation balance and describe its power to explain variations in and transitions between war and peace. I’ll also introduce a theoretical model which accounts for key changes in a state’s grand strategy.
Variations in conflict and cooperation: Some examples
While realist scholars in IR expect conflict to dominate international politics, the 19th-century Concert of Europe shows the possibility for cooperation even among all the great powers of the day. Patterns of international cooperation seemed also to get much stronger in the post-Cold War era. Idealist and many liberal observers indeed believe in the great potential for international cooperation, yet the 20th century witnessed some devastating and costly conflicts in the two world wars and also during the Cold War. Even the Concert of Europe eventually collapsed into large-scale violence in the 1854–56 Crimean War, later again in the wars of German unification, and most disastrously in World War I. In contrast, following World War I and, to a greater extent, in the aftermath of World War II, important international institutions have been established, presiding over collaboration in different issue-areas. Even during the Cold War itself some notable patterns of cooperation emerged between the superpowers; some of these patterns are analyzed in the first article below.
Such notable variations between conflict and collaboration raise intriguing questions about the sources of cooperation and rivalry in the international arena. These questions are highly relevant to the post-Cold War system where rising international cooperation has taken place. Examples include the containment of aggressive states such as Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, various international attempts to bring peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict and to prevent the proliferation of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), particularly nuclear weapons.
Especially following 9/11, multilateral cooperation against terrorism has grown considerably. On the whole, levels of inter-state warfare have declined markedly, while states have usually adhered to the territorial integrity norm. In various regions, greater levels of integration have been on the rise while globalization in the economic field reached unprecedented levels with huge levels of trade, foreign direct investment, and monetary transfers in addition to services, industries, people, and ideas crossing national and regional boundaries in high numbers.
At the same time, violent conflicts seem to persist or even to re-emerge in some regions such as the post-Soviet domain, the Middle East, and parts of Africa and Asia. More recently, great-power competition seems to be re-surfacing with the US and the EU in conflict with Russia over Ukraine and Syria and the US and China in disputes over the South China Sea, among other issues.
The end of the Cold War apparently signified some key transformations in world politics. It is quite important to identify which of the post-Cold War changes brought about higher levels of collaboration and which changes contributed to the re-emergence of conflict.
Knowing which changes mattered and how they mattered will help us expect future patterns of continuity and change in international conflict and cooperation. Bipolarity – the two-superpower world dominated by the US and the Soviet Union and their Cold War competition – was replaced by a unipolar world of a single superpower, the US. Which is the key post-Cold War change: this structural transition from bipolarity to unipolarity and perhaps now the gradual start of the shift to multipolarity? Or maybe the key development occurred at the domestic level –regime changes – the spread of democracy, especially in the early post-Cold War era and then the halting process of democratization in the post-Soviet region, no democratization in China and the turbulence of the Arab Spring? Other observers focus on what appear like some important ideational and normative transformations entertaining the potential for more cooperative and peaceful conduct and outcomes in world affairs.
Realists highlight the effects of structural factors – the anarchic international system and the distribution of capabilities – on key patterns of conflictual and cooperative behavior and war and peace outcomes (Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer 2001). In contrast, liberals and others focus mostly on unit-level factors such as the type of regime, and also the state economic structure (Russett and Oneal 2001). Constructivists, for their part, highlight the effects of the normative and ideational changes (Katzenstein 1996; Wendt 1999).1
resolving major Scholarly debates in Ir
This book of essays analyzes some of the key themes in the fields of international and regional security and the links between the two. My work focuses on explaining patterns of international conflict and cooperation, and the sources of war and peace. I account for continuity and change by synthesizing levels of analysis (in particular the international system and domestic politics).2 The field of International Relations is distinctive not only because it addresses competition in the real world of
international politics, but also because of the intense conflict in the academic world among its competing explanatory perspectives (the so-called “war of the isms”). My theoretical approach is to bridge the sharp and counterproductive divisions in the field through a rigorous integration of some of these competing perspectives. The goal is to explain phenomena that were previously explained by a host of distinctive and unconnected theories in a single coherent overarching framework. This approach is evident in my books and articles.
What are the sources of international conflict and cooperation? What is the most powerful explanation of variations between war and peace, especially on the regional level? What are the effects of the international system on regional conflicts? What best explains changes in grand strategy? How should we define the concept of security following the great changes in the post-Cold War era? These are among the key questions I have addressed for a quarter of a century. The essays in this book are some of the fruits of these efforts. In all of these questions there are tensions between two – or more – competing sets of explanations. In response, my work generates an integrative account or an alternative explanation while maintaining relatively parsimonious explanations.
Creating a synthesis draws on the insight that while each school is able to explain a certain type of major outcomes, it is unable to explain other important outcomes. Thus, there is a need to distinguish between different types of outcomes and then to look for their most powerful explanations.
Locating the most powerful explanation depends at least partly on the type of phenomenon to be explained. I argue that, in the area of conflict and cooperation, intended outcomes (notably premeditated wars and conflict resolution) are best accounted for by the unit-level factors, while unintended ones (such as inadvertent wars and tacit rules for the use of force) are explained by structural factors. Another important point is to identify the conditions under which realist or liberal factors will be more relevant. Here I will advance what I call “the state-to-nation balance” variable as a key condition for the relative prevalence of realist versus liberal factors. Thus, under a state-to-nation imbalance, realist dynamics of the balance of power, leading to competition and conflict, are more likely to dominate regional and international security. In contrast, under a state-to-nation balance, liberal factors (such as democracy and economic interdependence) can more easily warm the peace and make violent conflict unlikely.3
developing novel concepts and theories
The various essays here show some of the new concepts and theories which carry quite a bit of analytical, and in some cases also major explanatory, power. Notably, these include the “state-to-nation balance” as a key causal factor for explaining variations in regional war and peace. In addition, I have presented an original typology of war and peace composed of hot/cold outcomes (of hot war, cold war, cold peace and warm peace). Based on this distinction I am able to differentiate between the effects of the great powers vs. regional/domestic factors on regional security. I propose that the international factors affect the “cold” outcomes (cold
war and cold peace), while the regional/domestic factors influence the much more intense “hot” or “warm” outcomes (hot war and warm peace).
My work has also introduced a new typology of security approaches which includes under the same framework “offensive” and “defensive” liberalism alongside the well-established offensive and defensive realism. I also specify under what conditions each of these approaches is going to dominate the grand strategy of a great power. Thus, I constructed a theory of the sources of changes in grand strategy.
Table 1.1 highlights some of the key points developed in the Introduction and especially in the book’s essays.
Table 1.2 presents some major post-Cold War cases, which show the applicability of my contributions. Some of these will be addressed in the book’s final chapter.
table 1.1 Summary of Some of My Contributions to Major Debates in IR
The issue Competing theoriesMy explanation
Theme I(a): Sources of Conflict and Cooperation
Systemic vs. Unit-level causal factors
Theme I(b): Sources of War and Peace (discussed in this volume only briefly)
Theme II: Great Power Effects on Regional War and Peace
Theme III: Causes of Regional War/ Peace
Theme IV: Post-Cold War Security Concept
The role of Polarity vs. Military technology
Depends on the type of outcomes: System-level explains unintended outcomes (inadvertent wars and tacit rules for crisis management); Unit-level accounts for intended outcomes (premeditated wars and conflict resolution)
Polarity affects inadvertent escalations, while the type of military technology (conventional vs. nuclear) influences the likelihood of intended wars
Systemic vs. RegionalDepends on whether the outcome is “cold” war/peace (great powers’ influence) or “hot/warm” war/peace (regional factors)
Realist vs. LiberalThe regional state-to-nation balance
Traditionalists (focusing on the military and inter-state war) vs. Expanders (including much more, such as non-state actors and non-military issues as the environment and human security)
Development of the concept requires a distinction between the phenomenon to be explained and its explanation. The subject-matter is war and peace (includes not only war, but also peace, though excludes issues unrelated to large-scale violence as the traditionalists argue); the explanation should, however, include all relevant causes of war and peace (not just military causes of war, thus going beyond the traditionalists’ agenda)
The issue Competing theoriesMy explanation
Theme IV: Changes in Grand Strategy
External/Material vs. Ideational and Domestic factors
The external/material environment brokers the ideational competition among various approaches and selects which idea will dominate the state’s grand strategy; The causal chain: Balance of capabilities + Balance of threat à Domestic/Perceptions à Grand Strategy
table 1.2 The Relevance of My Contributions to Post-Cold War Examples
The Issue
Theme I: Sources of Conflict and Cooperation
Theme II: Great Power Effects on Regional War and Peace
Post-Cold War Examples
• Potential for inadvertent escalation under multipolar regions, notably the Middle East and East Asia despite the high economic interdependence in the latter region;
• Enhanced high-level cooperation among similar and moderate states (notably western democracies) despite realist predictions on rising conflicts in Europe and between it and the US with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the common Soviet threat
The endurance of the cold Israeli-Egyptian peace, potentially extended to all US allies in the ME under its security umbrella, even if it doesn’t resolve underlying conflicts;
Russia-West rivalry aggravates the conflict in Ukraine even if it didn’t create the underlying tensions between Ukrainian and Russian nationalism
Theme III: Causes of Regional War/Peace
Theme IV: Post-Cold War Security Concept
Theme IV: Changes in Grand Strategy
The state-to-nation imbalance produces current conflicts in the following regions: Russia – Ukraine in the post-Soviet region; post-Arab Spring ME – Syria, Iraq, ISIS; China, Taiwan and maritime disputes in East Asia based on historical/nationalist claims
Issues of war and peace still relevant in the 21st century under anarchy even if new sources of both violence and reconciliation emerge
From Realist during the Cold War to Defensive Liberal Grand Strategy in the 1990s and then after 9/11 to Offensive Liberalism, later transformed to Def. Realism due to the decline of the 9/11 threat and the rising constraints on US power
explaining a complex Phenomenon
As the following sections show, when trying to explain a complex and important phenomenon, I take the following steps:
• Developing a new classification of the phenomenon to be explained
• Selecting the key variables which best explain the different components of this new classification
• Establishing causal relations between the key explanator y f actors and the major sub-types of the phenomenon to be explained
• Examining these newly proposed causal relations empir ically in different inter national and regional security contexts
• Concluding under what conditions each class of the phenomenon is more likely to take place.
the four themes
More specifically, this volume will introduce the following four major themes and some of my key articles representing these themes (though some key representative articles are left out due to space constraints). By addressing each of these themes, my work has advanced some innovative contributions to the study of international and regional security. I also present at the end of the Introduction a new research project, which is elaborated in the final chapter of this volume.
Theme I: The Sources of Great Power Conflict and Cooperation
The first theme presents my original theory of great power conflict and cooperation by synthesizing the effects of systemic and domestic factors.4 This theory addresses in an alternative way some of the key issues debated in the literature in the last few decades, though they are still extremely relevant today as they deal with some fundamental subjects in the IR field: the level of analysis problem and the sources of states’ conflict and cooperation. The level of analysis as such is not a theory, but it classifies and presents competing causes or explanations of behavior and outcomes in international relations.5 While competing explanations of international conflict have been a persistent theme in International Relations, an intriguing development since the last decades of the 20th century has been the emergence of theoretical and empirical literature in IR, which tries to account for the sources of cooperation under anarchy.6
I explain the intended and unintended outcomes of both conflict and cooperation by addressing the level of analysis question and by developing the distinction between crisis management and conflict resolution. In crisis management rivals reconcile between two potentially competing goals: they try to avoid war, while, at the same time, protecting their interests by coercive threats and maneuvers, which necessarily poses the prospect of war. Conflict resolution is, however, more ambitious in the sense that it aims at resolving the underlying issues in conflict
among the rivals so that dangerous crises will not take place anymore. More specifically, the outcomes of crisis management – either failure or success – are affected by systemic/structural factors (notably, system polarity) rather than by unitlevel attributes (such as similarity and moderation of domestic regimes and ideologies). Failure by relatively moderate and similar powers may result in inadvertent wars, which are especially likely under multipolarity. Success by immoderate and dissimilar powers might generate tacit rules for regulation of the use of force. This is more probable under bipolarity.
At the same time, outcomes of conflict resolution are determined by the unitlevel elements. Similar and moderate powers are much more likely to succeed in cooperation in normal (non-crisis) diplomacy leading to the formation of great-power concerts and success in diplomatic resolution of conflicts.
This theory can explain the key differences in war and peace between the 19th-century Concert of Europe and the post-1945 Cold War. Major manifestations include the evolution of the unintended tacit rules for crisis management in the post-1945 period in contrast to the inadvertent escalation in the Crimean War (1854–56) and eventually also in World War I. On the other hand, the European Concert succeeded in conflict resolution in normal times, while the superpowers failed in conflict resolution during the Cold War.
Another major contribution of this theory is to define in a new way the distinctive role of bipolarity in relation to nuclear weapons in war prevention during the Cold War era.7 I propose that while polarity affects the likelihood of failure in crisis management and inadvertent wars, the nature of military technology influences the possibility of intended wars. Thus I advance the proposition that whereas intended wars were prevented during the Cold War by nuclear arms, these arms could not prevent an inadvertent war. Indeed, such a war could have erupted because of the nature of the unit-level attributes of the superpowers, changes in the balance of forces, entanglement in allies’ local wars, and, above all, miscalculations and loss of control in times of crises resulting from all these factors. Yet, because of its clarity and simplicity, bipolarity helped to prevent an unintended war by facilitating the evolution of tacit rules for crisis management and the termination of local wars, and by reducing the destabilizing effects of the unit-level factors.
Articles for Theme I: The Sources of Great Power Conflict and Cooperation8
“Explaining Great Power Cooperation in Conflict Management,” World Politics, vol. 45, no. 1 (October 1992), pp. 1–46.
This essay presents a theoretical model for explaining great power cooperation in conflict management. The model refines recent cooperation theory by distinguishing between types and degrees of international cooperation. It also challenges the dominance of decision-making analysis in the crisis literature and supplements it with structural factors. In brief, the model suggests that whereas crisis cooperation (crisis management) is conditioned by structural elements, cooperation
in normal diplomacy (conflict resolution) depends on state attributes and cognitive factors. Such a model can account for the fact that unintended wars can break out between relatively moderate and similar actors whereas immoderate and dissimilar states can manage crises effectively. At the same time the model explains why some states are able to cooperate in normal diplomacy better than others, even when more powers are engaged in the cooperation. The high number of participants could supposedly make it very difficult to pursue cooperation because it may constrain coordination (notably under a multipolar structure). Despite this structural obstacle, however, the parties are able to cooperate due to the moderating effects of the unit-level factors highlighted by the model.9
Theme II: International Effects on Regional Conflicts
The second theme addresses the international effects on regional conflicts, esp. the effects of different types of great-power engagement on regional conflicts and on their resolution.10 For that purpose, one must address the debate between OutsideIn vs. Inside-Out explanations of regional outcomes. Scholars of regional war and peace have tended to privilege either the global/systemic or regional/domestic level of analysis. These approaches are typically regarded as irreconcilable. Each of the two approaches provides plausible arguments for the importance of its preferred set of factors (global or regional). Indeed, the weakness of both approaches lies in their failure to accommodate the other set of factors. It is more reasonable to assume that both types of factors (regional and global) affect regional conflicts (Vayrynen l984; Wriggins l992). Thus, the fact that dramatic changes have taken place in different regions more or less at the same time following a major international change – the end of the Cold War – shows the important effects of international factors on regional conflicts (Miller and Kagan l997; Miller 2002). At the same time, the different directions of these changes, and the great variations across regions in the post-Cold War era in terms of war and peace, notably between peaceful relations in Western Europe and armed conflicts in the Balkans and some parts of the Third World (Goldgeier and McFaul l992), especially the Middle East, South Asia and parts of Africa, indicate the significance of regional factors in affecting regional war and peace. Thus, it seems intuitive that both global and regional factors are influential in producing regional outcomes. The difficulty lies in building a coherent theoretical framework that integrates these global and regional factors in a single theory. This is one of the major objectives of Theme II.
I developed a distinction between hot and cold outcomes depending on the intensity of the war or the peace. While the great powers affect the cold outcomes of cold war and cold peace, the regional/domestic factors bring about the hot/warm outcomes of hot war and warm peace. I also distinguish between four types of greatpower regional engagement. On the whole, great-power competition and disengagement aggravate regional conflicts, leading to regional cold wars, while cooperation and hegemony reduce conflicts, thus producing a transition to regional cold peace. Still, the underlying sources of the regional conflicts (esp. hot wars) and
of their full-blown resolution (warm peace) depend on regional/domestic factors as discussed in Theme III.
The Article for Theme II: International Effects on Regional Conflicts11
“The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 38, no. 2 (March 2001), pp. 199–225.
This article examines the global sources of regional transitions from war to peace in two types of region: unstable (war-prone) and stable (not war-prone). I argue that the sources of regional hot wars are regional and domestic rather than global. Similarly, the possibility of reaching a high-level “warm peace” (i.e. conflict resolution) depends on regional and domestic forces. Accordingly, there is only limited influence of competing great powers on stable regions which are not warprone. Yet, global factors can make a difference with regard to unstable war-prone regions depending on the type of great-power engagement. The great powers can bring about a lower level of “cold peace” through conflict reduction if the greatpower intervention in war-prone regions is hegemonic or cooperative. If, however, the type of great power regional engagement is competitive, then the great powers play a permissive or even aggravating role with respect to the local violence in such regions. At the same time, great-power competition can bring about regional-war termination, which, in the absence of effective conflict resolution or peacemaking, leads to a regional cold war. Great-power hegemony or concert can also increase the likelihood of a transition to warm peace in stable regions, especially if they are populated by young democracies. The article applies the thesis to regional-war termination by the superpowers in the Middle East during the Cold War era. I also discuss the effects of US hegemony on the emergence of cold peace in the Middle East. The pacifying effects of great-power concert and hegemony were also shown in another war-prone region – the Balkans during the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, both the contribution of international factors to regional peace, and the limitations of this contribution, can be seen in the post–World War II transition of Western Europe to warm peace.
Theme III: The Sources of Regional War and Peace
The third theme analyzes the sources of regional war and peace. It highlights the effects of what I call the “state-to-nation balance” as a key cause of regional war- and peace-propensities.12 Here I address the major/classical debate on the causes of war and peace. A voluminous literature has addressed this hugely important issue in a number of disciplines, notably IR. 13 A key element in the IR literature is the challenge to account for the behavior of the key actor in the international system – “the state” (or the “nation-state”). The conception of the nation-state is as a unitary actor. Mainstream IR theory, including most recent constructivist theory, however, overlooks the variations in its unitary nature. Indeed, the nation-state is in many regions not a unified actor.14 Although IR theory uses the terms state and
nation interchangeably, they are not identical. In practice, in some regions they are almost the same, but in other regions they are not, and there might be even major differences between them. This variation in the state-to-nation balance is a key factor in accounting for regional variations in war and peace.
This balance refers first of all to the extent of congruence between the division of the region into states with formal boundaries and the national affiliations and loyalties of the key groups in the region. The other key factor in this balance is the level of stateness in the region: are the states in the region strong in their capacity to maintain law and order and to deliver services or are they weak or even failed states with malfunctioning and ineffective institutions and without a monopoly over the means of violence?
The State-to-Nation Imbalance and the War-Propensity of States
The state-to-nation imbalance affects both the motivation for resort to violence and the opportunity to do so.15 National incongruence affects the level of motivation by incorporating substantive issues of war such as territory, boundaries, state creation and state making. External incongruence, in particular, affects motivations for interstate war related to nationalist revisionist ideologies such as wars of national unification and irredentism. Thus, the state-to-nation imbalance provides an explanation for many of the territorial conflicts among states. The extent of domestic incongruence affects the motivation for domestic wars of secession. The degree of state strength, for its part, exercises major effects both on the capacity of states to wage international wars as well as on the opportunities to initiate civil wars and for external intervention in the territory of the state. Accordingly, we get four combinations of types of states and types of violent conflicts in which they tend to be involved, if at all, as discussed in the Review of International Studies article below. These causal relations affect the likelihood of the implementation of the predictions of the various post-Cold War approaches addressed in the final chapter of this book. This theory is able to explain why some regions are prone to war while others remain at peace. It offers a theoretical explanation for the differences in levels of war and peace among different regions. The lower the state-to-nation balance, the higher the war proneness of the region, while the higher the balance, the warmer the peace. I have examined the theory of regional war and peace through case studies of the post-1945 Middle East; the Balkans and South America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and post-1945 Western Europe and South Asia and also the American expansion in the 19th century.16 The study (especially my 2007 book) also used comparative data from all regions and concluded by proposing ideas on how to promote peace in war-torn regions.
Various types or levels of regional peace are the result of different ways of addressing this underlying cause. In other words, whether, how and to what extent the question of the state-to-nation imbalance is resolved determines the type or level of regional peace. This is closely related to the second theme above because the external great powers are able and willing at most to mitigate – rather than resolve
– the state-to-nation problem, and thus they may only affect lower-level cold outcomes, which do not demand the resolution of the state-to-nation problem. In contrast, in the higher-level warm peace, the state-to-nation problems are resolved (or transcended), and therefore such high-level peace has to be generated by the regional actors themselves. Thus, global elements can produce cold peace, but it will be of a different quality than a warm peace based on domesticregional factors. The idea is that the higher the level of peace, the more demanding it is with regard to resolving the regional state-to-nation problems; hence, the requirement to move beyond global mechanisms and to rely on the appropriate regional-domestic factors.
Some of the key contributions of this theory are the following:
First, the theory is able to explain both civil wars and inter-state wars by the same conceptual framework of the “state-to-nation balance” – whereas usually the literature explains only one of these types of war.
Second, the theory explains regional dynamics of war/peace. These dynamics are overlooked in the literature, which focuses either on the international system or on dyads.
Third, the study distinguishes between types of war/peace (cold/hot war and peace) and thus is also able to account for the different dynamics in regions like Europe and East Asia. Both are “peaceful” according to quantitative data-sets which focus on the number of casualties, but in contemporary East Asia there are also quite a few intense conflicts and crises, which are missing in today’s Europe (excluding the post-Soviet region). Thus, in my terms Europe enjoys warm peace, while East Asia is in cold peace and in recent years it might even have moved toward some level of a cold war situation following the more assertive Chinese behavior.
Fourth, the bargaining literature focuses on dyads and thus is unable to account for multi-actor/regional conflicts, which my theory is able to explain.
Finally, the theory implies that “proxy wars” – regional wars induced by the great powers to serve their global interests – are an infrequent phenomenon. This is because the underlying causes of regional hot wars are local/domestic factors rather than global. Similarly, the theory suggests that an “imposed peace” by the great powers can’t be a lasting warm peace.This kind of peace can be generated only by the regional actors themselves even if the great powers can provide some crucial help for producing a cold peace.
Articles for Theme III: Sources of Regional War and Peace17
1. “Between the Revisionist and the Frontier State: Regional Variations in State War-Propensity.” Special Issue on Regionalism of the Review of International Studies, vol. 35 (2009), pp. 85–119. This article explains variations in state war-propensity. I introduce a new typology of state war-proneness based on four major types of states: revisionist, failed, frontier,
and status-quo. The major contribution of this essay is the argument that the combined effect of variations in the extent of success in state-building (strong or weak states) and nation-building (nationally congruent or incongruent) shapes the level and the type of state violence by producing different categories of states with regard to their war-propensity. Strong but nationally incongruent states generate revisionist states, which initiate aggressive/expansionist wars. The combination of state strength and national congruence leads to a status-quo state. Weakness and incongruence bring about civil wars and foreign intervention in “failed” states. Weak but nationally congruent states produce the “frontier state” with boundary and territorial wars, but also with a reasonable likelihood of evolution of statusquo orientation over time. I focus here on key examples of these types of states, especially from two regions: Iraq and Lebanon in a highly war-prone region – the post-World War II Middle East; and Argentina and Brazil in a more peaceful one, at least in the 20th century – South America, although these states experienced quite a number of wars in the 19th century.
2. “Does Democratization Pacify the State? The Cases of Germany and Iraq,” International Studies Quarterly (September 2012), vol. 56, issue 3, pp. 455–469. This paper asks the following question: Does democratization pacify states –and thus their respective regions – or does it make them more war-prone? Specifically, the paper attempts to account for two types of puzzles: one is theoretical, the other is empirical. The theoretical puzzle is with regard to the democratic peace theory and the counter-argument that democratization leads to war. The empirical puzzle refers to regions which democratized and became more peaceful (South America in the l980s; Central Europe in the l990s) and regions which democratized and became more violent (the Balkans and parts of the former Soviet Union in the l990s). My argument focuses on what I define as the “state-to-nation balance” in a given region. This balance incorporates both the issue of state strength (weak or strong) and the extent of congruence between political boundaries and national identifications in a certain region. Consequently, when democratization takes place under a state-to-nation balance, it tends to have stabilizing effects and warms the peace. In contrast, under a state-to-nation imbalance, it is probable that democratization will have de-stabilizing effects. Democratization is, therefore, at best an intervening variable, and in some cases has no major effects on war and peace; at any rate, it is not the underlying cause of either large-scale violence or peacemaking. To illustrate these propositions, I focus on the changes which Germany and Iraq – two key powers in their respective regions – have gone through since WWI until today. The study looks at the effects of their state-to-nation balance and level of democratization on their tendencies toward war and peace.
Theme IV: Grand Strategy, Intervention and National Security
The fourth section deals with some key issues of international security: the origins of grand strategy, democracy promotion, the concept of security and whether it
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thousand feet, and Lakaan, which is regarded as the highest in that chain, is supposed to be only six thousand. The soil appears to be very infertile, yet when the sun was approaching the western horizon, and the cumuli, floating in the pure air, slowly drew along their changing shadows over the innumerable hills and valleys, the whole scene was nearly as delightful as my first view of the tropics in coming up the Strait of Sunda. There is no road in the interior of the island, and every one who will travel the shortest distance, must go on horseback along the sandy beaches.
This afternoon we passed Pulo Gula Batu, “Sugar-Loaf Island.” It is quite high, with steep, almost perpendicular sides, which have a white, chalky appearance, and appear to be composed of strata of coral rock, which would indicate that it had recently been elevated above the sea. At sunset we entered Ombay Passage, the one that ships from England and America usually choose when going to China in the western monsoon, and frequently when returning in the eastern monsoon. One was just then drifting down into the Indian Ocean, on her homeward voyage. This was the first vessel we had seen since we passed down Sapi Strait, and left the Java Sea. It was then nearly calm, and yet I saw flying-fish come out of the water and go a considerable distance before plunging into it again, thus proving that they must sustain themselves in the air chiefly by a vibrating motion of their great pectoral fins. The sun was now sinking behind the high, dark peaks of the island of Pintar.
At daylight next morning we were steaming into a little bay surrounded by hills of fifteen hundred to two thousand feet. At the head of the bay and around its southern shore extended a narrow strip of level land, bordering the bases of these high hills. On the low land are two miserable forts, and a few houses and native huts. These comprise the city of Dilli, the Portuguese capital in all these waters. Of all the nations in Europe, the Portuguese were the first to discover the way to the Indies by sea. Then, for a time, they enjoyed an undisputed monopoly over the Eastern trade; but now the northern half of this island, the eastern end of Floris, the city of Macao in China, and Goa in Hindustan, are the only places of importance in all the East that continue in their hands. The common,
or low Malay language, has been more affected by the Portuguese than any other nation, for the simple reason that those early navigators brought with them many things that were new to the Malays, who therefore adopted the Portuguese names for those articles. The last governor of this place had run away a few months before we arrived, because he had received no pay for half a year, though his salary was only five hundred guilders per month; and a merchant at Macassar told me that, when he arrived at that city, he did not have the means to pay his passage back to Europe. The first inquiry, therefore, that was made, was whether we had brought a new governor. The captain’s reply was, that he had but one passenger in the first cabin, and the only place he appeared to care to see in that region was the coral reef at the mouth of the harbor.
The native boats that came off with bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges, and fowls, were all very narrow, only as wide as a native at the shoulders. Each was merely a canoe, dug out of a single small tree, and built up on the sides with pieces of wood and palm-leaves. They were all provided with outriggers. It was then low water, and the reef was bare. It had not been my privilege to visit a coral reef, and I was most anxious to see one, but I could not make up my mind to risk myself in such a dangerous skiff. The captain, with his usual kindness, however, offered me the use of one of his large boats; and as we neared the reef, and passed over a wide garden richly-tinted with polyps, with here and there vermilion star-fishes scattered about, and bright-hued fishes darting hither and thither like flashes of light, a deep thrill of pleasure ran along my nerves, which I shall never forget to the end of my days. Here in an hour I collected three species of beautiful star-fishes, and sixty-five kinds of shells, almost all of the richest colors. The coral rocks, thus laid bare by the receding tide, were all black, and not white, like the fragments of coral seen on shores. This reef is scarcely covered at high water, and therefore breaks off all swell from the ocean; but, unfortunately, the entrance is narrow, and the harbor is too small for large ships. Only two vessels were there at that time. One was a brig from Amboina, that had come for buffaloes, or for sapis, and the other was a small topsail schooner from Macassar, that had come for coffee, which is raised in considerable quantities on the plateau back
of Dilli, and is brought down on the backs of horses. Long lines of them were seen ascending and descending the winding paths on the steep hill-sides back of the village. These declivities were sparsely covered with trees, but a thick grove of cocoa-nut palms grew on the low land bordering the bay. The name Dilli, according to Mr. Crawfurd, is identical with that of the Malay state on the northeastern side of Sumatra, which we call Delli, and he suspects from this fact that this area was settled by a colony of Malays from Sumatra in the earliest times. The word Timur, in the Malay, means “East,” and this island was probably the limit of their voyages in that direction, hence its name. Immediately off the harbor of Dilli lies Pulo Kambing, or Goat Island, a common name for many islands in the archipelago. On both this island and Pintar the highest peaks are at the southern end. North of Dilli the coast is steep, and the mountains rise abruptly from the sea. The sides of all these elevations are deeply scored with valleys that have been formed by the denuding action of rain.
From Dilli we steamed northward along the southeast coast of Wetta, a high, mountainous island. Its coasts are occupied by Malays, and its interior by a black, frizzled-haired people, allied to the inhabitants of Timur. The bloody practice of “head-hunting” still exists among them. North of Timur is Kissa, the most important island in this part of the archipelago. In the early part of the present century this was the seat of a Dutch residency. It is a low island, and the rice and maize consumed by its inhabitants are chiefly imported from Wetta. Its people, however, carry on a very considerable trade with the surrounding islands, and are said to be far in advance of the natives of Amboina in point of industry. Southeast of Kissa lies Letti, for the most part high and hilly, but level near the sea. Kloff[24] describes the natives as tall and well formed, and having light-brown complexions. The men wear no other dress than a piece of cloth wrapped around the waist. The women sometimes wear, in addition to this dress, a kabaya, open in front. Polygamy is not found, and adultery is punishable with death or slavery. When the Dutch occupied these islands, they induced the natives to change these sentences into exile to the Banda Islands, where men were needed to cultivate the nutmeg-trees. Neither Mohammedanism nor
Hinduism has been introduced into these islands; they only pay homage to an image of human shape placed on a heap of stones that has been raised under a large tree near the centre of the village. When a marriage or death, or any remarkable event occurs, a large hog or buffalo, which has been kept and fattened for the purpose, is slaughtered. They are especially anxious to obtain elephants’ teeth, and hoard them up as the choicest treasures.
The morning after leaving Dilli, Roma appeared on our starboard hand. It is very high and mountainous. In 1823 it suffered very severely from a violent hurricane, which also caused a frightful destruction on Letti. On the latter island the cocoa-nut trees were levelled to the ground over considerable areas. This disaster was followed by a drought, which destroyed all their crops, and produced great mortality among the cattle, through lack of food. The hurricane also caused the bees to desert the island for a time—a serious loss to the inhabitants, as wax and honey are among their chief exports. These are taken to the Arru Islands, and thence to Macassar and Amboina. When a chief dies, his wife takes his place in the council, a privilege rarely granted to a woman among these Eastern nations. East of Letti is Lakor, a dry coral bank, raised twenty feet above the sea.
Damma soon after came into view. It is also high and mountainous, and has a lofty volcanic peak at its northeastern extremity. In 1825 it was pouring forth great quantities of gas. At its foot is a sulphur-spring, such as exist at many places in Java and Celebes, in the immediate vicinity of existing volcanic action. The doctor of Captain Kloff’s ship, the Dourga, sent some of the crew to bathe in this spring, and he states that “though they were so affected with rheumatism as to be not only unfit for duty but in a state of great misery, the use of this water contributed greatly to the improvement of their health.” Springs of this kind are found in the district of Pekalongan, west of Mount Prau, and are frequented by many foreigners, but I never heard that any remarkable cure has ever been effected by the use of their waters. The nutmeg-tree grows wild on Damma, and the canari also thrives here. Thirty years after the Dutch deserted this island, the whole population were found to have
completely relapsed into barbarism, but some of the natives of Moa, Letti, Roma, and Kissa, continue to be Christians, and five or six native schoolmasters are now located among those islands. Southeast of Damma lies Baba. Its people have the odd custom of rubbing lime into their hair, even from infancy. An English vessel that was trading here was boarded by these wild natives, and all her crew were butchered. Another vessel suffered a like fate at Timur-laut, that is, “Timur lying to seaward,” an island about one hundred miles long, and one-third as wide in its broadest part. It is customary here for each family to preserve the head of one of their ancestors in their dwelling, and, as if to remind them all of his valorous deeds and their own mortality, this ghastly skull is placed on a scaffold opposite the entrance. When a young woman marries, each ankle is adorned with heavy copper rings, “to give forth music as she walks.” Their war customs are like those of the Ceramese. It is said that among the mountains of this island a black, frizzled-haired people exist. If this should prove true, they will probably be found to be like the inhabitants of Timur and Ombay, and not referable to the Papuan type. The inhabitants of all these islands are constantly separated by petty feuds, or carrying on an open warfare with each other.
We were now fully in the Banda Sea, and on the 28th of June the summit of the Gunong Api, or “Burning Mountain” of that group, appeared above the horizon, but, as I afterward revisited these beautiful islands, a description of them is deferred to a future page. As we steamed away from the Bandas, we passed out of the region of continuous dry weather and began to enter one where the wet and dry seasons are just opposite to what they are in all the wide area extending from the middle part of Sumatra to the eastern end of Timur, including the southern half of Borneo and the southern peninsulas of Celebes. In all that region the eastern monsoon brings dry weather, though occasional showers may occur; but at Amboina, and on the south coast of Ceram and Buru, this same wind bears along clouds that pour down almost incessant floods. At Amboina I was assured that sometimes it rained for two weeks at a time, without apparently stopping for five minutes, and from what I experienced myself I can readily believe that such a phenomenon is not of rare occurrence.
In the northern part of Celebes, at Ternate, and in the northern part of Gillolo, and the islands between it and New Guinea, and also on the shores of the western part of that great island, the wet and dry seasons are not well defined. This exceptional area is mostly included within the parallels of latitude two degrees north and two degrees south of the equator. North of it the wind at this time of year is from the southwest, instead of from the southeast. This dry southeast monsoon bends round Borneo, and becomes the southwest monsoon of the China Sea, supplying abundant rains to the northern parts of Borneo and the Philippines. It has its origin near Australia, and thence it pushes its way first toward the northwest and then toward the northeast across the whole Philippine group. It appears in Timur in March, and reaches the southern part of the China Sea in May.
CHAPTER V. AMBOINA.
June 29th.—We are this morning approaching Amboina, the goal of my long journey, and the most important of the Spice Islands. Amboina is both the name of the island and its chief city. In form the island is nearly elliptical, and a deep, narrow bay, fourteen miles long, almost divides it longitudinally into two unequal parts. That on the west, which forms the main body of the island, is called Hitu; and that on the east Laitimur, which in Malay means “the eastern leaf.” Both are composed of high hills which rise up so abruptly from the sea that, though this bay for one-third of its length is nearly four miles wide, yet it perfectly resembles a frith or broad river. Along the shores are many little bays where praus are seen at anchor, and on the beaches are small groves of the cocoa-nut palm, which furnish food and shade to the natives dwelling in the rude huts beneath them. Higher up the hill-sides, large, open areas are seen covered with a tall, coarse grass; but the richly-cultivated fields on the flanks of the mountains in Java nowhere appear. These grassy hill-sides are the favorite burial-places with the Chinese, for they rarely or never carry back the bones of their friends to the sacred soil of the Celestial Land from these islands as they do from California. Such graves are always horseshoe-shaped, just as in China, and their white walls make very conspicuous objects on the green hill-sides. Above the open areas, in the wooded regions, we notice a few places filled with small trees that have a peculiar bright-green foliage. Those are the gardens of clove-trees which have made this island so famous throughout the world.
It is now the rainy season here, and thick rain-clouds at first completely enshrouded us; but as we passed up the bay they slowly broke away, and revealed on either hand high hills and mountains, which, on the Hitu side, began to assume a most wonderful
appearance. The strong easterly wind pushed away the thick, white clouds from the exposed sides of all these elevations, and caused them to trail off to the west like smoke from hundreds of railroad engines, until every separate peak appeared to have become an active volcano that was continually pouring out dense volumes of white, opaque gas; and as these hills rose tier above tier to high, dark mountains which formed the background, the whole scene was most awe-inspiring, especially in this land where eruptions and earthquakes are frequent, and only a comparatively thin crust separates one from the earth’s internal fires.
Near the mouth of the bay the water is very deep, but eight or nine miles within it is sufficiently shallow for an anchorage. Here also the hills on the east or Laitimur side are separated from the beach by a triangular, level area, about a paal[25] long, and on this has been built the city of “Amboina” or “Ambon,” in the native language. Viewed from the anchorage, the city has a pleasing appearance, its streets being broad, straight, and well shaded. About half way from its southern end is Fort Nieuw Victoria. Landing at a quay we passed through this old stronghold out into a pretty lawn, which is surrounded by the Societeit, or Club-House, and the residences of officials and merchants. The total population of the city is about fourteen thousand. Of these, seven hundred are Europeans, three hundred Chinese, and four hundred Arabs. The others are natives. The entire population of the island is about thirty-two thousand. Like all the cities and larger settlements in the Dutch possessions, Amboina is divided into a native kampong or quarter, a Chinese kampong, and a quarter where foreigners reside. The natives are directly under the control of a rajah or prince, and he, in turn, is responsible to a Dutch assistant resident. In a similar manner the Chinese are subject to a “Captain China,” who, in the larger cities, has one or more assistants or “lieutenants.” He, likewise, must report himself to the assistant resident. In this way each separate people is immediately ruled by officers chosen from its own nation, and consequently of the same views and prejudices. Justice is thus more perfectly administered, and the hostile feelings which each of these
bigoted Eastern nations always entertains against every other are thus completely avoided.
On leaving Batavia, Cores de Vries & Co., who then owned all the mail-steamers in the Netherlands India, kindly gave me a letter of credit so that I might draw on their agents from place to place, and wholly avoid the trouble and danger of carrying any considerable sum with me. This letter further recommended me to the kind attention of all their employés, and Mr. Var Marle, their agent at this place, at once said that I must make his house my home while I remained in that part of the archipelago; and this unexpected and very generous invitation was still more acceptable, as both he and his good lady spoke English. A chamber was assigned me, and a large room in an adjoining out-building, where I could store my collections and pack them up for their long transit to America; and thus I was ready to commence my allotted work without the least delay. I then called on His Excellency the Governor of the Spice Islands, who received me in the most cordial manner, and said that boats, coolies, and whatever other assistance I might need, would be immediately ordered whenever I wished.
Amboina has long been famous for its shells, and the Dutch officials have been accustomed for years to purchase very considerable quantities as presents for their friends in Europe. The natives, therefore, are in the habit of gathering them for sale, and a few have become extensive traders in these beautiful objects. It was soon noised abroad that a foreigner had come from a land even farther away than “Ollanda,” as they call Holland, solely for the purpose of purchasing shells; and immediately, to my great delight, basketful after basketful of the species that I had always regarded as the rarest and most valuable began to appear, every native being anxious to dispose of his lot before his fellows, and thus obtain a share of the envied shining coin, which I was careful to display to their gloating eyes before I should say I had bought all I desired. Competition, here as elsewhere, had a wonderfully depressing effect on the price of their commodities, judging from what they asked at first and what they were finally willing to take. The trade, however, became more brisk day after day, and some natives came from long
distances partly to sell their shells and partly to see whether “that man” could be sane who had come so far and was spending, according to their ideas, so much money for shells. At first I bought them by the basketful, until all the more common species had been obtained, and then I showed the natives the figures in Rumphius’s “Rariteit Kamer” of those species I still wished to secure, and at the same time offered them an extra price for others not represented in that comprehensive work. One species I was particularly anxious to secure alive. It was the pearly nautilus. The shell has always been common, but the animal has seldom been described. The first was found at this place, and a description and drawing were given by Rumphius. Afterward a dissection and drawing were given by Professor Owen, of the British Museum, and his monograph probably contains the most complete anatomical description that has ever been made of any animal from a single specimen. He worked, as he himself described it to me, with a dissecting-knife in one hand and a pencil in the other. So little escaped his pen and pencil, that very little information has been added by later dissections. I was so anxious to secure one of these rare animals, that I felt that, if I should obtain one and a few more common species, I could feel that my long journey had been far from fruitless. Only the second day after my arrival, to my inexpressible delight, a native brought me one still living. Seeing how highly I prized it, he began by asking ten guilders (four Mexican dollars) for it, but finally concluded to part with it for two guilders (less than one Mexican dollar), though I should certainly have paid him fifty if I could not have obtained it for a less price. It had been taken in this way: the natives throughout the archipelago rarely fish with a hook and line as we do, but, where the water is too deep to build a weir, they use instead a bubu, or barrel of open basket-work of bamboo. Each end of this barrel is an inverted cone, with a small opening at its apex. Pieces of fish and other bait are suspended from within, and the bubu is then sunk on the clear patches of sand on a coral reef, or more commonly out where the water is from twenty to fifty fathoms deep. No line is attached to those on the reefs, but they are taken up with a gaff. Those in deep water are buoyed by a cord and a long bamboo, to one end of which a stick is fastened in a vertical position, and to this
is attached a piece of palm-leaf for a flag, to make it more conspicuous. In this case it happened that one of these bubus was washed off into deeper water than usual, and the nautilus chanced to crawl through the opening in one of the cones to get at the bait within. If the opening had not been much larger than usual, it could not possibly have got in. It was at once placed in a can containing strong arrack. I then offered twice as much for a duplicate specimen, and hundreds of natives tried and tried, but in vain, to procure another during the five months I was in those seas. They are so rare even there, that a gentleman, who had made large collections of shells, assured me that I ought not to expect to obtain another if I were to remain at Amboina three years. Rumphius, who usually is remarkably accurate in his descriptions of the habits of the mollusks he figures, says it sometimes swims on the sea; but this statement he probably received from the natives, who made such a mistake because many empty shells are frequently found floating on the ocean. When the animal dies and becomes separated from the shell, the latter rises to the surface of the sea on account of the air or other gas contained in the chambers. It is then swept away by the wind and tide to the shore of a neighboring island. When the natives are questioned as to where these shells come from, they invariably reply, “The sea;” and as to where the animal lives, they merely answer, “Dalam,” “In the deep.” The dead shells are so abundant on these islands, that they can be purchased in any quantity at from four to ten cents apiece.
My first excursion from the city of Amboina was with a gentleman to a large cocoa-garden, which he had lately planted on the high hills on the Hitu side. A nice boat or orangbai—literally, “a good fellow”— took us over the bay to the little village of Ruma Tiga, or “Three Houses.” The boatmen were gayly dressed in white trousers with red trimmings, and had red handkerchiefs tied round their heads. A small gong and a tifa or drum, made by tightly stretching a piece of the hide of a wild deer over the end of a short, hollow log, gave forth a rude, wild music, and at least served to aid the boatmen in keeping time as they rowed. Occasionally, to break the monotony of their labor, they sang a low, plaintive song. Instead of steering straight for the point which we wished to arrive at on the opposite side of the
bay, our helmsman kept the boat so near the shore that we really passed round the head of the bay, twice as far as it would have been in a right line. This mode of hassar steering, or, as the sailors express it in our language, “hugging the shore,” I afterward found was the one universally adopted in all this part of the archipelago. When we landed, I had the pleasure to find, just beneath low-water level, hundreds of black sea-urchins, with needle-like spines nearly a foot long, and so extremely sharp and brittle, that it was very difficult to get the animals out of the little cavities in the rocks where they had anchored themselves fast with their many suckers. Near by, the villagers were busy boiling down the sap of the sagaru-palm for the sugar it contains. According to my taste it is much like maple-sugar. Up to the time that Europeans first came to the East, this was the only kind of sugar known to the natives, and large quantities of it are still consumed among the islands here in the eastern part of the archipelago.
From the beach, a narrow footpath led through a grove of palmtrees into a thick forest, and then zigzagged up a steep hill-side, until it reached a small plateau. Here were the young cocoa-trees, filled with their long, red, cucumber-like fruit. The original forest had been felled and burned, and these trees had been planted in its place. Almost the only difficulty in cultivating the cocoa-tree here is in removing the grass and small shrubs which are continually springing up; yet the natives are all so idle and untrustworthy that a gentleman must frequently inspect his garden himself, if he expects it to yield a fair return. This tree,[26] the Theobroma cacao, Lin., is not a native of the East. It was discovered by the Spaniards in Mexico during the conquest of that country by Cortez. From Mexico they took it to their provinces in South America and the West India Islands. At present it is cultivated in Trinidad, and in Guiana and Brazil. It probably thrives as well here as in Mexico, and is now completely supplanting the less profitable clove-tree.
The chief article of food of the natives working in this garden is our own yellow Indian corn, another exotic, also introduced into the East by Europeans. It is now raised in every part of the archipelago in such quantities as to form one of the chief articles of food for the
natives. The Dutch never use it, and generally think it strange that it should be made into bread for the very nicest tables in our land. I never knew the natives to grind it or pound it. They are accustomed to roast it on the ear after the kernels have become quite hard and yellow. Our house in this tropical garden was merely a bamboo hut, with a broad veranda, which afforded us an ample shelter from the pouring rains and scorching sunshine. I had been careful to take along my fowling-piece, and at once I commenced a rambling hunt through the adjoining forest. Large flocks of small birds, much like our blackbird, were hovering about, but they so invariably chose to alight only on the tops of the tallest trees, that I was a long time securing half a dozen specimens, for at every shot they would select another distant tree-top, and give me a long walk over tangled roots and fallen trees in the dense, almost gloomy, jungle. As evening came on, small green parrots uttered their shrill, deafening screams, as they darted to and fro through the thick foliage. A few of these also entered my game-bag.
In these tropical lands, when the sun sets, it is high time for the hunter to forsake his fascinating sport and hurry home. There is no long, fading twilight, but darkness presses closely on the footsteps of retreating day, and at once it is night. On my return, my friend remarked in the coolest manner that I had secured us both a good supper; and before I had recovered from my shock at such a suggestion, the cook had torn out a large handful of rich feathers from the skins, and all were spoiled for my collection; however, I consoled myself with the thought that it did not fall to the good lot of every hunter to live in the midst of such a wondrous vegetation and feast on parrots. In the evening, a full moon shed broad oscillating bands of silver light through the large polished leaves of the bananas around our dwelling, as they slowly waved to and fro in the cool, refreshing breeze. Then the low cooing of doves came up out of the dark forest, and the tree-toads piped out their long, shrill notes. That universal pest, the mosquito, was also there, singing his same bloodthirsty tune in our ears. Our beds were perched on poles, high above the floor of the hut, that we might avoid such unpleasant bedfellows as large snakes, which are very common and most unceremonious visitors. That night we were disturbed but once, and
then by a loud rattling of iron pots and a general crashing of crockery; instantly I awoke with an indefinite apprehension that we were experiencing one of the frightful earthquakes which my friend had been vividly picturing before we retired. The natives set up a loud hooting and shouting, and finally the cause of the whole disturbance was found to be a lean, hungry dog that was attempting to satisfy his appetite on what remained of our parrot-stew.
My chief object on this excursion was to collect insects; and among some white-leaved shrubs, near the shore, I found many magnificent specimens of a very large, richly-colored Papilio. The general color of the upper surface of its wings was a blue-black, and beneath were large patches of bright red. Another was a blue-black above, with large spots of bright blue. The wings of these butterflies expand five or six inches, and they seem almost like small birds as they flit by.
It was my desire not only to obtain the same shells that Rumphius figures, but to procure them from the same points and bays, so that there could be no doubt about the identity of my specimens with his drawings. I therefore proposed to travel along all the shores of Amboina and the neighboring islands, and trade with the natives of every village, so as to be sure of the localities myself, and, moreover, get specimens of all the species alive, and thus have ample material for studying their anatomy. I now realized the value of the letter with which His Excellency the Governor-General had honored me at Batavia. I had only to apply to the assistant resident, and he at once kindly ordered a boat and coolies for me at the same rate as if they were employed by the government, which was frequently less than half of what I should have been obliged to pay if I had hired them myself; and besides, many times I could not have obtained boats nor coolies at any price; and when the Resident ordered them to come at a certain hour, I always found them ready.
My first excursion along the shores of the island was on the north coast of Hitu. Two servants accompanied me, to aid in arranging the shells, and carrying bottles of alcohol to contain the animals. From the city of Amboina, a boat took us over the bay to Ruma Tiga, where several coolies were waiting with a “chair” to carry me over
the high hills to the opposite shore. This “chair,” or palanquin, is merely a common arm-chair, with a bamboo fastened on each side. A light roof and curtains on the sides keep out the rain or hot sunshine. Usually eight or more coolies are detailed to each chair, so that one-half may relieve the others every few moments. The motion is much like that on horseback, when the horse is urged into a hurried walk, and is neither extremely unpleasant nor so very delightful as some writers who have visited these islands have described it. In China, where only two coolies carry a chair, the motion is far more regular and agreeable. This is the only mode of travelling in all the islands where horses have not been introduced, and where all the so-called roads are mere narrow footpaths, except in the villages.
From the shore we climbed two hills, and on their crests passed through gardens of cocoa-trees.[27] The road then was bordered on either side with rows of pine-apples, Ananassa sativa, a third exotic from tropical America. It thrives so well in every part of the archipelago, without the slightest care, that it is very difficult to realize that it is not an indigenous plant. The native names all point out its origin. The Malays and Javanese call it nanas, which is merely a corruption of the Portuguese ananassa. In Celebes it is sometimes called pandang, a corruption of pandanus, from the marked similarity of the two fruits. In the Philippines it is generally called piña, the Spanish word for pine-cone, which has the same origin as our name pine-apple. Piña is also the name of a cloth of great strength and durability, made by the natives of the Philippines, from the fibres of its leaves. The Malays, on the contrary, seldom or never make any such use of it, though it grows so abundantly in many places that any quantity of its leaves could be obtained for the simple trouble of gathering them. The fruit raised here is generally regarded as inferior to that grown in the West Indies, and the Dutch consider the variety known as “the West Indian ananas,” that is, one that has been recently introduced, as the best. The finest specimens of this fruit are raised in the interior of Sumatra and on the islands about Singapore, and great quantities are exposed for sale in the market at that city.
From the crest of the first range of hills we descended to a deep ravine, and crossed a bridge thrown over a foaming torrent. This bridge, like most the Dutch possessions, was covered with a roof, but left open on the sides. The object of the roof and its projecting eaves is to keep the boards and planks beneath dry, for whenever they are frequently soaked with rain they quickly decay in this tropical climate. The coolies here lunched on smoked fish and sagocake, their common fare, and quenched their thirst with draughts from the rapid stream. Their ragged clothing and uncombed hair made them appear strangely out of keeping with the luxuriant vegetation surrounding us. Crossing another high range, we caught a view of the blue ocean, and soon descended to the village of Hitulama, “Old Hitu.” The rajah received me most kindly into his house, and assigned me a chamber. Large numbers of children quickly gathered, and the rajah explained to them that I had come to buy shells, insects, and every curious thing they might bring. As it was high water, and good shells could only be found at low tide, I asked them to search for lizards, and soon I was surprised to see them coming with a number of real “flying-dragons,” not such impossible monsters as the Chinese delight to place on their temples and vases, but small lizards, Draco volans, each provided with a broad fold in the skin along either side of the body, analogous to that of our flying-squirrel, and for a similar purpose, not really for flying, but to act as a parachute to sustain the animal in the air, while it makes long leaps from branch to branch. Another lizard, of which they brought nearly a dozen specimens in a couple of hours, had a body about six inches long and a tail nearly as much longer. Knowing how impossible it is to capture these agile and wary animals, I tried to ascertain how they succeeded in surprising so many, but they all refused to tell, apparently from superstitious motives, and to this day the mystery is unsolved. When these specimens were brought to me they were always in small joints of bamboo, and when one escaped the natives generally refused to try to catch it in their hands.
As the tide receded, shells began to come in; at first the more common species, and rarer ones as the ebbing ceased. My mode of trading with these people was extremely simple, my stock of Malay being very limited. A small table was placed on the veranda in front
of the rajah’s house, and I took a seat behind it. The natives then severally came up and placed their shells in a row on the table, and I placed opposite each shell or each lot of shells whatever I was willing to give for them, and then, pointing first to the money and then to the shells, remarked, Ini atau itu, “This or that,” leaving them to make their own choice. In this way all disputing was avoided, and the purchasing went on rapidly. Whenever one man had a rare shell, and the sum I offered did not meet his expectations, another would be sure to accept it if no more was given; then the first would change his mind, and thus I never failed to obtain both specimens. It was a pleasure that no one but a naturalist can appreciate, to see such rare and beautiful shells coming in alive, spotted cypræas, marbled cones, long Fusi, and Murices, some spiny and some richly ornamented with varices resembling compound leaves. The rarest shell that I secured that day was a living Terebellum, which was picked up on a coral reef before the village, at low-tide level. Afterward I procured another from the same place; but so limited does its distribution appear to be, that I never obtained a live specimen at any other locality.
At sunset I walked out with the rajah along the shore of the bay. Before us lay the great island of Ceram, which the rajah called, in his musical tongue, Ceram tana biza, “The great land of Ceram,” for indeed, to him, it was a land, that is, a continent, and not in any sense a pulo or island. The departing sun was sinking behind the high, jagged peaks of Ceram, and his last golden and purple rays seemed to waver as they shot over the glassy but gently-undulating surface of the bay, and the broad, deeply-fringed leaves of the cocoa-nut palms on the beach took a deeper and richer hue in the glowing sunlight. Then a dull, heavy booming came out of a small Mohammedan mosque, which was picturesquely placed on a little projecting point, almost surrounded by the purple sea. This was the low rolling of a heavy drum, calling all the faithful to assemble and return thanks to their Prophet at the close of the departing day. The rajah then left me to wander along the shore alone, and enjoy the endless variety of the changing tints in the sea and sky while the daylight faded away along the western horizon.
It was in this bay that the Dutch first cast anchor in these seas, and this thought naturally carries us back to the early history of the Moluccas, so famous for their spices, and so coveted by almost every nation of Europe, as soon as enterprise and action began to dispel the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition which had enveloped the whole of the so-called civilized world during the middle ages. Antonio d’Abreu, a Portuguese captain, who came here from Malacca, in 1511, is generally regarded as the discoverer of Amboina and Banda, but Ludovico Barthema (Vartoma), of Bologna, after visiting Malacca and Pedir, in Sumatra, according to his own account, reached this island as early as 1506, yet his description of the Moluccas is so faulty that Valentyn thinks he never came to this region, but obtained his information from the Javanese and Arabs, who, as early at least as 1322, visited these islands to purchase spices.[28] The Dutch first came to the East in the employment of the Portuguese, and in this manner became acquainted with its geography and its wealth. Their earliest expedition sailed from Holland in 1594, under Houtman. His fleet first visited Bantam and the island of Madura. At the latter place the natives seized some of his crew, and obliged him to pay two thousand rix dollars to ransom them. On the 3d of March, 1599, he arrived here off Hitu-lama. A serious and continual warfare then began between the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, for the possession of the Moluccas, which lasted until 1610, when the Dutch became masters of these seas, and monopolized the lucrative trade of the nutmeg and the clove. The English also tried to secure this valuable prize, but the Dutch finally compelled them to leave this part of the archipelago, and have continued to hold it, except for a short time in the early part of the present century.
The guest-chamber of my host, the rajah, was so open at the eaves that a current of damp air blew over me all night, and I had a strong reminder of the Batavia fever the next day. However, I continued along the shore to Hila, where an assistant resident is stationed, whose district also includes a part of the neighboring coast of Ceram. In the days when the clove-tree was extensively cultivated in Amboina, this was an important place, but now it has become
almost deserted. It is chiefly famous for its fine mangoes, the fruit of the Mangifera Indica.
The Resident here had two fine specimens of an enormous hermit crab, the Birgos latro. The habits of this animal are most remarkable. Its food is the cocoa-nut, and, as the ripe nuts fall from the tree, it tears off the dry husks with its powerful claws until the end of the shell where the three black scars are found is laid bare. It then breaks the shell by hammering with one of its heavy claws, and the oily, fattening food within is obtained by means of the pincer-like claws attached to its hinder joints—so perfectly is this animal adapted to its peculiar mode of life. They are esteemed great delicacies after they have been well fed for a time, and these two unfortunates were destined for the table.
A rest of a couple of days stayed the fever, and a boat was ordered to take me to Zyt, the next village, where I reaped another rich harvest of beautiful shells. Here I purchased many Tritons, which the natives had brought over from the neighboring coast of Ceram. They are quite similar to the Tritons of the Mediterranean, which in mythological times were fancied to be the trumpets used by Neptune’s attendants to herald the approach of the grim god, when he came up from the depths of the ocean, and was whirled by foaming steeds over its placid surface. The next village we visited was completely deserted, except by the rajah and his family. The cause of this strange exodus was some misunderstanding between the rajah and his people; and as the Dutch Government claims the right to appoint each native prince, and had refused to remove this rajah, all his people had deserted their homes and moved off to the various neighboring kampongs, a quiet and probably an effective mode of remonstrance. Near all these villages the beaches are lined with cocoa-nut palms, and this is frequently the only indication that you are approaching a kampong, unless, as occasionally happens, a thin column of smoke is observed slowly rising from out the tall treetops. When I wished to take water with me in our canoe, I naturally asked the rajah if he could provide us with a bottle, but he only smiled to think I could be so unaccustomed to tropical life, and ordered a servant to climb one of the cocoa-nut palms above us, and
cut off some of its clusters of large green fruit. These we could carry anywhere, and open when we pleased, and a few strokes with a heavy cleaver at once furnished us with a sparkling fountain.
At Assilulu, the next village, I found the rajah living in such style as I had always fancied a rich Eastern prince enjoyed. His house was in the centre of a large village, and located on the side of a steep hill. It covered three large terraces, and, when viewed from the landing below, appeared like a temple. At this place, besides many rare shells, I purchased several large cassowary-eggs, which had been brought over from Ceram. They are about as long as ostrich-eggs, but somewhat less in diameter, and of a green color. The bird itself belongs to the ostrich family, its feathers being imperfectly developed and separate from each other, and suitable only to aid it to run. One species has a spine on each wing to enable it to defend itself, but the usual mode of attack is by striking with the beak. In size it is twice as large as a full-grown turkey. It is not found wild on any island west of Ceram, and those reported from Java were all undoubtedly carried there from this part of the archipelago. Here also I bought of the rajah a number of superb skulls of the babirusa, Babirusa alfurus, literally “the hog-deer,” a name well chosen, for its long tusks would at once suggest to these natives the antlers of the deer, the only other wild animal of any considerable size found on these islands. These skulls came from Buru, the eastern limit of this remarkable species of hog.
For some time one of my servants kept alluding to several wonderful and most valuable curiosities which this wealthy rajah was so fortunate as to possess—curiosities indeed, according to his glowing descriptions, compared to the shells I was continually buying. At last I asked him to say to the rajah, that I would be greatly obliged to him if he could show me such rare wonders, being careful not to add, that possibly I should like to purchase one or more; for I had a strong suspicion that the rajah had offered to give him all over a certain sum that I might pay for them, if he could induce me to purchase them. In these Eastern lands, when you send a servant to buy any thing, you have the unpleasant certainty in your mind, that a large part of “the price” will certainly lodge in his pocket; however, if
