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Three tense events involving the US Army and the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache nations in Oklahoma in the decades after the end of the Great Plains Wars seemed destined to end in violence: The Ghost Dance in 1890−91, the death of three Kiowa boys in a blizzard in 1891 and the transfer of Geronimo and around three hundred Chiricahua Apache Indians to Oklahoma in 1895. In all of these events a US Cavalry officer, Hugh Lenox Scott, played a key role as a soldier-diplomat. Through his linguistic skills and inter-cultural competence, Scott, assisted by Iseeo, a Kiowa army scout and close friend of Scott's, managed to prevent the three situations from erupting in violence. These outcomes are in stark contrast to what happened around the same time in the Northern Plains, where violence erupted on several occasions, most conspicuously at Wounded Knee in December 1890, when US troops killed between 150 and 200 Lakota Indians. The purpose of this micro historical study is to highlight how the military, in concrete action, could promote peace and development in their dealings with American Indians and to explore the significance of personal relations, tolerance and trust for the maintenance of peace. These factors were crucial for the more peaceful development on the Southern Plains compared with in the north. In promoting peace, moreover, Scott not only acted as a diplomat in relation to the Indians; he also successfully advised his superior commanders not to send troops into the field in order to uphold order and quell any possible unrest. Such deployment of troops, Scott was convinced, was like putting a keg of gunpowder in front of an open fire and risked sparking uncontrolled and lethal violence between the soldiers and the Indians, to the detriment of the latter, as happened at Wounded Knee. Based on his long service as a soldier-diplomat, Scott later in life developed a general theory about the military as a peacemaking institution. According to Scott, it was politicians and the people who made war and the task of the military was to conquer the peace. His styling of the US soldier as the "harbinger of peace and mercy", however, depended on Scott ignoring the many instances when the US military had failed to maintain peace and order, both in relation to the American Indians and in colonies overseas. ; Förmedlare i imperialistisk expansion: Möten och kontakter i USA:s gränsland (1876−1916)

In 1908–1909, maritime commerce, fishing and traffic in the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines almost came to a standstill due to a surge in piracy and coastal raids that challenged US colonial rule in the area. The leader of the outlaws was a renegade subject of the Sultan of Sulu, a Samal named Jikiri. Together with his followers, Jikiri was responsible for the murders of at least 40 people in numerous raids on small trading vessels, pearl fishers, coastal settlements and towns throughout the archipelago. In spite of the concerted efforts of the US Army, the Philippine Constabulary and private bounty hunters, Jikiri was able to avoid defeat for more than one and half years, before he was eventually killed in July 1909. His decision to take to piracy was triggered by the failure of the US authorities to pay compensation for the loss of the traditional claims that many families in the Sulu Archipelago had to the pearl beds of the region, as stipulated by a law on pearl fishing adopted in 1904. The law was in several respects disadvantageous to the native population of Sulu and this – together with the high-handed behaviour of the local officers in charge of the Sulu district from 1906 – fuelled widespread discontent with colonial rule and led several of the leading headmen of Sulu covertly to sympathize with, and protect, Jikiri and his followers. This sponsorship combined with the general reluctance of the population to cooperate with the US military explains why Jikiri was able to defy the vastly superior US forces for so long. American officers at the time tended to attribute the depredations to the allegedly piratical nature of the Sulus, but this article argues that the so-called 'decay theory', first proposed by Raffles a century earlier, is a more appropriate explanation of this surge in piracy.

An outstanding feature of the early modern Indian Ocean World is the large number of women who exercised formal sovereign political power. Based on a systematic survey of 277 queens regnant in the Indian Ocean World from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, this article discusses four possible explanations for the relative frequency of female rule: religion, trade, political stability, and gender relations. It concludes that the spread of world religions, particularly Islam, entailed a decrease in the acceptance of female rule in large parts of the region, although its influence varied, and, in sharp contrast to the Middle East, many Muslim polities in the Indian Ocean World were at one time or another during the period under study led by a woman. The notion that women rulers were preferred because of their commercial skills and ability to promote peaceful, open, and trade-friendly policies is rejected as a causal explanation because of its weak support in contemporary sources. The relative frequency of female rule in the Indian Ocean World can instead be explained on a general level by a combination of the desire for political and dynastic stability and the matrifocal orientation of many societies along the Indian Ocean rim. However, as in Europe during the same period, female rule tended mainly to be adopted as a last resort, and female royal power tended, apart from a few exceptions, to be weak and short-lived.

Warfare and legitimate violence have long been seen as key elements in state formation. "Persistent Piracy" brings into the picture the long missing component of maritime violence -- and shows it to be of vital importance to the formation and, on occasion, disintegration, of states. Spanning from the Caribbean to East Asia and covering almost 3,000 years of history, from Classical Antiquity to the eve of the twenty-first century, the book is an important contribution to the history of state formation as well as the history of violence at sea. The book has contributions by leading authorities in the field of piracy studies and history more generally: Philip de Souza, Neil Price, Wolfgang Kaiser, Guillame Calafat, James K. Chin, Robert J. Antony, David J. Starkey, Matthew McCarthy, James Francis Warren and Stig Jarle Hansen

Cover -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- Piracy in World History -- Stefan Eklöf Amirell, Bruce Buchan, and Hans Hägerdal -- 2 "Publique Enemies to Mankind" -- International Pirates as a Product of International Politics -- Michael Kempe -- 3 All at Sea -- Locke's Tyrants and the Pyrates of Political Thought -- Bruce Buchan -- 4 The Colonial Origins of Theorizing Piracy's Relation to Failed States -- Jennifer L. Gaynor -- 5 The Bugis-Makassar Seafarers -- Pirates or Entrepreneurs? -- Hans Hägerdal -- 6 Piracy in India's Western Littoral -- Reality and Representation -- Lakshmi Subramanian -- 7 Holy Warriors, Rebels, and Thieves -- Defining Maritime Violence in the Ottoman Mediterranean -- Joshua M. White -- 8 Piracy, Empire, and Sovereignty in Late Imperial China -- Robert J. Antony -- 9 Persistent Piracy in Philippine Waters -- Metropolitan Discourses about Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, and Moro Coastal Threats, 1570-1800 -- Birgit Tremml-Werner -- 10 Sweden, Barbary Corsairs, and the Hostis Humani Generis -- Justifying Piracy in European Political Thought -- Joachim Östlund and Bruce Buchan -- 11 "Pirates of the Sea and the Land" -- Concurrent Vietnamese and French Concepts of Piracy during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century -- Stefan Eklöf Amirell -- 12 Pirate Passages in Global History -- Afterword -- Lauren Benton -- Index.