Category Archives: migration

by Joel | 7 October 2026 · 6:57 am

Manchukuo Quagmire Spreads, 1930s

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 75-78:

By February 1932, the three Manchurian provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin were all under the control of the Japanese army. That garrison forces could occupy portions of China without formal approval sent a dangerous signal. Young and frustrated soldiers, willing to blame those in power for various social and economic difficulties facing Japan, had been wanting to force radical change for some time. Now inaction in Tokyo and the absence of clear instructions from the top invited further violent actions. The ancient samurai would have called this a retainer supplanting his lord. In modern military terms, it was simple insubordination. Yet no army leader was willing to put his foot down.

Japan’s actions in Manchuria marked a major step toward political isolation, even though very few Japanese recognized it as such. The Kwantung Army’s establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo—comprising the captured provinces—was proclaimed on March 1, 1932. International condemnation followed. On May 15, a group of young naval officers and army cadets burst into the prime minister’s official residence and shot Inukai; he died that evening. The killers were alarmed that Inukai was becoming soft on China, possibly yielding Japanese control of Manchukuo. Japan had been an exemplary member of the League of Nations throughout most of its existence, but the country renounced its membership in March 1933 on account of Manchukuo.

Sino-Japanese relations did not break down entirely, however, because of the confluence of pragmatic interests on both sides. Through the mid-1930s Tokyo oscillated between a more cautious, even friendly, China policy and a hardline approach backed by military pressure. Chiang, preoccupied by the problem of consolidating his control over the rest of China, and especially by fighting the Communists who had established independent “Soviet Republics” in the hinterland of southern and central China, seemed willing to overlook the sticky question of Manchukuo for the time being. He certainly did his best to avoid major clashes with Japan in the north. Recognizing a window of opportunity, the Kwantung Army expanded Japan’s sphere of influence first toward Rehe (Jehol) Province, west of Manchuria, which became part of Manchukuo in 1933, and then toward the nearby areas of Hebei and Chahar (Inner Mongolia). In a series of Sino-Japanese agreements reached in 1933 and 1935, the Guomindang accepted humiliating terms that included partial demilitarization of North China, the withdrawal of the Guomindang organizations from Manchukuo’s vicinity, and the establishment of autonomous, pro-Japanese governments in East Hebei and Chahar.

At home, as Japanese society struggled to recover from the economic slump caused by, among other things, the worldwide depression, fear and unrest were growing. In this dismal atmosphere, on February 26, 1936, a nearly successful coup was launched in Tokyo by young army officers. The officers assassinated several key government figures before surrendering. Prince Saionji, the principal target of the assassins, escaped. Prime Minister Hirota Koki’s cabinet was formed on March 9, but only after Prince Konoe had declined to assume the post, claiming poor health. (He may well have not wanted to purge elements sympathetic to the rebel officers, as he himself wished to remain on good terms with them. His later attempt to pardon the indicted officers only corroborates this view.)

Hirota’s government now adopted a tougher foreign policy as a way to divert domestic discontent. It called for a military buildup in preparation for a possible war with China, the Soviet Union, and the Western powers, all the while making plans for advancing into Southeast Asia. The Japanese policy shift was immediately felt in China, which explains the volatile atmosphere at the Marco Polo Bridge. The number of Japanese troops had tripled in 1936, to almost six thousand, without prior consultation with the Chinese.

China’s domestic situation had substantially changed by then. Japanese expansionism and Chiang’s ambition of leading a strong, unified China could only cohabit for so long. Because of his earlier concessions to Japan, Chiang had become increasingly vulnerable to Communist propaganda, which painted him as a traitor to the nation who gave into Japanese imperialist pressure and who was willing to sacrifice fellow Chinese. The decisive turning point happened in December 1936, when Chiang was kidnapped by the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, the son of Zhang Zuolin, a Manchurian warlord assassinated by the Japanese in 1928; Zhang wanted Chiang to join a united front against Japan together with the Communists. To preserve his legitimacy as China’s national leader, Chiang decided he could no longer afford to look conciliatory toward Japan. This meant that he and the Japanese army stopped sharing the same priority of defeating the Communists, be they Chinese or Soviet. This development, in turn, persuaded the Japanese military hardliners to push for a more aggressive policy, especially in the north, to sustain and maximize its existing interests.

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by Joel | 6 October 2026 · 5:33 am

Tangled Loyalties: Aizu, Meiji, U.S.

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 124-127:

In the summer of 1882, the year the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors was issued, a tall and slender beauty with a perfectly oval face stood on a college auditorium platform in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was one of the select few in the graduating class asked to deliver a valedictory address based on her dissertation. Yamakawa Sutematsu stood out among her classmates at Vassar. She was class president, graduated magna cum laude, and was a member of several prestigious societies. She behaved like a perfect Western woman, but beneath her soft, elegant appearance and impeccable manners lay a will of steel. She was the first Japanese woman to be awarded a bachelor of arts degree.

Having lived in the United States since the age of eleven, Stematz (as she spelled her name for the benefit of her American peers) was a product of the successful social engineering undertaken by the young Meiji government, with help from goodwilled Americans. She was one of five girls sent to the United States on government stipends to become prototypes of the modern Japanese woman, an idea originally conceived by the samurai-turned-statesman Kuroda Kiyotaka, who was in charge of developing Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The minister was impressed with the American women he saw on a trip to the United States in 1871. He was especially impressed with the sturdy ladies he saw tilling the soil of the frontier alongside their men. Just as the American West was pioneered by both men and women, Kuroda reasoned, Japanese women, as wives, mothers, and even hard laborers, should play their part in the birth of Japan as a great nation.

The Yamakawas, a venerable old samurai family, were in the service of the lord of Aizu. In the Japanese civil war, Aizu backed the declining Tokugawa shogunate and, along with several other northern domains that did the same, was branded an enemy of the imperial court. In August 1868, in one of the final and fiercest battles of the war, Stematz, eight years old, fought together with the men and women of Aizu, who were under siege by enemy forces. She was in charge of preventing explosions in the domain’s castle by covering unexploded cannon shells with futon mattresses. Those shells were fired by a Satsuma battalion led by her future husband, Army Minister Oyama.

The northern rebel domains proved utterly powerless in the face of the British-backed technologies of the southern forces. With the fall of Aizu, the fortunes of the Yamakawa family declined as well. Something drastic had to be done to regain social respectability. Education was the best, and often the only, way to recover one’s status. At the time, the government was calling for applicants to study abroad, urging young people to acquire knowledge in the West. Many young men from the formerly well-to-do families of those fallen domains took on the challenge. Although very few families were willing to send their daughters so far away for so long, the Yamakawas, in dire straits, decided to send theirs.

Stematz thrived in the home of Leonard Bacon, an abolitionist clergyman in New Haven, Connecticut. Growing up with his fourteen children, she attended local schools before enrolling at Vassar. Her best friend was Bacon’s youngest daughter, Alice Mabel, who would help establish a women’s college in Japan many years later. Unlike some other Japanese students, who assimilated to the extent of almost losing their mother tongue altogether, Stematz, determined to keep her Japanese language skills, wrote letters home every day.

In the early summer of 1882, Stematz’s loyalties were many: to the new Japanese government, which enabled her to study in the United States; to her family, who tried to clear its rebel name; to the Bacons, who raised her as one of their own; and to Vassar, which enabled her to become an independent-thinking woman. She was eager to be of use in the real world.

Stematz’s homecoming at the end of 1882, after eleven years abroad, would be something of a disappointment. She was overeducated and overqualified for the jobs available to women in Meiji Japan. Then she married one of the most powerful men in the Meiji government. Oyama Iwao was a widower eighteen years her senior. He was also the general responsible for bringing down her family’s feudal domain. This would have been a union unimaginable in less enlightened circles. After the marriage, Stematz was able to initiate various philanthropic and educational enterprises.

The story of Prince Oyama and his Vassar bride was an example of how individual innovation, industry, grand ambition, and imagination could overcome the historical wounds that divided Japan. It was a union in which Japan’s future enemy, the United States, was a prime inspiration. Both Japan and the United States were emerging powers coming into their own just as the world itself was going through profound change. In the words of one historian, it was “a world of empires gained and maintained by military power,” and yet it was also “an internationalizing world; a world yearly more conscious of its one-ness” owing to economic interdependence, peace movements, and mass media (though the term “globalization” had not yet been coined). In a world of competing agendas and great uncertainties, Japan looked to the United States as a sympathetic mentor. “To catch up to and surpass the West” was the mantra of Japan’s national quest. And more often than not, the West meant the United States, not old Europe.

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by Joel | 30 September 2026 · 6:21 am

Melanesian Obsidian in Micronesia

From Waka Kuaka | The Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 131, no. 4 (2022):

OBSIDIAN POINT DISCOVERED ON KAPINGAMARANGI ATOLL, MICRONESIA:
IMPLICATIONS FOR POST-SETTLEMENT REGIONAL INTERACTIONS

TAKUYA NAGAOKA. Pasifika Renaissance
PETER J. SHEPPARD, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland
CALLAN ROSS-SHEPPARD, McGill University
NINA KONONENKO, University of Sydney, Australian Museum

ABSTRACT: An obsidian point was discovered by chance by local people on Kapingamarangi Atoll, a Polynesian Outlier in Micronesia. In addition to use-wear and residue analysis to identify its use, pXRF analysis conducted on it demonstrated that it was brought from the Admiralty Islands in Papua New Guinea over about 900 km. The information on other Admiralty obsidian artefacts found in western Oceania and other associated phenomena suggest that those artefacts were brought from the source through an interaction network between Micronesia and Melanesia during the first half of the second millennium AD. They had significant social value as prestige goods in the peripheral areas of the Admiralty obsidian circulation, serving as chiefly heirlooms and grave goods. In addition to skilful Caroline Islands seafarers, Polynesian Outlier populations had an important role in the interregional interactions during this dynamic period in the western Pacific, which was possibly activated by Polynesian intrusion into the region related to a larger Polynesian expansion into eastern Polynesia circa AD 1000. Further, we argue that the Saudeleur dynasty of Pohnpei, which achieved the development of a famous megalithic politico-religious centre, Nan Madol, was influential in the interaction sphere during its height in AD 1000–1500. Thus, by using archaeological, linguistic, historical, ethnological, oral traditional and DNA data, the interdisciplinary analysis of this rare obsidian artefact has deepened our understanding of post-settlement interaction in the region.

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by Joel | 26 September 2026 · 5:32 am

Living Underground in Berlin, 1945

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 305-306:

Living underground was for many Berliners an oddly democratic experience; one had to sit, sleep, eat, and defecate together with people of all classes. Nazis threw away their uniforms, burned their documents, and shared underground spaces with people who had always despised them. Germans shared spaces with foreigners, and sometimes even with Jews. “I no longer hid from the neighbors,” Marie Jalowicz recalled. “We didn’t go to the bunker but lay in the slit trenches…. In a rather foolish way, I was annoyed to see the war ending in so tediously banal a way, and finding that I was not part of the turmoil of battle.”

The lack of water and toilets must have been a particular torment to fastidious Germans. The smell inside an almost airless bunker where people lingered for many days was foul. When they had a chance, the youngest girls, who could run fast, would dash out between bombing raids or street battles to a nearby pump to fill pails with water. Some made it back to the bunker, some never did. Boys were less keen to undertake such forays, lest they get forced by chain-dog [Kettenhunde, nickname for military police] patrols to join the suicide forces.

Ruth Andreas-Friedrich noted in her diary on April 24, “Life in the cellar commences. We sit side by side without speaking, jammed in between piles of clothes and junk. The war goes on over our heads. The barrage of deadly fire is making a terrible racket. After eleven, the electricity is cut off. It is cold and dark. The contrast between the inferno outside and our own forced inactivity is increasingly unbearable…. Fabian winds up the phonograph and plays a song from ‘The Beggars’ Opera.’ The words ‘You gentlemen who think you have a mission to purge us of the seven deadly sins…’ echo tinnily off the basement walls. Then, ratatatat. The first machine guns. Our walls are lashed by bullets.”

Getting hold of food was an added problem. The economy had largely broken down, and much was now down to barter: cigarettes for cabbage, or a bar of chocolate, or clothes. There were still some mobile field kitchens operated by Wehrmacht soldiers, called “goulash cannon [Gulaschkanone],” where people could fill pots with soup. And as soon as there was a rumor about stores or factories that could be plundered, it was every man—or, more likely, woman—for him or herself. Order, so much a part of German life, collapsed. But sometimes the habit of discipline was so ingrained that women would stand in a queue at a goulash cannon, even as they were being strafed by enemy fire. Bodies crumpled; the line was held for a bowl of soup.

In fact, the word “democratic” goes only so far in these circumstances. Not all shelters were the same. A certain pecking order still remained intact. It was no doubt far more comfortable sheltering in Albert Speer’s huge bunker in central Berlin, originally built for railway employees, but later accessible to other people too, than to be exposed to bombs, Katyusha rockets, and howitzer shells in an open trench for foreign workers or POWs. There was room for three thousand people in the Reichsbahn bunker. Water still ran from the taps. Speer himself would sometimes put in an appearance and acknowledge the crowd with a friendly “Heil Hitler!” Ursula von Kardorff spent some time there before leaving the capital. She recalled Speer as an amiable fellow, with none of the mannerisms of the officious party boss. Soon, many more than three thousand people found their way in.

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by Joel | 25 September 2026 · 4:45 am

Berlin’s Full Mobilization, 1944

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 279-280:

But [Heinrich] George did not have to worry. He was one of the very few to be put on a special list of national geniuses (Gottbegnadetenliste), along with Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Heinz Rühmann, who were exempt from wartime mobilization.

Women, too, were ordered to take on the jobs of absent men. Sabine Alenfeld, whose Jewish husband, Erich, was becoming a nervous wreck, worked from 6:45 p.m. till 4:45 in the morning, sewing military uniforms. She was terrified that things would get worse. She heard rumors that parents in mixed marriages would be separated from their children and put into camps. This didn’t happen. Mischlinge and Jewish husbands were forced instead to labor in the most dangerous construction jobs, or clear out the rubble after bombings. Sixty hours a week was the norm. Sabine wrote to her sister on November 13, “Our lives are turning more and more into a race, a race against…well, what. A race against death, of course, but also against the possibility of living.”

The words fanatisch, used in an entirely positive sense, and Volksgemeinschaft dominated the newspaper headlines. Such words were uttered, often without making any sense. The Völkischer Beobachter on September 25: “Fanatically we will stand together. Leadership that is harder than fate will always win in the end.” On October 16, Hitler announced that all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty in every province (Gau) of the Great German Reich had to join the people’s militia (Volkssturm). Sabine Alenfeld was terrified that her frail husband would be called up. But Mischlinge and Jews were exempted. They were given a “certificate of exclusion.” How could they possibly be included in this great fanatical enterprise?

The Volkssturm army would “defend the Heimat soil with every suitable weapon.” Many of the men were not able-bodied, but fragile and sometimes even invalids. Since suitable weapons for fighting a modern war were now in short supply, the old men and young boys, some in ragged civilian clothes, some in Hitler Youth uniforms, and some in their everyday clothes, were handed primitive weapons, occasionally dating to the last war, and given minimal instruction how to use them. The main weapon was the Panzerfaust, a portable grenade launcher to fire at tanks at close range. Many of the instructors were elderly veterans, whose knowledge of modern warfare was limited. But that didn’t matter. It was the fighting spirit of the Volksgemeinschaft that would surely be enough to defeat Germany’s enemies.

Goebbels wrote in his diary how pleased he was with the enthusiasm of Berliners who signed up willingly: “I will pay special attention to the Volkssturm and make sure that in this respect, too, Berlin will outdo every other Gau.” The hope was to raise an army of millions. The papers reported that long lines of men waited patiently to file into the recruiting centers, decorated with swastikas and busts of Hitler, their eyes shining with the requisite fanaticism.

That many people were perhaps less than keen might be gathered from a joke that did the rounds at the time: “Why is the Volkssturm Germany’s most precious resource? Because its members have silver in their hair, gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones.”

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by Joel | 22 September 2026 · 5:44 am

German ‘Workforce Turnover’, 1942

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 155-57, 181, 191:

If things were bad in Berlin, they were far worse on the eastern front, where many soldiers were freezing to death. The people back home caught glimpses of the Russian campaign on the Wochenschau [weekly newsreels]: horse-drawn carriages and tanks bogged down in knee-high snow; soldiers in white camouflage outfits, rather like hooded bathrobes, skiing or plowing their way through the ruins of Russian villages that were “utterly destroyed by the mighty arms of our heroic shock troops”; German planes dropping food parcels for the soldiers marching in the glacial steppes. Letters home spoke of frostbite and amputated limbs. There were images of “Bolshevik corpses” littered around the icy Russian plains, but never of German soldiers, for that would be too upsetting.

One of the main items on the Wochenschau in January celebrated a domestic campaign that had been ordered by the Führer in December 1941: to donate socks, pullovers, scarves, ski boots, furs, fleeces, blankets, or anything else to keep the troops warm on the front lines….

What was not reported on the Wochenschau, or anywhere else, was an event that occurred at much the same time, on the western shore of the Wannsee, in a grand Italianate villa that once belonged to a rich industrialist and now served as a guesthouse and conference center for SS officers. Houses around the lovely Wannsee were sought after by the wealthiest Berliners. Before 1933, Jews lived in some of the finest homes. After the Nazis came to power, these were confiscated by senior figures in the regime. Goebbels owned a house on the lake, at Schwanenwerder. Walther Funk, the minister of economics, resided in a grand house that had once belonged to a Jewish family, now decorated with swastika tiles. Albert Speer lived nearby, as did Heinz Rühmann, the movie star.

…

Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), invited fourteen senior figures in the Nazi regime to a secret meeting followed by breakfast on January 20 at the SS guest house on the Wannsee. They included top bureaucrats from various ministries, as well as Roland Freisler, the notorious judge on the People’s Court who sentenced more than five thousand people to death between 1942 and 1945. Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for managing Jewish deportations, was asked to take the minutes. What needed to be discussed on that chilly morning, alleviated by a steady supply of fine brandy, were some practical aspects of the extermination of the Jews.

That the Jews were to be eradicated was no longer a matter of dispute. Just one week before the Wannsee Conference, Goebbels wrote in his diary, “The Führer once more expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no sentimental squeamishness about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them.” Mass killings had already been taking place in Poland since 1939. Jews who were not murdered on the spot were to be worked to death. But two questions still needed to be cleared up. How to administer the genocide in an orderly and efficient manner? And how to define who was Jewish? Should Mischlinge be included in the killing program? Heydrich believed that they should. Others wanted to postpone the decision until after the war. After some to-ing and fro-ing, Heydrich settled for that. The logistical issues were cleared up pretty quickly to everyone’s satisfaction, so the gentlemen could enjoy a leisurely glass of cognac in front of the fireplace.

…

The first sign that deportations were imminent was a questionnaire sent through the mail to be filled out meticulously: financial assets, family history, personal details, and so forth. After some days, or sometimes weeks, the Gestapo would come beating on the door. There was no way back after that. In 1942, sixteen transports, each with loads of roughly one thousand people, left the Berlin railway stations. The trains carrying their human freight were mostly bound for the ghettos of Warsaw or Riga, or the death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor, where those not deemed fit to be worked to death were immediately gassed. In the summer of 1942, the killing of Jews had reached a bloody peak. Millions had already been shot or murdered by other means before the gas chambers of Auschwitz were employed day and night. The General Gouvernment had become a giant killing field, presided over by Governor General Hans Frank.

…

There were now more than three million foreign workers in Germany. Many were French POWs. A number of men from occupied countries in Western Europe, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Scandinavian countries, had volunteered for work. Then there were male and female workers from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and other parts of the Soviet Union. Some had come willingly, many had not. The Russians and Eastern Europeans, called Ostarbeiter, often mere teenagers, were treated appallingly. Cooped up in dismal work camps, they were so underfed that many died, or had to be shipped home in horrible conditions. One description of these transports: “There were dead passengers on the returning train. Women on that train gave birth to children that were tossed from the open window during the journey, while people sick from tuberculosis and venereal disease rode in the same coach. The dying lay in freight cars without straw, and one of the dead was thrown onto the embankment.” Treatment of Jewish slave workers in concentration camps, such as Sachsenhausen, was of course even worse.

And yet, a semblance of normalcy for most Berliners continued despite the griping, the bad news from different battlefronts, the horrors endemic in a murderous police state, and “Berlin pessimism.” The soccer competition carried on as always. BSB from Berlin Mitte beat Minerva from Schmargendorf. Tasmania was too strong for Tennis Borussia. And FC Wacker from Reinickendorf lost to Blau-Weiss 90.

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by Joel | 19 September 2026 · 5:50 am

Berlin Bombing Neologisms, 1940

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 102-103, 108:

Berliners, like all denizens of big cities, often pride themselves on their urban wit, the humor of which is not always apparent to people from the outside—which is part of the fun, of course. The new reality of nightly bombing raids inspired some examples of the famous Berlin wit. A printed invitation did the rounds to a basement party put on by a Berlin cabaret, promising an all-night program with a musical overture of sirens, a fireworks display, and a lecture by Professor Fragmentation-Bomb entitled “All Good Things Come from Above.”

A contemporary joke: An airplane carrying Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels crashes. All three are killed. Who is saved? Answer: The German people. When Berliners said goodbye, they often wished each other a “bo-lo-na,” short for Bombenlose Nacht (night without bombs).

…

A new verb entered the already rich lexicon of violent Nazi vocabulary: Coventrisieren, to “Coventry” a city. On November 14, the Luftwaffe bashed the city of Coventry with more than five hundred tons of incendiary and explosive bombs, as well as air mines that exploded upon impact. The cathedral went up in flames, more than five hundred people died, and two thirds of the city’s buildings were badly damaged.

Newspaper headlines in the rest of November gave Berliners a taste of what it meant to be Coventried: “Eyewitness Account of the Devastation of London: London Is on Its Way to Being Totally Destroyed” (Völkischer Beobachter, November 20). “Birmingham in Flames: The Blaze Can Be Seen from as Far as the English Channel” (VB, November 21). “Coventry, a Dead City” (VB, November 21).

…

Since the bunkers that went up in 1940 by no means offered enough protection against bombs for most Berliners, it was decided that children should be evacuated to the countryside. The word “evacuated” was never mentioned in public, however, since that would suggest a sense of panic. The official term was Kinderlandverschickung, KLV, or “children’s relocation.” In the bracing rural air of Brandenburg, Silesia, or Bavaria, the children would be taught discipline, obedience, and loyalty to the Volksgemeinschaft, by senior members of the Hitler Youth. The state would pay for the KLV of poorer children. Wealthier families would have to pay for it themselves. Off they went, waving swastika flags from packed railway carriages, the youngest ones with tags around their necks bearing their names. Parents were not allowed to visit their children in their new billets, for that would interfere with their education.

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by Joel | 18 September 2026 · 5:09 am

From Sitzkrieg to Blitzkrieg in the West

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 92-93:

When German troops invaded Denmark and Norway in April [1940], “to save Scandinavia from British influence,” according to the Nazi press, victory came so quickly that the public was not especially alarmed. On the contrary. The SD reported, “The occupation of Denmark and Norway has made a huge impression on the entire German people, which rejoiced almost without exception.” It helped that Denmark was a major producer of ham, butter, and eggs, supplies the occupation army was not slow to plunder to feed the Volk back home. Moltke wrote to his wife on April 13, “The process by which Denmark is gradually to be made like Poland begins today. I did what I could to prevent it; but when I first heard about it the people who should have done something had already given their consent.” Denmark would never be like Poland, but the occupation was bad enough.

Meanwhile, Goebbels’s Promi [Propaganda Ministry], echoed by the obedient press, made sure that once an attack on Britain and France was launched, the blame would fall squarely on the belligerents in Paris and London. On May 8, the Berliner Volks-Zeitung reported that France and Britain were preparing aggressive war plans. Chamberlain, of all people, was depicted as a warmonger: “Never before has a responsible statesman played with the fate of nations in a more villainous and shameless fashion.” An article on the same page exulted in the extraordinary change in Norwegian public opinion. Somehow, all the old sympathies for Britain had vanished:

…

On the evening of May 9, Major Sas, the Dutch military attaché, anxious to get information on the latest German war plans, visited the home of Hans Oster, his friend in the Abwehr. Oster told him that the Germans would invade the Netherlands the next morning, unless Hitler gave a counterorder later that night. The Dutch ambassador, meanwhile, was dancing with his wife, Nini, at the home of a friendly German aristocrat. Sas and Oster waited fearfully for more news. Perhaps things might still turn around at the last minute. When the counterorder didn’t come, Oster said, “My dear friend, it’s all over. I hope we’ll see each other again after the war.” The Dutch capitulated four days later, after German Luftwaffe bombers did to Rotterdam what they had previously done to Warsaw: The center of the city was obliterated. This marked the end of the Sitzkrieg, the Phony War.

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by Joel | 10 September 2026 · 4:59 am

Islam Penetrates Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 250-254:

Whether rulers adopted it out of genuine preference for its monotheistic belief and universalism, out of commercial or other temporal interest, or because of conquest, Islam spread from the top downwards. How long that took, and the depth to which it penetrated, depended on many factors. Even in Sumatra the progress of Islam was slow and fitful. Tomé Pires, writing in the early sixteenth century, recorded that most rulers in Sumatra were Muslims, but those in the west and interior were heathen and ‘some make a practice of eating their enemies when they capture them.’ In other words, not much had changed since Ibn Battuta’s visit 150 years earlier.

…

During that era the only place where Islam was on the retreat was in Spain and North Africa. But again that helped Islam in the east. The Spanish conquest of Arab Granada in 1492 and subsequent oppression of non-Christians propelled a Muslim exodus that reverberated as far east as Maluku. There, as in other places they visited two decades later, the Portuguese were surprised to find Spanish speakers.

The spread of Islam gradually eliminated Hindu and Buddhist worship from the whole archipelago except Bali. On the mainland, however, Islam never penetrated far inland, where it was up against a form of Buddhism which in practice gave strength to the kingdoms in what are now Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. Known as Theravada, this version of Buddhism originated from Sri Lanka and focused on the role of sangha, or monkhood, and the accumulation of merit through works. This fitted well with concepts of kingship, but also enabled the absorption of earlier concepts of spirits and minor deities. But more importantly, these states were more agrarian, mostly more populous and far less reliant on foreign trade, so less subject to the influence of foreign Muslim merchants.

The Sufi Influence

The Islam which spread through the archipelago varied according to its source and the strength of the existing belief systems. A relatively far greater number of Muslims arrived in the less populated, trade-oriented Sumatra and the peninsula than in Java, where conversion of traditional rulers was the key. The difference is reflected in many ways, such as the fact that Arabic-derived script, Jawi, was the norm in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula by the fifteenth century, whereas in Java Kawi continued to be widely used into the twentieth century. Both were then largely supplanted by Roman script.

An important factor in the spread of Islam, especially in Java, was that the dominant strain was Sunni Sufism. Sufism, found in both Sunni and Shia Islam, has at times been viewed as heretical by more legalistic Muslims but was strong among Indian Muslims from Gujarat and Bengal and in the Ottoman realm. Its emphasis on direct communication with God, its mysticism, its admiration for holy men and ascetics and its focus on individual teachers rather than rituals and laws helped acceptance. Under the overlay of Hindu-Buddhist features was an older belief system in which the spiritual and temporal were one. In this domain lived the spirits of nature, who needed to be respected. Sufi mysticism could accommodate this.

…

Singing, dancing, drumming and recitation of phrases were a means of embracing the divine spirit, which merged well with existing traditions. Sufism also often recognized the importance of ancestral links to past teachers, so focus on the lineage of rulers was accepted. At the populist level none of this may have mattered greatly, but at least it left room for gradualism. In many cases, Islamization amounted to little more than circumcision and the end of eating pork. The more conversions were obtained by local people rather than by Muslims from overseas, the less likely they were to be overly strict, or indeed to be well acquainted with the Qur’an and Hadith.

…

Essentially, Java’s Muslim rulers were pragmatists who could readily tolerate the old practices alongside nominal acceptance of the new. Such syncretism was to reach its apogee in the seventeenth century when Muslim Mataram, under Sultan Agung (1613–45) briefly came to rule most of Java. The exceptions and last bastions of Hinduism on Java were Banten [in the extreme west] and Balambangan in the extreme east. Formally and avowedly Muslim, Mataram combined many of the features of pre-Islamic customs and beliefs, had its own unique calendar and maintained its own very elegant version of the Kawi writing system. Although Muslim, the Mataram sultans were suspicious both of the ambitions of ulamas and of the trading cities with their wealth and foreign-inspired religious orthodoxy.

For much of Java, Sultan Agung’s rule was crucial for embedding old systems within the new and for creating a lasting culture which remains at the heart of the modern state and the essentially theist principles expressed in the Indonesian constitution. Elsewhere too, old and new went side by side, with Hindu epics being modified and appearing in both Javanese in Kawi script and in Malay in Jawi. Thus today in Indonesia it is possible to say that ‘Islam is our religion, kakawin [the Javanese rhythmic narrative verse which mixes Hindu mythology and Javanese settings] our culture.’

The sultanate also aligned itself with the pre-Hindu legend of the goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul. Belief in the powers of this lady from the Indian Ocean, sometimes portrayed as a mermaid, is still strong in popular culture of the southern Javanese and Sundanese. Other legends mixing Hindu and earlier beliefs also live on.

Well, I’ve approached the publisher’s warning limit for copying from the Kindle version of this book, so this will have to be my last post from this work. The next chapter, titled “Nusantaria: Holed Near the Waterline,” is about the arrival of the Portuguese, so this is a good break point.

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Filed under China, economics, language, migration, Portugal, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Spain

by Joel | 8 September 2026 · 6:03 am

Rise of Brunei Sultanate

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 247-248:

The end of the Melaka sultanate was by no means the end of its influence on Islam and the Malay world. Melaka had inherited the language and culture of Srivijaya and hence of trading centres around the archipelago which had been part of the Srivijayan and Javanese systems. Melaka added the ingredient of Islam. For many Malay and Muslim seemed inseparable. Johor inherited the Melaka sultanate, and a family connection to the Melaka dynasty helped the development of the Perak sultanate. Though never a trading hub, Perak modelled itself on Melaka and became increasingly important as a source of tin and forest products. Malay Patani, with its family links to the Melaka sultanate, grew in importance as a trade rival to Siam, looking more to the north-east, to China, than to the south.

Exiles from Melaka were instrumental in spreading Islam. Johor played a leading role in the conversion of the Brunei ruler which took place shortly before the visit in 1521 of Ferdinand Magellan, who was much impressed by the wealth of the Brunei court and the size of Borneo island. (The name is a derivation of ‘Brunei’. The Indonesian name ‘Kalimantan’ derives from Sanskrit and means ‘burning hot island’.)

‘Boni’, as Brunei was known to the Chinese, was a relatively late addition to the Chinese links. It had only first been officially noted in 971 with a mission which advised that it was 30 sailing days away from Champa and 45 from Srivijaya. They brought camphor, turtle shells and documents with unknown characters written on a glossy material which they rolled up. The envoys described some aspects of their country: their use of longbows and brass armour, finger rings for marriage, water buffaloes for ploughing, coconut liquor to drink, and rice, fish, fowls and goats to eat.

Regular trade with China did not develop until much later, spurred by a mission in 1405. Brunei was well placed for trade links with Champa, Luzon and the eastern islands, as well as with Java and Sumatra, and expanded its influence along the Borneo coast. Islam, to which its ruler converted in the mid fifteenth century, strengthened Brunei’s trading role and it expanded its hegemony to include the Sulu archipelago and Luzon’s two trading settlements on Manila bay. The southern one was called ‘Seludong’ by Malays, though to local Tagalogs it was known as ‘Maynila’, after a flowering mangrove. Thus for 60 years, between the Portuguese capture of Melaka and Spain taking Manila in 1571, Malay Islam expanded its reach partly thanks to the loss of Melaka.

Brunei for a long time was the only Islamized part of Borneo. Farther east, Islam advanced with trade. Ternate in the Malukus, centre of the clove trade, was an early convert. By then, however, Christianity was hard on its heels in the Spice Islands, thanks to the Portuguese sending priests. Among the first was one of the founders of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier, who visited Ambon and other islands before moving on to China and Japan. But on all sides trade and power interests could lead to religious compromises. Thus Muslim Ternate allowed the Portuguese to build a fort even while it was trying to Christianize other islands.