Category Archives: military

by Joel | 24 September 2026 · 5:08 am

Berlin After Stalingrad, 1943

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 202-205:

An even worse damper on the public morale than the bombings was the news from the eastern front, where the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad. On February 2, amid the stench of rotting corpses, blood, and human waste, only about ninety thousand exhausted, hungry, freezing German soldiers were still alive to be taken prisoner. Hitler was furious. He had demanded a battle to the last man. As martyrs, he declared, the German soldiers would have earned “national immortality.” The Wehrmacht took up to a million casualties in the battles around Stalingrad. The victorious Red Army lost even more.

…

Propaganda in the Nazi press had swung from triumphalism to the need to bring Opfer [sacrifice], of course, but also to dark warnings over what the barbaric Russians might do to the Germans in their thirst for revenge. Some conscience-stricken Germans already assumed that the British bombing raids were not only a payback for London and Coventry, but a just punishment for what the Germans had done to the Jews. In the words of Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, “Hardly anyone understands that what is happening now was caused by what happened before; caused by Coventry, by Dunkirk, by atrocities against the Jews, by the destruction of cities and by concentration camps.” Perhaps more people might have sensed this than Ruth assumed. The absolute need for German victory was no longer presented just as a way to rule the new Europe, but to save the German people from their unforgiving enemies.

The annual commemoration of the war dead on March 21 was initiated in 1922 to remember the soldiers who died in World War I. Once they were in power, the Nazis turned what had been a solemn commemoration into a ritual of hero worship, and renamed it Heldengedenktag, “Day of Commemoration of Heroes.” But in 1943 it was more like a state funeral, with Hitler, looking subdued and much older than his fifty-four years, greeting wounded veterans who raised their bandaged arms in the Hitler salute.

…

Hitler might well have died on this occasion, for an officer named Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff had concealed a bomb in his pocket, timed to go off while Hitler was inspecting captured Russian weapons at the Armory. Unfortunately, Hitler, apparently bored by looking at Russian guns, left much earlier than anticipated, and the bomb had to be defused in a nearby lavatory. Hitler, quite unaware of what had occurred, emerged from the Armory to be met by Paul von Hase, the commanding officer of the Berlin garrison, which snapped to attention. One year later, Hase would be hanged for taking part in the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. (Gersdorff, who also took part in the attempt on the Führer’s life, was one of the very few plotters to survive the war, because his friends refused to name him under torture.)

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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 | 20 September 2026 · 5:52 am

Soldiers On Leave in Berlin, 1941

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), p. 133:

Perhaps Moltke was not just thinking of German victims, but it was difficult to disguise the toll the war was taking on German soldiers. Death notices of men who had “fallen for the Volk and Führer” increased in the newspapers. And bitter strains began to be felt between the men who had to do the fighting and the people at home. The Wunschkonzert for the Wehrmacht had been stopped already in May, for reasons that are not quite clear. By midsummer, German soldiers on the eastern front might no longer have had time for such distractions.

In December, a curious letter of complaint was sent by a soldier to officers in the high command, who forwarded it to the Nazi Party authorities. On leave in the capital of the Reich, this soldier had been shocked by the behavior of Berliners. While men on the front were dying for their country, or losing their limbs, or freezing to death, he remarked, Berliners, many of them men under thirty-five years old, who had managed to be excused from military duty, were carousing in the packed bars and restaurants. Women, often without male company, used ration coupons belonging to soldiers on leave to gorge themselves. He was deeply offended by the cynicism he encountered. “The morals of Berlin are beneath contempt,” he wrote. “When it comes to eating, pushing black market goods, and fraudulence, 80 percent of the population has no conscience. And what about those Judeo-Bolshevik jokes that endanger state security in the worst way? If Berlin were Germany, we would have lost this war long ago.”

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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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Filed under Britain, food, France, Germany, migration, military, Netherlands, Scandinavia, war

by Joel | 15 September 2026 · 3:08 am

Sitzkrieg Begins in Berlin, 1939

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 50-51:

The next air raid, on September 9, was as harmless as the first. The alarm lasted for forty-five minutes, but nothing happened at all. This, too, helped to further calm the nerves of Berliners. Helmuth von Moltke wrote to his wife from Berlin that “an infectious optimism has spread in the well-known way of mass psychology; the optimistic assumption is that the people of France won’t fight; it is claimed that French soldiers put big placards on their bunkers, in German: ‘If you don’t shoot, we won’t start.’ The story seems too fantastic. Still, it is true that nearly a week after the outbreak of the war the French and British have not yet done anything to come to the aid of their ally [Poland].”

Moltke had been drafted into the Abwehr, the military intelligence service, run by Wilhelm Canaris, a Nazi supporter who began to turn against Hitler after the invasion of Poland. As an intelligence insider, Moltke knew more than most people, but even he was puzzled by the lack of action from the Allied powers. Many Berliners hoped this meant that the war would be over soon. Surely, the occupation of Poland would be accepted as a fait accompli, just as the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the annexation of Austria had been in 1938. Rumors of imminent peace started spreading around town. As Christabel Bielenberg, the Anglo-German living in Dahlem, had already observed before the invasion of Poland: “With all normal channels of information successfully under control, rumor and hearsay took over and ran riot.”

This is exactly what happened on October 10. Quite how the rumor of imminent peace negotiations began is unclear: A misinformed telegram sent by a clerk at the Berlin central post office was the explanation of the SD, short for Sicherheitsdienst, the fearsome Nazi security service. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich: “A rumor is running through town this morning, like wildfire: the English government has fallen; a ten days’ truce is proposed…. All Berlin is on the telephone. ‘Had you heard…. Is it really true?’ ”

People stopped working in offices. Students at the Friedrich Wilhelm University were celebrating. There was a rush on government bonds at the stock exchange. Christabel Bielenberg went shopping at her local market, passing the church of Martin Niemöller, who had been arrested in 1938 for resisting Nazi persecution of Jewish converts to Christianity. Groups of people gathering around stores and street corners discussed the sensational news. The French had given up all resistance. The abdicated King Edward VIII, who held rather warm feelings toward the Führer, was about to reoccupy the British throne. Hands were stretched to Christabel in congratulation. Frau Schmitz, who ruled the food market behind her vegetable stall, “all overcoat and apron, a bulging monument to the peculiar ribald stoicism which characterizes the true Berliner,” knew exactly what was up: The gentlemen at the top had changed their minds, they were coming to an agreement! A plane all the way from Britain was about to land that afternoon at Tempelhof airfield. Extra rations of tomatoes, bread, and cabbage were slipped into the shopping bags of grateful customers. Rationing would soon be history anyway.

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by Joel | 3 September 2026 · 6:24 am

Spread of Islam in Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 193:

The establishment of Melaka and rise of Demak and other Muslim-dominated communities on the north coast of Java coincided with a power struggle within the Majapahit realm. Islam presented a challenge to Java’s Hindu-Buddhist kingship notions. Internal dissension was also apparent, possibly caused by conversion of some of the aristocracy to Islam, and by intermarriage with Muslims, such as the Cham princess who married King Kertawijaya. This eventually forced the Majapahit to focus on the land base of the kingdom, moving the capital back to Kediri on the upper Brantas. Meanwhile the north coast saw the rise of independently minded trading entities dominated by Muslims, many from India, China and Arabia.

Trowulan was reported to be thriving until very shortly before it was utterly destroyed in 1478 in a war, exacerbated by a dynastic dispute, with Demak. The young sultanate effectively conquered Majapahit but claimed dynastic continuity. The end of Trowulan was the beginning of the end for all Hindu Majapahit, which finally saw its remnants retreat to Bali as Islam made a huge step towards eventual dominance of most of the southern part of the Nusantarian archipelago.

After being razed, Trowulan became overgrown with a teak forest. Stamford Raffles, who, as lieutenant-governor of Java under its brief British rule, initiated the first excavations there in 1815, described it as ‘this pride of Java’ Even then, few physical remains were left of a once great city. Yet the years of Majapahit glory remain deeply embedded in the Javanese collective memory. The memory (and myth) of Majapahit and its empire in Nusantaria remains at the heart of modern Indonesia’s sense of identity, generally overriding Muslim identity and also proving an historical basis for a state created in its present geographical form by the Dutch. Wawasan nusantara, or ‘an archipelagic outlook’ brings the islands together, while the national motto, bhinneka tunggal ika (‘unity in diversity’), is from a Javanese poem, ‘Sutasoma’, of the Majapahit era.

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Filed under Arabia, China, economics, language, migration, military, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia

by Joel | 2 September 2026 · 6:05 am

Kublai Khan vs. Kertanegara

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 182:

Kertanegara’s expansion goal was intended partly to pre-empt designs that the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which had already attacked Japan and Vietnam, might have for a southern maritime empire. He also sought to thwart further southward expansion by the Siamese. But he paid a high price. He only subdued Jambi and Palembang after a long fight and his hold there remained tenuous. However, he did succeed in bringing the smaller straits and southern peninsula ports under his sway to become the leading regional maritime power.

Upset at this expansion of Javanese influence, Kublai sent envoys to demand Kertanegara pay tribute to his empire. But the king responded by deliberately provoking the emperor Kublai, giving his envoys tattoos before sending them back. A furious Kublai then sent a vast fleet, said to be of 1,000 vessels with 100,000 men, to punish him. Before the fleet arrived, Kertanegara was killed in battle by the forces of the leader of Kediri in league with a disloyal general. The details are murky, but the Javanese managed to turn their divisions into an advantage. Kertanegara’s son-in-law Raden Wijaya survived and appeared to align himself with the rebel general against Kediri. They persuaded Kublai’s commander that there was no longer a need to fight the dead Kertanegara but to punish Kediri instead. After Raden’s Kediri rivals had been eliminated, Raden then turned on the Mongols with an ambush.

Although the Javanese could not defeat the invader in pitched battle, they could harass them readily enough. Time was not on the invaders’ side. With supplies running short, Kertanegara dead anyway and facing the change of winds which would have kept them there another six months, the Chinese decided to cut their losses and sail away. Thus ended China’s first military incursion into Nusantaria. It was driven not so much by lust for territory but by a mix of hubris – the demand for fealty – and control of the profits of trade.

One legacy was to leave behind many Chinese stragglers, who helped establish the local Chinese community. Fei Xin, who visited Java with Zheng He’s expeditions more than a century later, noted: ‘Right down to the present time some Chinese live intermingled with the natives because at that time over a hundred were left here and later they brought up families.’

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by Joel | 30 August 2026 · 7:41 am

Rise and Fall of Champa

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 134, 147:

Nusantarians, protected by their seas and ships, were relatively safe on their islands from more populous mainland powers. But it is remarkable that their mainland foothold – the Cham territory – on the southern coastal border with China lasted as long as it did: from settlement, probably from Borneo, around 1000 BCE to Champa’s final extinction by Vietnam in 1832.

Champa was the political successor to the Sa Huynh culture but came under Indian cultural influence while retaining its Austronesian language and living by its seafaring traditions. At its greatest extent Cham territory ran from Vishnupura, near modern Dong Hoi, to Phan Thiet, just north of the Mekong delta. The importance of this narrow strip between the sea and the mountains lay not in its resources but in its position. Journeys from Guangzhou to Siam, Sumatra, Java, Borneo and beyond could be direct, but a stop-off point was often needed for safety. Its ports could also serve as entrepôts for goods from Borneo and Mindanao. From early trading communities there developed more organized, Hindu states, tied together, sometimes loosely, as Champa.

…

Another Vietnamese advance in the early seventeenth century included the capture of Nha Trang. The Cham state was formally wiped off the map in 1832 when the Vietnamese took its last stronghold Panduranga (Phan Rang) and advanced through the hitherto Khmer-ruled Mekong delta to the Ca Mau peninsula, modern Vietnam’s southernmost point. Cham resistance to the Vietnamese continued long after the capture of its territory. Vietnamization was a slow process brought about by a mix of immigration and adaptation.

…

By the time the shrunken Cham territory was finally absorbed by the Vietnamese, the majority were Muslims. Today the small Cham minority in Vietnam is divided by religion, though most are non-Muslims. Following the fall of Panduranga in 1832, many Cham Muslims fled to Cambodia, where they remain as a small minority speaking and writing Cham and maintaining such Austronesian characteristics as matrilineal descent. Some also left for Kelantan in Malaysia. Few Cham speakers are left in Hoi An, which inherited a trading tradition from the Cham and was settled by merchants from China and Japan who built the riverside town which is today a World Heritage site like My Son itself. So different in style, My Son and Hoi An are a microcosm of some 1,500 years of Nusantarian history.

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by Joel | 29 August 2026 · 5:50 am

Tamil Chola vs. Srivijaya, 1000s

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 126-127:

For centuries Nusantaria’s seafaring skills and island geography protected it from outsiders. But in 1025, those walls were breached by another trading state, this one from across the Bay of Bengal. The Tamil Chola dynasty attacked and sacked Palembang, seized Kedah and for several decades had a permanent presence on the peninsula. The attacks on Srivijaya by the Cholas were the only known direct military engagement of an Indian state in Nusantaria. They changed trading dynamics and seriously weakened Srivijaya.

By contrast, their cultural impact may have been slight because Indian-derived culture was so embedded in the region that the Chola military intervention barely added to it. Chola interaction with the region pre-dated the attack as Nusantarian trade and cultural relations with south India had long been close. For example, its architectural influence can be seen in Java’s Prambanan temple, built 70 years before the attack. As late as 1016 the Chola King Rajendra donated funds for the upkeep of a shrine in Nagapattinam erected by the Srivijayans. This referred to the Sailendra family as the kings of Srivijaya and Kedah.

These relations between Chola and Srivijaya were further enhanced by the trade boom of the Tang era which saw the rise of the Chola kingdom to control the whole of southern India. A professional army and bureaucracy brought strong government which undertook public works such as damming the Kaveri River and created an environment in which the arts and literature flourished. From its base at Nagapattinam on the Kaveri delta, it expanded its land borders to the west coast and eventually sent its forces north as far as Bengal. The Cholas did not have a permanent navy, but had at their disposal merchant ships able to transport armies complete with elephants. This naval power enabled it to conquer Sri Lanka and the Maldives and become the dominant force in eastern Indian Ocean trade. Before taking on Srivijaya they had had much practice in a war against the Sinhalese: Sri Lanka saw half a century of Tamil rule of most of the island and the establishment of Shivaite temples.

The Cholas were Hindu with a predominantly Shivaist alignment, though Buddhist shrines continued to be patronized. The main driver of rivalry with Srivijaya was commerce, not belief. The Chola kingdom was strongly influenced by its merchant guilds who, emboldened by conquests elsewhere and seeing Srivijaya being challenged by east Java, wanted to reduce the Srivijayan grip on trade and be noticed by China as an important country. Arab sources record how the Srivijayan king controlled the whole of the [Malay] peninsula but the Cholas wanted to capture some of this trade for themselves and not be dependent on Srivijayan cooperation. Indicating their ambitions, they sent an embassy to China for the first time in 1015.

This was a time when trade was expanding again after a pause caused by the declines of the Tang dynasty in China and the Abbasid one in the Muslim world. Now the Song were in control of China and the North African-based Fatimids were the biggest power in the Muslim world. Already by 985 an Arab was writing: ‘Baghdad was once a magnificent city but is now fast falling into ruin […] Al-Fustat of Misr [Cairo] in the present day is like the Baghdad of old.’

War may have started well before the 1025 Chola sacking of Palembang and capture of the king.