Monthly Archives: August 2004

by | 3 August 2004 · 7:45 pm

New Offensives in Mindanao?

Belmont Club reports on ominous new developments in the Philippines.

The scene is now set for a possible resurgence of fighting. A glance at the map dramatically illustrates the bind that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Philippine Government have worked themselves into. For the first time in a century, Muslim rebels have established themselves in force on the Mindanao mainland, away from their traditional strongholds of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-tawi, island groups in the southwest corner of the archipelago. They are positioned on the west side of Mindanao’s breadbasket, the Cotabato valley. The MILF [Mindanao Islamic Liberation Front] camps guard the approaches to mountain massifs to the west which then give on the sea, their line of supply. They isolate the predominantly Christian Zamboanga peninsula from Northern Mindanao and essentially cut the huge island in two. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, despite a nominal strength of ten divisions, has very little combat power. A lack of logistical support and ammunition stockpiles means that (Belmont Club estimate) it can sustain offensive operations with only two battalions for a period of 12 weeks after which it simply runs out of everything. Thus, Manila has long lacked an offensive option against the MILF and has tried to compensate by “peace talks”, which are another name for appeasement.

Leave a comment

Filed under Islam, Philippines, war

by | 2 August 2004 · 7:30 pm

The Dutch VOC in Burma in the 17th Century

The July 2004 IIAS Newsletter includes an article by Wil O. Dijk on the Dutch VOC in Burma during the 17th century, the same period in which they were conquering one sultanate after another in the Spice Islands and the rest of the Indonesian archipelago.

This article highlights a little known aspect of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)’s inter-Asian trade: the trade with Burma. The vast archives of the VOC at the National Archives in The Hague have yielded a treasure trove of detailed information on seventeenth century Dutch-Burmese relations. The archives throws light on the composition of the VOC’s Burma trade, and how it fit into the grand design of the Company’s inter-Asian commerce, where it was not as marginal as some historians would have it. Vital statistics on shipping, imports and exports, wages and prices, and inventories of Indian textiles the Dutch shipped across the Bay of Bengal, together with purchasing and selling prices, allow us a unique glimpse into life in seventeenth century Burma….

The VOC’s years in Burma can be divided into three distinct periods: the early years of indecision (1634-1648), the golden middle years (1649-1669) and the final years of decline and departure (1670-1680). During the first period suggestions were made, in turn by Pulicat and Batavia (the company’s head office in Asia), to close down the Burmese factories. Pulicat and Batavia, however, seemed unable to agree, with the result that trade continued halfheartedly. The second period witnessed a great improvement in conditions for trade. In the final years, a new king with little interest in trade or foreigners ascended the Burmese throne. By this time the objectives of the Dutch East India Company had altered, while forces beyond its control were working to undermine the company. In the end the Burma trade became a casualty of the company’s new priorities….

Empire of trade

Burma offered a large assortment of export goods. Statistics indicate that the Dutch generally took what they could get. Tin was a constant as were lac, elephant tusks, chillies (long peppers) and beeswax. In the 1650s, Chinese copper coins and Burmese ganza (a metal akin to bell metal) became major exports. The Company turned large quantities of Chinese copper coins, flowing into Burma from Yunnan, into money to be used as legal tender in Batavia and Ceylon. In the final years, the Dutch also exported a great deal of gold, much of it originating in China. The VOC, through its elaborate inter-Asian network, was in a position to trade Burmese goods in the most profitable markets throughout Asia.

[Ming China was at this time selling off copper and gold to convert to silver coinage, thereby fueling global trade, especially with Tokugawa Japan and the Spanish Empire in the New World.]

Their Bengal factory, always in need of additional funds, was sent valuable Burmese cargoes (including Chinese coins, ganza, and zinc). The copper extracted from Chinese coins and ganza was in great demand in Coromandel, as were gold, tin, timber and chillies. In Japan a profitable market existed for Burmese catechu, namrack, deerskins, buffalo hides and horns. Lac generated excellent profits in Mocha, as well as in Persia, where there was a good market for Burmese tin, elephant tusks, cardamom, and the costliest of Burma’s fabled rubies. Considerable quantities of Burmese elephant tusks were shipped to Surat, while in Holland there was demand for the excellent Burmese lac. As for Burma’s famous Martaban jars, there was constant demand throughout Asia for these huge, glazed pots used to store and transport a myriad of things, from potable water and rice to gunpowder and, on occasion, stowaways….

Military commitments

The main points of contention – the ban on direct trade with China at Bhamo, royal monopolies, high tolls, and the disarming of ships – were exasperating but not new. Rather, the circumstances and priorities of the Company had changed. Trade was no longer its main concern; the VOC had changed into a territorial enterprise with military and political commitments and began to operate increasingly from its two power bases, Batavia and Ceylon.

More importantly, a radical shift occurred in its commercial priorities. Whereas in the early days the company’s inter-Asian sea-borne traffic was a key element in its drive to create a vast empire of trade – with the outcome of this traffic largely determining the flow of trade between Asia and Europe – by 1680 the situation was different. The VOC’s inter-Asian trade had peaked by the 1670s, and was replaced by direct trade between Asia and Europe. This is perhaps the main reason behind the Dutch decision to abandon Burma. Whereas Burma had been an integral part of the VOC’s inter-Asian trade for nearly half a century, the company’s new priorities now made it irrelevant.

Leave a comment

Filed under China

by | 2 August 2004 · 6:51 pm

The Appeal of Stalinism to Intellectuals

Crooked Timber has a long and interesting comment thread in response to John Quiggin’s response to Tyler Cowen’s challenge on Marginal Revolution: “If I could have the answers to five questions in political science/sociology, the appeal of Stalinism to intellectuals would be one of them.” Here are a few of the less esoteric responses.

Chris Bertram:

I can’t agree with you entirely John. The [Beatrice and Sydney] Webbs, in particular don’t seem to me to be a good example of people who backed the Soviet Union because they thought it was more just and democratic. Rather, they seem (along with others like [George Bernard Shaw]) to have been captivated by the idea of a rationally managed society. Tidiness and orderliness were the reasons for a certain type of intellectual being attracted to Stalinism.

An entirely different type of person was attracted to communism (in its various forms rather than Stalinism) by their perception of the injustice of capitalism, the experience of mass slaughter in WW1 and by the feeble response of the Western democracies to the rise of fascism. Unlike what motivate the Webbs of this world, those are laudable aspirations.

The twist comes when you add a dose of “realism” to the mixture. Once you’ve identified some agency as the best means of fighting injustice, war and fascism, it is all too easy to convince yourself of something like Sherman’s “war is hell” doctrine and to shield yourself from a proper appreciation of what your side is really becoming. If you want a recent parallel for this psychological process, look at the way that people who believe the values of the West need to be defended by any means necessary and take solace in the writings of Victor Davis Hanson and the like.

And the fact is that there is something (but exactly how much?) to the idea that one shouldn’t be too squeamish in fighting for a just cause when the other side will use any means at its disposal. Differing views on that question and on whether the Soviet Union remained an effective means for prosecuting justice etc or had turned into part of the problem, explain many of the fractures in the communist movement from 1917 on….

Burritoboy:

It’s simply not true that few intellectuals supported ultra-right politics.

In continental Europe, there were always a very large percentage of prominent intellectuals who were on the right, at least before 1939 or so. Heidegger, probably the greatest of all twentieth-century philosophers, is but the best-known of cases …. Before 1918, ultra-right intellectuals were arguably more important: Baudelaire, the most influential poet of the nineteenth century; Flaubert, the most influential post-Romantic novelist; Celine, Yeats / Eliot/ Pound and many others.

It’s that intellectuals have been attracted to radical politics on both sides. It’s interesting that Cowen wants to ignore half of the equation….

Lindsay Beyerstein:

Anyone who thinks they have True Knowledge is at high risk for self-deception. In retrospect, it seems amazing that these smart people would continue to support Stalin.

Self-deception isn’t pure wishful thinking. Simply wanting X to be true isn’t usually sufficient to sustain massive self-deception. The self-deceiver must also engage in an active process of rationalization in which she explains away inconvenient observations in terms of her background theory. We call people self-deceived when they are unwilling to reexamine their background theories in light of the evidence, especially if wishful thinking fuels that reluctance.

When Stalinist intellectuals were confronted with evidence of Stalinist crimes against humanity they persuaded themselves that these were i) Lies and distortions perpetrated by an unreliable capitalist media, or, ii) Historical inevitabilities on the way to an equally inevitable utopia, and/or, iii) Snags that were only to be expected in the greatest experiment in human history.

Simon Kinahan:

While some intellectuals no doubt deceived themselves (and some still do) into believing that the Soviet Union really lived up to its proclaimed ideals, there were others for whom the totalitarianism that was implied by Marxism was part of the appeal.

The claim to knowledge of how history was going to progress. The ordering of society along “rational” lines. The important role of intellectuals in the revolution itself. Surely it’s not too hard to see how that might appeal? And still does, for that matter….

Brett Bellmore:

Why does it matter? Well, there’s that dictator just off the coast of Florida academics are still making excuses for, for one. The intellectual embrace of monsters in the name of ideology isn’t history, it’s still with us today.

Leave a comment

Filed under education, philosophy

by | 1 August 2004 · 8:32 am

Micronesian Diary: Meeting House and Eating Turtle, Yap

On 30 January 1999, archaeologist Felicia Beardsley visited a meeting house on the southern tip of Yap, Micronesia, where she ate sea turtle. Her Micronesian Diary entries focus on food as much as archaeology. I like that.

Anoth is at the south end of the island, the south tip. It is a coastal village, and we had been invited to the open house held in honor of the completion of rebuilding their traditional pebaey, or meeting house. The pebaey is right on the coastal flat — well, the entire village is — and immediately on the shore’s edge (not more than 50 meters from the pebaey) is the faluw, the men’s house. The only thing left of the faluw, however, is its foundation. It is a coral foundation, which is gradually eroding into the sea. In effect, the faluw foundation is an archaeological site.

Actually, a very large number of traditional dwellings in Yap were turned into similar archaeological sites by Typhoon Sudal in April 2004. Many people are still living in tents.

In these villages, the pebaey and faluw are used, reused, and rebuilt over time. Their locations generally do not change, so the same structure (or rather foundation) supports several generations of superstructures, all of which follow the same construction plan, with variation only in the decorative elements such as the plaiting in the walls and so on. Both structures are six-sided, and the only difference between the two is that the faluw is closed-walled, and the pebaey is not. That is because the faluw is (or was) used as a dwelling place for young men, where they would learn the skills that would carry them through life, including (but not limited to) fishing, the manufacture of all the tools necessary for fishing, fighting, dancing, oral histories, and of course, sexual skills. Each faluw used to house several girls who were obtained (kidnapped, purchased) from other villages. By contrast, the pebaey is a meeting house, or community house. It did not have need for walls, as it was not a place for permanent dwelling….

Teresa and I were the only girls at the open house; I was told the community had made a conscious decision not to include the women of the community. The festivities included roasting a sea turtle, which I was obliged to try. It really isn’t that bad, and tastes quite good when you eat the meat with the fat. But, as one of the chiefs pointed out, it is not something I am accustomed to eat, so it was of course understandable when I handed what was left on my plate over to someone else.

One of the most valuable phrases any fieldworker or traveller needs to learn is how to say in the local language, “I’m not accustomed to that yet.”

Then he went on to describe the preparation of the turtle, step-by-step, including how its shell is opened when it is basically half-cooked. There are times, he said, when the heart is still beating at this point. This is when the meat and fat is distributed, and several of the organs are removed. After this, the blood of the turtle continues to cook in its shell; it is this cooked blood that this particular chief prefers. Many others at the site also told me they prefer the cooked turtle blood, and could hardly wait until it was done. This same chief has a son whom Teresa was obliged to watch throughout the course of the day. She did a good job, keeping them both out of trouble and out of harm’s way. I think she welcomed this “job” because it kept her occupied….

I also had an opportunity to chat with the chief. What I found interesting is that chiefs like him are raised as chiefs from the time they take their first steps, and that is what he is doing with his son too. He said that he has seen so many changes in the traditions of Yap. Today, he said (and he seemed a little concerned about it), there are people who aren’t chiefs but who want to be. So, sometimes, he said, he just steps back and says, go ahead. Then watches. He said they don’t know how to do it, and they get frustrated and give it up.

The caste system in Yap has driven many talented commoners–and outcastes–to seek their fortunes overseas, many in the U.S. military. (Yapese have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.) But it also seems to have contributed to a healthier fiscal and cultural cautiousness than in some of the other Micronesian states.

Leave a comment

Filed under Micronesia