Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits, and Empires - Private Violence in Historical Context (PDFDrive)

MERCENARIES,
PIRATES, BANDITS
AND EMPIRES
PRIVATE VIOLENCE IN
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
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edited by
Alejandro Colds | Bryan Mabee

MERCENARIES, PIRATES, BANDITS
AND EMPIRES
Mercenaries, Pirates,
Bandits and Empires
Private Violence
in Historical Context
edited by
Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee, 2010
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mercenaries, pirates, bandits and empires : private violence in historical context / edited
by Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-70208-9 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-80052-3 (eBook)
1. Violence—History. 2. Political violence—History. 3. Non-state actors
(International relations). 4. Piracy—History. 5. Mercenary troops—History.
6. Imperialism. 7. Private military companies. 8. Private security services.
I. Colas, Alejandro. II. Mabee, Bryan. III. Title.
JC328.6.M47 2010
303.609—dc22
2010029997
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in India
c 10987654321
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
editors nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or
changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Private Violence in Historical Context 1
Alejandro Colds and Bryan Mabee
1. Distinctions, Distinctions: 'Public' and 'Private' Force? 15
Patricia Owens
2. State and Armed Force in International Context Tarak Barkawi 33
3. Privateers of the North Sea: At Worlds End—French Privateers
in Norwegian "Waters Halvard Leira and Benjamin de Carvalho 55
4. The Flow and Ebb of Private Seaborne Violence in Global Politics:
Lessons from the Atlantic "World, 1689-1815 83
5. Violent Undertows: Smuggling as Dissent in Nineteenth-Century
Southeast Asia Eric Tagliacozzo 107
6. 'Tribes' and "Warlords in Southern Afghanistan, 1980-2005 133
Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah
7. The Criminal-State Symbiosis and the Yugoslav Wars 159
of Succession Kenneth Morrison
8. Private Security Companies in the Malacca Straits: Mapping New
Patterns of Security Governance Patrick Cullen 187
9. Securing the City: Private Security Companies and Non-State
Authority in Global Governance 213
Rita Abrahams en and Michael C. Williams
Contributors 237
Index 241
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book had its origins in a workshop entitled 'Pirates, Bandits, Mercenaries
and Terrorists: Privatised Violence in Historical Context', held at Queen Mary,
University of London on 23 May 2008. We would like to thank all of the par-
ticipants in the original workshop for what was a very inspiring day, and also
to those who were not at the workshop but have since then prepared papers
especially for this volume. We would also like to thank the British Academy,
who supplied the funding for the original workshop on which the project was
based (British Academy grant SG-48319). The chapters by Rita Abrahamsen
and Michael C. Williams, and Patricia Owens are republished here with per-
mission from the journals International Relations and International Affairs,
respectively.
vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AIM Alternative Informativna Mreza (Alternative Information
Network)
ANC African National Congress
ARBiH Armija Bosne i Hercegovine (Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
BARS Background Asia Risk Solutions
BHL Ban Hoe Leong
BSA Bosnian Serb Army
CCID Central City Improvement Districts
CHAN Centre Historique dArchives Nationaux
CID City Improvement Districts
CSD Centre for the Study of Democracy
EIC East India Company
ESRC The Economic and Social Research Council
EU European Union
EUFOR European Union force
FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia {Savezna Republika Jugoslavija)
FYROM The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
CDMA Glenn Defense Marine Asia
GDP Gross Domestic Product
HDK Hizb-i Demokratik-e Khalq (Peoples Democratic Party of
Afghanistan)
HDZ Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (the Croatian Democratic
Union)
HMS Harbour Marine System
HUMSEC Human Security in the Western Balkan Region
HVO Hrvatsko Vijece Obrane (Croatian Council of Defence)
ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
IR International Relations
IRIN Integrated Regional Information Networks
ISI Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence
ISPS International Ship and Port Security
JEMB Joint Electoral Management Body
JNA Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija (Yugoslav People's Army)
KhAD Khadamat-e Etelaat-e Dawlati (State Information Agency)
KLA Kosovo Liberation Army
LIMA Langkawi International Maritime & Aerospace
LSE London School of Economics
NA National Archives
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NLA National Liberation Army
NUPI Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
NYSE The New York Stock Exchange
OZNa Organ zastite narodna (Department for Protection of the
People)
PMC Private Military Company
PSC Private Security Company
RFE Radio Free Europe
SAPS South African Police Services
SDB Sluzha drzavne bezbednosti (State Security Service)
SDS Srpska Demokratska Stranka (Serbian Democratic Party)
SFRY Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
SOA Srpski Autonomme Oblasti (Serbian Autonomous Regions)
SOLAS Safety of Life at Sea
SSU Strategic Surveillance Unit
UCLA University of California, Los Angeles
UCPMB Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
UDBa Uprava drzavne bezbednosti (Secret Police or the Department
of State Security)
UN United Nations
UNAMA United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
UNDOC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
x
INTRODUCTION
PRIVATE VIOLENCE IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In the opening scene of Bertold Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, a
Swedish recruiting sergeant rejects the protagonists diversionary offer of'a
brace of pistols? Or a belt? Sergeant?' and insists instead: 'It's something else
I'm looking for. These lads of yours are straight as birch-trees, strong limbs,
massive chests ... What are such fine specimens doing out of the army?' When
Mother Courage subsequently draws a knife in a desperate bid to prevent her
son being rounded up, the Sergeant responds with a venomous accusation 'You
admit you live off war, what else could you live off ? Now tell me, how can we
have a war without soldiers?'1
The present volume deals with people that have in the modern period also
collectively lived off war (or at least constant violence). Yet they were rarely
soldiers in the modern, conventional sense of the term. The focus of the chap-
ters that follow is instead upon pirates, privateers, mercenaries, warlords, ban-
dits and smugglers—groups of men (and occasionally women) that have
reproduced themselves and their kin principally through recourse to violence,
but generally from the outside, or the margins of public, state authority. Like
Mother Courage and her children, these social groups have developed a sym-
biotic relationship with war and violence; as in the European Thirty Years War,
1
Bertold Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle oj the Thirty Years
War, Eric Bentley (trans.), London: Methuen, 1972, pp. 7-8.
1
MERCENARIES, PIRATES, BANDITS AND EMPIRES
also in a context of transnational socio-economic and political upheaval, and
attempted state-formation; and, like Mother Courage, always driven by a very
personalized, private calculation of the costs and benefits attached to such
dependence on war, violence and ultimately, the modern state's repeated
attempts to affirm its public authority over a delimited space.
In a world dominated by nation-states, these expressions of private violence
have generally been neglected: either as relics of a more disorganized past, or as
minor nuisances to states themselves. The prevalence and centrality of private
violence in the past (as part of, or against, the rise of nation-states) and present
(in the form ofwarlordism and mercenarism) warns against such complacency.
An increasing academic interest in 'non-state' or private violence in International
Relations (IR) has been mirrored in the world of policy as terrorists, insurgents,
private military companies, and pirates have all become the focus of international
security today. Despite the growing interest, the historical analysis of such actors
has not been at a premium. Though a rising number of works have appeared deal-
ing with contemporary issues of private violence, most of these put the main
emphasis on the present, if setting out background details.2
The present book seeks to rectify this gap through contributions that set
private violence in historical context—showing the development of private
violence in time, its role in history, and through a geographically comparative
analysis of the phenomenon. Although this is a proudly cross-disciplinary vol-
ume, the bulk of the contributors are scholars of IR. This is because the original
impetus behind the book was a dissatisfaction with the ways in which 'non-
state' violence had in the past been addressed within IR, and with the generally
ahistorical fashion in which they were being analysed today by IR theorists
under the more topical headlines of the 'privatisation of security' or the 'crimi-
nalisation of warfare'. Thus, although the guiding problematic of the volume
is one strongly rooted in the disciplinary debates within IR, we have sought
to enlarge the analytical scope of the book by soliciting accounts of private
violence from our sister social sciences in anthropology, geography, history
and politics. By examining ways in which private violence can act in opposition
to existing forms of rule, but can also serve as a source of empowerment for the
2
For good examples of the current literature, see: Deborah Avant, The Market for Force:
The Consequences of Privatizing Security, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005; Robert Mandel, Armies without States: The Privatization of Security, Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002; and P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Priva-
tized Military Industry, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
2
INTRODUCTION
established political authorities, the chapters that follow complicate the often
simplified version of private violence as being merely 'non-state'. Overall, our
aim has been to de-naturalize the idea of national states as the dominant actors
in international relations, by examining the often contradictory and always
complex interactions with so-called 'non-state' expressions of violence, author-
ity and political mobilization. The chapters that follow also seek to shed light
on current concerns over the interactions of terrorism, banditry, warlordism
and piracy by placing them within a longer historical perspective and a tighter
analytical framework.
The rest of this introduction considers some of the key themes and concepts
running across the next nine chapters, in the process also identifying some of
the specific historical-sociological claims about private violence made by what
are after all distinctive contributions with varying methodological, thematic
and indeed political standpoints. It closes with a brief outline of the ways in
which the analyses accumulated here may add to our understanding of private
violence in contemporary world affairs.
The Interconnections of Private Violence
One can read into the words 'pirate', 'bandit', 'mercenary' and 'empire' many
of the core propositions behind this edited volume. Without falling blithely
into etymological determinism, such combination of words captures the inter-
play this book seeks to uncover between force, law and markets in the making
of contemporary private violence on a transnational scale. As the chapter by
Colas and Mabee indicates, the term 'pirate' derives from the Greek peirates
('one who attacks') and has historically been inextricably linked to depredation
and raiding through unlawful violence. This too, is more explicitly the case
with the term 'bandit', which has Latin origins denoting something that is
banished, proscribed or outlawed. Finally, 'mercenary' refers originally to 'one
who does anything for pay' even if, as Kenneth Morrison describes in his chap-
ter, other, more ideological factors relating to identity, faith or political persua-
sion often mitigate against such a straightforward association with financial
reward. A first, phenomenological definition of private violence might there-
fore begin with the observation that it involves the deployment of collective
violence through legally ambiguous means with the primary aim of acquiring
wealth. On such a definition, the fourth component of this book's title, namely
'Empire' comes to the foreground. For in the modern period at least—and
arguably far earlier—expressions of private violence like piracy, banditry, and
3
mercenarism have been facilitated by, and often instrumental to the commer-
cial, military and political circuits of imperial power. Empires, far more than
national territorial states, have been responsible for the transnational circula-
tion of commodities, armies, manpower and laws that have historically pro-
duced the forms of sea-borne and land-based private violence explored in this
volume. Empires have in turn benefited economically, politically and geo-
strategically from these very private sources of violence.3
An initial point of convergence among the chapters that follow is therefore
an emphasis on the global interconnections between different expressions of
private violence. Tarak Barkawi's essay is perhaps most forthright in advocating
a re-conceptualization of'the worldwide organization of force' that takes the
structures of modern imperial power seriously. Through an historically-in-
formed critique of Janice Thomsons seminal treatise on sovereignty and non-
state violence,4 Barkawi exposes the analytical and empirical shortcomings of
Weberian conceptions of the state as holding a legitimate monopoly over the
means of violence within a given territory. Instead, he posits—again, both
historically and conceptually—a different understanding of force and territory
(and by extension, private violence and public authority) in world politics: one
characterized by the 'co-constitution between core and periphery' where 'Core
states "exceed" their monopoly, while peripheral societies are shaped and ruled
through the military instrumentalities of this "excess"'.
These reconfigurations of the relationship between force, territory and
authority permeate the rest of the contributions to the book. The more fine-
grained historical chapters in particular illustrate how practices of piracy,
smuggling, privateering, warlordism, mercenarism and even consular repre-
sentation cut across static, reified conceptions of territorial space, uncovering
instead the deep transnational networks and overlapping territorialities and
identities that simultaneously usurp and reinforce, and therefore regularly
reshape the contours of sovereignty and power in contemporary world politics.
These contributions therefore not only delve into the particular expressions of
3
See, for example, the discussions of empire in the following: Tarak Barkawi, Global-
ization and War, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; and James D. Tracy
(ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991.

4
Janice Thompson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extrater-
ritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994.
4
INTRODUCTION
private violence of the time, but also help to more broadly de-naturalize the
state and sovereignty by demonstrating the complex and particular relation-
ships between force, territory and authority.5
The chapters by Tagliacozzo and Morrison detail how attention to practices
of trafficking, smuggling and banditry can bring to the fore the centrality of
seemingly peripheral and inaccessible borderlands, highlands, frontier towns
and archipelagos in our understanding of world politics. Yet these chapters
also highlight the inter-relation between the seemingly discrete expressions of
force, authority and territoriality. Be it on land or by sea (and the distinction
in this book is of course also relative rather than absolute) smuggling, raiding,
racketeering, privateering, extorting or war-fighting are rarely mutually exclu-
sive, but rather reflect a continuum across different forms of collective violence.
This, the next section of this introduction will suggest, is precisely why the
distinction between public and private violence is at once so problematic, yet
so critical to our understanding of such expressions of violence. As all of the
chapters in this book argue, however much public state authorities seek to
distance themselves from illegal practices, the distinction between soldiers and
mercenaries, outlaws and law-enforcers, warlords and businessmen while real,
is seldom clear, final and permanent. It varies historically according to geo-
graphical context and in accordance to the given power relations between the
social actors and forces at play.
These general propositions about the geographically and conceptually inter-
connected nature of private violence on a global scale, and indeed between the
latter and the legitimate' violence of states, is broached across three inter-re-
lated arenas throughout the book. The first of these is that of global markets.
None of the expressions of private violence addressed in this book is conceiv-
able without reference to the circulation of goods, people and capital through
the integrated world market that emerged in the course of the long' sixteenth
century. On a purely empirical level, the globalization of private security firms
dissected in Abrahamsen and Williams' chapter, the intensification of South-
east Asian contraband so powerfully evoked in Tagliacozzo's contribution, or
^ The thematic focus here overlaps with that of a number of scholars in IR interested
in the historically contingent nature of the state in international relations. For ex-
amples, see: Mathias Albert, DavidJacobson and Yosef Lapid (eds), Identities, Borders,
Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory, Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 2001; and Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds), State Sover-
eignty as a Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
5
the smuggling and racketeering detailed by Morrison all clearly point to the
world market as a necessary vehicle for the reproduction of these forms of
accumulation and their accompanying infrastructures of violence. The claim
that properly capitalist markets are a necessary component of such practices is
perhaps more controversial, as smuggling, raiding, extortion and mercenarism
plainly pre-dates the advent of capitalism. Moreover, there is an important
distinction to be made between private firms that offer protection of'life and
assets' within a capitalist market and private armies in non-capitalist societies
that forcibly extract wealth in the form of tax, tribute or rent. While some
contributions (e.g. Colas and Mabee) argue in a more classically Marxist vein
that the broader historical transition from mercantilist to capitalist imperial-
ism was critical in explaining the virtual disappearance of piracy and the mar-
ginalization of privateering by the end of the Napoleonic wars, others (e.g.
Barkawi) see the contrast between 'public' and 'private' violence through the
Wallersteinian framework of a dependent relation between a European core
and the periphery of the world-system, much like Thomas Gallant has did
some years ago in another context.6 The definition and role of global capitalism
in the dynamics of private violence is, then, something on which the contribu-
tors diverge. We all seem to agree, however, that it is pointless analysing mod-
ern expressions of private violence without inserting them within the wider
networks of the global market.
A second major theme running throughout this collection is the place of
law and, by extension, political authority and state sovereignty in the under-
standing of private violence. Once again, most contributors agree that terms
like 'non-state' are unhelpful in analysing violence perpetrated by the likes of
pirates, bandits, terrorists or mercenaries. States have been, and still are so
deeply implicated in these forms of 'non-state' violence that it makes little
sense to insist on this hard distinction. Likewise, the chapters that follow seek
to go beyond the understanding of private violence as being merely illegal.
Plainly, the changing legal status ofpredation, taxation, tribute and the forms
of property they gave rise to—both across time and in different geographical
locations—is central to the definition of what we have labelled private vio-
lence in this volume. The chapter by Leira and de Carvalho in particular offers
a highly illuminating account of the changing regulatory regime governing
6
Thomas W. Gallant, 'Brigandage, Piracy, Capitalism, and State-Formation: Transna-
tional Crime from a Historical World-System Perspective' in J. M. Heyman (ed.)
States and Illegal Practices, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998, pp. 25-62.
6
INTRODUCTION
the issue of privateering letters of marque and the subsequent adjudication of
prizes in Absolutist and Napoleonic France. It demonstrates the importance
of privateering not just to the French conduct of war and diplomacy during
that period, but also in propelling changes to European state-formation and
public law more generally: 'States were increasing the reach of their govern-
ing capacity to include compatriots in foreign lands, and consuls were their
prime tool. This function was incidental to the support and control of priva-
teers, but was clearly an element of the institutional state-building of the send-
ing state.'
Equally, however, the other chapters by Cullen, Morrison, Tagliacozzo, and
Colas and Mabee emphasize the generally contingent, and often arbitrary dis-
tinction between legal and illegal uses of collective violence according to the
interests of the most powerful party at any given time. In this regard, many of
the historical examples of private violence explored in this volume could rea-
sonably fall under the label of'transnational organized crime'. Whilst accepting
that mafia-type criminal syndicates plainly represent one powerful form of
private violence (as Morrison's chapter indicates), we do however wish to
underscore in this Introduction that pirates, bandits, mercenaries and warlords
are more than just criminals: they are above all characterized by their mobiliza-
tion of violence through personalized networks in the appropriation of wealth.
Such practices are politically indeterminate and can both support existing
power structures—as in the case of privateering and mercenarism—or—as
renowned scholars of banditry and piracy like Eric Hobsbawm and Marcus
Rediker have demonstrated—act as forms of resistance by disenfranchized
social sectors, exploited classes and oppressed ethnic groups.
There is, in short, more to private violence than illegality and lying beyond
the direct control of the state. After all, one justly famous rendition of Euro-
pean state formation saw this process as a legitimized protection racket where
the line between law and criminality was 'uncertain and elastic'.8 Here, our
earlier working definition of private violence needs to be modified by dropping
any necessary connection with criminality. As Josiah Heyman and Alan Smart
have suggested, it is more useful to see the tensions between legality and illegal-
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1969; Markus Rediker, Villains
of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, London: Verso, 2004.
s
Charles Tilly, 'War-Making and State-Making as Organized Crime' in P. Evans,
D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985.
7
ity as being reflective of broader socio-economic and political struggles among
social groups: 'Emphasizing practices and process rather than rule or structures
provides a space within which indeterminacy, ambiguity and double-dealing
can be analysed more clearly'.9
A final general analytic concern that cuts across all the chapters in the book
is, logically enough, the character and dynamics of private violence itself. We
have aimed in this volume to force comparisons between very different expres-
sions of private violence, seeking out commonalities and differences across
geographical, temporal and sociological experiences. This has raised challeng-
ing questions regarding the operational mechanisms employed by the diverse
agents of private violence. Is it plausible to compare todays private military
corporations to the mercenary companies of the Thirty Years War ? How useful
is it to think of contemporary Asian or African warlords as expressions of non-
capitalist tribute takers or feudal retainers ? Is piracy simply a form of water-
borne banditry that adjusts the same principles of land-based predation and
raiding to the high seas? These sorts of questions are addressed implicitly and
explicitly throughout the next nine chapters, mainly with reference to histori-
cal illustrations of the way in which these private actors have organized and
deployed collective violence. While some chapters (e.g. Giustozzi and Ullah,
and Morrison) underline the continuity in the forms of violence practised by
private subjects in their previous incarnations as military officers or intelligence
agents, others focus upon the very specific historical conditions that have facili-
tated the global expansion of private security firms under neo-liberalism (Cul-
len, Abrahamsen and Williams) or the mobilization of diasporic mercenaries
in the contexts of a resurgence of Balkan identity politics (Morrison). This
variation in the conceptions of private violence across the different chapters
of the book thus warrants a short note on the vexed question of what is distinc-
tive about this category and what is to be gained in using it—questions to
which we now turn.
The Question of the Pubic/Private Divide
Patricia Owens neatly sets out the problematic of the public/private divide in
the opening chapter of this collection: 'There is no such thing' she states, 'as
public and private violence. There is only violence that is made "public" and
9
Josiah M. Heyman and Alan Smart, 'States and Illegal Practices: An Overview' in
Heyman, States and Illegal Practices, p. 7.
8
INTRODUCTION
violence that is made "private"'. Whatever their differences, all of the chapters
that follow adopt this view of the distinction between public and private vio-
lence as historically constructed and therefore variable across time and place.
This begs the question, however, of what social and historical forces account
for the diverse permutations of the relationship between public and private
violence? We identify three overlapping types of response in this volume
(although the list is plainly incomplete—as Owens herself rightly points out,
the public/private dichotomy, 'structures virtually the entire tradition of west-
ern political thought and practice').
The first of these approaches, whilst unambiguously recognizing the historicity
of the distinction, nonetheless takes on board the modern states' claim to a
public monopoly over violence within a given territory, and probes the ten-
sions and contradictions in its relationship with the force-wielding contractors
of civil society. Here Leira and de Carvalho's survey of French privateering is
perhaps most illustrative of the negotiation (over contracts, prizes, regulations)
that characterizes the differentiation between public authority and private
force-provision. Rather than a straightforward opposition between these two
spheres, Leira and de Carvalho suggest that 'state-sanctioned private use of
violence usually implies a trade-off, where direct control is (albeit often feebly)
replaced by indirect control, and where public and private interests and capa-
bilities are intertwined'. They moreover highlight the critical role of indepen-
dent agents—merchants, consuls and ship-owners—in facilitating and
brokering the negotiation and contract between the state and privateers.
Importantly, Leira and de Carvalho also alert us to the perils of an ahistori-
cal use of the term 'privatization'—a process implying that force and authority
are already 'public' in the first instance. As Abrahamsen and Williams' chapter
demonstrates with reference to private security companies, the 'privatization'
of security is a fairly recent phenomenon that was transnationalized with the
end of the Cold War and the triumph in the last thirty years of neo-liberal
policies and ideologies. Unlike Absolutist France, the privatization of security
in the contemporary world is only conceivable within the context of a pre-
existing separation between public authority and private property. Yet much
like seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe, there has been at the close of
the twentieth century a blurring of the distinction between these two are-
nas—at least as regards the use of force. This has not been the inevitable con-
sequence of the fabled erosion of state power through economic globalization,
but rather a direct result of state-sanctioned policies, backed by named social
forces and often legitimated through electoral mandates. As Abrahamsen and
9
Williams note: 'Again, broader global discourses and practices such as New
Public Management strategies and moves toward private-public partnerships
are of key importance here, and although states are not necessarily the instiga-
tors of such "hybrid" forms of governance, they lend them strength and legiti-
macy through official recognition and/or incorporation into domestic/
international law'. The first point, then, is that attention to the origins and
development of private violence in the modern world takes us away from an
historically unsustainable and analytically unpersuasive contrast between state
and non-state actors.
A second iteration of these agent-centred accounts of the shifting relation-
ship between public authority and private violence focuses on more structural
determinants. The chapter by Colas and Mabee in particular emphazises the
centrality of appropriation of wealth in defining private violence. The argument
here is two-fold. On the one hand, that wealth-creation under capitalist societ-
ies is founded upon the structural separation between the public, political
authority of the state and the private, economic power of the market. The latter
is—both formally and substantively—a realm where coercion and violence
play no direct role in the creation and appropriation of surplus. The capitalist
market, as Marx famously suggested, is characterized by the 'bourgeois free-
dom' of exchange between employers and wage-earners and competition
among diverse capitals. Conversely, in pre-capitalist societies force and violence
(or threats thereof) are integral to the generation and distribution of wealth.
This is why European mercantile empires of the 'long' eighteenth century—
including Britain's overseas empire—which were not properly capitalist until
well after the end of the Napoleonic wars, were so strongly predicated upon a
merger of public and private violence.10 It also explains why under a global
capitalist economy it is perfectly legitimate to conceive of the protection of
'life and assets' as a service to be privately supplied through the market, without
direct interference of the state. On the other hand, even where—as in the case
of the Dutch and English chartered companies—there was a public-private
partnership in the provision of overseas violence, the mechanisms employed
to do so revolved around private entrepreneurs with access to personal wealth
and resources, and the subsequent private appropriation of the spoils of war.
10
A parallel, though not necessarily corresponding argument is made by A. Claire
Cutler regarding the transition from common to positive law in the regulation of
transnational merchant law. See A. C. Cutler, Private Power and Global Authority:
Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2003.
10
INTRODUCTION
In both instances, the emphasis on private violence as a vehicle of wealth accu-
mulation can help to explain the historical variations in public/private rela-
tions, as well as accounting for the specific socio-economic and political
interests that drive the provision of private force in the world today.
There is, finally, a third perspective on the meaning and relevance of private
violence present in this book, which emphasizes the personalized nature of the
phenomenon. Eric Tagliacozzo's chapter rescues from the condescension of
state-centric IR, the experiences of trafficked men and women and emphasizes
their central role in reproducing the circuits of imperial power in nineteenth
century south-east Asia. These life-stories were (and still are) characterized by
a violence that is indelibly private—both in the corporeal sense and insofar as
trafficked slaves, prostitutes and 'coolies' were traded as property of named
individuals. Yet, as Tagliacozzo so vividly recounts, such expressions of private
violence were at once buttressed by and supportive of the very public structures
of colonial rule and administration in that part of the world.
Similarly, Giustozzi and Ullah's detailed case-studies of three Afghan 'tribal
entrepreneurs' reveals how much private violence—both past and present—
relies on personal bonds of kinship, patronage and charismatic leadership. Like
many other 'military entrepreneurs' around the world, the biographies of the
warlords and 'strongmen' explored by Giustozzi and Ullah demonstrate the
capacity of former pro-government militia leaders to reinvent themselves as
traffickers subsequent to the collapse of communism; to live off war as both
'public' retainers of the state and 'private' merchants.
Once again, tracing these personal trajectories in private violence allows
students of contemporary world politics to go beyond the rigid state/non-state
or national/international dichotomies and explore instead the ways in which
these structures of power are constituted and re-constituted by diverse social
actors through distinctive recourse to force, or the threat thereof.
The Relevance of Private Violence Today
The book as a whole does not seek to give easy parallels between the past and
present, but rather to show how the broad historicization of private violence
can give depth and perspective on understanding private violence in the pres-
ent. In this light, this book has two principal objectives in regards to under-
standing private violence today. The first is to relativize the historical novelty
of private violence today, arguing that while private violence is not new, it does
express itself in different, historically mediated forms. The embedding of pri-
11
vate violence in various historical contexts, from the global economy to per-
sonalized networks, only highlights the contingent nature of private violence:
it is embedded in broader social contexts that impact upon its particular mani-
festations in any period.
Second, we wish to emphasize the role of private violence in understanding
the modern international system. "We are not arguing for a banal transnational-
ism that simply emphasizes social forces that exist 'beyond the state'. Rather,
we seek to demonstrate how putting private violence in historical context
reveals the 'interstices' of the international system. As such, our principal aim
is not to merely revise the historiography of private violence, but also to offer
cross-disciplinary insights into the interconnections between the historically
mediated forms of private violence and the modern international system. Here,
understanding the role of private violence today goes hand in hand with a bet-
ter understanding of the present international system, particularly the links
between organized violence and political economy, hierarchy in the interna-
tional system, and especially the contemporary role of imperialism and
empire.11 That is to say that a proper understanding of private violence can get
at the heart of understanding present international relations.
These key aims are augmented by one final objective, which plays a broader
role in debates concerning Eurocentrism and periodization in the analysis of
international relations. First, the contributions as a whole challenge the evo-
lutionary assumption that private violence can be equated as a pre-industrial/
pre-modern remnant,12 by showing how private violence has tended to exist
in particular forms in very different social systems, as both a means of repro-
11
There have been a number of recent debates on the character of the present interna-
tional system, especially as regards US power within that system. See, for diverse
examples, David A. Lake, 'Escape from the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy
in "World Polities', International Security 32, 1, 2007, pp. 47-79; John M. Hobson
and J. C. Sharman, 'The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the
Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change', European Journal of International
Relations 11,1,2005, pp. 63-98; Ellen Empire of Capital, London:
Verso, 2005; Ray Kiely, Empire in the Age of Globalisation: US Hegemony and Neo-
liberal Disorder, London; Pluto, 2005; CraigJ. Calhoun, Frederick Cooper and
Kevin W. Moore (eds), Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power,
New York: New Press, 2006; Gopal Balakrishnan, Antagonistics: Capitalism and
Power in an Age of War, London: Verso, 2009; and Alejandro Colas, Empire, Cam-
bridge: Polity, 2007.

12
For example, in Hobsbawm, Bandits.
12
INTRODUCTION
duction and of transformation. Second, the contributions to the volume
attempt to challenge the universality of core concepts, while still nonetheless
positing the validity of a classically modern 'public/private' distinction outside
of Europe. As Dipesh Chakrabarty puts it: 'European thought is at once both
indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences
of political modernity in non-Western nations.'13 We concur, and hope that
the following investigations, from those looking at the broader political econ-
omy of empire and violence, to those investigating particular practices of pri-
vate violence in the non-Western world, can help to illuminate both the
usefulness and inadequacy of the public/private distinction.
Overall, the collective argument given by the collection is that private vio-
lence in the present is not new, but it is certainly different. A historical sociol-
ogy of private violence in international relations requires more attention to
the change and reproduction of institutional forms and the distinctive mani-
festations of private violence across time and place, and greater emphasis on
the shifting yet structural relations between private violence and political
authority. Private violence today can only be understood in relation to this
complex history.
13
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference, New ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 16.
13
1
DISTINCTIONS, DISTINCTIONS
'PUBLIC AND 'PRIVATE' FORCE?
Patricia Owens
Historically and conceptually, the distinctions between the domestic and for-
eign and the public and private have been crucial to how we have understood
the functioning of modern government and the mobilization of resources to
fight in 'national' armies. Home police forces were tasked with enforcing law
and order in the domestic sphere; only in national emergencies and in Euro-
pean empires was the army to assist in these functions.1 It is now well-known
that policing and security institutions are merging, as is the distinction between
external and internal, as soldiers take on policing activity and vice versa.2 A
'private' security industry able to offer highly trained combatants, equipment,
and training now works within and across state boundaries, protecting national
and transnational military and economic interests. 'Private' corporations engage
in a variety of classical military and domestic security operations, providing
skills, strategic planning, intelligence, and much more. They even possess their
own trade organization, the International Peace Operations Association.
1
Mathieu Deflem, Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police
Cooperation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

2
David H. Bayley, Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
15
According to P.W. Singer, 'the responsibility for a public end—security—is
diffused across a number of actors, public and private'. Public and private are
not what they used to be; 'the public-private dichotomy ... which was once
solidly fixed, is now under siege'.3
The idea that security and insecurity are now experienced and practiced in
ways that merge the internal and external, public and private, is an important
feature of recent literature on the changing character of war and security.4 We
are frequently told that the state, the privileged public realm in the modern
imaginary, is under threat as the primary provider of military and economic
security in the face of military globalization and neo-liberal capitalism. The
scale of involvement of commercial firms in the business of security is vast and
their challenges to existing domestic and international law, civil-military rela-
tions, and political accountability are huge.5 Wealthy individuals, gated com-
munities, insurgents, multinationals, states in strategic competition for oil, and
inter-governmental organizations all increasingly purchase 'security' in the
market for force.6 In 2007, nearly 180,000 'private' contractors were employed
by the United States government in Iraq, 20,000 more than the total of desig-
nated US 'national' troops. At the time of writing, none of these contractors,
these 'victims, soldiers, and torturers', had been prosecuted for a single war
crime on the battlefield of Iraq.8 The signature of L. Paul Bremer, while head
of the Coalition Provisional Authority, exempted them from any national or
international regulation.
Important debates about the consequences of the so-called 'privatization'
of force are taking place. Are these firms simply corporate versions of the older
'whores of war', mercenaries with better PR? Given falling budgets, rising costs
and overstretch, is it not simply rational for state militaries to turn to private
3
PW. Singer, Corporate Warriors (second edition), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2008, p. 8 and 220.
■' For a thorough review, see Ian Loader and Neil Walker, Civilizing Security, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
^ Caroline Holmqvist, 'Private Security Companies: The Case for Regulation', SIPRI
Policy Paper No. 9, 2005.

6
Deborah D. Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Anna Leander, "The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance
of Private Military Companies', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 33: 3,
2005, p. 805.
8
Singer, Corporate Warriors, pp. 245, 251.
16
DISTINCTIONS, DISTINCTIONS: 'PUBLIC AND 'PRIVATE' FORCE?
solutions to new global problems and new markets? Should commercial firms
take over the training of friendly foreign armies if domestic political pressures
make it unfeasible or unattractive for direct intervention by national-state
armed forces ?9 (Insurgencies are more likely to defeat the government the more
intense the military actions of the outside state supporting the struggling gov-
ernment.10) Do global corporate warriors represent 'the "new face" of neo-
colonialism', making Africa's strategic minerals 'safe for investment'?11 After
all, many are hired for diamond, oil and mining concessions sometimes made
available through the 'strategic privatization' of resources still in the hands of
rebels. Or is the rise of these firms simply an inevitable and legitimate by-prod-
uct of the need to protect private property rights and open markets in an era
of globalization? Might private contractors step in quickly and efficiently
where the UN fails and actually halt some of the genocides of the future?12
What if preventing a repeat of Rwanda or Darfur was a matter not of political
will, but of simply finding the cash?
The majority of this chapter does not engage directly with these important
political debates. Moreover, the question at hand is not whether we should be
optimistic or pessimistic about the more open turn toward corporate firms
organizing and providing the means of violence. It is easy to be ambivalent,
rather than just critical, of the commercialization of war in the face of the
grossly inadequate response by governments and their international organiza-
tions to genocide. The meaningful comparison today is perhaps not 'between
private financing and/or delivery of security and the financing and/or delivery
of security by states'.13 It may be the different, albeit much more difficult to
measure, contrast between expressions of force that increase global social and
economic inequality and genocide and those that do not.
9
One example is the use of commercial firms in 'Plan Colombia' with a cost to the
United States of between $770 million and $1.3 billion. Singer, Corporate Warriors,
p. 211.
10
Max G. Manwaring and John T. Fishel, 'Insurgency and Counter-insurgency: Toward
a New Analytical Approach', Small Wars & Insurgencies, 3: 3, 1992, pp. 272-310.
" David Francis, 'Mercenary Intervention in Sierra Leone: Providing National
Security of International Exploitation?', Third World Quarterly, 20: 2, 1999, p. 319;
323.
12
David Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention, London: IISS Adelphi
Paper, 1998.
13
Avant, The Market for Force, p. 26.
17
This contribution offers an evaluation of the underlying conceptualization
within International Relations (IR) of what it is for force to be privatized.
Much of the literature in this field suffers from a fundamental flaw in its under-
standing of the 'grand dichotomy' between public and private and hence misses
an important element of the changing character of war.14 The public-private
distinction is one of the primary mechanisms, if not the primary mechanism,
for organizing political, economic and, therefore, military power. ^ The dichot-
omy structures virtually the entire tradition of Western political thought and
practice. Yet it remains surprisingly under-theorized in the relevant literatures
within IR. For example, most work on 'privatized' violence in this field accepts
an ideological construct as real and proceeds to analyze contemporary patterns
of war and peace based on a misunderstanding about what the public-private
distinction actually is in modern society—an exercise in political legitimation
underpinned by an ideology. The distinction has never been 'solidly fixed'.16
The identity of these spheres shifts and changes as a way of organizing power.
In other words, there is no such thing as public or private violence. There is
only violence that is made 'public' and violence that is made 'private'.
To substantiate these claims, the chapter describes in more detail the prin-
cipal ways in which post-Cold War armed conflicts are believed to have
changed in the IR literature on 'private force', with implications for what are
assumed to be older and more stable distinctions between public and private.
It suggests that the conceptual weaknesses of much of this literature can be
accounted for, in part, by a misunderstanding of the historical and sociological
importance of the way power is organized and legitimated through shifts in
the public-private distinction. In the modern period what is normally described
as 'public'—government administration—is largely a function of the private.
Moreover, the classical image of the state as the possessor of the legitimate
monopoly of the 'public' use of force in its borders (capable of mobilizing
resources from within the state) was never a plausible reflection of reality.
Indeed, there is nothing essential in Carl von Clausewitz's political understand-
ing of the phenomenology of war that means we must define war itself as an
act carried on by a public authority as understood in much of the literature.
14
JeffWeintraub and Krishan Kumar (eds) Public and Private in Thought and Practice:
Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997.

15
Michael Warner, 'Public and Private', in Publics and Counterpublics, New York: Zone
Books, 2002, pp. 21-63.

16
Singer, Corporate Warriors, p. 8.
18
The chapter concludes by arguing that for the sake of historical accuracy and
conceptual integrity scholars should abandon the terminology of'public' and
'private' force, but not the distinctions between war, violence and politics.
Tracing how public-private distinctions shift and change as an effect of
political power is a joint task for historical sociology and international pol-
itical theory.
The Changing Character of Public and Private
There is an almost unlimited source of examples and themes which may be
used to illustrate the significance of the public-private distinction. For example,
in democratic Athens, the difference between public and private corresponded
to the household and the political realms, between activities related to main-
taining the necessities of life and those related to a common world.1 Labor
within the private realm of the household tended to the needs of'life', the bio-
logical processes of the human body. The common world was understood as
the space for politics, the public realm in which those permitted to enter could
freely debate their affairs and initiate political action in concert. The social
conditions enabling this model of political conduct were related to the form
of warfare and inter-polis system. Hoplite armies and small-scale fighting made
possible the Greek ideal and practice of the citizen-soldier and manly warrior.18
That was the ideal. But in reality, of course, ancient Greek armies also hired
non-citizens.19 The distinction between public and private served the interests
of slave-holding patriarchs who were the only ones permitted to enter the pub-
lic realm. Unbound by the necessities of maintaining life, which were catered
for by women and slaves, Greek citizens exercised their freedom in public.
Privacy meant to be deprived. 'A man who lived only a private life' was under-
stood to be 'not fully human'.20
In the modern period, the classical distinction between public and private
has become blurred into a realm that can be called the 'social'.21 This realm is
1
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958,
p. 28.
18
R. Claire Snyder, Citizen-soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender
in the Civic Republican Tradition, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.

19
G. T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World (new edition), Palos Heights,
IL: Ares Press 1997.

20
Arendt, Human Condition, p. 38.
21
Ibid., p. 35.
19
neither public nor private in the classical sense although modern 'society' is
still structured through a variety of such distinctions; only the meanings of the
terms have changed. Since the seventeenth century, the public realm in Euro-
pean nation-states has been associated with governmental administration of
the commonwealth. The state monopolized the right to declare itself as the
primary 'public' arena because it could claim to successfully represent and
defend the general interests of those it governed. The modern state form
showed itself to be the most efficient and well-equipped entity for offering a
solution to achieving the 'first freedom' as it is understood in most Western
political thought—'security-from-violence'.22 The Leviathan removed the indi-
vidual and groups of individuals from the state of nature. Since Hobbes, the
protection and fostering of life has been understood as the liberal solution to
the problem of persuading individuals to submit to the Leviathan. In giving
up unfettered liberty, citizens have the right to expect certain benefits and
rewards. In exchange for obedience to the sovereign's process of power accu-
mulation, the state provides a way of life in which the pursuit of'private' inter-
ests is made compatible with the 'public' good. The 'public' is synonymous
with 'government' and its primary rationale the sustenance of life.
That the modern purpose of the public realm is to foster and sustain the life
processes of humans is reflected in the literature on private force where the
term 'public' is taken to 'denote governmental institutions ... because the mean-
ing of public is associated with the pursuit of collective ends'.23 Action in public
is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Governments are deemed success-
ful to the extent that they can simultaneously protect individuals from violent
death and foster the social and economic conditions in which the collective
good can thrive. However, the concept of'collective good' is the not the same
as the ancient notion of the public realm or even a republic which exists in its
own right as a distinct and separate sphere. As Hannah Arendt wrote, it 'rec-
ognizes only that private individuals have interests in common'.24 Rather than
the concepts of'public' and 'private' serving to distinguish between two related
but distinct activities—those that relate to building a common world and those
that relate to maintaining life—in modern society the 'public' is a function of
the 'private'; 'private interests assume public significance'.25
22 Daniel Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the
Global Village, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

23
24
25
Ibid., p. 35; 69.
20
Just as the meaning of the 'public' has shifted in the modern period, so has
the meaning of'private'. It no longer means to be deprived of something such
as the ability to fully express one's humanity. Rather the existence of autono-
mous, private persons has become 'the proper site of humanity'. Individuals
are understood to be in 'possession of publicly relevant rights by virtue of being
private persons'.26 In a move that made an allegedly non-political sphere the
single realm of true liberty the private autonomy of individual rights bearers
was created so that legal (public) persons could exist. Not deprivation, but
notions such as intimacy and most importantly wealth are 'private' and the
freedom to accumulate wealth became inextricably linked with the idea of
privately-owned property. Private appropriation of wealth and relatively fre-
quent elections are deemed sufficient to protect individual liberty. In ancient
Greece, in contrast, 'property meant no more or less than to have one's location
in a particular part of the world and therefore to belong to the body politic'.2
Now the protection of private wealth accumulation is a central function of
government.
The point of this contrast between ancient and modern is to suggest that
change in the distinction between public and private is one of the drivers of
change in the character of war and vice versa. As the next section will elaborate,
this modern way of framing the public-private distinction has grown in
strength to the extent that it correlates with the normative and material claims
of the modern capitalist state, including how it has prepared for and justified
the wars that protect its interests. In the modern period, we see the emergence
of an incredibly stylized, but distinctive, type of war 'characterized', as Mary
Kaldor puts it, 'by a different mode of warfare, involving different types of
military forces, different strategies and techniques, different relations and
means of warfare'.28
Private Force in International Relations
In International Relations, soldiers of fortune and the wide variety of other
non-state fighting units are primarily understood in relation to states' efforts
to achieve a 'public' monopoly on force and questions of what it is for a sov-
26
Warner, Publics and Counterpuhlics, p. 39.
2
hctnAt, Human Condition, p. 61.
28
Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (second edi-
tion), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006, p. 17.
21
ereign state to generate, organize and control force. In this regard, the follow-
ing comments and concerns are typical. How do 'exports of private security
services affect states' ability to control the force that emanates from their
territory'?29 A government exercises sovereign powers and 'When those powers
are delegated to outsiders', we are informed, 'the capacity to govern is
undermined'.30 The central element of the sovereign inter-state system is broken
when 'the collective monopoly of the state over violence in world politics' dis-
appears.31 The assumption is that certain government functions are inherent
to sovereignty, that sovereignty implies the ability to govern, and that the cen-
tral issue for investigation is the extent of states' 'control' of the violence 'that
emanates from their territory'.32
This formulation is unsurprising since the Western tradition of social and
political theory has defined the sovereign state as that which possesses the
legitimate monopoly on the means of violence within a given territory. States
are understood to be properly sovereign to the extent that they can achieve the
'public' monopoly on the use of force. These assumptions about the appropri-
ate relationship between public and private, state and non-state, dominate
scholarly and political debate about the 'privatization' of violence and the
changing character of war. It is assumed that states' armed forces generate vio-
lence from their societies and instrumentally deploy this violence to achieve
their objectives, such as more territory, wealth or power. Hence the following
questions typically structure the research agenda of those within the field
studying variation in expressions of'private' force. 'How did the state achieve
a monopoly on violence beyond its borders that emanates from its territory?
What explains the elimination of non-state violence from global politics?'33
What 'type of force' do states 'choose to employ'?31 These questions arise since
it is assumed that since the French Revolution citizen armies 'have been touted
29
30
Paul R. Verkuil, Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions
Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do About It, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007, p. 1.

31
32
Ibid., p. 77; Verkuil, Outsourcing Sovereignty, p. 3.
33
Janice E. Thompson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-building and Extra-
territorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994, p. 3.
34
Sarah Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 4.
22
as the most appropriate (and effective) vehicles for generating security', signal-
ling 'the end of hired soldiers playing a serious role in warfare, at least for the
next two centuries'.3^
Under these material and ideological conditions, the elimination of certain
forms of'privately' owned means of violence would appear to be central to the
rise of European states as war-making organizations in an inter-state system
and emerging world market. Sovereignty involved the ability to extract wealth
from populations through taxation and borrowing and to regularize armed
forces and policing functions by eliminating 'private', that is, non-regular
armies, such as privateers and pirates.36 Through a slow and uneven process,
mercenaries, privateers and pirates were edged out of the military business. It
is well-known that the Thirty Years War, which culminated in the Treaties of
Westphalia, had been fought with large numbers of mercenaries participating
for what was understood to be primarily financial gain. Over time, European
armies comprised of soldiers of fortune declined. By the nineteenth century,
we saw the emergence of more centrally controlled peoples' armies, regularized
armed forces, serviced by men supposedly committed to a national cause, not
only financial gain; eventually '"good" states, as well as successful states, fought
wars using their own people'.3
There is a broad understanding that the extent to which we can describe a
monopoly on the use of force in European states, is that it occurred through a
centuries long process of internal pacification and international war-making.
As already indicated, increasingly only the state was permitted to use or
threaten violence to appropriate money and men. Non-state actors were less
able to successfully claim the right to pursue their just cause through violence
unless allowed by states. For example, violence remained noticeably prevalent
in the 'private' sphere of the household supported and maintained by patriar-
chy and assertions of the primacy of the 'public' realm, dominated by men, and
associated denigration of women.38 'Specifically, at the present time', noted
Max Weber, 'the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or
individuals only to the extent that the state permits it. The state is considered
the sole source of the "right" to use violence...; the state is a relation of men
35
Avant, The Market for Force, p. 29; Singer, Corporate Warriors, p. 31.
36
The seminal work on this process is Thompson, Mercenaries.
37
Percy, Mercenaries, p. 122.
38
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political
Thought (second edition), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
23
dominating men [sic], a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. con-
sidered to be legitimate) violence'.39 Because the state successfully claimed to
represent collective interests it was also able to define itself as public' and the
'public' arena came to be defined as the only legitimate agency for the use of
force. War was for the political end of states and was justified as the legitimate
pursuit of state interest. It could be distinguished from less organized crime
because it was defined as an activity carried out by a newly fashioned 'public'
entity which established the law and exceptions to the law.40 The 'people', the
'army' and the 'government' were legally separated. The legal and political
category of the 'civilian' emerged. 'Civil' war and other forms of partisan vio-
lence, which implied the collapse of the state's ability to control violence,
were vilified.
Given the origin of international law as an adjunct to the modern European
sovereign state, it is perhaps not surprising to find that international law is
similarly based on a variety of public-private distinctions and that these distinc-
tions are evolving as an effect of changes in global power.11 Most obviously,
classical international law consists of areas internal to the domestic jurisdiction
of states ('private') and issues of international concern ('public') and was later
codified in Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter. International 'public' law concerns
relations between states and international organizations; international 'private'
law to cases with an extra-territorial character regulating property, banking
and currency and to conflicts of law and state jurisdiction. Just as the distinc-
tion between public and private became blurred into the 'social' in the modern
period, we have recently seen the emergence of transnational 'public-private
partnerships', a hybrid form of global governance aimed at securing the life
39
Max Weber, 'Politics as a Vocation' in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (trans,
eds, and intro.), H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1946, p. 78.
40
The formulation is obviously taken from Charles Tilly, 'War Making and State Mak-
ing as Organized Crime', in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Theda Skocpol
(eds) Bringing The State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985,
pp. 169-85; On the importance of defining exceptions to the law see Carl Schmitt,
Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (trans, and with in-
troduction by George Schwab; with a new forward by Tracey B. Strong), Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005.

41
Hilary Charlesworth, 'Worlds Apart: Public/Private Distinctions in International
Law', in Margaret Thornton (ed.) Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 243-60.
24
processes of ever-larger numbers of people. Often under the rubric of'human
security', governments and international organizations work with 'private'
actors to implement international 'norms and rules' and effectively co-govern
in place of a sovereign state, usually in the global South.42 Given that the rule
of law is a major technique for the establishment and regulation of public and
private, it is no surprise that we have seen efforts to regulate the so-called 'pri-
vate' military and security sectors especially given their challenge to existing
but fragile international humanitarian law.43
Distinctions, distinctions
The above picture of sovereignty, territory, and so-called public control and
constitution of armed force has come under sustained assault in recent years.
But the implications have not been addressed in IR literature on the organiza-
tion and use of'private force'. In addition to under-theorizing the public-pri-
vate distinction, the discipline has tended to underestimate the centrality of
the 'periphery' in shaping global dynamics. Almost by definition, imperialism
and the imperial constitution of armed force is assumed to have relevance only
outside Europe, if it is considered to be relevant at all.44 This is significant
because the appropriation of money and men to secure the European state
'monopoly' on violence did not emerge from purely 'domestic' territory. The
so-called 'public' monopoly on armed force, that is, the imperial European
state of the nineteenth-century, did not 'emanate' from within state borders
or even from within Europe. The choice about what type of force states should
employ was not between mercenaries or citizens, but often between mercenar-
12
John Gerard Ruggie 'Reconstituting the Global Public Domain—Issues, Actors, and
Practices', European Journal of International Relations, 10,4,2004, pp. 499-531; on
human security and global governance see Mark Duffield, Development, Security and
Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
43
Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt (eds), From Mercenaries to Markets: The
Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007.
44
See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (new edition with added pref-
aces), New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966; Owens,'The Boomerang Effect:
On the Imperial Origins of Total War' in Between War and Politics: International
Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007,
pp. 52-71.
25
ies, citizens or imperial troops. The mobilization of native (foreign) imperial
soldiers—especially from the nineteenth century—enabled European states
to project military power across the globe. As Tarak Barkawi argues in his con-
tribution to this book, the alleged 'monopolies on force' in many European
states 'were only ever achieved in the context of a wider international organiza-
tion of force that was broadly imperial in character'. The armies of Europe
became 'citizen armies' while they were expanding and policing the empire.'0
This has important implications for our understanding of the public-private
distinction and the changing character of war.
Throughout the very period that 'private' fighting units were going out of
fashion in Europe, foreign colonial troops were being mobilized by imperial
states in rapidly expanding numbers.46 This suggests that a major contributing
factor in the decline of mercenary armies in some major European states is the
ability of those states to hold overseas territory with men and material
'recruited' from the colonies. This, in turn, enabled the fiction of 'citizen
armies' which has played a major role in nationalist thought and the discourse
of much international theory. In terms of material scale, the raising of colonial
armies was a major transformation in the way imperial states used force. To
take the British case, military security was provided by what has been described
as 'indigenous mercenaries', local troops, hired hands or imperial soldiers to
protect 'public' or 'private' wealth depending on the context.4 Clearly the
imperial charter companies, most famously the English East India Company,
totally disrupted the modern distinctions between public and private, econom-
15
Of course, there is a close relationship between the ideas and practices of European
citizenship, 'citizen armies' and imperial conquest in the nineteenth century. How-
ever, discussions of the imperial cultural context are absent in literature on the shift
away from mercenary use and 'the moral superiority of citizen soldiers'. Percy, Mer-
cenaries, p. 95. As John M. MacKenzie reminds us, 'colonial campaigns of the nine-
teenth century were the subject of fierce moralising, a particularly intense justifica-
tory process', in part, to establish the relative superiority of different political and
military actors, citizens, subjects, and races. See MacKenzie, 'Introduction' in MacK-
enzie (ed.) Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850-1950, Manchester: Man-
chester University Press, 1992, p. 4.

46
V. G. Kiernan, Colonial Empires and Armies, 1815-1960, Gloucestershire: Sutton,
1998.
47
G. J. Bryant, 'Indigenous Mercenaries in the Service of European Imperialists: Tie
Case of the Sepoys in the Early British Indian Army, 1750-1800', War in History,
7:1,2000, pp. 2-28.
26
ics and politics, state and non-state.48 Yet the full import of the mobilization
of imperial soldiers by both trading companies and national armies, incredibly
significant in terms of numbers and 'control' for nineteenth and early twenti-
eth century world politics, is passed over in the largely 'normative' explanations
for the decline and delegitimization of the 'private military market' in this
period.49 This is possible since 'the identity of colonial soldiers' is subsumed
'under the nationality of the imperial power'.50 Foreign imperial subjects, some
of whom were loyal and some of whom rebelled, are imagined to be fighting
for the same 'cause' as their 'civilized' masters.51 The fact is that some political
entities are able to mobilize armed force that can be described as foreign and
private, foreign and public, domestic and private, or domestic and public
depending on the audience and/or the prevailing ideology or power.52
State control over the use of force ebbs. Some states are so strong (and
have such control) that they can allow military and security firms to operate
from their territory and mobilize them to pursue their own ends. In these
cases, the capacity to govern is clearly not undermined when certain features
of 'sovereign power' are delegated.53 That the United States can mobilize
forces from foreign populations through both state and increasingly com-
mercial means, is a crucial factor in its ability to defeat those insurgencies it
defines as inimical to its political and economic interests. That is, it is able
to participate in the 'governance' of those territories and peoples. We can
48
See Thomson, Mercenaries, p. 32 and Singer, Corporate Warriors, p. 34 and Colas
and Mabee s contribution to this volume

49
On mercenarism and norms see Janice E. Thompson, 'State Practices, Interna-
tional Norms, and the Decline of Mercenarism', International Studies Quarterly, 34:
1, 1990, pp. 23-47; Thomson, Mercenaries-, Singer, Corporate Warriors, p. 42; Percy,
Mercenaries.
Barkawi, Globalization and War, p. 46; David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: the
Indian Army 1860-1940, London: Macmillan, 1994.
^ 'These troops were not really "foreign" in the sense that they were considered to be
part of an imperial project'. Percy, Mercenaries, p. 164, 165. On how 'mutiny' and
other rebellions shaped colonial policy and other imperial self-images see Gautam
Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005, and Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
See the discussion in Barkawi, 'State and Armed Force in International Context' in
this volume.
-3 See Verkuil, Outsourcing Sovereignty, on contemporary global governance see Duff-
ield, Development, Security and Unending War.
27
easily think of examples of covert US military activity as well as efforts to
build local, indigenous security forces through 'public' and 'private' means/4
It was standard practice in the Cold War to train and mobilize counterinsur-
gency forces from local and foreign populations.55 As already indicated, it has
been willing to do this through various combinations of'public' and 'private'
and foreign and domestic forces depending on availability and need. This strat-
egy of'arming the free world' has been pursued since the late nineteenth-cen-
tury and has consistently been sold as a form of democracy promotion.56
Needless-to-say, while Western states today choose to distinguish between
public and private, those against whom they fight in Afghanistan and Iraq
often possess a better understanding of the function of this distinction. As
many have noted, it is only logical for insurgents to target contractors working
for coalition forces and to view such attacks as part of a battle against a polit-
ical enemy.
State institutions are deeply shaped by relations of property ownership and
production. It goes without saying that commercial economic interests are
supported by 'privatization' and this, in turn, reconfigures political geography
and power/ To define an economic activity as private, liberates processes of
wealth accumulation and circulation and separates it from democratic regula-
tion. Similarly, powerful states can organize force in a manner that appears to
be 'private' and/or foreign because this reduces political scrutiny. That seem-
ingly public and private actors and practices are merging and crossing territo-
rial boundaries is not new or as significant as is often assumed. Seen in this
light, contemporary military and security firms are not so radically different
v
' Christopher Robbins, Air America: The True Story of the CIA's Mercenary Fliers in
Covert Operationsfrom Pre-War China to Present Day Nicaragua (new edition), New
York: Corgi, 1991.
^ William H. Mott, United States Military Assistance: an Empirical Perspective, West-
port, CT: Greenwood, 2002.
^ Chester J. Each Jr., Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military
Assistance Program, 1945-1950, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1991.
v
As Mark Duffteld has argued, 'privatisation does not contradict the neo-medieval
model of political authority ... That is, the emergence of multiple, overlapping and
autonomous areas of sovereignty side by side with a weak central competence. In
many respects, this reflects the neo-liberal ideal of deregulated markets supported
by a facilitator state'. Duffteld, 'Post-Modern Conflict: Warlords, Post-Adjustment
States and Private Protection', Civil Wars, 1: 1, 1998, p. 88.
28
from the trading companies of old. Contemporary military companies are
often distinguished from traditional soldiers of fortune because they have
'diverse clientele' (not just states but multinationals, NGOs, and intergovern-
mental organizations); they have been 'corporatized' into hierarchical busi-
nesses with proper structures (which means they can compete in the global
marketplace); and they operate openly with proper licences to provide a service
(which means they have the blessing of powerful states).58 These are descrip-
tions of how corporate bodies are more successful and efftcient at organizing
and justifying their expressions of force than their forebears. Taken together,
however, they do not amount to a qualitative difference in the character
of force.
Similarly, some governments are better at achieving collective ends such as
wealth and security than others because they possess greater 'capacity and
legitimacy'.59 Advanced industrial countries appear to be better at providing
wealth and security for more people. Again, this is not a qualitative difference.
'Treating the state as the locus of the "public"', as Jeff Weintraub puts it, 'may
be combined with arguments for the openness or "publicity" of state actions;
but it has been at least equally common to claim that, in order to advance the
public interest, rulers must maintain "state secrets" and have recourse to the
arcana imperil.60 The state in advanced industrial countries, the so-called 'pub-
lic' realm, still largely remains a function of interests properly understood as
rooted in something else. Recall the previous discussion of the main purpose
of modern European governments, to sustain and foster the life processes of
their subjects. The 'national' administrative state proved itself the best-
equipped vehicle for pursuing this task through the accumulation of wealth
and the prosecution of war. The very meaning of the word 'public' came to be
redefined as the state's 'pursuit of collective ends'.61 The concepts of'public'
and 'private' no longer served to distinguish between distinct activities—those
that relate to building a common world and those to maintaining and securing
58
Singer, Corporate Warriors, pp. 44-7.
59
60
Jeff Weintraub, "The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction' in Wein-
traub and Kumar (eds) Public and Private, p. 5.

61
Avant, The Market for Force, p. 24. Loader and Walker also present 'the state as being
formed by equals to whom the state promises equal protection' and what is being
competed for in the market for force is the ability 'to promise security to citizens'.
Civilizing Security, p. 75; 24.
29
life. In modern society's blurring of the older distinction, the private assumes
an overwhelming 'public' significance.62 In pursuit of security from violence
and the freedom to accumulate wealth modern states fight modern wars.
There are strong sociological and political-economic reasons for historical
variations in the organization of force which are reflected in the normative
understandings and legal regulation of military power. International Relations
has not been very good on the history and theory of the public-private distinc-
tion or at conceptualizing how force is constituted trans-nationally, that is, in
a manner not captured by notions of sovereignty, territory, and so-called 'pub-
lic' control and constitution of armed force. Rather, the field accepts a histori-
cally inaccurate model of territory, population, and force (state-non-state and
public-private as they are articulated by the Westphalian model). It reiterates
an ideological, rather than empirical, distinction between public and private.
The organization of force is only superficially understood when conceptualized
this way and international theory is hindered in its ability to understand the
changing character of war as a result. The current transformations are more
accurately, albeit less attractively, classed as a process of de-staticization or the
commercialization of war and not 'privatization'.63 After all, we are describing
a transformation in the contemporary socialization and organization of force.
We ought to speak of the rise of contract, not 'private', armies for they are not
'private actors operating in the public realm of warfare'.6' They are simply actors
operating in the social and political realm of war much like the privateers and
mercantile companies before them.
Conclusion
Public-private distinctions shift and change as an effect of political power. Inter-
national theory needs a better conceptualization of how power is organized
through public-private distinctions and how the transformation of these distinc-
tions is one of the drivers of change in the character of war. There is clear histori-
cal and sociological evidence to support the conceptual claim of this chapter that
a variety of public-private distinctions are made and remade during war. The
62
63
Herfried Miinkler is more accurate when he writes of the staticization and de-stati-
cization of war, although he does turn to the terminology of 'private' firms as evi-
dence of de-staticization. Miinkler, The New Wars (trans. Patrick Camiller), Cam-
bridge: Polity, 2005, pp. 16-22.

64
30
development of the distinction within and across states shapes and conditions
how political debate occurs about different forms of violence; how the subjects
of international politics are constituted; and how political communities form.
This process ought not to be understood in terms of the conceptually simplistic
and historically inaccurate state/non-state dichotomy or indeed the modern
public-private binary that organizes the present volume. Rather, it should be
understood historically as part of the transnational constitution and circulation
of military and economic power.6'5 To properly conceptualize this process is a
joint task for historical sociology and international political theory.
The idealizations and abstractions of liberal political theory have led to some
estrangement between these sub-fields in the study of war and international
politics. But if we can properly move beyond the liberal tradition, then histori-
cal sociology and political theory can be seen as complementary in the study
of the public-private distinction, not antagonistic.66 As Michael Warner has
put it, 'most of the major figures of our time on the subject of public and pri-
vate have reacted against the liberal tradition'.6 In IR, historical sociology
begins with the relationship between state-making and war-making. But to
fully understand the structuring effect of public-private distinctions we may
need to begin somewhere else. State-building expresses the intensification of
the territorialization of political power and the effort of groups and classes to
achieve security from violence. The meaning of this process is properly cap-
tured in the registers of both historical sociology and political theory. The
public and the private are ideal categories and normative models of democratic
critique. But they are also historical-sociological descriptions of processes cen-
tral to the development of modern inter-state relations and modern political
relations in flux.
65
For an important early statement see Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, 'The Imperial
Peace: Democracy, Force and G\ohz\\ziLt\.on, European Journal of International Rela-
tions, 5: 4, 1999, pp. 403-434. More recently see Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey,
'The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies', Review of International Studies, 32:
2, 2006, pp. 329-352.

66
This latter is often how these agenda are presented by Barkawi. But for diverse and
sophisticated work on the public-private distinction see Arendt, Human Condition
and The Promise of Politics, New York: Schocken, 2005; Richard Sennett, The Fall of
Public Man, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976; Elshtain, Public Man,
Private W)man; Jiirgcn Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991; Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.

6
Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, p. 43.
31
The central argument of this chapter, that the identity of public and private
shifts and changes as a way of organizing power, has implications for how we
distinguish the specific activity of war from the more general phenomenon of
violence. Violence can be distinguished from war, but not on the basis that war
is conducted by a public authority as is assumed in much of the literature on
'private' force. Following Clausewitz, war is an act of force to compel our oppo-
nent to do our will; it is the clash of armed forces, organized violence carried
on between two or more political entities. War is the continuation of the policy
of these entities through the means of violence.68 In Clausewitz s day, this was
the policy of European national-state governments in competition with each
other. It goes without saying that warring political entities need not correspond
to the model of the sovereign state that we have inherited from European his-
tory and neither should our categories for analyzing force. War is not a 'public'
activity. It is political.69 The public and the political are not the same.
The distinction between 'public' and 'private' force is untenable. This does
not mean we should abandon the distinction between war and politics. We
need no more accept vulgar Marxist or post-structuralist assumptions that all
politics is a function of economics or that there can no such thing as the public
realm only varying degrees of violence than the view that 'government' or the
commonwealth is synonymous with the 'public'. To borrow from Clausewitz
but also depart from his meaning, the 'grammar' and 'logic' of politics and war
0
are fundamentally distinct. War is an act of force. Its meaning is coercion and
being coerced and its end is security or conquest. The meaning of politics, if it
is to have a meaning at all, is the freedom to act in concert with plural equals
to build a common public world between them. Some forms of violence are
made public and others are made private through historically varying ways of
organizing and justifying force. There is no such thing as public violence or
private violence. There is only violence that is made public or private through
political struggle and definition.
68
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976,
p. 75.
69
According to Avant, 'Clausewitz's conception reflected the emerging view in the
west that the state—or the "public" sphere—was the institution through which the
use of violence could be most effectively linked to endeavours endorsed by a collec-
tive'. The Market for Force, p. 3. In fact, Clausewitz possessed a more far-reaching
understanding of the need iotpolitical groups to subordinate war to their goals.

0
See Arendt, 'Introduction into Politics' in Promise of Politics, pp. 93-200.
32
2
STATE AND ARMED FORCE IN
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
Tarak Bark aw i
Armed force lies at the core of the state form. Yet most analyses of the organi-
zation of violence in world politics revolve around a definition of state Max
Weber intended for the Europe of his day. A territorial monopoly on the legiti-
mate use of force, upheld by an administrative staff, is seen as the essence of
the state-force-territory relation and the basis of sovereign power.1 Even for
those convinced that states are losing their monopoly on violence, Weber's
definition is the 'obvious starting point' for inquiry.2 More common are those,
like Janice Thomson, who assume Weber's definition is correct and supply an
historical analysis of how states got there: 'Why is this monopoly [on violence]
based on territorial boundaries?', she asks at the outset of her book.3 For these
and other thinkers, Weber's monopoly implies that in the modern interna-
'Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol. I, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978, p. 54.
2
Deborah Avant, The Market for Force, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005,
p. 1. See also P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003,
p. 170.
3
Janice Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1994, p. 3. See also Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 1985.
33
tional system, violence is under public control and is nationally constituted.
In this way the sovereign, territorial, and national state becomes the basic
'unit'4 of international politics, and it does so by virtue of its monopoly on
coercive power.
Whether one accepts the view that states retain their monopoly on force
today, or that the privatization of violence is challenging that monopoly, much
of the current debate is hamstrung by a Eurocentric image of the state as a
'social-territorial totality' or a 'bordered power-container' in which force is
organized behind sovereign borders? An additional source of trouble is an
ahistorical understanding of the 'public' and 'private', in which contemporary
liberal understandings of these terms are read back into history. 'Ever since the
rule by kings was replaced by the bureaucratic state in the seventeenth century,
there has been a give-and-take between the public and the private'.6 In this way,
seventeenth century mercenaries and contemporary private military firms can
both be defined as 'private violence' as if they were the same kind of thing in
essential respects.
This chapter queries whether 'territorial monopolies' and the public/private
distinction are adequate for an international theory of the state and coercive
power. It argues they are not because they occlude a range of common practices
by which states regularly have constituted force from, and exercised it over,
foreign populations. The coercive power of states has international and trans-
national dimensions which call into question the adequacy of the idea of ter-
ritorial monopolies as a way of thinking about the global organization of force
and state power. These dimensions are one of the principal ways in which
states, most especially but not only great powers, project power abroad. Such
practices as colonial armies, the advice and support of the armed forces of sub-
ordinate states, and various covert or deniable uses of foreign military man-
power are widespread and well-known in historical and other literatures.7
4 Cf. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979,
pp. 95-7, on states as 'like units'.
^ Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 1994, pp. 78-9; Giddens, The Nation-State,^. 120.

6
See V.G. Kiernan, Colonial Empires and Armies 1815-1960, Stroud: Sutton, 1998
[1982]; Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, New York: Pantheon, 1992;
Lora Lumpe, 'U.S. Foreign Military Training', Foreign Policy in Focus Special Report,
Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, 2002.
34
STATE AND ARMED FORCE IN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
Yet they tend to be ignored in International Relations (IR), and appear as
anomalies from the point of view of a state monopoly on force within a given
territory.
The discussion below begins with a brief discussion of Eurocentrism in
understandings of the state. Second, it anatomizes the various ways in which
states have constituted and used foreign forces, showing that there has always
been a plurality of state-force-territory relations in world politics, not a single
trajectory leading to the public monopoly of force and its possible contempo-
rary dissolution. Through a critique of Janice Thomson's work, the chapter sug-
gests re-conceiving the national/foreign and public/private distinctions as fields
for the constitution and use of force by states for various purposes, including
those that require a modicum of deniability for one or another audience. Unfor-
tunately, this deniability has been so plausible that social scientists are taken in,
particularly those who take too seriously the juridical realm of sovereignty or
are too credulous in respect of the formal boundaries between the 'public' and
the 'private' spheres. The conclusion offers some thoughts about the wider con-
sequences of the critique of territorial monopolies on force for International
Relations, as well as the social sciences and humanities more generally.
Eurocentrism, the State, and the International
Generalizing Weber's definition so that it serves as the norm for what states
are supposed to be is an archetype of Eurocentrism in the social sciences.8 The
worldwide organization of force is imagined in terms putatively appropriate
for European states at the turn of the twentieth century. What do such imagin-
ings obscure about the global organization of armed force and what is the
significance of that which is obscured? The historical sociology of state forma-
tion in Europe identifies the transition from the medieval order to the modern
state, which then served more or less consciously as the teleology for state for-
mation everywhere else. As Charles Tilly comments, this reasoning is flawed:
'It supposed that a single standard process of state formation existed, that each
state passed through the same internal process more or less separately, that
Western experience exemplified the process, [and] that contemporary Western
states had generally reached the end of the process'.9 Tilly's own account of
8
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000.
9
Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1992, Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1992, pp. 193-4.
35
these processes in late medieval and early modern Europe as well as in the
Third World after 1945, focuses on variable relations between force, capital,
and major power holders and specifically emphasizes the very different inter-
national context in which the 'new states' arose, a point returned to below.
However, Tilly's focus, like the state formation literature in general, is with
the local processes by which the 'unit' is formed. 'International' factors affect-
ing state formation can be taken into consideration, but only in a relatively
limited way. As Otto Hintze classically argued in 'Military Organization and
the Organization of the State', the 'pushing and pressing' of states against one
another meant that each had to develop appropriate military power and shape
its internal structure according to the dictates of such potentially existential
competition.10 But this analysis is still oriented towards the inside of the state,
and with categorizing and comparing states. A Third World state is seen as a
somewhat different type of state, shaped by a different international and eco-
nomic context and lacking in certain attributes. In this vein, Anthony Giddens
provides an array of classifications for secondary and peripheral states, citing
for example their relatively low industrial and military power and aligned or
non-aligned status vis-a-vis the superpowers.11 Nonetheless, for him, moder-
nity is characterized by 'the global ascendancy of the nation-state', even if the
postcolonial versions are best thought of as 'state-nations'.12 World politics are
divided into territorial packages, each with its coercive monopoly.
The problem with sub-categories that list the attributes of different kinds of
states is that they potentially miss the international interconnections between
states, and the ways in which these connections are mutually constitutive of
state-society complexes. So for example, with respect to the development of
capitalism, core and peripheral societies are in uneven and combined relations
with one another, relations constitutive of the core and the periphery. The
periphery makes possible the kind of economy and society found in the core
and vice versa.13 A question this chapter raises is whether or not such constitu-
tive connections are evident in the case of armed force. An initial problem
") Otto Hintze, 'Military Organization and the Organization of the State' in Felix
Gilbert, (ed.), The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975, pp. 178-215.

11
Giddens, The Nation-State, pp. 267-76.
12
Ibid., pp. 255; 272.
13
See e.g. David Harvey, 'The Geography of Capitalist Accumulation' in Spaces of
Capital, New York: Routledge, 2001, pp. 237-66.
36
faced in opening up this terrain is that force implies a world not of intercon-
nection but of separate units in an eternal struggle for existence, a world in
which 'alliances' may occur but not mutually constitutive relations, at least not
in the political-military realm. In posing the issue of the international dimen-
sions of the organization of force, this chapter necessarily calls into question
the 'unit-ness' of the unit as well as the adequacy of a world image of a system
of units.
An essential first step is the critique of the military edifice of the territorial
nation-state, its 'public monopoly on force', and the consequent nation-state
ontology of world politics. Local monopolies on force in the core were only
ever achieved in the context of a wider international organization of force
that was broadly imperial in character. The civil-military relations found in
the dominant core states in various periods were dependent on this imperial
context, and in particular on the vast and varied forms by which foreign-
recruited forces were constituted and used. The discussion below provides an
initial introduction to this world of foreigners in the midst of'national' mili-
tary power.
Foreign Forces
In Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, Janice Thomson offers an empirical
inquiry that purports to establish a world of Weberian states. She argues that
states largely eliminated what she terms 'extraterritorial violence'. In doing so,
she validates a kind of common sense about nation-states, national militaries
and the worldwide organization of violence. By 'extraterritorial violence' she
refers to foreign military manpower (e.g. mercenaries) as well as the existence
of private military forces of various kinds, such as those employed by the great
trading companies of the early period of European expansion. This choice of
term already suggests that organizing force beyond the territory of the state is
abnormal. It means literally beyond the jurisdiction of the local state, indicative
of the juridical character of much of the reasoning behind employments of
Weber's definition of the state. A gap is opened between juridical and de facto
relations, a gap one could drive an army through, but an army opaque to social
scientific inquiry based on juridical premises.14 In constructing a teleology with
14
Cf. Timothy Kubik, 'Military Professionalism and the Democratic Peace' in Tarak
Barkawi and Mark Laffey, (eds), Democracy, Liberalism and War, Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2001, pp. 89-90.
37
the sovereign and territorial state as its endpoint, Thomson misses the plurality
of state-force-territory relations in modern world politics.
She writes, 'the last instance in which a state raised an army of foreigners
was in 1854,' when Britain hired some mercenaries for the Crimean WarT By
mercenary Thomson refers to 'the practices of enlisting in and recruiting for
a foreign army.'16 Her eyes, and many others, are relentlessly fixated on Europe
where early modern states regularly recruited foreign mercenary companies
for their armies. In this way, Hessian regiments fought for King George III
in the American Revolutionary War. One problem this practice posed for
states is that nationals thereby could become involved in foreign wars in
which a state desired neutrality. US neutrality laws from the 1790s and the
spread of similar restrictions in other states increasingly delegitimated this
practice. Another problem was in depriving states of a portion of their own
military manpower. As great powers turned to building mass national armies
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, they preferred to reserve the
national population for their own uses. This combination of the institution
of neutrality and the imperatives of nation-state building, on Thomson's
account, meant that mercenarism declined as an institution. 'Today real states
do not buy mercenaries.'1
If we understand mercenarism in European historical terms, then Thom-
son is surely correct. The great mercenary companies of the late medieval
period are no more, as is the early modern practice of hiring large contin-
gents of foreigners through subcontractors to serve in states' official standing
armies. Thomson concludes, 'In sum, foreigners play a minor role in most
twentieth-century standing armies.'18 While a standing army is not the only
armed force available to a state, it is useful to consider this narrower claim
on its own terms first. A great deal here hinges on what one means by 'minor'.
There is of course the French Foreign Legion, which Thomson incorrectly
asserts is the 'only standing military force that is composed of multiple
nationalities whose loyalty to their employer is unquestioned.'19 Today, the
Legion has members from 136 different countries and numbers around 7,600
in a French Army of fewer than 130,000.20 While somewhat minor in
15
Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p. 88.
16
Ibid., p. 27.
1
Ibid., p. 96.
18
Ibid., p. 95.
19
Ibid., p. 91.
20
See http://www.defense.gouv.fr/terre/ [Last accessed on 3 Mar. 2008].
38
percentage terms, this overlooks the political utility of the Legion as an expe-
ditionary force that does not carry the same political costs for the French
government as would the deployment of national formations, especially
those composed of conscripts before 1996 (when conscription ended). At
the time of writing, among other places, Legion formation were deployed
on active service in Afghanistan and Ivory Coast.
Thomson does not mention the British Army, also known to be loyal and
effective. Over 2,000 Fijians serve today in a British Army of just over 100,000.
Caribbeans, Africans, and other Commonwealth personnel bring the number
of foreigners up to around 6,000, and when Commonwealth citizens in the
Royal Navy and Air Force are added, their overall numbers are equivalent to
the Legion.21 These numbers do not include the Brigade of Gurkhas and its
3,000 Nepalese soldiers, now based in Yorkshire. The British Army is some
3,800 below its legislated complement and has difficulty recruiting infantry.
Again numbers belie utility as Gurkhas and Fijians are concentrated in infantry
battalions. Almost one in ten soldiers in the Royal Regiment of Scotland is
Fijian, while platoons of Gurkhas have been spread throughout other British
infantry regiments to make up shortages. In a context in which citizens from
Commonwealth countries already make up 10 per cent of recruits to the Brit-
ish Army, senior officers are considering changing the rules to allow yet other
foreigners to join. They are particularly interested in Poles resident in the UK,
many of whom have expressed a desire to join.22
France and the United Kingdom are 'real states' by any measure. So is the
United States. As a way of emphasizing just how illegitimate mercenarism has
become, Thomson asks whether it is possible to imagine 'a rich state like the
United States [forming] an army by recruiting, say, poor, unemployed
Mexicans?'23 In September 2003, there were approximately 30,000 foreign
born, non-US citizens in the US armed forces, including Mexicans and other
Hispanics. The U.S. Army's cyber-recruiting operation holds daily online chat
sessions in English and Spanish. Between October 2002 and December 2007,
some 31,200 members of the U.S. Armed Forces were sworn in as citizens,
21
See http://www.theherald.co.Uk/search/display.var.2033508.0.uk_overseas_armed_
forces_match_french_foreign_legion.php [Last accessed on 17 Feb. 2008].

22
Matthew Flickley, 'Should We Change the Rules to Let Poles Join the British Army',
Daily Mail, n.d., http://www.daiIymail.co.uk:80/pages/live/articles/news/news.
html?in_article_id=537509&in_page_id=1770, [Last accessed on 18 Mar. 2008].

23
Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p. 146.
39
while in February 2008, 7,200 recently discharged service members had citi-
zenship applications pending.24
Even in the narrow sense of contemporary standing 'national' armies, Thom-
son's claim is on shaky ground. But there is another world of'public' foreign
forces that escape attention entirely if mercenarism is defined in 'private' and
foreign terms to match the early modern European model. Britain may have
ceased hiring private mercenary companies for its own national army after the
Crimean War, but it fielded hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers before
and after 1854 in the form of colonial armies. As the great imperial trading
companies wound down or were subordinated to the state in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, their forces along with other locally recruited forma-
tions came under the control of colonial governments.2^ The British Indian
Army numbered 160,000 in 1900 and was over two million strong during the
Second World War.26 There is no sense in which the Indian Army was a minor
element of British power. It was 'the leading British strategic reserve on land'
and made Britain an Asian land power for nearly 200 years.2 Indian divisions
played critical roles in both World Wars, helping to prevent a German victory
in France in the autumn of 1914, eject Rommel from North Africa, and fight
up the Italian peninsula, as well as carrying the main burden of Britain's war
against Japan in Burma, the largest and longest land campaign fought by Impe-
rial Japan outside of China in the Second World War, For comparison, the
Indian Army suffered over 80,000 dead from all causes in all theatres in the
Second World War, from an army just over two and a half million in strength
at its peak.28 From ground combat forces totalling around eight and a half mil-
24
See Fernanda Santos, After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens', New York
Times, 24 Feb. 2008; Rodolfo F. Acuna, 'Immigrants could end up fighting war in
Iraq', The Miami Herald, 19 Sept. 2003, http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
news/opinion/6808600.htm, [Last accessed on 2 Mar. 2004]; Eric Schmitt, 'Boom
times for U.S. military recruiters', International Herald Tribune, 22 Sept. 2003, p. 8.
Only aliens legally resident in the US can be recruited into the military, although
recruiters have crossed into Mexico looking for young people with US residency
papers.
25
Kiernan, Colonial Armies and Empires.
26
F.W Perry, The Commonwealth Armies, Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1988, p. 116.
2
Jeremy Black, War and the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, p. 178.
28
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Annual Report 2005-06, Section 6, p. 3,
40
lions, the US suffered 288,000 dead.29 The British Army numbered around
three million with 145,000 killed.30
Alongside the Indian Corps in France during the First World War were over
200,000 French colonial troops from North and West Africa.31 In 1940, West
Africans alone made up 9 per cent of the 'French' Army, and 20 per cent of
'Free French' forces in 1944.32 Some 275,000 colonial soldiers served the Allies
in Italy, 1943-45. Nearly 30,000 North Africans, 18,000 West Africans, and
200,000 Indochinese served France in Indochina from the end of World War
II to the Geneva Accords of 1954.33 They were joined by thousands of German
veterans, many zx-Waffen SS, who joined the Legion after 1945.34
These figures from the great conflagrations of the twentieth century are in
a sense less significant than the fact that the primary military burden of Euro-
pean imperial expansion was always carried by locally-raised, indigenous
forces. The British and French colonial military systems were so well-devel-
oped and extensive that they were also able to use their colonial forces as
'imperial fire brigades' and as strategic reserves in great power war. But the
Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Germans, Italians, Americans and Japanese all
developed colonial security and military forces that substantially reduced the
burden of empire on their national populations and militaries. Foreign forces
pervade the worldwide histories of expansion and empire from the sixteenth
to the twentieth century, and were major adjuncts in the military contests
between great powers.
Colonial forces were raised by using European officers to train indigenous
recruits to fight in European fashion. They were officered by various combina-
available online at http://www.cwgc.org/admin/files/6%20Statistics.pdf [Last ac-
cessed on 27 Jun. 2007].

29
The US figures include Army and Marine Corps strengths and casualties, excluding
the Army Air Force. See American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists
and Statistics, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, RL32492, up-
dated 13 Jul. 2005, available online at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.
pdf [Last accessed on 27 Jun. 2007].

30
David Fraser, And We Shall Shock Them, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983,
pp. 93; 109.

31
Anthony Clayton, France, Soldiers and Africa, London: Brassey's, 1988, p. 98.
32
Myron Echenburg, Colonial Conscripts, Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991, p. 88.
33
Clayton, France, Soldiers and Africa, p. 160.
34
Kiernan, Colonial Armies and Empires, pp. 214-15.
41
tions of European and 'native' officers. In the decades after 1945, this system
had to be adapted to the realities of decolonization. In Asia, the Middle East
and Africa, the militaries of the new states often were based on colonial precur-
sors. The Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam (ARVN), for example,
was formed out of the French colonial Vietnamese National Army. The South
Korean army (ROKA) was formed initially out of locally-raised Japanese impe-
rial forces. In both of these cases, the US then stepped in with the characteristic
modality for making use of indigenous manpower in a putatively 'post-impe-
rial' age: advice and support. Along with the UK and France to a lesser degree,
the US and the Soviet Union developed extensive and diverse programs for
the advice, support, and training of Third "World militaries and other armed
forces such as insurgents and paramilitaries. Nearly 400,000 Third World offi-
cers passed through various programs in the US between 1955 and 1981
alone.3"5 Much more of this training takes place in peripheral states themselves.
US provision has increased since 1994, with the budget for the main program
providing training in the US (IMET or International Military Education and
Training) jumping four-fold to $80 million in 2003. 'In recent years U.S. forces
have been training approximately 100,000 foreign soldiers annually. This train-
ing takes place in at least 150 institutions within the U.S. and in 180 countries
around the world.'36 State Department financing for foreign militaries to buy
US weapons, services and training was over $4 billion in 2003, with an addi-
tional $2.3 billion for Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics.
During the Cold War, these programs were explicitly conceived by various
US administrations as means for utilizing foreign manpower for their own
purposes. As President Eisenhower put it, 'The United States could not main-
tain old-fashioned forces all around the world', so it sought 'to develop within
the various areas and regions of the free world indigenous forces for the main-
tenance of order, the safeguarding of frontiers, and the provision of the bulk
of the ground capability'. After the trauma of the Korean War, for Eisenhower,
'the kernel of the whole thing' was to have indigenous forces bear the brunt of
any future fighting.3 After additional trauma in Vietnam, the Nixon Doctrine
was similarly concerned with limiting the role of US national forces. The US
35
Stephanie Neuman, Military Assistance in Recent Wars, New York: Praeger, 1986,
pp. 28-9.
36
Lumpe, 'U.S. Foreign Military Training', p. i.
3
Quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1982, p. 153.
42
would 'look to the nation directly threatened to assume primary responsibility
of providing manpower for its [sic] defense.'38 IMET was a product of the
Nixon Doctrine.
Without apparent irony as to the imperial origins of the wars in Vietnam,
President Nixon's 'Vietnamization' policy was based on the principle that
'Asian boys should fight Asian wars.'39 However traumatic Vietnam was for the
US Armed Forces and the national population they recruited from, the bulk
of the fighting and dying was always done by the ARVN, which in its heyday
was a million man force and one of the four or five most powerful armies in
the world.40 The US clothed, trained, supplied and armed the ARVN, as well
as advising it down to the company level in combat. The ARVN played the
primary role in projecting US power in Indochina, defending the South Viet-
namese state from its own population as well as invading Cambodia and Laos
and then carrying the war largely on its own for the final three years. Notably,
Thomson's discussion of Vietnam overlooks entirely the ARVN, as it was offi-
cially the army of an independent sovereign state, and supposedly not an
example of'extraterritorial violence'. She focuses on rather more minor matters,
such as US payments to South Korea for use of ROKA divisions in South
Vietnam or General William Westmoreland's quixotic interest in hiring Gur-
khas when Washington would not agree to higher troop levels.41 But the
ARVN was only one of many Third World militaries drawn into US policies
concerned with the defence of the Free World from much of its own popula-
tion. Whereever there was insurgency in the Third World, often backed by
Soviet bloc support, often there was a client army advised and supported by the
US or its allies to fight it. Examples comprise a worldwide tour: Central and
Latin America; Western and Southern Africa; Arabian Peninsula; Southeast
and North Asia. An informal empire was maintained primarily with locally-
raised forces in the face of indigenous revolt, just as previous formal empires
had put down revolts mostly with security forces recruited from the colonized.
This discussion of foreign forces could be considerably expanded. Nothing
so far has been said about the cosmopolitan world of the CIA's covert action
arm, or about the military integration and subordination characteristic of the
38
From a clarification of the Nixon Doctrine provided by the White House and quot-
ed in Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 298.

39
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, London: Verso, 2004, p. 135.
40
Robert Brigham, ARVN, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006, p. x.
41
Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, pp. 94-6.
43
superpower blocs in Europe during the Cold War, as well as in NATO after it.
Nonetheless, this cursory discussion is sufficient to indicate that the global
organization of force is considerably more complex and international in
character than suggested by a nation-state ontology. There is little here to sup-
port the primary teleology favoured by Eurocentric inquiry, viz. that the end-
point of state formation is a public and 'trinitarian' monopoly on force in
which state, armed forces and society are contained behind sovereign borders.
Rather, in so far as the language of monopoly is even appropriate, core states
'exceed' this monopoly, raising forces from and ruling foreign lands, while
peripheral entities 'share' their monopoly with the core.42 New ways to draw
in foreign forces were found at each historic transformation of the interna-
tional system.
National/Foreign and Public/Private
The modalities through which foreign forces are constituted and deployed vary
historically in modern times. They operate in and around two distinctions:
that of public/private and national/fo reign. For much of the literature, a par-
ticular instantiation of these distinctions (e.g. a public monopoly on force) is
taken as essentially defining for state-force-territory relations. A change (e.g.
the contemporary rise of private military firms) is seen as a fundamental altera-
tion in state-force-territory relations. In this way, various kinds of teleological
arguments can be constructed. For Thomson, eliminating mercenarism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century varieties meant the rise of a public monop-
oly on force; for P.W Singer, the recent growth of private military firms indi-
cates the 'present breakup' of that monopoly.43 Deborah Avant writes, 'It is
common sense that the control, sanctioning, and use of violence fall to states
... Private security activity in the last two decades, though, should lay waste to
this conventional wisdom.'44 These arguments, and the discourses they are rep-
resentative of, operate in terms of the official distinction between the 'private'
and the 'public' in liberal capitalist states. That which is 'private' is considered
42
On 'sharing' coercive monopolies, see Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, 'Hi-
erarchy under Anarchy' in Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, (eds), State Sov-
ereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996,
p. 246.
43
44
Avant, The Market for Force, p. 1
44
'outside' the state, or 'non-state'. 'In keeping with the most common usage, I
will use "private" to refer to non-governmental actors.'45 Thus, mercenaries
hired by the state are seen as emanating from the 'private' sphere since, formally
speaking, they are not state officials, even if they work for the state. On the
face of it, the distinction seems primarily juridical.
In Marxist analyses and in the great debate over the capitalist state, relations
between the private and the public are handled much differently. The private
and the public are principle and shifting spheres for the organization of power
in modern societies. The institutional and legal order of the state instantiates
and polices a boundary between the public and the private. By locating prop-
erty in the private sphere, the state enables capital to exercise its sway and accu-
mulate to significant degree outside of public control and democratic
regulation. The boundary between private and public changes in different
capitalist contexts, with considerably more public control over capital accu-
mulation in core states than peripheral ones.46 Concentrating only on the
juridical determination of private and public misses the place of the state, and
of the private/public distinction, in the overall ordering of power.
This brief discussion illuminates a very intriguing feature of Thomson's
book. She is very aware of imperial trading companies' military capacities as
well as the fact that they typically recruited from among indigenous popula-
tions, citing for example the 100,000 Indian 'sepoys' employed by the British
East India Company by 1782T But nowhere does she indicate awareness of
the 160,000 Indian soldiers serving the British Raj in 1900 or the over 2 mil-
lion during the Second World War. The reason is that, formally speaking; the
Company's sepoys were employees of a private firm, and hence 'extraterritorial
violence' in Thomson's terms. The Raj's Indian Army was under the public
control of the British Government of India. Having defined 'mercenarism' in
terms of the private service of foreigners, she is oblivious to the public employ
of foreigners. Juridical relations obscure de facto relations.
This juridical mentality structures Thomson's analysis, which focuses on the
major legislative moments by which the crown and parliament stripped the
Company of its trading monopoly as well as its sovereign and military powers
45
Ibid., p. 24.
46
Roger Benjamin and Raymond Duvall, "The Capitalist State in Context' in Roger
Benjamin and Stephen Elkin (eds), The Democratic State, Lawrence: The University
Press of Kansas, 1985, pp. 38-9.

1
Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, p. 38.
45
during the mid-nineteenth century.48 Already by 1834, the Company had
ceased to be a commercial organization and became the agency through which
Britain ruled India. Even this civil authority was taken away following the
mutiny and revolt of 1857. The Company was dissolved entirely by 1874. The
problem here is that the formal, juridical status of the Company is not the same
thing as an analysis of British political and economic power, nor of the char-
acter of the state. Emphasizing formal legal relations is to remain trapped
within a 'juridico-political ideology'.49 All that happened in 1858 was that the
Company's native regiments were transferred to the Government of India,
their officers and basic structure remained the same. Both before and after the
demise of the Company, Britain held India primarily with Indian troops.
During the nineteenth century, Britain separated political and economic
power in the colonies, placing the former under control of the crown and its
functionally specialized officials. This did not mean that 'private' economic
powers no longer influenced the character and policy of the British state or its
Indian Empire. The timing of the shift in India reflected not only the shock of
the revolt of 1857 (and thus the failure of Company rule) but among other
things a changing balance of power between manufacturing and financial capi-
tal in Britain in favour of the latter.80 There was a struggle between and among
capital and major power holders in Britain, which coursed through the state
and found its expression in various Acts of Parliament, such as the repeal of
the Corn Laws. The gentlemen of Britain's ruling families typically occupied
interlocking positions in government, the military, party politics, and of course
banks and private firms. Arthur Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington) com-
manded Company and crown forces in India between 1796 and 1805 and was
twice British Prime Minister. His elder brother Richard sat on the Board of
Control, the crown's device for regulating the East India Company from 1785,
and later became Governor-General of India, overseeing wars of expansion
there ably executed by his brother. Even at this earlier stage, the Board of Con-
trol meant that the Company was already akin to a department of state.81 Their
official capacities aside, it almost goes without saying that the Wellesley family
profited immensely from British expansion in India in particular.82
48 Ibid., pp. 97-105.
49
Bob Jessop, State Theory, Cambridge: Polity, 1990, chap. 2.
50
PJ. Cain and A.C. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688-2000, Harlow: Pearson, 2002,
pp. 278-302
^ John Keay, The Honorable Company, New York: Macmillan, 1991, p. 391.
,2
Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 670.
46
This brief foray into British and Indian imperial history stands in for the
ways in which 'the state' cannot be analyzed in isolation from the broader
organization of power, including economy and culture. Thomson loses sight
of her main object of analysis—'extraterritorial violence'—precisely because
she takes too seriously juridical relations analysed in isolation from broader
context. Foreign forces were essential to Britain's presence in India from start
to finish. The change in juridical status was a change in the tactics of organiz-
ing these forces, to match a new era and a new dispensation of power in the
British Empire.
Another point must be made about taking the juridical too seriously in the
political-military domain. To enter the realm of strategy is to enter a realm
where deception is valued. It may be shocking to note, but intelligence and
security officials lie and break or change the rules in the course of carrying out
their duties. Even short of intentional deception, laws can be changed. One of
the basic features of the notion of a 'public monopoly' on force is that it is
assumed that 'nationals' staff the armed forces. But the laws and regulations
governing nationality are a prerogative of state. As seen above, the US, UK
and France have legal mechanisms that enable foreign citizens to serve in their
militaries. For the US, military service is a route to achieve citizenship. Should
it become necessary to recruit more foreigners, laws can be altered further.
More cunningly, in the context of constituting foreign forces in the develop-
ing world after 1945, soldiers and equipment were 're-flagged'. United States
Air Force (USAF) pilots, for example, covertly became Indonesian, Guatema-
lan, Vietnamese or Laotian, as did their aircraft. In the early 1960s, before the
formal commitment of US combat formations to Vietnam, the USAF had a
large advisory effort for the South Vietnamese air force (VNAF). The VNAF
lacked not only planes but trained pilots to fight the growing insurgency.
USAF planes were transferred to the VNAF: 'With a bit of red and yellow
paint, the planes ... became Vietnamese.' American pilots were not supposed
to fly combat missions, as they were officially present only for training pur-
poses. But they regularly flew missions, carrying a Vietnamese in the back seat
in case they crashed or were shot down. 'The Kennedy administration could
claim, as it did on occasion, that the American pilots were merely "conducting
training in a combat environment'".53
This was by no means an isolated event. During the twenty years of what
William Colby termed America's 'non-attributable war' in Laos, USAF pilots
- 3 Neil Sheehan, U Bright Shining Lie, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, p. 64.
47
were conveniently discharged and provided with aircraft painted in Royal Lao-
tian Air Force markings. In this case, the strike missions flown by this 'CIA air
force' had to be directed out of the US embassy in Vientiane because the 1954
Geneva Accords prevented the US and the Soviet Union from deploying mili-
tary personnel in Laos even as advisors. As Kissinger remarked of this and
other similar arrangements in Laos, it was necessary 'to avoid a formal avowal
of American participation for diplomatic reasons'54 Other CIA operations also
required air forces. In Indonesia (1957-58) and Guatemala (1954), USAF
pilots posed as rebels from those countries. One such pilot, concerned that if
he carried no papers as ordered he would be harshly treated, was shot down in
Indonesia carrying his US military identification and other official paperwork,
creating a diplomatic scandal. Caught out on the national/foreign distinction,
President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State reverted to the public/private
when challenged about the involvement of American personnel in a puta-
tively Indonesian civil war. They claimed the Americans were simply 'soldiers
of fortune'75
Manipulating both distinctions simultaneously has proved very useful in
the post-1945 world. The British helped the Sultan of Oman put down a rebel-
lion in the late 1950s and thereafter took over the Sultan of Oman's Armed
Forces (SAF). A British officer was seconded to command the SAF along with
British officers and NCOs who volunteered to serve in the SAF. Other British
officers were hired privately directly into the SAF and known as 'contract offi-
cers', many having been recently discharged from the Indian Army (which
continued to employ British officers for some years after 1947). Due to his
feudal rights in Pakistan, the Sultan could recruit soldiers 'privately' from Bal-
uchistan. Baluchis made up around 67 per cent of the SAF in 1961 as the
Dhofar rebellion got underway. Indians were hired as dentists, doctors and
other specialists, and as navy officers. The air force had all 'white faces'. The
relative lack of Omani nationals in the SAF was politicized by the Dhofar reb-
els and the British and the Sultan created an 'Omanization' plan in response.
Along with efforts to recruit more Arabs, this had the Sultan proclaiming in
one speech in 1972 that 'everyone knows the air force is an Omani air force,
and that the navy is an Omani navy, and that our Omani army is the only force
,4
Colby and Kissinger quoted in Timothy Castle, At War in the Shadow of Vietnam,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 57; 94.
^ Quoted in Audrey R. And George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, New
York: The New Press, 1995, p. 175.
48
which protects the land of our nation', all of which was true formally speaking,
if not in terms of actual personnel. After the rebellion was over, the social
forces behind it crushed, the presence of British and other foreigners could be
wound down and the Omani component in the SAP strengthened. Today,
many Omani officers are trained at Sandhurst and elsewhere in the UK and
US. While British contract officers are no longer employed, some British offi-
cers are still seconded to the SAP.56 Yet one more part of the world secured
from communism' and prepared for 'globalization'.
The CIA's covert action arm also involved a mix of public/private and
national/foreign. One of the CIA's proprietary airlines, Civil Air Transport
(CAT), was comprised of CIA officers, USAF personnel on secondment, and
a variety of foreign pilots privately hired but with anti-communist credentials,
such as Nationalist Chinese or Poles or Czechoslovaks who had flown for the
Royal Air Force in the Second World War and were effectively stateless. The
Chinese among others flew strike missions for the CIA in Guatemala, while the
Poles were active in Albania and Indonesia. The CIA force that invaded Gua-
temala in 1954 was ostensibly an indigenous revolt but was comprised of North
and Latin American mercenaries trained and directed by CIA officers.
Just as with British India, these various moments in the history of Western
military involvement in the Third World took place in the context of a broader
organization of power. The various juridical modalities for constituting and
using foreign forces take on significance only in this context. After World War
II, the US sought to organize 'a world environment in which our free society
can survive and flourish', in the words of NSC-68. This entailed reshaping
state-society relations across the Free World, and involved the US both directly
and indirectly in a variety of Cold War conflicts. The various shenanigans
designed to cover up US military involvement were necessary in a decolonizing
world in which the US purported to be the defender of'free peoples'. Anti-
communist and free market ideology ensured that even though political and
economic power were formally separate, the interests of capital shaped foreign
policy. It was not necessary, for example, for United Fruit to use its influence
to encourage the Eisenhower administration to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz in
56
Author's interview with Major-General John Graham (ret.), former commander of
the SAF, 26 Sept. 2004; Addresses given by HM Sultan Qaboos', Graham Papers,
Oman Archive, The Middle East Centre, St. Antonys College Oxford, 3/3; 'Report
on Tenure of Command of SAF by Col. Smiley from April 1958 to March 196T,
Smiley Papers, Oman Archive, 1/1.
49
Guatemala. As Piero Gleijeses argues, anti-communism among US officials
was quite sufficient.57 As with the shift from Company rule in India, new
mechanisms and tactics were found to use US and foreign military manpower
to exert a certain kind of rule over the sovereign state of Guatemala and its
populations.
A wide of variety of different forms of constituting and using foreign forces
have been discussed. Many of them fall within the twentieth century and the
'global ascendance of the nation-state'. Collectively, they suggest that the
notion of a public monopoly on force is a misleading foundation for thinking
about state-force-territory relations in world politics. It is important to note
the breadth and significance of the political-military forms identified above.
Throughout modern history, foreign forces of one kind or another have been
the West's primary military instrumentality for shaping and ruling what is
today known as the 'global South', that is, most of the people and territory on
the planet. Even if we focus just on great power war, and ignore the imperial
dimensions of conflicts in Europe, foreign forces were present in significant
numbers, occasionally playing decisive roles. The major world powers have
gone to considerable trouble to mobilize and use military resources beyond
their borders.
The literature on the coercive dimensions of the state is too legalistic and
formal in character, and focuses on the 'inside' of the state, ignoring the broader
domestic and international organization of power in which the institutions of
state are embedded. Placing too much weight on the juridical distinctions
between public/private or national/foreign is misleading for social science. In
taking sovereign borders and 'nationality' too seriously, inquiry is outsmarted
by strategists who see them only as factors that can be dealt with, and even
turned to advantage. Rather than marking a teleology of state formation, the
public/private and national/foreign distinctions should be thought of as con-
stituting fields for the constitution and use of force for various purposes. States
raise forces on both sides of these distinctions, both sides of the border, in vari-
ous combinations. A state may desire, say, a mostly foreign and private force
for one purpose (CIA covert operations), a foreign and public one for another
(colonial armies, foreign legions), and a domestic and private one for yet some
other (US private contractors in Iraq). What makes the difference in why one
modality over another is chosen has to do with the broader historic context of
57
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991,
pp. 361-66.
50
power in which a state is operating. The juridical aspects are only indicative of
broader shifts, revealing little on their own. To add just one more example to
those above, the idea of a 'Democratic Peace' rests on the data set provided by
the Correlates of War project. This data set uses sovereignty and official
national armed forces to produce its population of interstate wars. As a
consequence, the Correlates data is bamboozled by deniability. Guatemala in
1954 is coded as a civil war on grounds that there was 'no formal American
• • • ? qo
participation/
Conclusion: States, Foreign Forces, and World Politics
In conjuring a bounded relation between force and territory, Weber's defini-
tion of the state performs a kind of categorical magic for the social sciences
in general and IR in particular. Force wields together and bounds those dis-
tinctive packages of government, society, and territory that comprise the
sovereign states that populate the international system, so memorably termed
'units' in the Waltzian vision or 'bordered power containers' in Anthony Gid-
dens' less efficient formulation.-9 It is generally assumed that these sovereign
and territorial states constitute force largely from within their borders, use it
to authoritatively rule their subjects, and project it outwards to defend their
interests and existence. This 'trinitarian' co-location of state, army, and soci-
ety—the 'nation-state'—makes the 'unit' a coherent subject of international
politics, and a coherent object of inquiry for the social sciences and humani-
ties. This nation-state ontology of world politics allows IR to focus on rela-
tions between units, while the other social sciences and humanities disciplines
can focus on their 'insides'. Force, on these imaginings, implicitly or explicitly
plays a primary role in dividing up the world into separate entities. 'As a con-
58
Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982, p. 324.
It is unclear how the role of the CIA, operating at the behest of the President in ac-
cordance with the law, amounts to anything less than formal involvement. In a clas-
sic piece of Cold War ideology informing social science, Small and Singer have no
trouble seeing through the device of'volunteers' by which the PRC entered the Ko-
rean War, but are unable to spot (or at least formally credit) the 'traceless troops' with
which the US fought its 'non-attributable wars'. For a fuller discussion, see Tarak
Barkawi, 'War Inside the Free World' in Barkawi and Laffey, Democracy, Liberalism
and War, 107-128.
^ Giddens, The Nation-State, p. 120; Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 95-
97.
51
sequence, the histories of interrelated peoples become territorialized into
bounded spaces.'60
In mentioning political economic approaches to core-periphery relations
above, an important idea was broached. This is the notion that without the
periphery, the core would not have been the core. There are relations of co-
constitution between core and periphery, relations that shaped Europe as well
as its colonies, the West as well as the rest. A similar research agenda opens in
respect of the political military dimensions of empire, formal or otherwise.
Colonial armies and other indigenous forces made possible Western imperial-
ism, sharply reducing the military demands core states made on their own
populations. That is, civil-military relations in core states were shaped by the
availability of foreign forces to secure empires. The US could not police the
'free world' solely with its own forces. The extensive programs of'advice and
support' shaped civil-military relations in both the US and the Third World,
and made possible the US-centered world order of the post-1945 era. Those
covert instrumentalities were also used inside the US, to gather intelligence
and subvert domestic opposition to US foreign policy.61 These political-mili-
tary and security relations fall outside of the kinds of approaches and questions
found in security studies and IR. The model of the sovereign nation-state turns
out to be a poor guide to the organization of military power for much of world
politics.
This chapter has sought to draw attention to the international context of
state-force-territory relations. Core states 'exceed' their monopoly, while
peripheral societies are shaped and ruled through the military instrumentalities
of this 'excess'. This systematic interconnection is productive of the political-
military dynamics of core-periphery relations, and of the social and economic
relations that follow in their wake. In various ways, these interconnections are
obscured by the image of the nation-state and its territorial monopoly on force.
Polities and their histories are conceived within fixed, disconnected spaces
such as 'Germany' or the 'United States'. Countries appear to have internal,
autonomous histories. The thick webs of international interconnections in
which peoples, polities and places are situated, and in and through which they
are constituted and transformed, fade into the background. Inter-related,
transnational processes occurring across different spaces appear instead as the
effects of the intrinsic attributes of separate nations.
60
Fernando Coronil, 'Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Non-imperial Geohistorical
Categories', Cultural Anthropology, 11,1, 1996, p. 77.

61
Morton Halperin et al., The Lawless State, New York: Penguin, 1976.
52
The nation-state is a principal vehicle of this territorialization of history.
Nation-states constitute more or less arbitrary and independent packages for
the study of culture, history, society and politics. Ranajit Guha characterizes
the governing assumptions at work with the formula 'Civil Society=Nation=
State', which effectively severs any sense of the constitutive embeddedness of
each element in a transnational context and occludes imperial relations.62 The
military dimension adds 'army', recruited from 'civil society/nation' for service
to the state. As a consequence, the military was viewed as essentially a national
institution, and the local image of the official armed forces of Western states
became hegemonic. Morris Janowitz remarks almost offhandedly, '[s]ince the
military profession is an expression of national identity, only those with strong
feelings of nationalism tend to enter.'63 One of the oldest professions known
to humankind, long predating modern nationalism, is transformed into a
national institution, and in a book entitled The Professional Soldier.
It is not only, then, an international context of state-force-territory relations
that is obscured by the image of the nation-state, but a more general transna-
tional context of the multiple interconnections through which world politics
are made. Behind the core-periphery interconnection is a set of transnational
relations and flows through which foreign forces are constituted and used. This
draws attention to a question prior to the international context of state-force-
territory relations and the role of foreign forces discussed in this paper: how
were these armed forces constituted? What institutional processes made these
forces possible so that they could go on to play their historic role ? Such a ques-
tion places the military within the domain of a transnational sociology of
world politics. What processes of transmission and constitution made possible,
and continues to make possible, the imperial militarization of world politics?
These kinds of question open up a new research agenda in the political military
analysis of world politics. They connect the study of'narrow' military matters
to a wider reconfiguration of the social sciences and humanities, one that
becomes possible once the nation-state is dropped as the organizing principle
of the disciplines.
62
Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1997, p. xi.

63
Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, New York: Free Press, 1971, p. 82.
53
3
PRIVATEERS OF THE NORTH SEA:
AT WORLDS END
FRENCH PRIVATEERS IN NORWEGIAN WATERS
Halvard Leira and Benjamin de Carvalho
Introduction
In 1692, a French consul in Bergen bailed out a Jacobite privateer from jail,
hired him as captain of a captured prize, and gave him commission to go cap-
ture more English ships on the consul's behalf, with the implicit provision that
the captain and the consul would share the profit. How does this fit with the
common image of the clear separation between private and state violence ? In
this chapter, we problematize the public/private divide in an early stage of state
consolidation, through a reading of French privateering in Norwegian waters.
We argue that the eighteenth century witnessed a gradual increase in French
capacity for control over privateering, but that privateering practices continued
to incorporate both private and state elements.
The existence of private violence in the international system could super-
ficially be read as an indication of a deficit in the state monopoly of force,
and privatization of violence could then be seen as an indication (as well as
a result) of states losing some of their ability to control the exercise of
power. Janice Thomson, however, argues that non-state violence in the early
modern period could actually be applied to enhance state power and state
55
building.1 She furthermore argues that privatization of violence has had a
tendency to create adverse unintended consequences for states, and that these
consequences again gradually led to the downfall of non-state violence. While
inspired by Thomson's work, this chapter questions several of her presump-
tions and her conclusion.
Among the many different varieties of non-state violence, we believe that
privateering offers a particularly fruitful case, and one that challenges Thom-
son's account. First, while obviously important for the war efforts of the early-
modern period,2 privateering is relatively understudied, even within the general
framework of private violence. The last decades have seen increased interest in
private violence as such, and with regards to sea-borne violence, pirates have
received substantial academic treatment, to speak nothing of their prevalence
in popular culture. Privateers are, however, largely forgotten. Second, privateer-
ing is of particular interest given that it is the most thoroughly institutionalized
form of private violence. Institutionalization of private violence generally took
place through restrictions and prohibitions, as was also finally the case for pri-
vateering, which was largely abolished by the Treaty of Paris in 1856. However,
privateering was also for several centuries couched in legal terms of rights and
privileges. What we are seeing is not only the process described by Thomson,
whereby states use non-state actors, but complex interrelations where non-state
actors would also use the state. Furthermore, where other forms of private vio-
lence would foster sporadic diplomatic interaction, privateering became inter-
twined with regular diplomatic practice, through the work of consuls. For
these reasons, privateering lends itself particularly well to a study of the interac-
tion between state capacity for control and non-state violence.3
Within the larger universe of privateering, we have chosen to focus mostly
on French privateering, particularly in the North Sea, and the privateers' use
1
Janice E. 'Vcvoxwson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns. State-building and Extrater-
ritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1996. We are sceptical of the use of both 'state' and 'non-state'/'private' as clear-cut
analytical categories, at least in the early part of the early-modern period, but apply
them here for lack of more precise alternatives.

2
See e.g. J. S. Bromley, Corsairs and Navies. 1660-1760, London: The Hambledon
Press, 1987.
3
While we do not explore these possibilities in this article, privateering also lends itself
easily to comparative analyses, since different states used privateers at different times,
and, importantly, at different stages in the state-building process. Compare e.g. our
chapter with Colas and Mabee's chapter on English privateering in this volume.
56
PRIVATEERS OF THE NORTH SEA: AT WORLDS END
of Norwegian waters and Norwegian ports. In part, this is a result of our access
to source material, and our linguistic competencies, but the choice primarily
rests on France being the case that most clearly combines complex state-build-
ing and extensive use of privateers, and on the way in which French privateer-
ing in the North Sea and the use of Norwegian waters and ports illuminate the
diplomatic interaction. Where the English/British case lends itself easily to
studies of the relationship between piracy and privateering, and how they were
parts of the global networks of trade and violence and the material factors
influencing the growth and decline of private sea-borne violence,4 the French
case leads us to explorations of state-building, public-private partnerships and
the international relations of privateering practices.
We start out by sketching briefly some conceptual issues relating to priva-
teering, and the history of French privateering. The main part of the chapter
is then spent discussing two interrelated ways in which the French state tried
to control and aid the activities of the privateers—through the establishment
of official regulations on privateering and through the creation of consuls in
foreign ports. Where the regulations formalized the activities of privateers, the
consuls were charged with enforcing these regulations, and in general supervis-
ing the privateers abroad.
The Pitfalls of Privateering—Conceptual Challenges
Janice Thomson suggests that privateering is one of eight distinct types of vio-
lence, characterized by the combination of private ownership and state deci-
sion-making authority.^ As noted both in general in the introduction and in
several of the other chapters in this volume, there are problems with this
account. States had more control at an earlier stage and tightening control need
not imply the abolition of private violence. While Colas and Mabee focus
largely on how private means of violence were put at the disposal of the state
in the British case, the case of France highlights how state means were put to
use in aid of private operators and how private operators abused state regula-
tions. In our reading, Thomsons framework cannot be upheld when con-
fronted with the empirical variation.
We therefore also disagree with the views held by individuals such as Alex-
ander Tabarrok, who argues that privateering should be seen as a government
4
Cf. Colas and Mabee in this volume.
- Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, p. 8.
57
program, an instantiation of contracting out: 'With privateering, government
uses private enterprise to serve its own ends'.6 On the contrary, we will argue,
the state at least at the outset of the 'long' eighteenth century could do little
more than issue letters of marque and reprisal, letters that were often misused,
and hope for satisfying results. Our argument with Tabarrok's assessment is
threefold. First, his case, the United States, is quite clearly a deviant case, in as
much as the state was ideologically founded among other things on a distrust
of the type of standing armies and navies that could be found in Europe. Reli-
ance on privateers was then the quickest way of raising a naval force. Our second
point regards the analogy of contracting out. Even though privateering was
regulated through an initial contract between state and violence-provider and
surrounded by an elaborate set of economic and juridical ties, there was a dis-
tinct lack of oversight and strategic direction.7 When a modern state contracts
out services, it will specify quite closely what is to be provided and how, and a
control-regime might be put in place to ensure that the regulations are fol-
lowed. With privateering, the early-modern state could do little more than
legalize the process.8 Privateers would seek to maximize prize value, regardless
of the state's strategic goals, and this could have unfortunate unintended con-
sequences, as when the attacks of French privateers on Hamburg shipping lanes
during the war of the League of Augsburg led to 'the breakdown of diplomatic
and commercial relations with that port, whose ties with Russia and Scandi-
navia had been especially useful'.9 Our final point is temporal. Tabarrok's case
is at the tail end of active privateering—the war of 1812. Thus, as he acknowl-
edges, the state control-regimes could draw on centuries of tradition, and state-
6
Alexander Tabarrok, "The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers', The Independent
11 (4), 2007: p. 572.
The obvious point that privateers often turned to piracy at the cessation of hostilities
should make anyone sceptical of a 'contracting-out'-narrative.

8
As we shall see, the French case also illustrates how the initiative was not confined to
the state; rather, local merchants and even naval officers would push for state support
for privateering. The idea of the state using private enterprise thus needs to be coupled
with an account of private entrepreneurs using the state.

9
Donald Pilgrim, "The Colbert-Seignelay Naval Reforms and the Beginnings of the
War of the League of Augsburg', French Historical Studies, 9(2), 1975, p. 249. Cf. how
'prize mad captains' on Swedish privateers in the Baltic helped destroy Sweden's com-
merce in the Great Nordic War by attacking indiscriminately even neutral and Swe-
den-bound ships; John J. Murray 'Baltic Commerce and Power Politics in the Early
Eighteenth Century', The Huntington Library Quarterly, 6(3), 1943, p. 305.
58
building had reached a relatively mature level. But by assuming the situation
in 1812 to be the norm, he misses out on what we would consider to be the
story—how states gradually developed the indirect control over privateering.
While Thomson performed an important task in raising awareness about
non-state violence, we will caution against reading non-state violence as merely
a different tool in the state's force-kit. As we detail below, privateering could
just as well be initiated by private interests as by the state. Moreover, states can
act creatively in the face of a lack of control over non-state exercises of power,
and they explore new ways of exercising control. While privateering implied
less state control than the use of regular navy vessels, the French state counter-
acted with explicit regulation and the establishment of consular posts in for-
eign ports. Rather than states facing a deficit of power, we will thus suggest
that state-sanctioned private use of violence usually implies a trade-off, where
direct control is (albeit often feebly) replaced by indirect control, and where
public and private interests and capabilities are intertwined. From the outfit-
ting of vessels to the interactions of privateers and consuls, we find privateers
and representatives of the state cooperating closely towards partly common
ends. And, although the states experienced obvious adverse unintended con-
sequences of non-state violence, there were other, more indirect, unintended
consequences that were actually conducive to state-building and societal inter-
national interaction. Central to this is the expansion of consular offices. Con-
suls had been present in Mediterranean ports since the first centuries of the
second millennium. They were usually elected by the merchant community of
compatriots, and acted as head of the colony (often with judicial powers) and
intermediary between the polity of residence and the colony. From the middle
of the seventeenth century, the centralising states increasingly tried to assert
control over who was made consul for 'their' subjects in foreign ports.10 The
motives were many, like information gathering, patronage, support for trade
and control over subjects abroad. Support for privateering was probably the
single most common reason for establishing new consular posts. While the
establishment of consular posts abroad increased the states' capacity for control
over their own subjects, it also induced establishment of clearer restrictions on
extraterritoriality in receiving states.
10
Halvard Leira and Iver B. Neumann 'Consular Representation in an Emerging State:
The Case of Norway', Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 3(1), 2008: pp. 1-19; Halvard
Leira and Iver B. Neumann 'Consular Affairs: An Historical Overview', in Ana Mar
Fernandez and Jan Melissen (eds) Consular Affairs and the Transformation oj Diplo-
macy, Leiden: Brill, (forthcoming 2010).
59
One final conceptual clarification needs to be made, regarding private vio-
lence as opposed to privatized violence. As Thomson indicates, both decision-
making authority and ownership can be private. While some privateering
provides us with clear instances of'privatized' violence in the sense of privatiza-
tion of the means (as when the state allowed the privateers the use of royal
ships and crews), we hesitate to apply the term generally, as it implies a pro-
cess—i.e. that these forms of violence were at some point not private. Privateer-
ing tended to be closely related to the development of regular naval fighting
forces, more often than not preceding it. Privateers in wartime would tend to
have been merchants in peacetime, and one form of privateering was the prac-
tice of armed trading—merchantmen carrying a number of guns, mainly for
defensive purposes, but taking prizes if the chance arose.11 Thus, the practices
of privateering did not develop on the basis of state practices, and the practices
as such were not 'privatized'. The one thing that was generally 'privatized' was
the right to apply violence. Since we believe that the ambiguities of privateer-
ing should be highlighted, and since 'privatization as process' is only partially
appropriate as a description for privateering, we have chosen to regard the
practices as private, rather than privatized.
French Privateering—Historical Background
Turning now to history, central privateering practices such as the issuing of
letters of marque and reprisal can be traced back at least to the thirteenth cen-
tury, and prize courts were created in France in 1373 and England in 1426.12
With the discoveries of new continents and new trade routes followed the
advent of long distance trade (and with it, more elaborate trade-policies and
maritime warfare), and increased importance of privateering.13 The break-
through is commonly perceived to coincide with the English and Dutch wars
against Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through the actions
" Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, 187; 213.

12
Johan NicoXxyT&nnesstn,Kaperfartogskipsfart 1807-1814, Oslo: Cappelen, 1955,
p. 14.
13
The increasing importance of privateering must also be seen against the background
of technological change—improvements in 'sail and shot' during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries made it possible to design ships with the sole purpose of deep-
water war-fighting, thus at least in principle creating a divide between merchant ships
and warships, although this distinction would remain partly blurred well into the
twentieth century; Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, p. 187.
60
of the English 'Sea Dogs' and the Dutch 'Sea Beggars', and, somewhat later,
the 'Dunkirkers'—privateers raiding Dutch shipping on behalf of the Hab-
sburgs.14 Even though regularly employed by all belligerents, as a supplement
to the navy or in the place of a navy, privateers were usually associated in par-
ticular with the relatively weaker party—the Netherlands and England vs.
Spain in the sixteenth century, France vs. England/Britain in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries and France and USA vs. Britain around 1800.15
France stands out as the country that relied most on privateering. Whereas
the Netherlands and England, mostly for geographical reasons, had historically
emphasized the naval arm, the French navy did not have much of a tradition
as a fighting force until the seventeenth century, when it was expanded by
Richelieu. During their reign as naval secretaries of Colbert (1669-83) and
his son, the Marquis de Seignelay (1683-90), France tried, and partly suc-
ceeded, to establish the foundations of a navy to rival the English. At the outset
of the Nine Years' War (1688-97), the French navy did well, winning the battle
of Beachy Head in 1690. However, serious problems with financing and man-
power ensued,16 and in 1692 the successive losses at the Battles of Barfleur and
La Hogue created a less hospitable climate for navalists. However, as Bromley
points out,1 what was lacking was not a fleet as such, but a design for its use,
and from 1695 onwards, Louis XIV decided to de-emphasize the navy. The
opponents of the regular navy were not only the ones who would favour the
army, but also those who favoured & guerre de course (a privateer-war) rather
than regular naval operations. Thus, during the remainder of the Nine Years'
War as well as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13/14), France relied
to a large extent on privateers for their naval presence. These wars mark the
apogee of French privateering, which then subsided during the wars of the
mid-eighteenth century, only to reappear at a reduced level during the revolu-
tionary wars. It should be noted immediately that Thomson's brief account of
French privateering is quite misleading. She states that France, unlike Britain,
14
Dunkirk, positioned at the intersection of the English Channel and the North Sea,
close to both the Dutch and the English main ports, would remain an important
privateer-port even after the French capture in 1646.

1
- During the war of 1812, there were around 700 commissioned US privateer-ships,
as compared to a navy of around 100 vessels; Tabarrok 'The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again
of Privateers', p. 567.
16
Pilgrim, "The Colbert-Seignelay Naval Reforms'
1
Bromley, Corsairs and Navies,^. 218-19.
61
did not allow privateers to attack neutral shipping, and that in the case of
France the privateers 'were the navy'. The first claim is blatantly wrong, the
second at least misleading. The reason for these curious claims might be her
sole reliance on a secondary source from 1897.
By 'Mahanians' or traditionalists, the French recourse to privateering has
traditionally been seen as a mistake, allowing for English mastery of the seas.
However, it seems doubtful if the French ever had the requisite money, man-
power or apparatus to meet the demands of the regular navy.18 By way of
example: from c. 1760 to 1815, it is estimated that the shore establishment of
the British navy was 'at least in terms of physical plant, finance and labour
force, by far the largest industrial unit in eighteenth century Britain and, prob-
ably, in the entire western world'.19 It is unlikely that France had the necessary
finances to sustain a navy at this level.
The most important obstacle nevertheless seems to have been lack of will,
coupled with enthusiasm for privateering. At the outbreak of war in 1688, the
secretary of the navy, Seignelay, commissioned four frigates for privateering,
and persuaded the king and several members of the court and the naval admin-
istration to partake in the endeavour.20 Furthermore, as Bromley has discussed
in detail, the French navy regularly lent ships, sometimes with crews, to priva-
teers, at least in the Nine-Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession.21
To ensure that sailors of the navy would obey their new captains, these latter
were sometimes given officer's rank. The navy (or the king) would then be
claiming a proportion of the takings. Some outfitters were only bearing the
financial burden of paying the sailors for the stay at sea, but more common
seems to have been a mixed financing, with ships delivered partly outfitted. At
some occasions, the state would have a high degree of control, with the king
choosing commanders and targets to be attacked, but a more hands-off pro-
cedure seems to have been the norm. On one hand, the turn to privateering
was thus an active choice, a theoretically founded attempt at maximising the
18
Pilgrim, 'The Colbert-Seignelay Naval Reforms', p. 258.
19
H.M. Scott, 'Review Article: The Second 'Hundred Years War', 1689-1815', The
Historical Journal, 35(2), 1992, p. 454. Scott refers to three recurring problems in
the French navy: 'an inexperienced, cautious and, at times, lethargic officer corps, a
shortage of men to crew the ships, and the crucial failure of finance'; Ibid., p. 462.
20
Pilgrim, 'The Colbert-Seignelay Naval Reforms', p. 78; 258; Bromley, Corsairs and
Navies, p. 187.
21
Ibid., pp. 187-212; 215-20.
62
use of the state s resources. On the other hand, and particularly as the wars
wore on, privateering was initiated from below (even by naval officers) and
caused by financial distress as ship-owners and merchants were shut out of
trade, fishermen were denied the access to the banks of the North Atlantic and
seamen were left out of work. Thus, in a way not dissimilar to what Colas and
Mabee describe for Britain, French privateering was enmeshed in the global
networks of trade and violence and crucially connected to material factors. In
the bigger picture, privateering was largely a high-risk private undertaking,
spurred by the downturn in maritime trade occasioned by English/British
naval superiority.22 The risks would seem to be close to outweighing the
rewards, at least during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, but the lure
of great prizes nevertheless encouraged investors.23 A turn to privateering was
thus to some extent a virtue of necessity, for the state as well as for the private
investors, and one should not overestimate the actual choice nor the level of
state control. Nevertheless, since private and public interests were closely con-
nected, it should come as no surprise that a relatively strong, centralising state
like the French sought to establish indirect means of control. Here we are par-
ticularly interested in the attempts to regulate the form of privateering where
direct control was most difficult, where prizes were taken to foreign ports. We
look first at some of the central laws and regulations, then at the ones in charge
of implementing them abroad: the consuls.
Laws and Regulations
The first French official documents dealing with prizes and privateering were
issued in 1543 and 1584, and some regulations and declarations were made in
the first half of the seventeenth century. Later acts of state (ordinances, declara-
tions, edicts, regulations etc.) concerning privateering, were, logically enough,
largely issued during wartime. As one would expect from the general trajectory
of French privateering described above, substantial numbers of acts were made
during the Nine Years War and the War of Spanish Succession, with numbers
22
Scott, 'Review Article', pp. 455-57.
23
Patrick Crowhurst, 'Profitability in French Privateering 1793-1815', Business His-
tory, 24(1), 1982: pp. 48-60. Tabarrok's numbers indicate that US privateering (at
least in the war of 1812) was less driven by dire economic need and also more eco-
nomically sustainable than its French contemporary counterpart; Tabarrok, 'The
Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers'.
63
decreasing during the wars of the mid-eighteenth century. The first increase in
numbers and detail can be found during the Franco-Dutch War (1672-78),
when a number of ordinances and regulations were put into effect. Among
them was one stressing the provision from 1543 and 1584 that prizes had to
be returned to French ports, preferably the port where the privateer had been
outfitted. This precondition was repeated in the seminal Ordonnance de la
marine of August 1681,24 better known as the Ordonnance Colbert, which
among a host of other issues specifies both regulations for privateering and
consular affairs.25 The consuls were placed under the authority of the
Admiralty,26 and were thus given clear duties with respect to France's naval and
mercantile interests. However, since prizes were to be sent to French ports,
they were not mentioned at all in the chapter dealing with consular duties.
The issue of privateering was regulated in chapters dealing with prizes and
letters of marque. The necessity of a commission from the admiral or the king
for arming a vessel was stated at the outset, and after receiving such a commis-
sion, the vessel was to be registered and a caution of 15,000 livres had to be
paid. The definition of what was considered a 'good prize' was relatively wide,
covering all vessels belonging to enemy powers, commanded by pirates or sail-
ing without commission from a prince or sovereign state, as well as any vessel
fighting under a false flag or carrying commissions from more than one state.
Vessels that could not account for where their goods originated from by pre-
senting appropriate papers were also considered good prize. As explained in
the Ordonnance, it would be fraud to withhold such documents with a view
to have the prize declared good and legitimate. Ships carrying enemy goods
were also considered good prize.27
24 Ordonnance de la marine, du mois d'aoust 1681 [Reprod.], Paris: C. Osmont, 1714.
^ This was the first document which linked the consular institution to the authority
of the state; Geraud Poumarede, 'Le consul dans les dictionnaires et le droit des gens:
emergence et affirmation dune institution nouvelle' in Jorg Ulbert and Gerard Le
Bouedec {eds),Lafonction consulairea I'epoque moderne. LdAjfirmation d'une institu-
tion economique etpolitique (1500—1800), Rennes: PUR, 2006, p. 25.

26
Unlike other countries, where consuls were often under the authority of boards of
commerce and/or trading companies.

2
Thus, France did not at this point adhere to the principle 'free ships make free
goods', but reserved the right to take neutral ships if they carried enemy cargo.
Thomson's misunderstanding of French privateering as not attacking neutral ship-
ping might stem from a confusion about what constituted neutrality in the French
perspective.
64
Upon seizing a ship, the captain had to gather for safekeeping all papers and
passports relating to the load. The prize then had to be immediately returned,
together with any prisoners, to the port where the ship had been armed. Failure
to do so would result in a captain losing his claim to the prize, and an arbitrary
fine.28 The only exceptions to this rule were cases where weather or enemies
giving chase prevented a return to the port of origin. In these cases, prizes
could be sent to other ports that were closer or more convenient, and the inves-
tors and outfitters had to be immediately notified.
Opening the goods before the prize had been judged legitimate was not
allowed, nor was the sale of the prize or parts of it before it had been judged
good. As soon as the prize was returned to a French port, the captain had to
report to the officers of the Admiralty, and give all the details of the seizure.
This included both the circumstances and location. These officers would then
take charge of the prize, make an inventory of quality and quantity, seal it, and
guard it. Prisoners were to be examined and interrogated in order to corrobo-
rate the report of the captain. If no prisoners had been taken, the crew would
be interrogated in order to address whether the prize had been taken under
legal circumstances and on an authorized ship. Based on all this information,
the Admiralty would judge a prize good or bad. If it was declared good,
ship and goods would be sold, and one tenth of the value retained by the
Admiralty.
The Ordonnance Colbert exemplifies the ideal of the centralising state. If it
had been followed to the letter, French privateering would have fitted Thom-
son's description of states using private providers of violence to further their
goals. As we shall soon see, practices on the ground were a lot messier, and this
was also reflected in later acts of state. During the first months of the Nine
Years War, the king renounced his claim to a third of the profit from prizes
captured by the king's own ships, so as to encourage privateering, and ships
captured in the tropics were allowed to be condemned without returning to
French port. Throughout the war, acts of state stressed the regulations laid
down in the ordinance of 1681, particularly concerning how prizes were to be
condemned. The same pattern could be found in later wars, successive acts of
2S
This article was made with reference to the earlier Ordonnances of 1543 and 1584,
and how a return to the port of departure was an 'inviolable custom' [coutume in-
violable) of life at sea. The reasons were also more profit-oriented; the investors and
outfitters wanted direct control over the sale of goods, and the king wanted immedi-
ate access to the prisoners of war with a view to exchanging them.
65
state stressing and modifying the original regulations. During the Seven Years
War, colonial governors were given privileges, such as the right to judge
whether prizes were good or not. The general trend seems to be increased
specification of the regulations, covering the process from outfitting to final
sale in ever more detail. The frequency of new and updated regulations never-
theless suggests that the old ones were not being followed to the letter.
Even though the Ordonnance Colbert and later regulations had stipulated
that the prizes should be taken to the home port, prizes were regularly taken
to foreign ports. Captains could always utilize the loophole in the regulations,
and claim that weather or pursuing enemies forced them into foreign port. In
1779, what had become regular practice was codified in z Reglement conccvn-
ing what consuls should do when prizes were taken to foreign ports.29 At the
outset, it was stated that as soon as a consul learned of an enemy prize in a for-
eign port, they had to travel to the said port in order to do an inventory. The
Reglement further specified what had to be recorded in detail, including the
date the prize was taken, the name of the vessel and the vessel taken, whether
the vessel was alone, or accompanied by others, as well as the names of the
whole crew. If prizes had been taken without proper lettres de marque, the con-
sul had to take custody of the entire prize, and inform the secretary of state in
charge of the navy.
Throughout the process involving prizes captured by French privateers, the
role of the consul was central. All correspondence and administration between
the armateur and the relevant ministries was to go through the consuls, and
in cases in which prizes carried perishable goods they were allowed to unload
the goods, value the prize through the aid of four reputable local merchants,
and proceed to the provisory sale of the goods. During the process whereby
the validity of the prize was adjudicated, consuls were also in charge of securing
the prize, making sure that members of the crew did not take anything from
the prize, as well as ensuring that prisoners were treated well. If the prize was
deemed to be good, the consuls were also in charge of selling the ship and
goods. Regarding prisoners, the consul was required to take good care of them,
and to consult the agents or consuls of enemy powers with a view to proceed
to an exchange of prisoners. The revolution brought further expansion of the
consuls' mandates; as noted by Faivre d'Arcier,30 consuls in the Levant were in
29
Available in Jourdan, Decrusy and Lambert (eds), Recueilgeneraldes anciennes loisfran-
$aises (31 Decembre 1778 au 3 Mars 1781), Paris: H. Fournier, 1826, pp. 191 -98.
30
Aumary Faivre D Arcier, 'Le service consulaire au Levant a la fin du XVIIIe siecle et
66
1794 given the right to judge the validity of prizes without referring the matter
to the Minister of the Navy.
Why did the French state soften its earlier strict regulations ? Three alterna-
tive readings come to mind. The first one would see the codification of con-
sular responsibility as a case of delegation of authority. This reading is belied
by the lack of actual central control over consuls and by the fact that most pri-
vateers were operating as close to home as possible. A second reading would
be that necessity breaks all laws. When engaged in warfare, securing the profits
became secondary to striking a blow against the enemy's shipping. The renun-
ciation of the king's share of the spoils could be read in this light. However,
disregard for the profits would in general be counter-productive for privateer-
ing. Outfitters and financial backers would not continue to finance privateer-
ing if the profits were lost in foreign ports. This leaves a third reading—the
gradual development of regulations was a result of initial state weakness, and
gradually increasing control. In 1681, the French state simply did not have a
consular network that it could trust with the handling of prizes, and thus had
to demand that prizes be taken to French port. Enforcement of the existing
regulations proved both difficult and impractical, and some modifications were
made to adapt to facts on the ground. When state control over consuls had
been better ascertained, and a network of consuls established, the regulations
of 1779 could be made. The general weakness of the state allowed for multiple
complex intertwinements of state and private interests, e.g. with state-
appointed consuls acting in their private interest in collusion with state-
sanctioned privateer-captains on ships who might be royally owned but
privately outfitted.
Controllers and Enablers—Consuls and Privateers in Norwegian
Ports and Waters^
Legal frameworks and wartime regulations provided ways of controlling priva-
teers that returned with prizes to their port of origin, which in any case were
what the outfitters and sponsors preferred. However, as noted, prizes were corn-
son evolution sous la Revolution', in Jorg Ulbert and Gerard Le Bouedec (eds), La,
fonction consulaire, p. 179.

31
This section draws to some extent on material gathered in the preparation of Leira
and Neumann, 'Consular Representation'.
67
monly taken to other ports.32 The reasons could be tactical, as prize courts in
other ports might be less strict on legal formalities and/or provide different
shares of the spoils.33 There were also ample logistical reasons for heading for the
nearest suitable (i.e. allied or neutral) port. Prize crews tended by necessity to be
small, and risks of weather as well as the risk of encountering enemy men of war
favored a swift; return to port. These factors were amplified if the privateer was
operating close to the enemy homeland, or had to pass enemy waters in order to
get home.34 But any odd port would not do. As seen above, the laws governing
privateering were explicit on the need for prizes to be recognized as legal before
they could be condemned, and negligence on this count could not only imply
lengthy court-proceedings, but could also entail accusations of piracy. Thus, pri-
vateers would head for a port with a prize court or at least some official presence.
In most cases, that would entail a port where there was some form of consular
representation from the polity that the ship hailed from. The know-how of the
consuls could be critical to the success of the case at the Admiralty courts back
home or in the host country. Furthermore, consuls were invaluable intermediar-
ies, and the privateers 'generally had too much need of consular protection and
technical services to seek to evade jurisdiction'.3^ However, submitting to con-
sular jurisdiction need not entail submitting to state jurisdiction.
At the end of the seventeenth century, consular representation was well
established in the Mediterranean and what could anachronistically be called
32
Or, indeed, not taken to port at all. The practices of ransom and parole allowed for
the release of the prize with its original crew, with promises of future retributions.
33
Lauren Benton, 'Legal Spaces of Empire: Piracy and the Origins of Ocean Regional-
ism', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47(4), 2005: p. 718. Condemning
prizes at home ports might, for example, make one liable to pay import taxes; G. N.
Clark, 'War Trade and Trade War, 1701-1713', The Economic History Review, 1 (2),
1928: pp. 262-280.

34
Compare e.g. the practices of US privateers in the wars of revolution and of 1812,
who would be sailing just off the British coastline, and might send prizes to the clos-
est available port rather than bringing them back across the Atlantic. The squadron
led by John Paul Jones, for example, sent three British prizes, taken within eyesight
of Scotland, to Bergen in 1779. They were subsequently returned to the owners after
the intervention of the British consul, protesting that the ships were not good prize,
as the US was not a recognized belligerent; Arthur Burchard, 'The Case of the "Ap-
pam" and the Law of Nations', The American Journal of International Law, 11(2),
1917: p. 288.
35
Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, p. 223.
68
consular services were in the process of being formed. This was largely a con-
sequence of the growth of what has been called 'fiscal-military states' and the
increasing codification of the international society of states. As noted above,
Colbert's reforms subordinated consuls to the navy, and the organization of
French naval presence more generally, and stipulated that consuls should be
elected by the king.36 This was an organizational innovation, as consuls until
then had largely been elected by the local members of the 'nation' in question
(e.g. the French nation in Alexandria).3 The consul's role as a servant of the
state also became ever more accentuated, as the states extended their respon-
sibility and control over compatriots in foreign ports. The consuls were also
given a more accentuated responsibility for the general interest of the state, as
in relation to privateering.
Around the Mediterranean, a network of consuls could act as prize courts
for privateers, as well as helping captains and crew refurbish and replenish.
Fiowever, with the growth of long-distance shipping as well as the highly
important trade on Norway and the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean (with its com-
ponent seas like the North Sea and the English Channel) became the main
waters for privateers. And here consuls were few and far between indeed.38
With naval war arose a need for new consulates in neutral or allied territory.
Among the North Sea ports, the Norwegian ones hold a special interest in
regard to privateering and consular activities. First, as there were no consulates
there before 1650, we get a good gauge of the relationship between naval war/
privateering and the establishment of consular representation. Second, the
conglomerate state ruled from Copenhagen was neutral in most of the naval
wars of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hence, consulates could
in principle be established there by all warring parties, and prizes be taken there
36
The consular service remained a branch of the navy until 1781; A. Broder, Trench
Consular Ktipotts, Business History, 23(3), 1981: pp. 279-282.

37
Stricter state control implied more room for patronage, where the title of consul
might follow from political ties rather than mercantile experience; Violet Barbour,
'Consular Service in the Reign of Charles IF, American Historical Review, 33, 1928,
pp. 553-578.
38
Disregarding the Aldermen of the Hanse, there were few, if any, foreign consuls in
Scandinavia before 1650. The Scandinavian states themselves only started establish-
ing regular consular representation in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
Consuls can be found somewhat earlier in London and the Low Countries, and
England and the Netherlands also established (or gained control over) consulates
somewhat earlier.
69
for condemnation.39 Third, Norway was strategically situated on two main
waterways. During wartime, ships from the Indies and other distant ports,
bound in particular for England or the Netherlands, would often choose to
enter the North Sea from the north, rather than through the narrow and pri-
vateer-infested English Channel, and would use Bergen as a port of call for
necessary refurbishments and replenishments before the final dash across the
North Sea.40 The Baltic and Russian traders always passed through Norwegian
waters, and in particular the Baltic traders would make use of Norwegian out-
ports for refurbishing and replenishments, and not least while waiting for
favourable winds. The long-distance trade route was tempting to privateers for
its riches, while the northern trade route was prominent due to the importance
of the goods, the Naval stores of the Baltic essentially keeping the navies of
Europe afloat.41 The ebb and flow of French privateering and consular presence
in Norwegian waters and ports follows the general trends of French privateer-
ing, and the following section is thus divided into three parts. During the wars
around 1700, French privateering was at it apex, and the first French consuls
to Norway were appointed. The mid-century-wars saw lower activity, which
could be felt in Norway by the lack of new consuls sent from France. The cen-
tral consular post in Bergen became hereditary, and the title became little more
than a status-marker and the source of a guaranteed salary. The revolutionary
wars implied increased general French privateering, and a more forceful pres-
ence in Norway as well.
The Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession
The first 'consul' mentioned in Norwegian sources was the Scottish born
Andrew Davidson Christie.42 He became a burgess in Bergen in 1654,43 and
39
For foreign privateers, this advantage applied largely to Norway, as the western coast
of Jutland was too treacherous to provide shelter; Bromley, Corsairs and Navies,
p. 70.
40
The use of the northern route seems to have been sort of a standing rule for the
Dutch East India Company; DagnyJorgensen, Danmark-Norge mellom stormaktene
1688-1697. Dansk-norsk sjofart og utenrikspolitikk under denpfalziske arvefolgekrig,
Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976, p. 198.

41
Murray, 'Baltic Commerce and Power Polities'.
His family history gives him the title of consul, and he certainly carried out 'consul-
like' activities, but we have found no independent verification of the title.

43
W. H. Christie, Genealogiske Optegnelser om SUgten Christie i Norge 1650-1890 og
med den forbundne SUgter, Bergen: Private print, 1909, p. 3.
70
sometime after that, most likely during the second or third Anglo-Dutch wars
(1665-67 and 1672-74 respectively), he started looking after the interests of
English ship-owners when English-owned prizes were brought to Bergen, and
he also reported to London on political issues.44 Christie s son inherited his
position, but when he died in 1719 without leaving any adult sons, the British
consulate in Bergen intermittently disappeared.
In the meantime, the Nine Years War had brought both privateers and new
consuls to Norway. Dunkirkers in particular used the Norwegian fjords for
shelter, repair and refurbishments, and prizes were sold at Norwegian portsT
For Denmark-Norway, an important political drama of this war was the ongo-
ing pressures from the maritime powers to restrict the access of privateers to
Norwegian waters and ports, and the French moves to counteract. That the
situation was real and acute can be illustrated by the French sea-legend Jean
Bart. He performed a famous breakout from Dunkirk in the summer 1691,
and immediately sailed for Norway, and started sending prizes to Norwegian
ports. His instructions were to utilize Norwegian ports, particularly Bergen,
as sources for provisions and the repair of ships, and if need be as a destination
for prizes.46 The developments of the summer and autumn of 1691 led the
grand pensionary of Holland to comment that if the development was not
checked, trade would be ruined and the Norwegian coast turned into a new
Dunkirk, which the French would find even more suitable than their own
ports.4 At the same time, there were reports about six French privateers in
Norwegian waters, and the maritime powers were certain that Norwegians
were aiding the privateers. Gradually, the Danish-Norwegian court was forced
to restrict the admission of privateers and regulate strictly what sort of prizes
would be accepted.
One way of circumventing such restrictions was to have personnel on the
ground. Denis Bossinot was a French-born merchant, who was made consular
agent in Bergen by the French ambassador to Copenhagen at the outbreak of
hostilities in 1688. When French privateering started in earnest in 1691-92,
he soon had his hands full. He arranged for the sending of prizes from Bergen
to France, but also had several prizes refurbished and put to sea as privateer-
44
Helga Christie, Slekten Christie i Norge. Supplement til W. H. Christiesgenealogiske
optegnelser om sUgten Christie i Norge 1650-1890, Oslo: Private print, 1964, p. 7.
^ Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, p. 81.

46
Jorgensen, Danmark-Norge mellom stormaktene, p. 197.
47
Ibid., p. 192.
71
ing vessels.48 This latter fact is extremely interesting with regards to the private-
public partnership. Bossinot was a public trustee, expected to represent the
state in its interactions with French privateers, but at the same time he was
outfitting and putting to sea his own privateering-vessels, even though his
authority to give them commissions seems highly unclear. All told, it is not
easy to gather where the public functions ended and the private initiative
started. The practice of taking prizes to Bergen also created ambiguities regard-
ing profits; the French minister to Copenhagen noted that 'the habit of visiting
Norway favoured the pockets of captains to the prejudice of their investors'.49
What really caused Bossinot trouble, however, were the Jacobite privateers,
outfitted by Englishmen in French ports, sometimes operating vessels lent to
them by the French state, and given letters of marque by Jacob II. When these
privateers started taking prizes to Bergen in the autumn of 1692, a diplomatic
uproar ensued, and one of the privateering captains was arrested with his crew
and ship. Bossinot posted bail for both captain and crew, transferred them to
one of his refurbished privateering vessels, replenished the crew with Norwe-
gian sailors and made a secret deal with the captain that he should continue
raiding under Bossinot's service.50 This deal was not only irregular (and would
have caused a massive scandal had it been known), but again demonstrates the
fuzzy borders between public and private. For Bossinot, the troubles contin-
ued, when one of the captains taken by the Jacobites complained through the
English ambassador to Copenhagen. The ambassador added to this that the
illegal sale of prizes and prize-goods was common in Norwegian North-Sea
ports, and demanded that charges be raised against Bossinot, who eventually
lost two of the three prizes that he had re-outfitted as privateersd1
After continued pressure from the maritime powers and some violent epi-
sodes in Norwegian ports, a full prohibition against taking prizes and prize-
goods to the ports of the kingdom was issued in the spring of 1693.52 However,
both the king and leading officials in Norway connived ways to circumvent
this prohibition. Prizes were as a general rule no longer taken to Bergen—as
this would be seen as too blatant a disregard for the rules—but to the out-
48
Ibid., p. 198-99; see also P.J. Charliat, 'Refuges franâis an Norvege. Le Consular
franâis a Bergen au temps de Louis XIV', Bulletin de la societe de I'histoire du prot-
estantismefrangais, 77(1), 1928, pp. 7-13.

49
Jorgensen, Danmark-Norge mellom stormaktene, pp. 199-202.
-1 Ibid., p. 202.
-2 Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, p. 81.
72
ports, from where Bossinot could easily be reached. More or less illegal sales
of prizes and prize-goods continued, with the aid of Bossinot, and tacit accep-
tance from officials in Bergen, even though Bossinot seems to have stopped
acting as an official French consular agent in 1694 or 1695.53
Bossinot was also joined by French representatives in Christiansand, at the
southern tip of Norway. The French merchant Nicolas Remy, who was brother
in law to the mayor of Dunkirk, was made consular agent in 1693, and
remained until 1696, and Norwegian merchants acted as commissionaires for
the ambassador in Copenhagen. These were of great help when Jean Bart
returned to Norwegian waters with two French ambassadors, while exploring
the Norwegian coastline in the summer of 1693, explicitly looking for out-
ports and inlets suitable as naval operations-bases?4 Jean Bart continued to be
a regular visitor. In 1696 he used the out-port of Kleven as a basis for opera-
tions, and took the Dutch convoy returning from the Baltic there after captur-
ing it at the Battle of the Dogger BankT In December 1696, a new treaty
between Denmark-Norway and the maritime powers put an end to all official
support for French privateering in Norwegian waters, and even though French
privateering continued at high clip, the captains preferred not to take their
prizes to Norwegian ports. If forced to go to Norway, they would seek out
smaller out-ports or inlets.56 The French consular representation lapsed after
hostilities ended, yet one indication of the close connection between warfare
and consular representation?
With the presence of British and French consuls in Bergen during the Nine
Years War, it should come as no surprise that we also find the Dutch. The
Dutch Republic had an interest in Norway as a provider of wood and sailors
that dated back to the Thirty Years War. During the seventeenth cen-
tury, somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent of the sailors on Dutch ships are
estimated to have been natives of the conglomerate state, and then usually
Norwegians?8 In 1693, the Dutch decided to formalize their presence
53
Jorgensen, Danmark-Norge mellom stormaktene, pp. 203-4.
^ Ibid., p. 81.
^ Ibid., p. 211.
56
Ibid.
^ Ibid., p. 206; 211; 279; Charliat, 'Refuges franâis an Norvege', p. 10.

58
Violet Barbour, 'Dutch and English Merchant Shipping in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury', The Economic History Review, 2(2), 1930, p. 283; Harold A. Hansen, 'Scandi-
navians in the Dutch and English Merchant Marine in March 1672', The Huntington
Library Quarterly, 11(3), 1948: pp. 311-312. This was not a uniquely Dutch phe-
73
in Bergen.^9 Unlike the English consulate, which lapsed with the death of the
consul in peacetime, and the French, which was discontinued after the scandals
surrounding Bossinot, Dutch consular presence in Bergen was more or less
continuous. And thanks to the reports of the consul, we know that at least
seventeen Dutch prizes were taken to Norwegian ports during the war.60
Unfortunately, we have no comparable number for other states.
The next large-scale war, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14)
brought renewed French presence. The Frenchman Jacques Buteaud settled in
Bergen in the late 1690s, and was made a burgess in 1709. He was officially
made consul in 1716, but in a letter sent after his death, his nephew (and aspir-
ing heir) commented that Buteaud had been in the service of the French king
since 1703.61 It is hard to envision any other possible such activity than the
'consul-like' activity of, for example, handling prizes and supporting privateers,
even though there were fewer French privateers in Norwegian waters than in
the previous war.62 In the tax—lists from both 1713 and 1715, as well as the
1714 census, Buteaud is registered as 'French Consul'. The sources are impre-
cise, but we do know that Butaud, a protestant, left France sometime after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 168 5.63 If he indeed performed 'consul-
like' activities, his religion, and Louis XIV's disinclination to naming consuls
who were not French citizens, might help explain the delayed recognition of
status.64 That there was some preparation for the official declaration is obvious
nomenon. When French authorities tried to curb the practice of hiring foreign sail-
ors on French privateers, the answer was that the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes
were the best sailors available Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, pp. 170-71. Norwegians
were also hired on French privateers in the war of 1807-14, despite prohibitions;
Tonnesson, Kaperfart ogskipsfart, pp. 380-81.

59
Basic information about the Dutch consuls can be found in O. Schutte, Repertorium
der Nederlandse vertegenwoordigers, residerende in het huitenland 1584-1810, Haag,
1976.
60
Jorgensen, Danmark-Norge mellom stormaktene, p. 205. Considering that Dutch
trade on Norway virtually collapsed during the war, the number is not particularly
low.
61
Centre Historique d'Archives Nationaux (CHAN), AE B207, correspondence con-
sulaire, Bergen. 1716-1792, vol. 1. We owe thanks to Maria Gabrielsen for the re-
search assistance that made these French archival files available.

62
63
Charliat, 'Refuges franâis an Norvege', p. 11
64
We might also simply be lacking the relevant source material—it was not uncommon
74
from the fact that even in his very first report, Buteaud refers to his vice-con-
suls in other cities. The organization of vice-consuls, the practice of sending
records and the maintenance of the records in Paris all point to more system-
atic state-building and control-efforts than during the previous war, even
though Buteaud had less work on his hands than Bossinot.
Wars of the Mid-Eighteenth Century
New wars brought additional consuls to Bergen, and the re-creation of the
British consulate offers us both insight into the work of the French consul, and
the connection between privateering and consular presence. The Briton Alex-
ander Wallace had become a burgess in Bergen in 1737, and a few years into
the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), he made his presence known.65
In the summer of 1744, he reported to the British envoy to Copenhagen, Wal-
ter Titley, that he had ensured the liberation of a crew of British sailors by
interacting with the French Consul.66 The official record tells of how two Brit-
ish ships had been brought as prizes to Bergen, and how:
Mr Alexander Wallace applied him self to the Consul [Buteaud] & solicited for the
liberating of the said Twelve Prisoners of War, in order to their being sent home on
Condition that he the said Alexander Wallace, who was personally present, should be
obliged, as he hereby becomes obliged, to procure effectually and without any delay,
the liberty of a like number and quality of French Prisoners in England in exchange
for these Twelve Prisoners [and] the necessary Passports for their Security.6
We do not know how Buteaud interacted with the privateer, but the
described procedure seems a lot closer to the intended standard of the regula-
for consuls to be re-appointed by a new king, and Louis XIV was succeeded by
Louis XV in 1715. The letter of recognition from 1716 might indeed be a letter of
re-recognition.
65
The Danish files on him are in The Danish National Archives, (RK), TKUA, Alm-
indelig del, Diverse Sager, Realia Akter vedr. fremmede konsuler i Danmark og Norge
1747-1768,3-019.
66
The practice of informal prisoner exchange was a recurring feature in Anglo-French
naval warfare through most of the wars of the eighteenth century; Olive Anderson,
"The Establishment of British Supremacy at Sea and the Exchange of Naval Prisoners
of War, 1689-1783', The English Historical Review,7'bCS'ty' I960: p. 85.

67
National Archives (NA), London, SP 75/87.
75
tions than the shenanigans of Bossinot half a century earlier. Wallace was also
keenly aware of his own possibilities in the current economic and political situ-
ation. The very next day, he wrote to Titley as follows:
Sir, [...] as the War now broke out between Great Britain and France requires if thought
necessary more than ever a Consul for the British Nation over this Country (the French
and Dutch having theirs here already) in order to the regulating what may happen with
regard to the bringing up of Captures and many other affairs.
Wallace was made consul in the autumn of 1744.68 Wallace combined com-
mercial and political reporting, detailing the movements of French ships and
warning against the possibility that 'rebels and Jacobite agents' might use the
Norwegian coast as a base for strikes against Scotland. However, there were
no further reports of prizes brought in.
The lack of prizes in the war of Austrian succession illustrates the downturn
in French privateering, and implied that the consuls were left with less work.
In 1748, Buteaud was succeeded by his nephew, Jean Etienne Dechezaulx, who
married into the higher circles of Bergen, suffered a scandal over unpaid bills
and consular immunity in the 1750s, and was put on a fixed salary by the
French king soon thereafter. It's uncertain how Dechezaulx earned this salary.
Around the mid-eighteenth century, French trade with Norway was on the
decline, even in peacetime, and French privateering in wartime was far off the
earlier peak. The perpetuation of a consular presence seems to have been based
on memory and the odd instance of a privateer arriving with a prize. The con-
sul, intended to be the local arm of the state, seems to have used the title and
the salary mainly to increase his status. His reports are irregular and unspec-
tacular. Nevertheless, with the coming of the Seven Years War (1756-63), the
French again wanted to expand their consular presence. At the outbreak of
war, a French vice-consulate was, for example, established in Christiansand at
the southernmost tip of Norway, with the explicit reason that it was a port well
situated for bringing in prizes captured in the North Sea.69
68 Even disregarding the previous British consular presence in Bergen, this was an
early appointment. At the time the only other British consuls in Northern Europe
were in Ostende, Elsinore and St. Petersburg DCM Platt, The Cinderella Service.
British Consuls since 182S, London, 1971, p. 10.

69
Quoted in Pierrick Pourchasse, 'Les consulats, un service essential pour le monde
negotiant: une approche comparative entre la France et la Scandinavie', in Jorg Ulbert
and Gerard Le Bouedec (eds) Lafonction consulaire, p. 198.
76
As the eighteenth century wore on, consuls increasingly tended to be Nor-
wegian, by birth or naturalization, as the original foreign consular families
settled and new ones were added. Increasingly, consulates were maintained
also in peacetime—neither of the leading powers could afford to give up their
consular presence while the other states kept consuls in place. It must also have
made sense to keep consuls at the ready rather than having to find new ones
whenever a war broke out. The perpetuation of a French consular presence in
Norway/Bergen in the second half of the eighteenth century, with a salaried
consul, seems to have been based on these causes rather than trade. In a long
memo from 1787, consul Dechezaulx noted that 'Commerce and navigation
in the North have always been much neglected by the French [...] and at the
present time, with the exception of vessels the King has sent to the Baltic, the
French flag appears only very rarely in these seas'.70 The year before, there had
not been a single French ship in Bergen. One consequence of the naturaliza-
tion of consuls was reduced control from the sending state, and, as we shall see
below, a tendency to favour receiving-state interest over sending-state interests
if push came to shove.
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
The relationship between consuls and privateers in the last quarter of the eigh-
teenth century is beautifully and extensively captured in a Memoire attached
to the letter from Framery, French Consul in Trondheim, residing in Bergen
with the permission of his Majesty (Bergen, 27 July 1779):71
When France finds itself at war with some maritime State, its commerce almost always
finds itself interrupted in most of its Ports. Merchants then direct their operations
towards la course. They build and arm privateers in which lords and laymen of the
Kingdom invest, and the advantages of resulting from this type of armament are so
considerable that they have always been the object of the attention of the Ministry,
which has been eager to grant them the protection and encouragement necessary to
multiply them.
In brief form, Framery exposes not only the economic push-factor, but
also the organization of the enterprise. He further stressed the importance of
the North Sea for privateers' operation out of Northern France, and com-
0
Quoted in Paul Walden Bamford, 'French Shipping in Northern European Trade,
1660-1789', llhe Journal of Modern History, 26(3), 1954, p. 217.

71
(CHAN), AE B207, correspondence consulaire, Bergen. 1716-1792, vol. 1.
77
mented that 'since Norway is in proximity and in easy access, they also come
to its Ports to put in safety the prizes they make in these waters.' However, all
was not well:
Iht Armateurs would without a doubt have taken the greatest advantages of this facil-
ity and the protection they have so often been granted by the Ministers of his Majesty
at the Danish Court, if the forgetting of the most essential rules and formalities with
respect to the prizes which have been taken wasn't the source of an infinity of Abuses
and embezzlements which have occasioned mutterings and complaints on the part of
the crews, ruined and discouraged investors, giving la Course the most mortal blows,
so that towards the end of the last war they had considerably diminished and have
almost entirely ceased today.
As noted above, French privateering had declined greatly from its peak
around 1700 to the wars of the mid-eighteenth century, and Framery pulls no
punches in blaming the consuls for the problems. With explicit reference to
the Ordinance of 1681, he argues that consuls in foreign ports occupy the same
position as officers of the Admiralty would do in French ports, with the same
responsibility of taking care of the interests of crew and investors, and of pro-
ceeding with the sale. This was indeed the position that would be codified later
that same year, but at the time of writing Framery was describing practice
rather than regulations. The problem was that the practice had not been car-
ried out properly:
the Consuls, especially those of the North Sea, have never sent any statements of the
goods, of the state of the vessels, and of the sale of the goods and vessels to the officers
of the Admiralty [...] Furthermore when proceeding to the liquidation of the prizes,
these same officers of the Admiralty have never required [...] that this essential docu-
mentation be presented to them, nor have they entertained any correspondence with
the Consuls. This has caused the operations of the Consuls in their departments to be
without object and without use, and in consequence exposed the investors \les interes-
ses\ in these armaments as well as the crews to all the Abuses and embezzlements which
have been done, and which the wisdom of the Ordonnance was intended to prevent.
Going into detail, Framery mentioned specific abuses. First, the captains
and outfitters had through different tricks, pocketed part of the profit from
sales in Norway, cheating the crews and the investors. Second, the outfitters
had sold off most of goods, leaving only goods of'mediocre value' behind for
the consul to sell, thus dragging the process of the sale, and in the meantime
disposing of most of the funds of the sale of the prize, blaming the consuls for
the delay. Third, since the consuls never sent any statements attesting the pub-
lic sale of the goods, and the Admiralty never required such statements, the
78
consuls had been able to buy the goods themselves, only to resell them for a
greater profit. Fourth, since the operations of the consuls were not monitored
by anyone having an interest in the matter, and since the commissioner con-
ducting the sale did not represent the interests of the investors, 'the obscurity
surrounding the operations covers them with a veil impenetrable to the eyes
of those investing in armament and the crews.' Thus, Framery concludes, 'the
consuls do not act as consuls or public men, but as the representative of the
outfitter (who often does not invest in the operation and only lends his name
to it) or the captain of the privateer.'
It seems obvious from the text that Framery was animated by patriotism.
However, it should be noted that due to the mixed public/private character
of consuls in general, consuls made a better living when compatriots frequented
the ports in wartime. Even though there were financial risks involved (e.g.
involving endless delays in refunds), consuls could make a nice profit (both
over and under the table) from handling prizes during wartime.
As noted, the period between 1792 and 1815 saw an increase in French
privateering. Again, prizes were sent to Norway, but lessons from earlier wars
were not necessarily heeded. Crowhurst, for example, details how a Dunkirk-
privateer in 1793 had sent a prize to Stavanger, rather than Bergen or Chris-
tiansand, and comments that only these two towns 'were safe from attack and
boats from British warships could, and sometimes did, raid small Norwegian
ports and carry off privateers and their prizes, which gave rise to strong diplo-
matic complaint'.72 One example can be made. Gabriel Schanche Kielland, the
leading man in the town of Stavanger, at the south-western tip of Norway, was
made British vice-consul in 1787. Combining that position with his position
as captain of the citizen guard, he was in 1793 and 1796 able to stop English
men of war in their attempts at taking away French prizes from the harbour.73
However, at the second instance, two French prizes were taken from one of
the neighbouring towns.74
There were risks with using even Bergen, and, as in earlier wars, nearby fjords
and outports were used. But both prizes and privateers were captured by Brit-
5
ish ships in Norwegian ports and waters. And there were other risks as well;
2
Patrick Crowhurst, The French War on Trade. Privateering 1793-1815, Aldershot:
Scholar, 1989, p. 54.

3
In 1793, there were six prizes, in 1796 just one.
4
Axel Kielland, Familen Kielland med dens kognatiske ascendents, Kristiania: Dybwad,
1897, p. 65.
75
Crowhurst, The French War on Frade, pp. 77-78.
79
in 1798 a French privateer was arrested in Stavanger due to the mess the crew
6
had made while on leave. In 1799, the king forbade foreign privateers to come
to Norway, or to attempt to sell prizes or prize-goods. As could be expected,
the privateers tried to circumvent the regulations, and in 1801, the British
consul in Stavanger reported that 'a number of french [sic] prices and priva-
teers put into the Norwegian harbours probably to try, if any change into the
law who shut up the harbours, would be procured'.
The practice of using 'foreign' ports was again confirmed, when at least some
Dunkirk privateers in the North Sea during the years 1807-09 sent prizes not
only to the Dutch ports, but also to Bergen, Arendal and Christiansand in
8
Norway, and, as before, had ships refitted in Norwegian ports. However, as
long as France controlled the Dutch and German North Sea and Baltic coasts,
9
relatively few prizes were sent to Norway. All told, eighteen French privateers
have been recorded in Norwegian waters during the years 1807-14, bringing
in at least twenty-eight prizes from England, Sweden, USA, Prussia, Papenburg
and Denmark-Norway.80 Unlike earlier wars, where both Bergen and Chris-
tiansand were regular ports of call for the privateers, Christiansand was clearly
the main port during these years. The French consul, Pierre Framery (the son
of the above-mentioned consul),81 was 'commissioner and eager protector' of
the privateers, and constantly got in the hair of the Norwegian officials on their
behalf.82 In 1801, Framery had reported that the magistrate of Christiansand
in particular was easy to get along with,83 but around 1810 Framery caused so
much trouble that the local authorities complained to the ministry of foreign
affairs. It was suggested that the consul acted wilfully and dragged his feet, and
that he tried to make a profit for himself by selling worthless certificates of
origin. He might also have been positioning himself for the role of arbiter
6
Kielland, Familen Kielland, p. 136.
77
Ibid.
8
Crowhurst, The French War on Trade, pp. 107-08. The conglomerate state and France
were allied 1807-1814.

9
Tonnessen, Kaperfart ogskipsfart, p. 375.
80
Ibid., p. 373.
81
Unlike the other consuls, both father and son Framery were part of the French con-
sular service.
82
Ibid., p. 381. He might just have been dutiful; however, there were, as noted, regu-
larly some profits to be made by haggling with privateers and local authorities.
^Journal des debats et des decrets 1801/04/14. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1789-
1805.
80
between privateers and the captains of captured prizes. Such arbitration would
lead to a percentage for the consul, and was reputed to greatly speed up the
process.84 Any gains made for France or Framery were nevertheless short-lived,
when the supply of victuals to Norway threatened to collapse, French privateers
were yet again prohibited from using Norwegian ports in January 1813.
Conclusions
If we are to sum up, a few developmental patterns are discernable, pointing in
sum to increasing state control. The continuous erosion of the strict regulations
from 1681 was, as noted, a sign that the state had a weaker grip on privateering
than it envisioned in peacetime. However, with gradually expanding control,
it was possible to make new specified regulations for consular handling of
prizes in 1779. If we look solely at codification, privateers had more leeway
around 1800 than 1700, but such a reading ignores the greatly expanded capac-
ity for the state to actually enforce the regulations, and how the later regula-
tions were much more attuned to actual practice. The development of state
control over privateering through the consuls follows the same pattern. Around
1700, the state simply appointed a merchant at the spot consul, and made few
attempts at controlling him. Around the mid-eighteenth century, consuls
increasingly tended to be Norwegians, by birth or naturalization, and thus
inclined to value Norwegian interests higher than foreign. However, around
1800 the principal consul was part of a consular service with clear ties of loy-
alty to Paris, and could be expected to mostly adhere to regulations.
The expansion of consular services in Norwegian ports correlates very
closely with the sending state being engaged in naval warfare. As we have seen,
the perceived usefulness of Norwegian ports as havens for privateers was even
given as the specific reason for establishing at least one of the consulates. The
establishment of consular representation had increased control as the intended
consequence. However, there were also unintended consequences of the estab-
lishment of consular representation. As one observer has noted of related
efforts to control manufacture and trade: 'The administrative state of the early
1700s was strong enough to implement practices of standardization and rou-
tinization, but not powerful enough to control the consequences of such inno-
vations'.8"' As the example of Bossinot underscores, consuls might well have an
84
Tonnessen, Kaperfart ogskipsfart, pp. 381-83.
^ David Kammerling Smith, 'Structuring Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century France:
81
interest in privateering themselves, and in principle they might choose to make
informal deals with privateers and local officials rather than dutifully following
prescriptions from home.86 The same situation is presented in Framery's long
memo. On the other hand, once the consuls were established in foreign ports,
the handling of prizes took up only a limited amount of their time. Thus, an
energetic consul could greatly enhance the knowledge, contacts and interac-
tion between his sending state and his state of residence. Furthermore, as was
more clearly the case in ports with larger 'nations' (i.e. residents hailing from
the same polity, like the French 'nation' in Bergen), the consuls during the
course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became effective interme-
diaries not only between the nations and the host states, but also between the
nation and the sending state. States were increasing the reach of their govern-
ing capacity to include compatriots in foreign lands, and consuls were their
prime tool. This function was incidental to the support and control of priva-
teers, but was clearly an element of the institutional state-building of the send-
ing state. Even the receiving states experienced unintended consequences of
the arrival of more consuls. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a
time of unsettled international law regarding the privileges of diplomats and
consuls, and receiving states gradually came to codify the rights and duties of
the consuls.87
If we return finally to Thomson and the conceptual understanding of pri-
vateering, any neat category quite clearly collapses under the multi-faceted
practices of French privateering. Some ships were owned by the state and
loaned to the privateers, government officials and even the king invested in
privateering enterprises, crews could consist of naval personnel and the con-
suls appointed to protect the interests of the state could just as well be enrich-
ing themselves. Public and private interests and means were intertwined and
intermingled throughout the long eighteenth century. If states were indeed
'using' privateers to further state interests in the wars of the first half of the
nineteenth century, the developments of the preceding 150 years were what
enabled such use.
The Political Innovations of the French Council of Commerce', The Journal of Mod-
ern History, 74(3), 2002, p. 495.

86
Benton, 'Legal Spaces of Empire', p. 718.
8
The conglomerate state e.g. made such steps in 1771.
82
4
THE FLOW AND EBB OF PRIVATE SEABORNE
VIOLENCE IN GLOBAL POLITICS
LESSONS FROM THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1689-1815
Audacious assaults on European-owned vessels, ransoms worth millions, bac-
chanalian celebrations in lawless ports, an international campaign to hunt
down pirates. The stuff of buccaneering adventures and swash-buckling mov-
ies appears to be alive and thriving today in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian
Ocean, among other places. Of all the expressions of private violence
addressed in this book, piracy—understood as 'unlawful depredation at sea'—
seems to be the most exotic and mysterious, a curious remnant of the past.1
Privateering was abolished by international law in 1837, and after its eigh-
teenth century high-water mark, piracy was limited to a few dozen incidents
a year in a handful of regions across the world. Yet statistics collated by the
International Maritime Organization indicate a sharp rise over the past
decades in the number of'acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships':
from less than fifty a year in the 1980s to several hundred in the new century,
peaking at close to 500 incidents in the year 2000.2 Despite this renaissance
1
Martin N. Murphy, Contemporary Piracy and Maritime Terrorism: The Threat to In-
ternational Security, London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

2
International Maritime Organization, Reports on Acts of Piracy and Armed Robbery—
83
of piracy, we argue in this chapter that predation at sea is in fact relatively
marginal as a form of private violence today, both in relation to its own past
and to its contemporary counterparts such as warlordism, banditry, merce-
narism and terrorism.3 Drawing on a now considerable historical literature
on piracy and privateering, we consider the Atlantic experience during its
eighteenth century heyday in order to identify some implications for our
understanding of modern international relations. We depart from the existing
approaches to the subject in International Relations (IR)—most notably Jan-
ice Thomson's seminal book and the more recent intervention by Donald J.
Puchala—by emphasizing the sociological and political-economic, rather
than the normative-legal causes behind the demise of Atlantic piracy and pri-
vateering.4 Specifically, we offer a British-centered account of private seaborne
violence in the Atlantic from 1689 to 1815 (the 'long' eighteenth century)
which inserts this phenomenon within the wider dynamics of intercontinen-
tal trade during this era. In other words, we make a structural connection
between the fate of piracy and privateering in this part of the world and the
strategic calculations, as well as the political-economic logic, of European
mercantilist empires of the time. The global triumph of an increasingly capi-
talist logic of accumulation after the Napoleonic wars, we contend, provides
the structural bedrock for a more materialist explanation for the disappear-
ance of Atlantic piracy and privateering after that period.
This exercise in historical-sociological re-interpretation paves the way for a
second major concern of this paper, namely what these specific experiences of
seaborne violence tell us about contemporary private violence more generally.
Instead of the simple (and historically unfounded) distinction between state
and non-state violence, we seek in this paper to probe the relationship between
Annual Report 2008, London, 2009, http://www.imo.org/includes/blastDataOnly.
asp/data_id%3D25550/l33.pdf [Last accessed on 21 May 2009]

3
See Deborah Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Private Security, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Kimberley Marten, 'Warlordism in Com-
parative Perspective', International Security, vol. 31, no. 3, Winter 2006/07; Sarah
Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006.

4
Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State Building and Extra-
Territorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1994; Donald J. Puchala, 'Of Pirates and Terrorists: What Experience and His-
tory Teach', Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 26, no. 1, Apr. 2005, pp. 1-24.
84
THE FLOW AND EBB OF PRIVATE SEABORNE VIOLENCE
'private' and 'public' forms of violence as they found expression in the eigh-
teenth century Atlantic world and after. We start from the premise that these
two spheres were not easily or clearly distinguishable before and during the
'long' eighteenth century, and that their meaning and content changed con-
siderably thereafter. For in the eighteenth century Atlantic piracy, privateering,
naval warfare, trade and diplomacy were all mutually implicated; all steeped
in, and indeed reliant on the combination of private and public mobilizations
of force, authority, manpower and resources. Atlantic piracy certainly 'pro-
duced undesirable, complex, even threatening consequences for the state', but
to present it as Thomson does, as a mere 'unintended consequence' of the
'unleashing of authorized non-state violence' plays down the structural con-
nections between piracy and the legalized circuits of labour and capital that
buttressed Atlantic mercantilism/ Piracy was thus not so much a 'non-state'
form of violence (although it was plainly antagonistic to existing state author-
ity) rather than a more predictable political-economic consequence of a world
where war and violence at sea were integral and necessary components of
wealth-creation, circulation and accumulation. This was even more obviously
the case with privateering which, as Thomson rightly indicates, represented a
form of lawful predation at sea, formally distinguishable from piracy only in
that the privateer 'acts under the authority of the state'.6 In both instances,
however, 'private' violence was deployed in ways that were difficult to separate
from the public power of the state. The distinction between public and private
violence was thus real but ill-defined—largely because blurring the lines
between the two often served the commercial and diplomatic interests of
dominant classes on both sides of the Atlantic.
The use of private force for public gain which characterized the Atlantic
world for the better part of the eighteenth century was gradually replaced at
the turn of the nineteenth century by a much sharper formal and substantial
separation between the private power of the capitalist market and public coer-
cive authority of the territorial state. At sea, this was mirrored in the division
of labour between the Royal Navy and merchant marine, and accompanying
transformations in the ways of naval warfare. Piracy and privateering were, in
different ways, a casualty of this shift toward a properly capitalist global econ-
omy underwritten by British naval and financial hegemony. As we shall endea-
vour to show, despite the centrality of maritime transport to the contemporary
^ Thomson, Mercenaries., p. 44.

6
Ibid., p. 22
85
world economy, privateering is today absent as a tool of statecraft while piracy
operates as a very localized menace. Private seaborne violence is no longer a
significant or generalized means of accumulating wealth or geopolitical power,
chiefly because—unlike the Atlantic world of the eighteenth century—there
is no internal, structural relation between maritime trade and organized vio-
lence in the contemporary world.
We will flesh out these claims in four sections. The next part of the chapter
examines the distinction between piracy and privateering, thereby addressing
knotty issues surrounding conceptions and practices of'private' and 'public'
violence in the eighteenth century Atlantic and beyond. The nature of this
distinction under mercantile rivalry is the subject of a second section, which
aims to illustrate historically the deep interconnections between private
seaborne violence on the one hand, and trade, mercantilism and naval warfare
on the other as they unfolded during our period. The third part explores the
diplomatic, sociological and political-economic dynamics behind the demise
of piracy and privateering in the Atlantic and elsewhere. These considerations
lead to a concluding section where we identify some tentative implications
of our argument for the broader phenomenon of private violence in the study
of IR.
Pirates, Privateers and the Concept of Private Violence
The concept of private violence itself needs to be placed under some analytical
scrutiny, as the key to understanding present investigations into private (or
'non-state') violence is often predicated on historical discussions of the evolu-
tion of state control over private sources of violence. In IR, the key reference
point for such historical discussions is Thomson's work on the dissolution of
private violence. Central to Thomson's conceptualization is a threefold division
between 'decision-making authority', 'allocation' and 'ownership'. While useful
in trying to schematise different forms of organized violence, the categoriza-
tion also obscures as much as it illuminates. Two aspects in particular are wor-
thy of critical attention at this stage.
Firstly, the use of generally abstracted signifiers obscures the more concrete
manifestations of organized violence, not just in how they changed over time,
but also in how actual historical experiences cut across Thomson's categories,
even during relatively limited time frames. For example, the designation of
privateers as 'non-state owned with state decision-making' clearly misreads
variations in what we can call 'privateering' in the course of the sixteenth and
86
seventeenth centuries, by underestimating the blurred lines of both authority
and ownership. Second, the key conceptual categories of'state' and 'non-state'
are not only bound up in the process of early-modern state building, but in a
broader social process of the development of a world market. As we shall
discuss below, in the merchant states of early modern Europe, the clear differ-
entiation between a 'public' and 'private' realm, or a clear division between
'state' and 'non-state' that corresponds to the modern sense, was conspicuously
absent. In light of both of these points, some further discussion is necessary,
to start with some stronger foundations.
Piracy is as old as trade and war itself. Derived etymologically from the
ancient Greekpeirates (literally, 'one who attacks') the term has been used to
describe (and condemn) banditry at sea. Since Greek antiquity, when the Cil-
ian league of pirates used their southern Anatolian bases to launch raids on
ports and vessels of the eastern Mediterranean, through to the early-modern
trans-oceanic marauders and their twenty-first century Somali, west African
or Malaccan counterparts, seamen and the coastal communities that harbour
them have taken to predation as a form of subsistence.8 Indeed, a more eco-
nomic understanding of piracy considers it as a phenomenon that is parasiti-
cally linked to any economic system dependent on seaborne trade.9 But warfare
has also been a historical companion to piracy. 'Violence' Anne Perotin-
Dumont has rightly emphasized, 'was not a trait of piracy but more broadly
of the commerce of the [sixteenth and seventeenth centuries]. Commercial
profits were linked pragmatically to considerations of war and aggression,
through at the same time, the state could be expected to put to protective for-
mations in place, like convoys that became a regular practice in the seventeenth
century'.10 The extent to which piracy itself was legitimated, tolerated or
encouraged within early political communities forms an interesting start to
Lineages of the Absolutist State, London: Verso, 1979; Justin Rosen-
berg, The Empire of Civil Society, London: Verso, 1994. See also chapter 5 of A. Claire
Cutler, Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the
Global Political Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

8
Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy, London: Cassell, 1932.
9
John L. Anderson, 'Piracy and World Markets: A Economic Perspective on Maritime
Predation', in C.R. Pennell (ed.), Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, New York: New
York University Press, 2000.

10
Anne Perotin-Dumont, 'The Pirate and the Emperor' in James D. Tracy (ed.), The
Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 202.
87
any conceptual discussion, especially concerning the division between pirating
and privateering. Early state-sanctioned 'privateers' such as those found in
Elizabethan England hardly fulfilled the clear conceptual distinction between
privateering and pirating found in Thomson's work. Thomson's focus on the
legal aspect is the major problem: the legitimacy of privateering was due to the
conference of legitimacy by the state, so that the withdrawal of such support
logically led to pirating. There is of course some truth to this view, but the early
commerce raiders and plunderers were much more than just an arm of the
state: they were granted very broad licence to attack rival vessels in the hope
that this might advance English economic and diplomatic interests. As Ritchie
has noted, such plunderers are better described as 'officially sanctioned pirates',
since their activities comprise 'acts that are clearly piratical under any system
of law but that go unpunished because a particular government finds it con-
venient to ignore such activities or even secretly sponsor them'.11
The issue of control thus loomed large in early practice, and needs to play
some part in our conceptualizations of private violence. Again using the exam-
ple of England, the Crown had until the seventeenth century little conception
of, even less control over its own seapower in ways that it would thereafter and
therefore relied on the actions of officially sanctioned pirates.12 Though such
actors did require 'letters of marque' during wartime (and 'letters of reprisal'
in times of peace) to underwrite their activities, there was little willingness, let
alone ability to control and regulate their actions. Indeed the Caribbean during
the period under scrutiny offered a privileged environment for plunder due to
both the limited territorial control over recondite coastlines, and the almost
constant political upheaval that followed revolts, wars and invasions. But this
also meant that the political use of privateers was rather blunted in terms of
the ability to secure geopolitical or diplomatic outcomes.13 In typical imperial
fashion, the mercantile powers ratified international treaties throughout this
period which they knew would only be enforced in the European heartlands:
the colonial backwaters and the sea-lanes leading to them were perceived as
being 'beyond the line' demarcated by the emerging international public law.
'From the standpoint of the maritime powers', Eliga H. Gould sharply observes,
" Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kiddand the War against the Pirates, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 11.

12
See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall oj British Naval Mastery, (Rev. ed.) London:
Penguin Books, 2004.

13
Kenneth R. Andrews, The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder 1530-1630, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978.
88
'Europe was a zone of law, the world beyond a place of competing jurisdictions
and perpetual war ... [I]nternational agreements like the Anglo-Dutch Treaty
of 1674 were theoretically binding on the high seas as in coastal waters. But
because no European navy could rule the waves everywhere, international rela-
tions at sea necessarily occurred in space that remained vulnerable to smug-
gling and piracy.'14 To compound the unpredictability of such seaborne
predation, in wartime, sea-bandits tended to attack anyone who was not ofh-
cially allied with their own country, and often switched allegiances, which
made it difficult to identify who was a pirate or a sanctioned privateer.15 In this
light, 'privateers' such Drake and Raleigh may well have assisted England in
the war against Spain, but it was hardly part of a coordinated naval campaign
of any sort, so the issue of'decision-making authority' is clearly problematic.16
That Drake could move so quickly from hero to villain says much about the
situation of early privateers.
By the end of the seventeenth century, much of this had changed. Among
English, and later, British authorities, the distinction between piracy, privateer-
ing and legitimate maritime commerce and warfare started to harden through
both law and policy.1 As the expansion and institutionalization of the Royal
Navy grew apace,18 spurred on by the Navigation Acts and wars with continen-
14
Eliga H. Gould, 'Zones of Law, Zones ofViolence: The Legal Geography of the Brit-
ish Atlantic, circa 1772', The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 3, 2003,
pp. 471-510. See also Lauren Benton, 'Legal Spaces of Empire: Piracy and the Ori-
gins of Ocean Regionalism', Comparative Studies in Society and History, no. 47,2005,
pp. 706-21.
15
Ritchie, Captain Kidd.
16
As Baugh describes it, 'their activities were commercial only to the extent that orga-
nized crime is commercial—sometimes legitimized by active war between England
and Spain, sometimes not. In either case the mode was based on the use of force and
aimed at aggrandizing'. Daniel Baugh, 'Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce:
The Uses of "A Grand Marine Empire'", in Lawrence Stone (ed.),^ Imperial State
at War: Britain from 1689-1815, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 189.

1
Robert C. Ritchie, 'Government Measures Against Piracy and Privateering in the
Atlantic Area, 1750-1850' in D.J. Starkey et al. (eds), Pirates and Privateers: New
perspectives on the War on Trade in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 1997,
pp. 10-28.
18
In tonnage alone the Royal Navy expanded fivefold during the 'long' eighteenth
century, from 173 ships in 1688 to 755 ships in sea service by 1809, vastly outdoing
its nearest rivals. See David M. Duffy (ed.), Parameters of British Naval Power: 1650-
1850, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1992, p. 7.
89
tal rivals, private men of war became increasingly marginal to Britain's naval
strategy. A raft of legislation was introduced at the start of the eighteenth
century by way of codifying the conventions regulating privateering.19 Tensions
intensified between privateers and the Navy's men-of-warsmen over their
respective roles in defence of the realm, their corporate integrity (privateers-
men increasingly seen as selfish and unruly), the generation of wealth in mari-
time commerce, and indeed its distribution on land. 'This does not signify,
however,' David J. Starkey reminds us, 'that the 11,000 or so vessels commis-
sioned [by the British Crown] during the "long" eighteenth century were
devoid of any military ramifications. On the contrary, the potential utility of
the business as a tool of war was such that the state did more than just sanction
the activity throughout the century—it positively advocated it ...'.20 Contract-
ing out the manning, arming and provisioning of the British fleet brought the
state significant financial and political benefits, among other things, by 'priva-
tising' the considerable risks associated with such ventures.21 Licensed raiding
at the time made a not insignificant contribution to the British economy,
calculated by one authority at anything between' 10 to 15 per cent of the coun-
try's imports' as well as weakening the relative standing of its rivals.22 As in the
Tudor and Stuart periods, privateering also continued to play a crucial role in
plugging what, through the centuries, proved to be a perennial manpower
shortage in the Royal Navy.23 Private violence was, in sum, still highly useful:
control was about the extension of power, but private sources were still seen as
part of the public good in the mercantilist system. Frederick Lane argues con-
vincingly that the switch from using force to plunder, to using force to protect
is key to a change in the value of force: 'Operating with lower payments for
protection was often the decisive factor in the competition between merchants
of different cities or kingdoms and was achieved by complicated mixtures of
public and private enterprise'.24
19 David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprises in the Eighteenth Century, Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 1990.

20
Ibid., p. 253.
21
See Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare 1650-1830, London: Univer-
sity College London Press, 1999 and Daniel Baugh, British Naval Administration in
the Age ofWalpole, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

22
Kennedy, Rise and Fall, p. 33
23
Duffy, Parameters.
24
Frederick C. Lane 'Economic Consequences of Organized Violence', in Profits From
Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises, Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, p. 58.
90
The tightening up of privateering also reflected a change in pirating. Ritchie
notes a number of different distinctions concerning piracy—broadly between
commercial piracy and deep-sea marauding.2^ The first category encompassed
those who privately (i.e. outside of government) funded commerce raiding, as
well as local economies on the peripheries of empire that used piracy (funding
raiding expeditions and trading with freebooters) as a means of obtaining
unavailable products and hard currency.26 However, it was the deep-sea
marauders who began to become most prominent in the late-seventeenth cen-
tury. Ritchie distinguishes between organized marauders who operated from
a fixed base (such as the Barbary corsairs) and anarchistic marauders who
roamed for extended periods of time across the various oceans.2 Both catego-
ries provided a real challenge to states and commerce throughout the eigh-
teenth century, as we shall see shortly.
The investigation of the concrete forms of private violence in the late-six-
teenth to the early-eighteenth century gives us three notable advances on
Thomson's more legalistic bias. First, the issue of state control over sanctioned
violence was hardly as clear-cut as indicated in Thomsons account (as sug-
gested for instance by the role of the High Admiralty and prize courts in regu-
lating this activity). Second, though the increase in control over private
violence was an important part of state-building, it was not really built on
abolishing private violence, but a way of making protection more efficient
(especially in its more 'operational' and 'logistical' dimensions, as well as, more
obviously with regard to harnessing privateering to the fiscal-military interests
of the state). However, the final crucial element is that the very distinction
between 'private' and 'public' was insufficiently developed in the period of
state-building—a subject to which we now turn in greater detail.
Public and Private in the Age of Mercantile Empires
We have thus far seen how different manifestations of private seaborne violence
during the period leading up to the 'long' eighteenth century are best con-
ceived as part of a continuum, stretching from deep-sea marauders on the one
21
26
Ibid. See also Arne Bialuschewski, 'Pirates, Markets and Imperial Authority: Eco-
nomic Aspects of Maritime Depredations in the Atlantic World, 1716-1726', Glob-
al Crime, vol. 9, no. 1-2, 2008, pp. 52-65.

2
91
end to the privateersmen commissioned by the Crown on the other. The com-
mon denominator to these otherwise diverse expressions of maritime violence
was that they were directed toward, and sustained by the extraction of surplus
through the predation of seaborne commerce. To fully appreciate this peculiar
symbiosis between profit and power—as well as the accompanying combina-
tions of and tensions between private and public mobilizations of force and
wealth—it is helpful to situate piracy and privateering within the wider socio-
economic and political context of a world dominated by the rivalry between
European mercantile empires. For the meaning of'private' and 'public' in this
context was significantly different to that which came to prevail during the
course of the nineteenth century, and certainly that which obtains today.
There were several private routes to commercial wealth during the period
of Mercantile Empires (1450-1750). One was aristocratic privilege. Many
Tudor 'men of rank' turned to the sea for the reinvestment of their politically
accumulated wealth. Dynasties like the Dudleys or Howards symbolized this
bridging of private worlds of commerce and the public realm of office. From
the end of the fifteenth century successive scions of these patrician families
not only owned and commanded sizeable privateering fleets but also held
senior positions in the Admiralty, including that of Lord Admiral. As Scam-
mell notes of English ship-owning politics during the hundred years either
side of 1550;
The sustained interest in shipping not only of a particular class, but of a number of
powerful families could be erected into a national policy... Private armies might have
disappeared, but private navies, on a scale perhaps never previously equalled, eclipsed
the fleet which had momentarily loomed so large under Henry VIII. And in the end
the cpeen was but a partner in policies conceived, and largely executed, by an influen-
tial faction. Nor, as the behaviour of the Howards suggests, were they any less unscru-
pulous or successful than their medieval predecessors in plundering the resources of
the State.28
If the private fortunes of individual earls represented one way in which per-
sonal ownership and state power fused during the Tudor era, in Stuart England
it was the chartered company that epitomized the conjugation of private wealth
and public authority. Among the various trading companies licensed by the state
in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was the 'Company
28
G. V. Scammell, Ships, Oceans and Empire: Studies in European Maritime and
Colonial History, 1400-1750, Aldershot and Brookfiled, VA: Variourum, 1995,
pp. 392-94.
92
of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies' (otherwise known as the
English 'East India Company'—EIC) that most clearly reflected the marriage
of profit and power under England's emerging mercantilist empire.
Over its two and half centuries of existence as a corporation, the EIC man-
aged its own fleet of East Indiamen, employing thousands of sailors, craftsmen
and labourers at its Blackwall docks and warehouses, as well as leasing ships
and crews for the purposes of trade and plunder east of the Cape of Good
Hope.29 As a joint stock company operating internationally with limited liabil-
ity and a differentiated management and ownership, the EIC is often com-
pared to the contemporary multinational corporation. There are clearly some
strong parallels, most importantly the ingenious spread of risk, and the invest-
ment of private capital in the pursuit of dividends in trade. Yet a crucial differ-
ence lay in that the EIC was one of a handful of chartered companies which
were granted a Crown monopoly over long-distance trade. Consequently,
another important difference was that the EIC was at regularly intervals
throughout its history obliged to prop up the Crown's finances and contribute
toward Britain's overseas military campaigns. The EIC was, one commentator
put it in 1767, a 'national object' and 'the members of it bound to attend to
the interests of the public as well as their own'.30 The EIC's loans to the Crown
escalated from £15,000 in 1659 to £70,000 in 1667. By 1709, the government
could demand that the Company's entire capital (£3 million) be mortgaged
to the state.31 Crown and Company worked hand-in-glove for Britain's impe-
rial expansion in south Asia during the critical closing decades of the eigh-
teenth century. Regular British forces supported the Company's armies in the
conquest of Indian hinterlands during this period, and in exchange the EIC
acceded to the state's successive demands for personnel, manpower, ships and
equipment. From the 'Manila expedition' of 1762-4 to the Javanese campaign
of 1811, the EIC furnished the British state with troops and vessels on at least
half a dozen occasions.32 Whatever the nature and extent of these contribu-
29
For details see Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and
Imperial Britain, 1756-1833, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; and
Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Com-
pany Shaped the Modern Multinational, London: Pluto, 2006.

30
Cited in Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World, p. 27.
31
M.N. Pearson, 'Merchants and States' in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy
of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991, pp. 41-116

32
Bowen, The Business of Empire.
93
tions, for one historian of the EIC 'There can be no doubt... that the Com-
pany's forces played a valuable supporting role in Britain's eventual victory over
France, and they certainly enhanced the ability of successive governments to
wage war on a worldwide scale'.33
Throughout the 'long' eighteenth century, the privateering ventures which
characterized early modern English maritime expansion continued to play a
signal role in British maritime policy. The War of the Spanish Succession
(1702-1713) was not only characterized by large naval campaigns targeting
the important Atlantic trade, but also involved large naval forces made up of
privateers, to supplement extant naval forces.34 Privateers proved to be a hugely
important 'force-multiplier'. According to Starkey, the demand for seafarers in
the period of long wars between 1689 and 1714 were unprecedented, and rep-
resented a truly global phase of Anglo-French rivalry.35 Almost 50,000 men
served in the English fleets during the closing years of the war. Harding esti-
mates that the number of commissions rose by 200 per cent from the Nine
'Years' War'.36 On the French side, privateers had come close to monopolising
the French navy, as they were seen as the cheapest and most effective way of
gaining naval power.3 The almost permanent state of war between Britain and
its continental mercantile rivals offered rich pickings for privateering entre-
preneurs. Among the latter, it was what Starkey has labelled '"deep-water"
private ships-of-war'—i.e. crafts carrying no cargo but fitted and manned to
cruise for enemy prizes in high seas—that are of greatest interest for our pur-
poses. Here the notion of 'private' manifested itself in the commercial con-
tracting of both men and materiel in the organization of commerce-raiding
expeditions.
The process of mobilizing for such enterprise in the eighteenth century ports
of London, Bristol or Liverpool might typically involve the following.38 First
and foremost, a privateering company would have to acquire a suitable vessel
or fleet, be it purpose-built, bought and fitted or simply re-deployed from a
33
Ibid., p. 47.
34
Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare.
^ David J. Starkey, 'Pirates and Markets', in C.R. Pennell {td). Bandits at Sea: A Pirates
Reader, New York: New York University Press, 2001.

36
Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, p. 175.
37
M.S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, London: Fontana,
1988.
38
The following paragraph draws generously from David J. Starkey, British Privateering
Enterprises in the Eighteenth Century, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990.
94
pool of captured prize ships. The craft would then have to be armed with guns
and ammunition, and otherwise structurally modified for combat in high seas.
Next, a specialist crew of close to 200 men was recruited, including sailors,
gunners, carpenters, armourers, linguists, surgeons, cooks, 'assorted ship's
people', as well as 'some provision for music, with a "French Horn", drummers,
and trumpeters shipped aboard to sustain morale'.39 Payment for this collective
labor was in the form of a predetermined share in the putative prize, strictly—
and unequally—distributed according to rank. Finally, and critically, a priva-
teering commander had to obtain a 'letter of marque' (or 'reprisal' in peacetime)
authorizing the attack and appropriation of enemy property on the high seas.
Such documents were issued and administered by the High Court of the
Admiralty and its domestic and colonial subsidiaries. The acquisition of the
predatory licence required a detailed statement of the size and nature of the
privateering vessels' tonnage, crew, armaments, ammunition and ownership.
The Admiralty Court was also the venue of the all-important adjudication or
'condemnation' of seized property.
What this basic sequence highlights, once again, is the peculiar combina-
tion of public authority and private entrepreneurship—both of them pre-
mised on threat or actual use of violence—that characterized the British
mercantile empire of the time. The notions of private and public as applied
to the English, and later British mercantile economy, we have seen, were
deeply ambiguous. Ownership was one obvious marker of the distinction
between these two realms. Be it in the form of personal property held by aris-
tocratic dynasties, or the joint stock of the chartered companies, 'private' was
distinguished from 'public' in the means of accessing wealth. Moreover, the
accumulation of the resources necessary for successful maritime ventures—
vessels, manpower, victuals, armaments, ammunition and so forth—were
generally all procured through private contract, be it market-led or otherwise.
Finally, and not least important, private accumulation of wealth was premised
in these instances on access to private means of violence: profiting from the
high seas during the period of the mercantile empires required mustering
either protective or coercive force (or a combination of both). Even when the
sources of capital accumulation involved more straightforward and relatively
peaceful commercial transactions, protection from seaborne predators was
an integral component of the mercantile process and indeed the calculation
of the bottom line. It belonged to the category of what K.N. Chaudhuri once
39
Ibid., p. 43.
95
called 'armed trading'.40 The great paradox, and unique feature of such private
mobilizations of maritime wealth and violence was that they were sanctioned
by the public authority of the state. Be it in the shape of the Crown's licensing
of monopoly trade like that enjoyed by the EIC, or the High Admiralty's
regulation of British privateering activity, the notion of 'private violence' as
we have been deploying it thus far cannot be disassociated from its very public
endorsements.
Our contention is that by the turn of the nineteenth century, this unique
'public-private partnership' in British maritime affairs was radically refashioned
along a much stricter separation of the public domain of the state from the
private realm of the market. Economic and political tendencies which had in
the past been ill-defined and ambivalent, increasingly took on a clear-cut qual-
ity by the end of the eighteenth century. Put crudely, privateering in its various
guises gave way to convoying as the chief form of maritime protection. The
monopoly trade of chartered companies was replaced by the aspiration to com-
petitive 'free trade' among capitalist firms, and the 'contracting out' of mari-
time trade, raiding or protection was overtaken by the 'contracting in' of
maritime commerce and defence by the merchant marine and Royal Navies
respectively. These changes represent a shift from a mercantilist world where
warfare is a form profit-making, to one dominated by capitalist 'free' trade,
where absence of war is championed as a source of prosperity. Consequently,
in the mercantilist period, the public authority of state is constantly and inde-
terminably invested in, and implicated with private deployments of force and
wealth. Seaborne violence is the dominant mechanism of accumulation. As
we enter the period of industrial capitalism after the Napoleonic wars, com-
merce becomes a strictly private source of accumulation, mediated through a
market, which, though plainly reliant on trade, is increasingly built on the
exploitation of labor within a delimited territory. Correspondingly, the state
takes on the role of public enforcer of property rights at home and protector
of its nation's commercial interests abroad.
The Triumph of Navigation and the War Against the Pirates
The realization that the secret to Britain's emerging global hegemony lay in
the judicious combination of maritime trade and naval power came to many
,I1
K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company,
160-1760, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 113.
96
observers (and no few statesmen) early in the eighteenth century. Britain had
by then embarked upon a 'blue-water policy' which, whether by design or
default implied a much more substantial, persistent and coherent involvement
of the state in the country's commercial affairs. 'Every servant of the Crown',
John Brewer notes in his classic study of eighteenth century British statecraft,
'knew full well that there were important political advantages to protecting or
encouraging British commercial interests, just as he was aware of the liabili-
ties incurred in by antagonizing any powerful commercial group'.11 And
in eighteenth century Britain, this necessarily meant protecting maritime
trade, A contemporary historian by the name of Thomas Lediard had in 1735
put it succinctly in this often-cited formula: 'That our trade is the Mother
and Nurse of our Seamen; Our seamen the Life of or Fleet; And our Fleet the
Security and Protection of our Trade; And that both together are the wealth,
strength, and glory of Great Britain'.42 Yet as we have thus far seen, this neat
division of labor between 'wealth' and 'strength', or trade and protection was
merely fledgling. Private seaborne violence—especially privateering—was only
slowly and unevenly eradicated with the rise of the 'second' British Empire
after 1750. Three inter-related factors occasioned this gradual demise of piracy
and privateering, albeit at different paces and in diverse fashion.
The first of these was war itself. From the War of Spanish Succession to the
Seven Years War, Britain systematically acquired a network of naval bases across
the world's major sea lanes, effectively securing the Royal Navy's mastery over
the oceans. The Peace of Utrecht (1713) delivered control over Gibraltar,
Minorca, Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. At the Peace of Paris
(1763) Britain acquired ports in Senegal, the lesser Antilles and Cape Breton
as well as securing the EIC's presidencies in India. 'Careering, naval stores sup-
ply, victualling and hospital facilities were established at these bases, thus
enabling the Navy to maintain an all-year-round presence in permanent stations
as opposed to the French practice of sending out squadrons...'.43 The permanent
presence on the world's major straits inevitably transformed Britain's maritime
strategy, consolidating the policing role of the Royal Navy and cementing the
distinction between trade and protection. The raiding ventures of the past
11
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783,
Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 171.

42
Cited as in the original by Baugh, 'Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce',
p. 195.
43
Duffy, Parameters of British Naval Power, p. 4.
97
increasingly had litde role to play in a world dependent on the safe passage of
trade across the oceans. Moreover, the inescapable fact that it was captured
prizes which incentivised privateering made it very hard to integrate this often
haphazard activity within Britain's emerging diplomatic grand strategy.44
With the benefit of hindsight it becomes clear that the global wars of the
eighteenth century (over the Spanish Succession, the 'Seven Years' War', the
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars against France) set the foundations for the
'imperialism of free trade' that characterized the Victorian 'Pax Britannica'. If
nothing else, these wars led to the defeat of economic rivals in Europe and
elsewhere—destroying their fleets, arresting their economic development, cut-
ting off their trade routes and upsetting their fiscal systems. More positively
for Britain, global conflict led to advances in naval technology and the cen-
tralization of naval power, which delivered some real changes in the possibili-
ties of seapower.45 The differences in strategy between the English and French
during the wars of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries only
serve to highlight this aspect. The British increasingly sought to use battlefleet
tactics and organize privateers within a broader naval strategy.46 The French,
while directly using privateers in commerce raiding, as part of the guerre de
course increased their control over privateering through prize courts.4 The
Peace of Utrecht saw the end of the French guerre de course, as the English
(now British) battlefleet strategy had become noticeably more effective. Dur-
ing the hundred years leading up to 1763, Britain had combined a
fiscal-military infrastructure with private resources to deliver a formidable
naval force. In the following decades, Richard Fiarding suggests 'battlefleets
proved that they could maintain operations in almost any seas and apply deci-
sive pressure. Landings could be made, states supported and large armies effec-
tively supplied. Commerce could be stopped and diplomatic isolation broken.
They proved that they could incapacitate the privateers and frigates which
conducted the guerre de coursed Once again, Britain's naval victories on the
44
45
See Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transforma-
tion of Europe, London: University College London Press, 1999 and Kennedy, The
Rise and Fall.

46
4
J.S. Bromley, "The French Privateering War, 1702-13', in Corsairs and Navies, 1660-
1760, London: The Hambledon Press, 1987.

4s
' Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, p. 58.
98
back of its regular battlefleet effectively sealed the fate of x\\zguerrre de course
as a loser's strategy.
But this success came at a price: the Peace of Utrecht also saw the beginning
of the largest piratical wave in history, often referred to as the 'golden age of
piracy', as if by way of vindicating Defoe's famous dictum that 'Privateers in
Time of War are a nursery for Pyrates against a Peace'49 The English had
already set against the Caribbean buccaneers in the final decades of the seven-
teenth century, with some success. Peter Earle notes that by the turn of that
century, piracy had significantly subsided in the Caribbean and on America's
Atlantic seaboard. But the War of the Spanish Succession, as noted above,
changed the situation as numerous privateering vessels were commissioned in
the region at the outbreak of war.50 During the war, Rediker notes that 'leaders
of European power used privateers to supplement naval power, to disrupt sup-
ply lines and commercial circuits, and to accumulate wealth at the expense of
their rivals. But when the war ended, they found that they could not control
the privateers they had once employed?1 The cutting of British Naval forces
to 14,000 men created a large body of unemployed seamen.52 In this wave, an
estimated 5,000 North American pirates were active, including some of the
most famous of all: 'Blackbeard' (Edward Teach), 'Black Bart' (Bartholomew
Roberts), Stede Bonnet, Howel Davis, amongst others?3 The surge in piracy
was hugely problematic, causing major disruptions to Atlantic shipping, and
challenges to state authority.54 'The result' Thomson succinctly puts it, 'was
probably the closest the modern state system has ever come to experimenting
with anarchy'T
49
Daniel Defoe, U General History of the Pyrates, Dover Publications, 1999 [1724],
p. 4.
50
Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars, London: Methuen, 2004.
Marcus Rediker, Villains of All the Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 2004, pp 6-7.
Starkey, 'Pirates and Markets'.
^ Defoe provides an entertaining account of the pirates of this era in his General His-
tory of the Pyrates. There is some contestation over whether he is the actual author of
the text, originally credited to one Captain Johnson. Rediker and others claim that
it is almost certainly not Defoe. Whilst deferring to this view we still refer to Defoe
as the author, as does the edition of the work used.
It is difficult to get accurate statistics on trade disruption. Rediker provides some
estimates in his 2004 book.

55
Thomson, Mercenaries, p. 43.
99
It was in this context that the Royal Navy's war on Atlantic piracy began
in earnest from 1713. Though sluggish at first, as the British needed to recoup
after the expense of war, and by approximately 1722 the campaign began to
pay dividends. The destruction of Bartholomew Roberts' crew in that year
was seen as a huge blow to the pirating community, both because Roberts'
group was seen as the strongest at sea, and also due to the rather tame way in
which his crew surrendered to the British."16 The increasing ability of the Royal
Navy to fight the pirates at this time was a direct consequence of its ascen-
dancy to global maritime hegemony. In this, IR scholars like Donald J.
Puchala are right to emphasize that 'The seeking out, hunting down and
destroying' of eighteenth century Atlantic piracy was carried out by 'the hege-
mon of the era, commanding a capable navy, acting unilaterally to provide the
collective good of heightened security for all, but acting nevertheless largely
in its own self-interest'."1 What observers like Puchala miss out in this thinly
veiled comparison with the contemporary war on terror is that the war on
piracy only came in the wake of a structural transformation in the world's
dominant logic of accumulation. Atlantic piracy became increasingly unprof-
itable by the start of the eighteenth century as the combination of naval
power, the drying up of local circuits of illicit trade and popular opposition
to piracy increased across the region. 'The pirates' dependence on access
to markets', Bialuschewski notes of the Atlantic experience in the early-
eighteenth century, 'was probably of equal importance in their eventual sup-
pression' as was the Royal Navy."18
Britain's acquisition of naval bases, its investment in a regular battlefleet and
the accompanying capability to police the world's sea-lanes would have been
less consequential without a second driver of change, namely the consolidation
of a capitalist world market. For as Baugh notes, British merchants at the turn
of the eighteenth century 'wanted convoy protection, and they wanted seas
swept clear of enemy privateers.'59 Here, convoying, which had in the past been
deployed selectively and intermittently, slowly became one of the Royal Navy's
chief tasks, thereby symbolizing the wider changes underway in maritime strat-
egy. The British move toward a doctrine of 'free' trade was encouraged by
increasing ineffectiveness—as we just saw—of the guerre de course, and the
,6
Earle, Jhe Pirate Wars.
- Puchala, 'Of Pirates and Terrorists', p. 13.

>s
Bialuschewski, 'Pirates, Markets and Imperial Authority', p. 64.
1,9
Baugh, British Naval Administration, p. 19.
100
deepening of the state s maritime bureaucracy.60 The gradual but decisive shift
in the dominant strategies of accumulation from the public-private fusion that
characterized European mercantile empires towards forms of wealth-creation
based on the public protection of capitalist production and circulation increas-
ingly made the use of'lawful depredation at sea redundant. Whereas the wars
of the 'long' sixteenth century had mainly been predicated on destroying rival's
access to trade, aspirations to autarky and the consequent concentration on
predation and plunder as a tactic of war, those of the 'long' eighteenth century
increasingly shifted the focus onto the control of navigation and circulation
as sources of universal prosperity issuing from a competitive world market. The
phasing out of trade restrictions associated to the Navigation Acts, the repeal
of the Corn Laws and the broader campaign for 'free trade' in Britain and
overseas were in this respect the proverbial nails in the coffin of privateering
as a strategy of accumulation.
These developments also help to situate, as has already been mooted, the
war against piracy within the larger framework of a more widely and deeply
integrated Atlantic economy. For a good century after the European conquest
of the Americas, settler communities had tolerated and often benefited from
piratical activity, as much as they occasionally suffered from its ravages. Impe-
rial authorities—whether colonial or metropolitan—also relied on freebooters
and buccaneers for their successive military campaigns, as was discussed earlier.
So long as the American markets remained peripheral to the imperial economy,
and the Caribbean a vortex of plunder and predation, private seaborne violence
remained instrumental to imperial diplomacy. Pirates were, in Bialuschewski's
apt formulation 'important commodity bearers' serving 'the needs of a con-
sumer market that was often unable to obtain necessary supplies, including
specie, at affordable prices' and offering an alternative 'to legal commercial
policies formulated by ineffectual administrative bodies across the Atlantic
that hindered prosperity and defence of the colonies'.61 Already by the end of
the seventeenth century, piracy was beginning to be seen as a threat to com-
merce, instead of as something to be tolerated. The overall usefulness of the
pirates as part of mercantile imperialism was coming to an end. As the eigh-
teenth century began, both intra- and inter-imperial trading became increas-
ingly important, and piracy was no longer tolerable in such a system. As Ritchie
60
Patrick Crowhurst, The Defence of British Trade, 1689-1815, Folkestone: Dawson,
1977.
61
Bialuschewski, 'Pirates, Markets and Imperial Authority', p. 65.
101
notes, 'the very success and geographic extension of piracy in the seventeenth
century could not continue in an era of thriving inter-imperial trade'.62
If inter-state war and transnational trade represented critical 'horizontal'
factors in the demise of piracy and privateering, 'vertical' socio-political antag-
onism within the various Atlantic polities also played their part. The continued
competition for ships, manpower and other maritime resources pitched pri-
vateers and men-of-warsmen against each other in the metropole. 'It is clear',
David J Starkey suggests, extracting figures from various contemporary sources,
'that the privateering business, at its height [in the last decades of the eigh-
teenth century] attracted a significant number of potential men-of-warsmen
away from the King's service'—between 10 to 15 per cent on his calculations.63
The ever-present threat of impressments and the accompanying casting of
aspersions on the part of naval officers as to privateering indiscipline—both
on land and sea—sharpened the antagonism between private and public sea-
men, highlighting the public costs of'private' vices associated to the 'predatory
business'. The latter were certainly not without political advocates. 'The cham-
pions of the privateering interests' in eighteenth century Britain, Daniel Baugh
reminds us 'asserted that, though admittedly privateers signed on men who
might have been available to the navy, privateers contributed materially to
maritime success.' Adding swiftly that 'This argument particularly annoyed
navy men because in practice the navy rarely got the emergency assistance that
privateers were supposed to provide'.6^ Other authorities on the subject have
left open the question of which side was in the right,65 but what is clear is that,
as the age of mercantilism waned, so did the power of arguments for state-
sanctioned piracy. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, consolidated its expan-
sion during the long eighteenth century to become the leading—if always
under-funded and undermanned—instrument of the Pax Britannica.
The decline of private seaborne violence also had local socio-economic and
political dimensions in the western Atlantic. The social interconnections
between piracy and privateering have already been hinted at: privateers did
not only turn to piracy at war's end. Broader economic and political factors
such as underemployment, economic fluctuations in the Atlantic economy,
revolts and political usurpation of sovereignty, as well as the fearsome condi-
62
Ritchie, Captain Kidd, p. 2.
63
Starkey, British Privateering, p. 262.
64
Baugh, British Naval Administration, p. 20.
65
Most notably Starkey, British Privateering.
102
tions of labor on the king's ships and merchant vessels all contributed toward
the successive waves of Atlantic piracy.66 The piracy of the 'golden age' also had
a distinctively ideological dimension, seen as a protest against not only the
labor conditions prevalent in deep-sea maritime work, but also as a reaction
against the state itself.6 Yet these very same motivations could be turned
against piracy. The enforcement of British rule in the Atlantic, the concerted
ideological campaign against piracy, the involution of buccaneer communities
and above all, the entrenchment of legitimate inter-imperial trade turned the
Atlantic Ocean into an inhospitable environment for those seeking to survive
on maritime depredation. Crucially, the seaport communities that had pre-
viously harbored pirates or benefited from interaction with them, turned
against the sea-rovers: 'Once [American] merchants created regular trade and
a steady support... the need to do business with pirates waned and so did their
support. The merchants quickly joined the anti-piracy crusade and instead of
finding a warm welcome, the pirates were confronted with the hangman and
the long rope'.68
In sum, the triumph of'navigation' as a strategy focused on the protection
of trade routes by the Royal Navy had as its counterpart the 'war on the pirates'.
These catchphrases aim to capture the complex, uneven and protracted pro-
cesses which in the course of the 'long' eighteenth century led to the margin-
alization of private seaborne violence in the Atlantic world. These involved the
increasing monopolization of seapower by the state and its accompanying
investment in a battlefleet as the chief source of naval power, to the detriment
of privateering as a tactic of war. As a corollary, 'free' trade—chiefly, though
not exclusively carried by sea—became the preferred mechanism of wealth-
creation, replacing the mercantilist fusion of'armed trading', plunder and raid-
ing. These two developments in turn required the intensified enforcement of
'free trade' and its policing at sea, both of which led to successive juridico-
political campaigns against those sectors of Atlantic society which had in the
past lived off private seaborne violence.
66
Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates
and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1987.

6
See especially Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, The Many Headed Hydra: The
History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, London and New York: Verso, 2002.
68
Ritchie 'Government Measures', p. 17.
103
Conclusions: Private Seaborne Violence and IR Today
Our aim in this chapter has been to contribute toward an understanding of
modern piracy and privateering in the Atlantic world, and to outline some
implications of this experience for the contemporary study of IR. There are
perhaps three areas where our own argument can add to the existing debates
on these subjects.
Starting at the most general level, the account of private seaborne violence
presented above challenges some prevailing conceptions of modern interna-
tional relations. In line with arguments made by, among others, Barkawi and
Laffey some time ago, we wish to 'retrieve the imperial', or at least recover
'Empire' as a key concept in our analysis of modern world politics.69 Phenom-
ena such as piracy and privateering, we have shown, were not simply incidental
to the unfolding of modern warfare, state-building, the world market and
international revolution. They were intrinsic to the genesis and development
of these structures of modern international relations. The expansion, consoli-
dation and administration of European Empires—in the Americas as else-
where—was based upon the private mobilizations of violence and wealth in
ways that IR has generally failed to recognize. For the experience of private
seaborne violence we have explored in this chapter raises all kinds of thorny
questions about, inter alia, the modern conception and organization of politi-
cal space, the origins of international public (and indeed merchant) law, the
transnational history of warfare or the very nature of state sovereignty, which
often escape the analytical scope of IR. Unlike our sister disciplines of history,
social anthropology or political economy, many of the foundational assump-
tions in IR still stand in the way of a full comprehension of socio-historical
phenomena that fall under the rubric of'private violence'. If nothing else, this
chapter—like the rest of the book—has sought to map out some possible lines
of inquiry regarding these expressions of violence, and their centrality to our
understanding of modern world politics.
In many respects, this is precisely why studies like that of Janice Thomson
are so important to IR. Our second, more specific, claim in this chapter has
been that, groundbreaking as it was for the discipline, Thomson's volume still
frames the problem of 'non-state' violence within the parameters of a very
conventional IR, thus reproducing the fetishism of Westphalian sovereignty
69
Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, 'Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and Inter-
national Relations', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 31, no. 1,2002,
pp. 109-127.
104
and its attendant legal frameworks. A more materialist conception of 'non-
state' violence seeks out the currencies of power that gave such expressions of
force their value for the mercantile empires of early modern Europe and
beyond. We have put forward an alternative vocabulary—that of'public' and
'private' forms of violence and capital accumulation and circulation—suggest-
ing that these categories offer a more accurate picture of the sinews of power
(to adopt and abuse a phrase) which articulated the various components of
imperial rivalry in the Atlantic world during the 'long' eighteenth century.
Recognising the peculiar fusion of private and public forms of authority and
wealth that underpinned the reproduction of the British Empire during most
of this period is, we have argued, critical in properly understanding Atlantic
piracy and privateering as forms of'private violence'. It is this specific combina-
tion which, in our view, helps to unlock paradoxes like the role of the High
Admiralty in adjudicating prizes forcefully seized in the high seas, or the com-
missioning by the Crown of successive waves of buccaneers in campaigns
against England's rivals in the Caribbean. It is with reference to the unique
amalgamation of public authority and private resources, and their deployment
in warfare, commerce and predation across the Atlantic that we get a truer
picture of the circulation of power across and within different polities and
economies of the Atlantic world during the 'long' eighteenth century. It is also
the changing conception and deployment of the public and the private during
this period and beyond, which explains the demise of piracy and privateering
as distinctive forms of'private seaborne violence'. In all these ways, conceptions
of private and public power, and their multiple, iterative combinations replace
the static and reified notions of 'state' and 'non-state' violence, thereby also
opening up connections between these deployments of force and the political
economy they served to reproduce.
Assuming these claims carry analytical weight, they necessarily impinge on
a third and final area of wo rid politics this chapter has speculated upon, namely
contemporary piracy. Our argument has been that piracy and privateering are
unique among historical expressions of private violence in that they have all
but disappeared from international affairs. Unlike land-based forms of private
violence—from banditry to mercenarism—private seaborne violence is at pres-
ent a relatively marginal and localized menace, and not one which any state
systematically licenses, as in the past. There are plainly some family resem-
blances with the pirates of'golden age': today's pirates operate from geographi-
cally isolated hideaways or coastal communities of 'under-governed' states.
They use lethal violence at sea to seize property, hijack, extort, hold ransom or
105
otherwise seek financial gain from seaborne depredation.70 Crucially, as in the
past, todays freebooters are parasitic upon maritime trade and tend to
concentrate around the worlds busiest sea-lanes.71 Commentators like Puchala
go further and make direct comparisons between Henry Morgans 1671
sack of Panama City and the attacks of 9/11 thereby making linkages
between piracy and contemporary terrorism, despite scant evidence in support

2
of this connection.
But beyond these surface parallels, there is a fundamental difference between
the 'golden age' of piracy and that which obtains today: the absence of mer-
cantile empires which fuelled the successive waves of piracy and privateering
until the end of the 'long' eighteenth century. Without the structural confla-
tion of wealth-creation and seaborne violence, we have contended, the resur-
gence of early-modern expressions of privateering and piracy in the twenty-first
century is highly unlikely. The contemporary world economy does not rely, as
did that of mercantile empires, on the transfer of plunder or the economic
emasculation of rivals through war and depredation. Today's oceans and sea-
lanes—notwithstanding the melting of polar ice caps—no longer operate as
decisive theatres of inter-imperial rivalry. This is so because today's imperialism
is one of'open doors and closed frontiers' where it is control over territorially
exclusive states, and not rule over boundless oceans that acts as the currency
of hegemonic power.73
0 For a riveting journalistic account see William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A
World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime, New York: North Point Press, 2004.
1
Recent data suggests that over a half of recorded piratical attacks are on vessels in
transit through the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait. See J.A. Roach, 'En-
hancing Maritime Security in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore',of Inter-
national Affairs, vol. 59, no. 1, 2005, pp. 97-116.

2
Puchala, 'Of Pirates and Terrorists'.
73
Alejandro Colas, 'Open Doors and Closed Frontiers: The Limits of American Em-
pire', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 14, no. 4, 2008, pp. 619-
643.
106
5
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
SMUGGLING AS DISSENT
IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTHEAST ASIA
Eric Tagliacozzo
Introduction
The notion of'private violence' usually conjures up a bevy of the usual suspects
of anti-state actors in global history: brigands and armed robbers in the forests,
pirates and corsairs on the high seas, even the hidden hand of secret societies,
who have their own reasons to spill blood (and occasionally possess the where-
withal to do so). These actors have been rendered into common tropes in lit-
erature and popular consciousness through the likes of Robin Hood, Bluebeard
the pirate, and Al Capone, to cover each of the three categories mentioned
above. Yet a fourth 'type' seems to be missing from these conceptions, one that
is perhaps less glamorous, and perhaps even less violent in the conduct of priva-
tizing the means toward coercion, but which may have been just as important
as a historical category of those who resisted governmental authority, and often
used armed means to do so. These are the smugglers: men and women who
moved commodities 'under the radar' of states and proto-states, but who nev-
ertheless resorted to violence when situations demanded force in order for
their operations to succeed. In this chapter, I examine the activities of contra-
banders and their proclivities toward private violence in nineteenth century
107
Southeast Asia. This surely is one of the most fertile landscapes for such an
historical inquiry, given the incredible range of state-making and state-resisting
projects that were simultaneously underway by a range of interested parties at
the time.
The chapter is divided into roughly two equal-sized parts. In the first half of
the chapter, I lay some of the foundations for why nineteenth-century Southeast
Asia proves to be such an extraordinary microcosm for analyzing these patterns
in some detail. I discuss some of the changing landscapes and seascapes of the
region during this time, showing how the European colonial project literally
altered the environment of cross-cultural contact by delineating boundaries,
mapping space, and accumulating knowledge in heretofore unparalleled ways.
The chapter then proceeds to ask which ethnic actors were involved in these
processes, both as identified communities of'recalcitrance' and 'resistance' to
colonial states, and also as actual groups who challenged the growth of Euro-
pean authority—often with violence—on the ground itself. The second half of
the chapter then explores in greater depth the functioning of smuggling as a
means toward private violence in resisting the encroachments of the state. I
attempt this through three windows: the passage of unfarmed (i.e. illegal)
opium; the movement of arms and ammunition; and the transit of trafficked
human beings. Each of these trades was accomplished through a certain amount
of violence. All were utilized not only as a means to make money on the sly, but
also as ways to express dissent with the growing power of colonial regimes.
Changing Landscapes, Changing Seascapes
I stated earlier that Europeans began to change the nature of cross-cultural
contact in nineteenth century Southeast Asia through their deepening knowl-
edge-projects. This happened in a variety of ways, and in a variety of places over
time. We can see this process especially clearly at two points on either side of
the emerging frontier between Dutch and British colonial spheres in Southeast
Asia: at British Labuan, off the coast of Western Borneo; and at what was
becoming Dutch Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra. No serious maps
existed of Labuan's topography even thirty years after the colony's founding in
the 1840s: the island was hydrographically surveyed as part of the sea-routes
leading to China, but not in its own local detail and context, an omission
which limited British imperial vision in Western Borneo's waters.1 This situa-
1
Surveyor General R. Howard, Labuan, to Col. Secretary, Labuan, 6 May 1873, in
CO 144/40.
108
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tion would remain almost unchanged until the turn of the twentieth century,
when government officials and businessmen alike complained that local hydro-
graphical inadequacies were actually impeding trade and policing alike.2 The
dangers of piracy in these waters eventually made the island a Colonial Office
priority, as Labuan was thought to have 'some queer neighbours.'3 By the turn
of the twentieth century, however, Labuan's geopolitical importance had
diminished, and Whitehall was kept busy full-time turning away requests by
the North Borneo Company, a new semi-privately-owned British constellation
of agricultural and mining interests on the northern part of the island, to bet-
ter coast-light regional shores. The Colonial Office felt that the Company
should be responsible for these duties; the Company, trying to stretch its prof-
its as far as possible, attempted whenever possible to get London to do this
work for her. By 1907, however, even London was acknowledging that huge
stretches of North Borneo's coasts were precariously under-lit, and that this
had all kinds of implications for regional security vis-a-vis the piracy question,
as well as for losses of shipping.4
Several hundred kilometers away in the Straits of Melaka, the crucial impor-
tance of the hydrographic project to Dutch expansion can be seen best in
Aceh, where sea-mapping was a matter of life and death for the invading Dutch
armies. Reconnaissance voyages by the Dutch marines started triangulations
of the coasts prior to the 1873 invasion of the sultanate, while other ships even-
tually steamed up Aceh's rivers to map interior waterways where resistance
forces hid, after the conflict was in full swing? Both of these missions—coastal
and riverine—were crucial to European military expansion in Aceh. Batavia's
forces couldn't maintain a concerted presence on shore for the first ten months
2
See Government Pilot of Labuan to Labuan Coalfields Co, 4 Oct. 1903; Labuan
Coalfields Co. to British North Borneo HQ, London, 20 Nov. 1903, both in Colo-
nial Office (CO) 144/77.

3
The term was the Colonial Office's. Piracy, the Sultan of Brunei, and intrigues in the
Southern Philippines (between Sulu, the Spanish, Germany and the United States)
all were seen to make the area highly unstable. See Governor Labuan to CO, 20 Mar.
1877, no. 32, and CO Jacket, 20 Mar. 1877, both in CO 144/48.

4
British North Borneo Co. Headquarters to CO, 26 Oct. 1899, and CO Jacket, 26
Oct. 1899, both in CO 144/73; see also Admiralty to CO, 15 Oct. 1907, M8148,
and the Report of the HMS 'Cadmus' on Sandakan Harbour and Marudu Bay, both
in CO 531/1.
^ J. A. Kruijt, Atjeh en de Atjehers: Twee Jar en Blokkade op Sumatra's Noord-Oost Kust,
Leiden: Gualth Koff, 1877, p. 169; 189.
110
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
of the war, so reconnaissance information had to be gathered by other means.6
Mapping the sea, and mapping coastlines from the sea, therefore, was one of
the most important steps in imperial processes of subjugation in Southeast
Asia. This happened early in some regional arenas, as in Aceh, though these
protocols took longer in other European island outposts, like Labuan. The
activities of Acehnese guerrilla forces by sea in the Acehnese theater, and those
of'pirates' in Borneo's waters—even to a comparatively late date—complicated
these missions considerably. Local exigencies, funding, and immediate imperial
needs all conspired to dictate the pace of the evolution of European colonial
control over these spaces.
Borders and state-controlled spaces in the fluid upland districts of mainland
Southeast Asia gradually began to harden by the later decades of the nine-
teenth century as well. 1885 proved to be a watershed year for the larger region
as a whole. While British commercial interests on Siam's various frontiers
pushed forward, Upper Burma was annexed at this time and northern Vietnam
was conquered by the French. Everywhere France's influence seemed to be on
the rise—especially in 1889, France formally proposed the existence of Siam
as a buffer state to the British, four years later demanding Siam's evacuation of
all lands east of the Mekong. A crisis developed, which was only averted when
Royal Navy warships were sent to Bangkok. Part of the problem was that nei-
ther European nation really had a firm grasp on the geographies of mainland
Southeast Asia's interior frontiers, or who traveled in these spaces. A bilateral
technical team was assembled to carry out surveying, using available geographi-
cal and political landmarks to effect a division into spheres.8 This, of course,
predominantly ignored indigenous conceptions of boundaries or frontiers.
China's views were taken into consideration only barely on the matter, with
Peking indicating that the 'territorial integrity' of Siam should be respected.9
6 See H. Mohammad Said, Aceh SepanjangAbad (I) (Medan: PT. Harian Waspada,
1981), pp. 675-753; PerangKolonialBelanda diAceh, Banda Aceh: Pusat Dokumen-
tasi dan Informasi Aceh, 1997, pp. 87-104.

7
PRO/FO/CP: 25 Nov. 1893 Anglo/French Protocol on the Upper Mekong (#6521,
Appx. F[i]), vol. 26.

8
\Les Agents Techniques devront noter soigneusement quelles limites geographiques et
politiques atteindraient le mieux ce hutl PRO/FO/CP: Protocol Signed on 25 Nov.
1893 by the Marquis of Dufferin and M. Develle, (#6521, Appx. F[i]), vol. 26.
9
PRO/FO/CP: 'Memorandum on Questions of Principal Importance in the Ameri-
can and Chinese Department Under Discussion Between September 1893 and March
7 1894' (#6636, Annex A), vol. 26.
Ill
Yet by 1895, London was having second thoughts about the viability of any
formalized buffer state along Siam's northern frontier, seeing French agents,
Chinese 'disorganization', and Siamese 'political weakness' as a recipe for disas-
ter in mainland Southeast Asia.10
If imperial visions of mainland Southeast Asia's frontiers were vague and
indeterminate, then collective local perceptions of any hard and fast borders
were equally imprecise. Thongchai Winichakul has shown how Siamese con-
ceptions of mapping and mapped space changed enormously from the nine-
teenth into the twentieth centuries. It was only in the late-nineteenth century
that Siamese maps started to take on boundary-lines of'fixidness', whereby ter-
ritory on one side was owned, and on the other side, only coveted.11 Upland
peoples on these frontiers often had the older worldview of space in common,
if published surveyors' reports—both European and Siamese—were any guide.
In 1882, the Norwegian naturalist/explorer Carl Bock had to impress upon
Laotians the political claims of the neighboring Siamese king; many of them
had little idea that they were at least nominally under Siamese jurisdiction.12
Yet the British traveller C.E. McCarthy was greeted with fairly exact (if con-
tradictory) approximations of territory and sovereignty in his own visits to the
hill regions a year later. In several instances he was given delineations of the
frontier by local peoples that were completely different from Bangkok's ver-
sions. His observations were also echoed by Siamese surveyors sent out by King
Chulalongkorn, who reported similar disagreements, dissimulations, and
obfuscations by local peoples.13
For the British, it was the possibility that a large-scale profitable transit trade
to China might be organized through northern Burma that allowed that coun-
try in particular to begin occupying a special place in London's strategic and
economic thinking. The brief border war between Burma and British Bengal
in 1824-6, whereby the frontier provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim were
ceded to the Raj, heightened the British trading bloc's interest in channeling
10
PRO/FO/CP: 'Siam, France, and China, 13 August 1895, (#6521, Appx. F[i]),
vol. 26.
11
See Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: The History of a Geohody, Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1993, especially Essays 3 and 5.

12
'Carl Bock in Siam' Singapore Daily Times, 10 Aug. 1882.
13
Nai Banchaphumasathan, A Thai Government Survey of the Middle Salween, 1890'
in, Constance Wilson (trans.), The Burma-Thailand Frontier over Sixteen Decades:
Three Descriptive Documents Ohio University Southeast Asia Studies, no. 70,
1985, p. 43.
112
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
this overland commerce. Some wanted trade between these new British pro-
tectorates and the Court at Ava. Others sought a road to Yunnan to assure a
flow of cheap labor, while still others advocated a territorial campaign to con-
nect the nearest part of China with the new British dominions on the coast.
Yet by far the most important common agenda was the opening and explora-
tion of new routes, both for their passage to Western China and the economic
possibilities along the way. The prizes of these avenues were manifold: amber,
rubies, jade, teak, silver and gold were only a few of the valuable products to
be found along the way.14 As had been the case along Siam's frontiers, local
British officials paved the way for exploitation. The British resident sent out
several reconnaissance parties to gather topographical information between
1830 and 1837.15 Meanwhile, many British merchants passed into the hills on
their own account to see what opportunities were available, and to cut their
own deals outside of the vision of the Burmese monarchy. Eventually the
Emperor of China himself sent a memorial to the Burmese King, advising the
latter to expel the dangerous coterie of Englishmen before they caused serious
diplomatic problems, as they had managed to do elsewhere in Asia.16
Ethnicity and Private Violence
As European power became more and more inscribed in the maritime and
overland spaces of nineteenth century Southeast Asia, as shown above, it
became clear to these same colonials that certain Asian populations required
surveillance vis-a-vis their tendencies or abilities toward private violence in the
region. In Island Southeast Asia, a number of sedentary populations of overseas
Chinese concerned the British and Dutch in Batavia and Singapore, respec-
tively, but it was particularly the specter of Chinese in motion—drifting along
14
Sardesai, British Trade and Expansion in Southeast Asia 1830-1914, Bombay: Allied
Publishers, 1977, p. 105.

1
- For a Burmese nationalist historians view of this sort of incitement, and severe
criticism of British duplicity in these events, see Htin Aung, The Stricken Peacock:
Anglo-Burmese Relations 1752-1948, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965, p. 36. For an in-
teresting Siamese parallel, see Andrew Turton, 'Ethnography of Embassy: Anthro-
pological Readings of Records of Diplomatic Encounters Between Britain and Tai
States in the Early Nineteenth Century', South East Asia Research, 5 (2), 1997,
p. 175.
16
W.S. Desai, History of the British Residency in Burma (1826-1840), Rangoon: Uni-
versity of Rangoon, 1939, Appendix B.
113
(and across) the length of emerging frontiers—which compounded these wor-
ries. It would be wrong to erect static categories of 'moving' and 'stationary'
Chinese: coolies en route to the mines and plantations of Southeast Asia had
to travel from the Chinese coasts, of course, and itinerant Chinese populations
journeying along the frontier often had bases or outposts, from which they
launched their travels. Yet colonial reporting on these potential challenges to
peace and authority often treated these 'threats' as different from one another.
Sites such as the mines and plantations were seen as flashpoints for violence
that could spill (if left unchecked) into other spaces, while travelling Chinese
were thought of in more conspiratorial terms, with 'secret society' activities
and smuggling high on the agenda of concerns. Overseas Chinese fit into both
of these categories in large numbers, which is one reason why they were singled
out as an especially 'problematic' population by area states.
Unlike the potential difficulties ascribed to Chinese in the mines and wood-
cutting camps, which have received comparatively scant attention in the
literature,1 the 'threats' to colonial order posed by Chinese 'secret societies'
has been a major topic of research for many years. Colonial administrators and
Sinologists wrote voluminously on what they perceived to be the violent chal-
lenge of these brotherhoods to the state. Men like Pickering and (later) Purcell
on the English side of the frontier, and Schlegel and De Groot on the Dutch
side, sketched out the parameters of these societies while they were active and
still very much a part of the colonial landscape.18 Vast quantities of ink were
1
Notable exceptions here are James Jackson, Chinese in the West Borneo Goldfields: A
Study in Cultural Geography, Hull: University of Hull Occasional Papers in Geog-
raphy #15, 1970; Mary Somers Heidhues, Bangka Tin andMentok Pepper, and her
'Chinese Organizations in West Borneo and Bangka'; Kongsi and Hui in David
Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues, 'Secret Societies ReconsideredKxmovhi, NJ: M.E.
Sharpe, 1993.
18
William Pickering was 'Protector of Chinese' in the Straits, and he wrote widely on
the Chinese communities in British Southeast Asia in official reports and correspon-
dence; for Victor Purcell, see his autobiography, Memoirs of a Malayan Official Lon-
don, Cassell, 1965. For Schlegel and de Groot, see 'De Wetgeving ten Aanzien van
Geheime Genootschappen of Broederchappen onder de Chineezen in de Straits-
Settlements en in Nederlandsch-Indie' TNI (Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie)
(1890) 1, pp. 180-2, which references Schlegel's writings on the Hung League (in
Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap [TBG], #32) and de Groot's research
on the kongsis of Borneo 'De Oorsprong an de Aard der Geheime Genootschappen
in de Kolonien', Essay 2.4 of his Het Kongsiwezen van Borneo: Eene Verhandelingover
114
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
spilled on the dangerous activities of these organizations, as the movements of
their members, and the expanding tendrils of their economic organization,
were seen to be spreading along evolving colonial borders. In the Pontianak
district of West Borneo, for example, Chinese secret societies were described
as potent and extremely active, while further north in Sambas these brother-
hoods were engaged in smuggling contraband goods across the border into
Sarawak.19 In Montrado, Chinese organizations were particularly strong in the
mines, but they also had outside economic and political connections that could
stymie the reach of the Dutch state.20 In Riau, European reporting was much
the same: Chinese 'secret societies' were blamed for robberies and violence on
Rempang and Batam islands, with local Dutch administration not being in a
position to stop the culprits, because of the proximity of the frontier as a refuge
and limited state resources.21 Across the Straits in Singapore, laws such as Ordi-
nance #19 of 1869 eventually waged war against these brotherhoods, outlining
arrest and seizure procedures in order to try to break the backbones of these
organizations, which were seen as violent and ungovernable by the British
colonial state.22
In Sulu, the southernmost waters of the Philippines, the connections
between ethnicity and violence were also commented upon by agents of the
state, in this case the emerging colonial Spanish regime in that archipelago. In
this domain in the late eighteenth century, a vast slave-state had been erected
to ship local marine produce to China in huge quantities by the Taosug, the
ruling ethnic elite of the Sulu sultanate. The most important factor in this sys-
tem's functioning was the implantation of a client system upon several 'sea area
peoples': the Samal, Bajau, Balangingi and Iranun. The two former populations
were reduced to a status of near-serfdom by Taosug princes, who pressed them
den Grondslag en den Aard der Chineesche Politieke Vereenigengen in de Kolonien met
eene Chineesche Geschiedenis van de KongsiLanfong, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1885.

19
See the sections of the residency report for 1872 under 'Pontianak' and 'Sambas' in
Arsip Nasional (ARNAS—National Archives, Indonesia), Politick Verslag der Res-
identie, West Borneo, 1872 (West Borneo, # 2/10).

20
'Montrado', in ARNAS, Politick Verslag der Residentie West Borneo 1872 (West
Borneo, #2/10); see also ARNAS, Algemeen Administratieve Verslag der Residentie
West Borneo 1874 (West Borneo, #5/4).

21
See ARNAS, Maandrapport der Residentie Riouw, 1873 (Riouw, #66/2, Oct.).
22
Straits Settlements Government Gazette, 24 Dec. 1869, Ordinance #19 of 1869,
p. 767.
115
into sea-produce collection for several months every year. It was in this way
that the vast numbers of edible sea cucumbers, mother of pearl, and shark fins
were collected for the Chinese market, all for export to distant Canton.23 The
Balangingi and Iranun sea-peoples of the Southern Philippines became the
wholesale slavers of this dominant Taosug elite.24 They were sent on pan-
Southeast Asian slaving missions to capture more manpower for Sulu, a calcu-
lated effort to thoroughly exploit the geography of the home region and
thereby increase profits. In a very real sense, much of the Sulu Sea coastal strand
became an enormous slave-state between 1775 and 1850, though 'slavery'
carried a different context in this milieu than in the West and was almost
always exercised on a seasonal basis.2^ These patterns were described in copious
detail by the Spanish, who were only able to break the power of the Sulu
Sultanate in the second half of the nineteenth century, when steam-power
could be brought to bear against the hundreds of blue-water vessels that sultan-
ate possessed.
On the Southeast Asian mainland, the pattern of ascribing violence to spe-
cific Asian populations was similarly undertaken by emerging regional regimes.
As early as the 1850s, for example, Siamese and Western sources had to be
cobbled together to make such approximations, as ethnic groups often spilled
across areas that geographically suggested themselves as borders.26 The English
diplomat/traveler McCarthy noted that Burmese horse merchants 'traveled
through Siamese territory with great airs of independence, thoroughly regard-
less of Siamese officials, who, on their side, think it best not to interfere with
these adventurers, who are accustomed to quick reprisals.'2 Three years later,
another English traveler named W.M. Archer also took copious notes on the
'recalcitrant' ethnic populations of these porous frontiers. He described armed
Burmans, 'Tonngons', and Karennis criss-crossing the border regions by foot;
23
James Warren, The Sulu Zone: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnic-
ity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State, Singapore: Singapore
University Press, 1981, p. 73-4.

24
Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and Politics in the Malay World, Lichtenstein: Kraus Re-
prints, 1978, p. 146-185.
^ For a discussion of the contexts of'slavery' in Southeast Asia, see Anthony Reid (ed.)
Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia, New York: St. Martins Press,
1983.
26
'Geographical Notices on Siam' Singapore Free Press, 25 Feb. 1858.
27
PRO/FO/CP: Mr J. McCarthy to Mr. Palgrave, 29 Mar. 1883, (#4874[i]), vol. 27.
116
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
armed Chinese merchants often journeyed by way of Siam's rivers, at least dur-
ing the appropriate seasons. In the far north, however, he came across huge
(and very heavily-armed) Chinese mule caravans from Yunnan, which were
trying to sell opium in the region. The opium they brought was technically
illegal in Siam (i.e. sold outside of the revenue farm), yet their very presence
also was a political concern to the court. Many of these men were Muslim Chi-
nese from Yunnan {Haw), and many were also related to Muslim uplanders
with whom Bangkok had been skirmishing, and whom also had fought a many
decades-long insurgency against the Chinese court.28 Yunnanese traders regu-
larly skirted the tax officials of both Siam and her northern vassals, preferring
to sell their goods without having to pay any 'required' duties.29 This was
accomplished, of course, from a position of strength: being heavily armed
yourself meant that state claims to violence (if taxes went unpaid) could often
be ignored.
In the minority landscapes separating the Siamese, Burmese, and Chinese
polities, these ascriptions toward violence held particular valence in political
economy questions. The Karenni question shows how ethnicity complicated
both emerging notions of state-based frontier-formation and the movement
of 'problematic' goods. Traditionally, both the Burmese and Chinese courts
received tribute from highlanders such as the Karen, a practice that extended
as far into the nineteenth century as both courts were able to enforce.30 Yet
these frontier regions were also seen as lawless and dangerous by lowland poli-
ties, filled with violence and often more trouble than they were worth.31 The
various hill peoples of these areas both used these designations as a wedge for
maintaining their independence from lowland civilizations, and also made a
mockery of these prejudices in the conduct of their daily lives. Many Karen,
for example, were prolific agricultural cultivators, while also engaging in long-
28
PRO/FO/CP: Mr. Archer to Mr. Satow, 3 April 1886, (#5295[i]), vol. 27; see also
Ann Maxwell Hill Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade Among Yunnanese
in Southeast Asia New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1998.
29
Henri Ph. de Orleans, Autourdu Tonkin, Paris: Calmann Levy, 1894, p. 609; August
Pavie, Expose des Travaux de la Mission, (Volume 1 of Mission Pavie Indo-Chine
1879-85: Geographic et Voyages), Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901, p. 227.

30
PRO/FO/CP: Diary of the Officiating Political Agent, Bhamo, 1-31 Jan. 1876,
(#2925/115[i]), vol. 26.

31
See PRO/FO/CP: 'Translation of a Chinese Memorial', 9 Dec. 1875, (#2925/27[i]),
in vol. 26.
117
distance trade of items such as guns, opium, and slaves on a regular and highly
organized basis.32 Indeed, Edmund Leach has shown how ethnic' differences
on the Thai/Burmese frontier were often a matter of choice and context, with
Shan minorities (for example) essentially 'becoming' Kachin when it suited
their needs, and vice-versa.33 Few minorities were more ontologically 'violent'
than others; context was everything. By the 1880s, British observers in the hills
were reporting that 'frontier culture' was actually extremely hybrid; while it
was true that a number of these high-altitude minorities did still engage in
slaving and the trade of arms and ammunition, none of them seemed more
pre-disposed toward these activities than others.34
Violent Trades: Contraband and Resistance Against
Colonial Authorities
Dangerous Poppies: The Passage of Opium
This was the template—both geographic and ethnic—of a changing Southeast
Asia over the course of the nineteenth century. The second half of the chapter
looks at the connections between smuggling and violence in this region as typi-
fied by the passage of three important 'commodities'; opium, munitions, and
trafficked human beings. Each of these trades involved the maintenance and
use of violence in one manifestation or another. Opium had been traded to
Southeast Asia legally for centuries by the various East India companies, but
by the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, private actors were mov-
ing in on these profitable trades as well. So-called 'country traders' (private
traders based in India, who could be British, Indian, or Anglo-Indian, among
other ethnicities) commissioned specialized ships, some kettle-bottomed and
32
'The Karenee Plateau, Pegu: A Description' Friend of India, 7 Feb. 1856. This does
not mean that upland peoples did not engage in robbery and 'opportunistic' com-
merce when they could; for such notices on the Shan, for example, see Pierre Lefevre
Pontalis, Voyages dans le haut Laos et sur lesfrontieres de Chine et de Birmanie (Vol 5
of Mission Pavie Indo-Chine 1879-1895, Geographie et Voyages), Paris: Ernest Leroux,
1902, p. 132-3.
33
Edmund Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
1954. Leach's fluid ethnic and organizational categories have become classic models
of the ethnography of identity.

34
'Upper Burma' Blackwood's Magazine (n.d.), excerpted in 'Our New Eastern Prov-
ince' in the Straits Times, 22 Apr. 1886, p. 3.
118
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
shallow to be able to navigate tropical rivers, others small and fleet-winged to
better smuggle opium, all in the service of their trade.35 A thriving business
sprouted around Batavia for Chinese opium runners looking to purchase the
illegal product. Both the country traders and the Chinese opium smugglers
were heavily armed in case they met up with Dutch patrols, which certainly
happened on numerous occasions. Country traders entered the shallow harbor
of the capital city of the colony, paid the requisite bribe to crooked Dutch
officials, and were then told where to pick up contraband cargoes of archi-
pelago produce and the inlets frequented by Chinese junks.36 These local
Southeast Asian products (marine goods, hornbill casques, spices and valuable
resins) eventually found their way up to Canton, transshipped by wooden
cranes onto the decks of East Indiamen who brought the items there for a
freight fee. The country traders could thus continue their coasting trade in the
Archipelago, picking up more produce in exchange for contraband opium
while their cargoes sped north on consignment.
By the late-nineteenth century, most official opium in Island Southeast Asia
was portioned out by colonial states to Chinese revenue farmers, who paid
huge sums for the privilege of retailing the drug to local populations. Eventu-
ally this system too was abolished, between 1894 and 1898 in the Dutch
Indies, and in the years around 1910 in the British possessions, though the
dates varied from place to place. The Chinese were thought to be too unreliable
in allowing smuggling outside of the revenue farm; colonial states were also
more fully taking over the reigns of economic control in their respective colo-
nies at this time, and no longer wished to face armed competitors.3 The direct
35
WH. Coates, The Old Country Trade of the East Indies, London: Imray, Laurie, Nu-
de, and Wilson 1911,p. 58; Robert Kubicek,'The Role of Shallow-Draft Steamboats
in the Expansion of the British Empire, 1820-1914' InternationalJournal of Mari-
time History, no. 6,Jun. 1994, p. 86.

36
C. Northgate Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas (1793-1813), Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1937, p. 351; for scandals involving Chinese payoffs to an
incumbent Governor General, see also F. de Haan OudBatavia Batavia, Kolff, 1922,
vol. 1, p. 498. Of course, the transit of opium into certain parts of the Indies, such
as Surakarta, was also banned. See C.E Winter 'Verbod Tegen het Gebruik van Am-
fioen' TNI3, 1840, #2, p. 588.

3
See Carl Trocki, 'Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism' in T.Brook, and B. Tadashi
Wakabayashi (eds) Opium Regimes: China, Britain, andJapan, 1839-1952, Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 79-104. Also see J.Butcher and H. Dick
(eds), The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming: Business Elites and the Emergence of the
119
sale and supervision of the drug was ultimately adopted by the two colonial
administrations, yet this did not stop opium smuggling on a massive scale
either. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Dutch consul in Singa-
pore estimated from intelligence available to him, that five times more illegal
opium was in transit to the Indies than the legally moving supplies, a figure
that probably increased after Batavia took over direct control of the retail
trade.38 Much of this illegal commerce in opium was carried by men with guns,
who were certainly willing to use them if they were caught by any of the rele-
vant colonial authorities.
In Siam and along its frontiers, opium was also in transit, reaping huge prof-
its for its handlers as both a legal and black market commodity. By the Burney
Treaty of 1826, opium was considered to be contraband by the monarchy, but
by the time of the Bowring Treaty thirty years later, England had insured that
the distribution of the drug had now become legal. A revenue farming system
was set up from Bangkok, and large quantities of the drug were imported into
the kingdom to be farmed out to local laboring populations (most of them
Chinese).39 On Siam's frontiers, use of the drug was commonplace, as it was
brought in by Chinese traders and various hill peoples, who used it to coun-
teract hunger, fever, cold, and the effects of long mountain journeys.40 Almost
all of this upcountry opium economy functioned outside of Bangkok's control,
however, and little revenue fell into Siamese coffers from the borders.
As a result of this, the opium economy in the margins was always tinged
with violence in the background of transactions. Local chiefs built their power
bases on control of the drug's movement, and tried to squeeze out their com-
Modern State in Southeast Asia, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, an excellent ed-
ited volume on revenue farming in Southeast Asia with many important contribu-
tions.
38
J.F. Scheltema, 'The Opium Trade in the Dutch East Indies', American Journal of
Sociology, 13, 2, 1907, p. 244.

39
PRO/FO/CP: Mr. Bell to SirJ. Bowring, 12Feb. 1856, (#4537i, Appx. 1),in vol. 27;
for a brief analysis see Carl Trocki, 'Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in South-
east Asia in Brook and T. Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes, p. 94; and Carl Trocki,
Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade,
1750-1950, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 150.

40
H. Warrington Smyth, Five Years in Siam From 1891-1896, vol. 2, 1898, Bangkok:
White Lotus Reprints, 1994, p. 194-5; PRO/FO/CP: Mr.J. McCarthy to Mr. Pal-
grave, 29 Mar. 1883 (#4874i), vol. 27.
120
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
petitors on the Upper Mekong caravan routes.41 Vast fortunes were made from
illicit opium dealings, and frontier geographies where opium ran freely became
increasingly important in geopolitical questions. Opium was forbidden transit
across the Sino/Burmese boundary except by sanction of the two respective
regimes, yet it moved in large quantities anyway, outside the vision (and exche-
quers) of both Amarapura and Peking.12 Opium was also used as a common
protection payment (along with salt) by armed trading caravans coming in and
out of Burma, to forestall attacks by the many interested parties separating the
two kingdoms.43 The drug spilled easily from this corridor into French-con-
trolled lands of the Upper Mekong as well, as the high prices of the opium
monopoly in Indochina encouraged rampant smuggling by armed caravans.44
Skirmishes in all of these interior landscapes between caravans, local semi-
independent polities, and the militias of area lowland courts were common.
The Transit of Munitions
Munitions were another contraband commodity that traveled freely in Main-
land Southeast Asia, often with violence associated with their movement. In
the years right around the fin de siecle, and sensing that the Southern Siamese
dependency of Trengganu by virtue of its resources and strategic position was
one of the principal regions of British commercial interest in the kingdom, the
Siamese Crown asked that all sales of munitions into the state by British mer-
chants be monitored and counter-signed by the Siamese envoy in Singapore.
The reason for this request was clear: aside from building an infrastructure of
docks and roads in the area, local British interests were also quietly selling mus-
11
Pierre Lefevre Pontalis, Voyages dans le haut Laos et sur les frontieres de Chine et de
Birmanie (Vol 5 of Mission Pavie Indo-Chine 1879-1895, Geographie et Voyages,
Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1902, p. 301; see also Daniel McGilvany, yl Half Century
Among the Siamese and the Lao: An Autobiography New York: Fleming Revell, 1912,
p. 368.
PRO/FO/CP: 'Memorandum on Questions of Principal Importance in the Amer-
ican and Chinese Department Under Discussion Between September 1893 and
March 7, 1894', (#6636, Annex A), vol. 26.

43
'Re-Opening of Bhamo to China Road' Singapore Daily Times, 3 Aug. 1881, p. 2.
For an analysis, see Ronald Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the
Making of the Golden Triangle Boulder, Colorado: Lynn Rienner, 1996.

44
See Eugene Picamon, Le Laos Fran$ais, Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1901, p. 259-62;
285.
121
kets into the region. Many of these merchants were fomenting local rebellion,
in the hopes that Trengganu would later fall into English hands. On the advice
of the Straits Settlements Governor, Sir Cecil Smith, London was advised to
refuse the Siamese request as an infringement of British economic rights, a
course of action to which the Government eventually acceded.4^ Trengganu
soon became a known haven for munitions smuggling, a regional arms mart
where firearms were bought and sold in large quantities against the wishes
of Bangkok.46
This was not the only frontier where guns flowed freely; these items also
traveled in unhindered (but technically illegal) fashion on Siam's vague north-
ern and Western borders as well, especially with Burma.47 There, King Mindon
needed British help to maintain his paramount position on the Burmese
throne, but he was also careful to try to use the division his agents reported
between British government and trading interests to his own advantage. By
the 1870s, however, this division was fast disappearing and Mindon's attempts
at ensuring the survival of Burmese independence were becoming more diffi-
cult. The Rangoon Chamber of Commerce began funding explorers to delve
deep into the northern extremities of Burma, searching out the fastest and
most secure routes to the markets of China. Englishmen were also sent to
thirty-nine different Shan chiefs, with gifts of guns and ammunition to help
conclude understandings that British commerce could pass their way. When
Mindon sent an embassy to Europe in order to complain about the distribu-
tion of firearms to these local minority rulers as a violation of Burma's sover-
eignty, his envoys were rebuffed.
This freewheeling commerce in firearms, undertaken by both British and
French traders in the 'Golden Triangle', helped fuel many of these rebellions,
intrigues, and a general trend toward complicated politics. Even at the mid-
4
- Governor Smiths letter is reproduced in Sardesai, p. 226, a relevant portion reading
'The question of having permits for the export of gunpowder to Tringanu counter-
signed by the Siamese Consul is seemingly a small one, but it is the first attempt, I
believe, on the part of Siam to interfere in the trade between the colony and any of
the Malay States on the east coast. In my opinion it should be resisted.' Trengganu
officially fell into British hands in 1909.

46
See Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a
Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005,
Chapters 11 and 12.

47
PRO/FO/CP: Mr. J. McCarthy to Mr. Palgrave, 29 Mar. 1883 (#4874i), vol. 27.
122
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
century point, British observers reported that almost every Karen house pos-
sessed muskets, which were often sold at a profit to other upland peoples.48
While both the Burmese and Siamese courts purchased firearms from Western-
ers, the sale of such items to border peoples only loosely controlled by these
regimes was seen as a serious breach of local laws. British agents distributed
double-barreled breech-loading rifles and hundreds of cartridges to Chinese
who performed services for them along the frontier; Frenchmen frequently
did the same in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.49 Chinese caravan traders tried
to smuggle munitions into Burma for profit, but were only rarely caught and
brought to cities like Moulmein for trial.50 By the 1870s, Kachins, Shan, and
even lowland-dwelling Burmese were starting to be able to acquire guns very
easily. These items crossed frontiers as easily as water and air, perhaps more so
because they were always in such constant demand.51
In Insular Southeast Asia, many of these same forces were at work. The years
around the turn of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in what
Europeans of the time called 'armed piracy' across the length and width of
Southeast Asia. As mentioned previously, the Balangingi Samal, Iranun, and
Bugis were among the most feared raiders in Southeast Asian waters^2 and they
were later joined by Malay and Chinese craft preying on the ever-growing
48
See 'The Karenee Plateau, Pegu: A Description' Friend of India, 7 Feb. 1856.
49
PRO/FO/CP: Translated Petition of Lee Chen-Quo, 26 Feb. 1876 (#2925/115[i]),
and "Memorandum of Crawford Cooke", 29 Feb. 1876 (#2925/115[i]), both in
vol. 26.
50
PRO/FO/CP: Diary ofthe Political Agent, Bhamo, 1-29 Feb. 1876, (#2925/115[i]),
in vol. 26.
-1 Ibid.; PRO/FO/CP: Diary of the Political Agent, Bhamo, 1-31 Mar. 1876,
(#2925/l40[i]),in vol. 26.

,2
For period accounts on these peoples, especially in the Sulu Sea, see F.A.A. Gre-
gori Aantekeningen en Beschouwingen Betrekkelijk de Zeerovers en hunn Rooverijen
in den Indischen Archipel, Alsmede Aangaande Magindanao en de Soolo-Archipel,
1844, and A.J.F. Jansen "Aantekeningen omtrent Sollok en de Solloksche Zeerovers"
Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 7, 1858, pp. 212-39. Aceh-
nese 'pirates' from North Sumatra were also feared; see Algemeen Rijksarchief
(ARA—National Archives, Holland), Ministerie van Kolonien (MvK), Gov Gen
NEI to Resident of Riau, 26 Dec. 1830 Secret, in Kol, Exh. 26 Sep. 1830, #28. On
piracy generally at this time, see the period Dutch historian J.H.P.E. Kniphorst
"Historische Schets van den Zeerof in den Oost-Indischen Archipel" Tijdschrift
Zeewezen (1876), p. 3 passim.
123
volume of ship-traffic in the region.53 Indigenous Southeast Asian 'pirates' were
ofanprahu crewed by thirty men, reinforced against shot by double-plankings
of bamboo on both sides, and were equipped with swivel guns and muskets.
They tried to board country traders by approaching their ships from the bow
or stern (steering clear of broadsides), and were often rowed by slaves from
places as far away as New Guinea. Country ships countered these attacks with
their own cannon and with the firing of langridge, a mixture of bolts, iron nails,
and glass that decimated entire decks filled with men.54 One early British his-
torian included in his study of piracy and trade in the region a contemporary
description of the armaments country traders were advised to carry,53 while
another reprinted part of a diary describing the terror of a night attack during
a thick fog in the Straits.36 Armed men were everywhere in the waters of early-
nineteenth century Southeast Asia, and opportunities for trade and piracy
often went hand in hand.
By the 1860s, European administrations were trying to undo the legacy of
centuries of free arms trading (including by European merchants themselves)
by progressively legislating against the transit in firearms. This was an extremely
uneven process however, with national policies and even personal predilections
heavily influencing the speed and depth of enforcement. In 1863, for example,
the Straits Settlements temporarily banned arms exports out of the colony,
seemingly out of a concern that too many guns were finding their way from
Singapore to Taiping-ravaged China. The decision was reversed shortly there-
after, though, with the port regaining its former status as a weapons emporium,
frequented by all manner of prahus and junks in search of such goods.5 If
53
For a very good historiographical treatment of piracy in Southeast Asia see Dian
Murray Pirates of the South China Coast (1790-1810), Stanford, Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1987. Designating someone a pirate', of course, implies a certain perspec-
tive—which local Southeast Asian peoples saw equally in European shipping 'pi-
ratical tendencies' as well. Ironically, the Balangingi Samal, who surged out of the
southern Philippines in the late eighteenth century, went raiding in Southeast Asia
partly in search for slave-manpower for the collection of marine products. These
items would then be sold to junks coasting back to Canton. See Warren, Sulu Zone,
p. 16.
^ Parkinson, Trade in Eastern Seas, p. 348.
^ Ibid., p. 349.
,6
Coates, Country Trade p. 47.
v
ARA, Dutch Consul Singapore to GGNEI, 26 Aug. 1863, and GGNEI to MK, 1
Nov. 1863, Kab #318 La Ml 1, both in (MvK, Verbaal 14 Jan. 1864, #1). Hundreds
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iv
Singapore was the central node of arms purchases in the archipelago, Labuan
was not too far behind in the waters just offBorneo, a fact that distressed many
in the Colonial Office back in Londond8 Yet it was the start of the Aceh War
in 1873, the last great stand of an autonomous polity in the region, which gave
new impetus to arms control measures in Insular Southeast Asia. The Dutch
immediately banned weapons imports to North Sumatra, and asked their Brit-
ish allies in the Straits Settlements to do the same. These bans were continually
flaunted, however, as the sale of guns was such good business, whether they
were to be used against Europeans or a range of other Asian actors by local
Asians themselves.
The Violence of Human Traffic
The traffic of human beings as commodities provides us with a last glimpse
into the complicated intersection between empires, violence, and commodi-
ties in motion in nineteenth century Southeast Asia. Slaving has a long his-
tory in much of this part of the world, and this has been particularly true in
many of the highland regions of the mainland. Despite the increasing pres-
ence of Europeans and the ostensible 'civilizing project' they brought with
them, human beings continued to be captured, bought, and sold in places
like upland Siam well into the nineteenth century. This human traffic was
sometimes Lao in origin, and also even sometimes Siamese, but slaving at the
point of a gun was a fairly common upland phenomenon in the region until
at least 1905.59 Human beings were not considered to be any different than
any other commodity by many peoples in the region, and if violence was
needed to ensure their capture and transit, then this could be arranged
throughout large parts of the Southeast Asian massif without moral quan-
daries or ethical dilemmas.
Many upland peoples participated in this commerce, and still others were
bought and marketed across nominal boundaries themselves. We know that
when Chiang Mai attacked several towns in upland Shan areas in 1839, that
of thousands of dollars worth of firearms were sold each year from the Straits
Settlements.
58
CO to GovLab, 10 Jan. 1865, in CO 144/23; GovLab to CO, 1 Apr. 1865, #5, and
Gov Lab to CO, 22 Apr. 1865, #6, both in CO 144/24.
^ 'Mr. Carl Bock's Travel's in Siam', Siam Advertiser, as excerpted in the Singapore
Daily Times, 10 Dec. 1882.
126
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
slaving on a large scale was part of the net result of conquest.60 In Burma, King
Mindon was aware that the freewheeling economic conditions of his frontiers
made the uplands a potential quagmire for conflict. The large-scale traffic in
humans, for example, could be used as an interventionist excuse by the British,
while this commerce was also sometimes destabilizing on its own terms.61 The
Burmese monarch participated in this trade himself; women from the uplands
were sold to him as concubines, sometimes for large sums of silver.62 Many
other slaves (especially females) were sold outside of his jurisdiction or control,
though.63 The Karen seem to have been particularly adept at slaving in the hills
along the Burma/Siam frontier; period British-Indian newspaper accounts
from 1856 make this very clear.61
In the island world of Southeast Asia, the violence of slave-raiding and slave-
trading was also well known in the long nineteenth century. We have already
briefly discussed some of these patterns in the Philippines, where the Taosug
and their client groups, the Iranun and the Balangingi Samal, went on huge
pan-Southeast Asian slaving missions in order to procure the manpower
needed to make Sulu s international trading economy run so smoothly. These
expeditions were always undertaken by heavily-armed ships filled with combat-
ready men. Yet the trafficking of humans also happened in less spectacular
manifestations, but always with the threat or use of violence as part of these
journeys and transactions as well. An extensive traffic in human beings devel-
oped to ferry men and women to a variety of places—and for a variety of
purposes—against the wishes of these two colonial states. These movements
can be summarized under three rubrics: women and girls being sold as concu-
bines and prostitutes; the sale of slaves; and the passage of undocumented
60
Constance Wilson, The Burma-Thailand Frontier over Sixteen Decades: Three Descrip-
tive Documents Athens, OH: Ohio University Southeast Asia Studies, no. 70,1985,
p. 10.
61
British officers in the 'Unadministered Areas' of Upper Burma estimated in the
1920s that 30-40 per cent of local populations in some places had been pro-
cured as slaves. See Gordon Means, 'Human Sacrifice and Slavery in the "Unadmin-
istered" Areas of Upper Burma During the Colonial Era,' SOJOURN, 15, 2, 2000,
pp. 188-9.
62
PRO/FO/CP: Diary of the Officiating Political Agent, Bhamo, from 1-31 Jan.
1876, (#2925/115[i]), vol. 26.

63
See 'Upper Burma', Blackwood's Magazine (n.d.), excerpted as "Our New Eastern
Province" in the Straits Times, 22 Apr. 1886, p. 3.

64
See "The Karenee Plateau, Pegu: A Description' Friend of India, 7 Feb. 1856.
127
labor known as coolies'.6^ These 'human trades' were objectionable to "Western
regimes because their continued passage against government proscriptions
made a mockery of the ostensible 'civilizing mission' of colonial Europeans.
Europeans were quite prepared to encourage the transit of women for prostitu-
tion and the passage of indentured Asians for cheap labour when it suited their
own purposes, but a huge commerce for these unfortunate human beings also
developed outside of the legalized colonial structures. These latter trades were
often accomplished through violent means and under the barrel of privately-
owned guns.
As for the trade in females for sexual purposes, the problem seen by imperial
states was that many of the women and girls bought and sold were, in fact,
unwilling (or underage) participants in the colonial system of sanctioned pros-
titution. They were smuggled alongside the legally moving women-for-sale,
and crossed the region's borders in a variety of directions. In the late 1860s it
became clear that Batak women from Asahan (Sumatra) were being trafficked
across the Straits to Melaka, and landed at night. The customers who bought
them included the son of the local Chinese Kapitan, and one of the wealthiest
merchants in the colony, a taukeh named Tek Chang. Because these women
were 'heathens', and not Muslim, the Resident Councilor of Melaka explained,
the Chinese buyers could import and use them without fear of having to con-
vert, or of any neighborhood repercussions.66 Two Malay Hajjis also gave tes-
timony to the authorities that Batak women were silently being shipped inland
to Malaya's tin mines, where Chinese and Malay buyers purchased them from
Penang traders.6" Into the 1870s and 1880s, women were also quietly smuggled
65
As with the terms 'smuggling' and 'smugglers', I use the term 'coolie' with caution
here as it has a demeaning connotation to some modern ears. This was the term in
use at the time, however, and utilizing it seems to make more sense than the term
'laborer', which does not necessarily have the same implication of movement to for-
eign shores in this context.

66
The women were landed at the backs of houses at night, and were kept as concubines
after that, at a price of $50-$70 per head. See Resident Councilor, Malacca to Sec.
of Gov't, Straits, 10 Apr. 1866, in CO 273/9.

6
Testimony of Hadji Abdul Raman, and of Hadji Abdullah bin Batu, both given to
Major Burns, 10 Apr. 1866, in CO 273/9. See also Resident Councilor, Penang, to
Sec. of Gov't., Straits, 24 Apr. 1866, and 30 May, 1866, both in CO 273/9. The
Resident Councillor said that the women were generally only sold in times of distress,
when they would be taken down to the coasts. After the turn of the century, miners
received prostitutes who had been warded by the state as brides; see Perak Gov't Ga-
zette, 1902, extract following p. 336.
128
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
into Singapore from China, and also from Borneo and other neighboring
islands, stretching across the Dutch dominions.68 Bugis shippers seem to have
been particularly involved in these latter voyages, using their prahus to great
effect in Riau's local shallow waters.69 By the early 1880s the reports also sin-
gled out Annam (Vietnam) and Siam as source countries, with the purchasers
0
of these women being Singapore Arabs and Chinese.
The trade in illegal labour, be it in the form of trafficked coolies or slaves,
followed many of these same patterns in the archipelago world. Slaving was
alive and well in Insular Southeast Asia in the middle decades of the nineteenth
century, especially in many areas along the length of the frontier. Batavia saw
the large scale of the slave trade between North Sumatra and the Malay
Peninsula as a good reason (or excuse, depending on whose letters one reads)
for expansion there in the late 1860s. Some 8-10,000 slaves were said to pass
across the Melaka Straits every year, though the British disputed the size of
1
this number. Many of these men and women were caught by armed slave-
catchers in the mountains of Sumatra, usually men from coastal societies who
had figured out ways to make profits on the sale of their higher-altitude,
inland-dwelling neighbors. For the trade in 'crimped' or 'sly' coolies (those
laborers not under the protection and reporting practices of the colonial state)
the calculus could be just as precarious. These men—usually from places such
as Guangdong and Fujian provinces in Southeastern China—lived lives of
grim servitude in a number of Southeast Asian locales where they had no
recourse for the harsh treatment meted out to them on a daily basis. Millions
of poor laborers passed in 'official' ways down to Southeast Asia, though oth-
ers, most notably in China, were kidnapped (especially farmers and coastal
68
'Persons, chiefly women and children, are bought in China, Borneo, and the islands
adjacent to Singapore and brought here as prostitutes and servants. It is quite pos-
sible that these persons change hands here, but this is not done openly... It is an of-
fense punishable with seven years of imprisonment.' Captain Dunlop, Inspector
General of Police, Straits, to Acting Colonial Secretary, 4 Apr. 1874, in CO
273/79.
69
Yvonne Quahe, We Remember: Cameos of Pioneer Life, Singapore: Landmark Books,
1986, p. 80.
0
Gov, SS to CO, 11 Aug. 1882, #290, in CO 273/115. Governor Weld stated that
the chief traffickers of women into the colony snckq prahus and junks, many of which
came from across the Dutch frontier.

1
See British Envoy, The Hague to Foreign Office (FO), 1 Feb. 1866, #20, and Gov,
SS to Sec. of State for India, London, 6 Apr. #406, both in CO 273/9.
129
fishermen), sold (including prisoners taken in inter-clan battles), or simply
duped by traveling recruiters, who then trafficked these men into waiting
boats.72 Armed overseers made sure that few escaped. They lived out their lives
as a footnote to Southeast Asia's economic 'progress' that was achieved at the
fin de siecle, when the region became widely known as a place sporting several
of the most profitable colonies to be found anywhere on earth.
Conclusion
Head-on violence was by and large slowly disappearing as an option for overt
resistance against the colonial state in late nineteenth and early-twentieth cen-
tury Southeast Asia. As a range of area polities—sultanates, rajas, kingdoms,
and smaller political groupings—all came under European control, open con-
flict against the superior armies and navies of the Western imperial powers
became less and less of a realistic course of action for colonized indigenous
peoples. Violence, if it was to be exercised, had to be exercised quietly, and this
was where smuggling became increasingly important. Trading in a range of
forbidden commodities, local actors strove to continue making profits even
when such trades were expressly criminalized by their colonial masters. The
transit of opium, munitions and human beings for a broad spectrum of pur-
poses was not forbidden perse by these European regimes, but their transit was
monopolized by the state in regulated forms. Any competitors trading outside
of this system were immediately labelled as outlaws. This did not stop area
peoples from participating in such activities. Yet it did require them to ensure
that they held their own means toward violence and coercion to pursue these
lines of commerce, and to resist capture and incarceration in the event that
they were caught.
Colonial regimes sought to stamp out smugglers because they were seen to
be antithetical to the mission civilicatrice. The hypocrisy of these administra-
2
See especially Eunice Thio's article on the mechanisms of labor trafficking; 'The Chi-
nese Protectorate: Events and Conditions Leading to its Establishment 1823-1877',
Journal of the South Seas, xvi, 1-2, I960, pp. 40-80 and Leonard Blusse, 'China Over-
zee: Aard en Omvang van de Chinese Migratie' in Het Paradijs is Aan de Overzijde,
Piet Emmer and Herman Obdeijn (eds) (Utrecht: Van Arkel, 1998), pp. 34-50.
Javanese labor was also utilized and exploited in similar ways; see Vincent Houben,
'Nyabrang/Overzee Gaan: Javaanse Emigratie' in Het Paradijs is Aan de Overzijde,
Piet Emmer and Herman Obdeijn (eds), Utrecht: Van Arkel, 1998, pp. 51-65.
130
VIOLENT UNDERTOWS
tions was clear: opium was fine so long as the state profited from its passage;
the munitions trade was also tolerated so long as the revenues accrued flowed
directly into colonial exchequers. Prostitution was deemed necessary as a sexual
outlet for the huge male laboring populations that maintained and built colo-
nial enterprises, but it helped that the colonial state received taxes on this
trans-regional trade, too. Smugglers complicated these narratives by continuing
to trade in these 'commodities' as well, though outside of the strictures erected
by colonial governments. To do this, they needed to engage in violence on a
systemic basis on their own: pushing opium through the margins of state-
controlled spaces, often in armed mule caravans; smuggling heavily-guarded
women in the holds of ships; selling guns to secret societies, and to anyone else
who needed firearms for a variety of personal reasons. Private violence did not
disappear in late colonial Southeast Asia, in other words; it merely went fur-
ther underground than it had ever been required to previously. It still functions
as an element of Southeast Asia's regional economy today, a vestigial legacy of
processes of coercion now several centuries old.
131
6
TRIBES' AND WARLORDS IN SOUTHERN
AFGHANISTAN, 1980-20031
Antonio Giustozzi and No or Ullah
'Warlords' and 'tribes' are generally seen as archetypal protagonists of private
violence. In Afghanistan as elsewhere, they have—in the collective imagination
if not in reality—been presented as the key sources of private violence today.
Both terms, however, are problematic and controversial, and so cannot be used
in a scholarly fashion without being first carefully defined. This chapter there-
fore starts with an attempt at precisely such an exercise in definition. It then
proceeds to consider the role of the state in generating or 'inviting' private
violence. It should be made clear that not all non-state violence is private.
Political movements opposed to a government and aiming to capture the state
would not normally be considered perprotators of private violence, but the
boundaries blur when the movements in question are not political parties or
organizations, but are instead communities led by local leaders ('tribes') or
1
The term 'tribe' is the object of an intense debate among anthropologists. In this pa-
per, it is used as a translation of the locally used qabile, to indicate 'localised groups
in which kinship is the dominant idiom of organization, and whose members con-
sider themselves culturally distinct (in terms of customs, dialect or language, and
origins)' and have been politically unified at least for much of their history. Richard
Tapper, 'Introduction', The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan, Rich-
ard Tapper (ed.), London: Croom Helm, 1983, p. 9.
133
military leaders with their own, patrimonially recruited following ('warlords').
The aims of these groups may well be political; certainly they are political in
their implications. So are their vehicles of private violence compatible with
those deployed by gangsters or pirates ? We return to this question at the end
of the chapter.
The Place of Warlords in the Anthropology ofthe Tribes
The distinction between different types of non-state actors on the basis of the
presence or absence of an ideological background is today well established.
Much of the literature clearly distinguishes between ideological groups such
as Maoist peasant armies or Islamist insurgent groups, from their non-ideo-
logical counterparts. However, it is also necessary to distinguish different 'ideal
types' within the ranks of the latter, such as warlords and strongmen.2 While
both are charismatic leaders who build a personal following, what characterizes
warlords is that their leadership is exercised over military forces. In other
words, their strength is their military legitimacy. This, together with their con-
trol over a territory, in turn gives them a political role, but without the benefits
of political legitimacy. By contrast, strongmen do not have a military back-
ground, although they have armed followers whom they mainly use to coerce
obedience from the surrounding population. They might have a degree of
political legitimacy, as they might come from notable families or might claim
a 'traditional' role (i.e. tribal leader) and at least accept some of the social con-
straints that come with it.
In order to understand warlordism and the importance of the above distinc-
tions in Afghanistan, we also need to look at parts of the country where war-
lordism did not find a fertile ground.3 The so-called 'Pashtun belt' offers such
a term of comparison. In this area, throughout the years of jihads and civil
wars, few warlords emerged, and few of those that did lasted very long. Since
the general conditions brought about by the war in this area were similar to
those of the rest of the country, it appears obvious that the weak presence of
2
See Antonio Giustozzi, The debate on warlordism. Discussion paper 13, London:
Crisis States Research Centre LSE, 2005; and Antonio Giustozzi, The Missing Ingre-
dient: Nonideological Insurgency and State Collapse in Western Afghanistan, 1979-
1992, London: Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, 2007

3
See Antonio Giustozzi, Genesis of a 'prince': The rise of Ismail Khan in western Af-
ghanistan, 1979-1992, London: Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, 2006, for the
case of an environment conductive to warlordism, such as Herat.
134
'TRIBES' AND WARLORDS IN SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN, 1980-2005
warlords must be due to local factors. Even when former military commanders
of the government became autonomous and seized local political power, their
military structures could not be sustained in the long term.
The anthropological literature provides some hints in understanding why
this might be.4 First of all, it is important to distinguish between different
types of tribal notables. The smaller notables, the village elders, such as arbabs
and maliks, regulate the sharing of water and act as intermediaries in the event
of a conflict among villagers. They have limited power and small clienteles,
ranging between five and seventy men.5 The big notables, the khans, have a
much larger following than the elders and have significant economic resources.
One important aspect of their role is to maintain contacts with government
and other khans. They have to come from respected families and tend to be
charismatic leaders, although in practice the position otkhan is normally inher-
ited, especially among some tribes.6 Would-be warlords would have to take up
a role similar to that of the khans in order to be legitimized in tribal terms.
The conundrum faced by aspiring Pashtun warlords was the same more
generally affecting tribal leadership. In Sahlins' terms, the very tool that enables
tribal leaders to establish powerful political entities, segmentary solidarity, is
also instrumental in political fragmentation. As Glatzer puts it:
Once a charismatic leader who used to master the instrument of segmentary alliance
loses influence or dies, the divisive factor of the segmentary tribal system will gain the
upper hand. Tribal systems do not usually develop institutionalised political power
which would be able to tolerate fluctuations in the abilities of individual rulers.
Political leaders can hardly build their power on the tribal structure alone since that is
an egalitarian one. They continuously need to convince their followers and rivals of
their superior personal qualities, and must procure and redistribute resources from
4
An overview of the social structure of the Pashtuns, as opposed to that of the Uzbeks
and Tajiks, is also in C. Noelle Karimi, State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Af-
ghanistan, London: Curzon, 1997, pp. 156-157.
^ Bernt Glatzer, Nomaden von Gharjistan, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977,
p. 172.
6
Sarajuddin Rasuly Diepolitischen Eliten Afghanistans, Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 1997, pp. 104-118.
Marshall Sahlins 'The Segmentary Lineage: An Organisation of Predatory Expansion',
American Anthopologist, vol. 80, no. 1,1961, pp. 53-70. See also Bernt Glatzer'Cen-
tre and Periphery in Afghanistan: New Identities in a Broken State', Sociologus,N/mttv
2002.
135
outside the tribal realm. Their followers expect material or symbolic advantages from
them, and in times of political chaos people demand that their leaders provide security.
Clients may quickly be disappointed in a khan or commander and may switch over-
night to a different one'.8
Until the early 1980s, Pashtun tribes were frequently described as an extreme
example of a segmentary society, based on the research of such authors as
F. Barth among the Swats of Pakistan and by J.W. Anderson among the Afghan
Ghilzhais.9 The power of the tribal leaders, maliks and khans, was described as
limited and subject to the approval of tribal councils (jirgas). The tribes, there-
fore, were seen as very egalitarian, providing a type of political environment
in which warlord polities could hardly establish themselves. However, gener-
alizations based on the work of these two scholars failed to recognize that the
Pashtun tribal system varies from region to region and from tribe to tribe. In
his work in Pakistan, A. Ahmad found that social differentiation could exist
within Pashtun tribes. Ahmad described two types of social organization
among the Pashtun of Pakistan, the first was called and it corresponded
to earlier egalitarian models. In his definition, Nang are the honor-bound
Pashtuns, who still abide to the tribal code (Pashtunwali) in full and whose
society is acephalous and segmentary. Yet he also found found a second type
of social organization called Galang. This is characterized by a hierarchical
social structure, where Pashtunwali plays a more modest role and patron-client
relations are dominant.10 Soviet anthropologists, who intensified their work
in the area during the 1980s, developed Ahmed's argument futher and went
as far as talking of a process of feudalization in some Pashtun tribes. This pro-
cess was the most advanced among the tribes living closer to the cities and
towns and those closest to the monarchy, such as the Durranis. In these cases,
landlords used their ability to raise rent to turn into full time 'leaders', using
their resources to strengthen their influence. An outcome of this development
was that the state co-opted tribal leaders and appointed them as local repre-
8
Glatzer, 'Centre and Periphery in Afghanistan'
9
Frederick Barth Political Leadership Among Swat Pathans, LSE Monograph Series,
NY: Humanities Press, 1959; Jon Anderson "There are No Khans Anymore' The
Middle East Journal, no. 32, 1978, pp. 119-149.

10
Akbar S. Ahmed 'Tribes and States in Waziristan' in The Conflict oj Tribe and State
in Tran and Afghanistan, in Richard Tapper (ed.), London: Groom Helm, 1983,
pp. 196-7. See also David B. Edwards, 'Learning from the Swat Pathans: Political
Leadership in Afghanistan 1978-97', American Ethnologist, vol. 25, no. 4, 1998,
p. 714.
136
sentatives, in charge of gathering taxes and duties from fellow tribesmen among
other things.11 This further strengthened the hierarchical character of these
societies and indeed started a process of feudalization. Katkov distinguishes
three types of Pashtun tribes:
1) qaumi, that is egalitarian, where the leader does not have real power and has to
depend on the jirga;
2) ruthavi, that is hierarchical, with a tendency towards feudalization and usurpation
of the power of the tribesmen by the leader; these leaders have the ability to influ-
ence the orientation of their followers, either directly or though their representa-
tives, who allow the leader to maintain influence even if he resettles in the city;
3) kuchi, that is nomadic and very egalitarian.
That leaders in many cases went far beyond the role attributed to them in
the ideal of tribal 'tradition' is attested by existing literature. Elphinstone
observed in 1815 that the tribes closest to the monarchy were the 'most obedi-
ent' to their khans}1 Khans have long been reported to be manipulating the
election of jirgas so that their own people were selected. As the Afghan state
started developing during the twentieth century, the leaders frequently and
often successfully attempted to get their own relatives and friends in positions
within the administration.13 In the 1970s, the scholarly literature reported a
tendency towards a change in the role of tribal leaders, away from lineage soli-
darity towards seeking individual or factional advantage. Some elements of
this development seem to confirm that it is possible to speak of a tendency
towards feudalization, such as the increasing reliance on dependent sharecrop-
11
I.E. Katkov, 'Sotsial'nye aspekty plemennoi struktury pushtunov', in Afganistan:
Istoriya, ekonomika, kul'tum (shornik statei), Moscow: Nauka, 1989, pp. 54-55. Of
course feudalization is meant by Katkov in the Marxist sense and we too shall use it
here with that meaning. See also L. Temirkhanov Vostochnyepushtuny i novoe vremya,
Moscow: Nauka, 1984 and Vostochnye pushtuny: osnovnye prohlemy novoi istorii,
Moscow: Nauka, 1987. A critique of this use of the term can be found in Zemaray
Daoud, L'Etat monarchique dans La formation sociale afghane, Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1982, p. 62, who argues that the lack of formal bounds of dependency
prevents the use of the concept of feudalism. However, Soviet authors tend to de-
scribe the situation more in terms of a process leading to feudalism, rather than feu-
dalism itself.
12
Mounstuart Elphinstone, Zfo account of the Kingdom of Cauhul, London: Longman
1815, p. 217. Also quoted in Glatzer, 'Centre and Periphery in Afghanistan'.

13
Rasuly, Diepolitischen Eliten, pp. 104-118.
137
pers as a source of revenue and power.14 The process of feudalization evidently
creates a social environment more conductive to the consolidation of the
power of rulers. This could have the further consequence of eventually creating
a social environment that favours the consolidation ofwarlordism and its hier-
archical military structures.
Hierarchization is therefore a key aspect of the historical dynamic of the
tribal system, sometimes even leading to the creation of states. The model pro-
posed by Tapper and Glatzer is derived from Ibn Khaldun1^ and focuses on
the attraction exercised on the tribes by the city. Not only is the city at the
centre of a 'vortex' which leads to the creation of surplus-extracting structures
from the surrounding tribes, but it draws the hereditary khans, or tribal leaders,
into the city. The khans sometime capture the city, sometimes just move in.
The control of the city, or even just the ability to establish connections with
it, gives access to unprecedented wealth and financial resources. This can prove
a major competitive advantage against the khans rivals and help him dramati-
cally expand his power in the short term, sometimes to the point of allowing
him to build a type of tribal state. In the Ibn-Khaldunian cycle, however, over
time the leader or his descendants distance themselves from their tribal base
to the extent that they lose it and are easily overthrown.16 This is why tribal
states are eminently unstable. Yet the question remains, why did warlordism
not intervene as a stabilizing factor, leading to the regionalization and feudal-
ization of the tribal state?
In Afghanistan's recent history, arguably a new Khaldunian cycle started in
1978, when the war began. The leftist group which took power, the Hizh-i
Demokratik-eKhalq (HDK), was not tribally based. Yet the 'revolution' destab-
lized the tribal environment, creating a situation in which the old established
khan families lost much of their influence as security became the primary con-
cern. This development opened the way to a new generation of'rougher' tribal
leaders, who were more likely to be proficient in the handling of militias and
armed groups. In this sense, the private violence that followed was state-driven.
14
H. R Ewans-von Krbek, The Social Structure and Organisation of a Pakhto Speaking
Community in Afghanistan, PhD thesis, University of Durham, 1977, pp. 276;
281-88; 301. A trend towards a more hierarchical system was also indentified in
Anderson, "There Are No Khans Anymore', pp. 167-183.

b
Abu Zayd Abdu 1-Rahman ibn Muhammad Ibn Khaldun, (1377), TheMuqaddimah:
An Introduction to History, Franz Rosenthal (trans.), Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2004.

16
Tapper, 'Introduction', and Glatzer, 'Political Organisation'.
138
Although this dynamic was focused on the local level, a key aspect of this loss
of influence was the severing of the link to the central government, due to the
removal of the old aristocratic elite from Kabul. This was by no means a weak-
ening of tribal and ethnic affiliations themselves, as these reasserted themselves
when the state started collapsing during the 1980s and the centre progressively
lost its authority over the periphery. The tribes stepped in to provide a modi-
cum of security in the absence of the central state. This in turn favored the
emergence of'tribal entrepreneurs', who claimed tribal leadership on the basis
of a real or alleged unifying role within the different tribes or tribal segments.
These 'entrepreneurs' were often inaccurately described as 'warlords', particu-
larly by the press. On the basis of the definitions adopted in this paper, most
of them could rather be described as strongmen. A hybrid category can be
indentified as 'tribal warlords', who have demonstrated the ability to lead men
into battle and win, but use these skills and reputation to claim tribal leader-
ship, rather than form their own fully autonomous polity. These distinctions
are not merely academic. While both warlords and tribal warlords can be
expected to be able to confront a military threat, strongmen are likely to melt
away in the face of it. Warlords, however, have a greater potential for expansion
than tribal warlords, who are bound to a particular population group. But the
role of warlords becomes problematic once the external threat disappears, as
their military legimacy loses importance and the competition of tribally rooted
rivals can reassert itself. Tribal warlords are at least in a better position to
reconvert their military leadership and claim a role as tribal leaders, not dis-
similarly from the strongmen.
As it is already evident from the emergence of new types of actors, the tribal
'entrepreneurs', be they tribal warlords or strongmen, the 1978 cycle was dif-
ferent from previous ones. One of the major catalysts for this new development
was foreign interference. I do not refer here to the Soviet Army, whose role in
1979-1989 demonstrated similarities with the role of the British Army during
the nineteenth century. Instead, I focus on the patronage of political organiza-
tions active among the tribes by foreign powers, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
and United States. Although dependency from foreign patrons was hardly a
new development in Afghanistan, having started already in the late-nineteenth
century, the 1978 cycle saw this dependency rapidly rise to unprecedented
levels. This was a major factor in the emergence of entrepreneurs, who exploited
these new opportunities for raising revenue and establishing a following.
Again, in this sense private violence was state-driven, even if the Afghan state
was not always responsible.
139
While the tribal entrepreneurs were all to some extent the product of for-
eign support and of the crisis of the old tribal leadership, having filled the
vacuum left by it, the tribal warlords had in part also a different origin. While
the Afghan tribes had still been able to teach a lesson or two to careless British
imperialists a century or so earlier, during the 1978-1989 war, the military
inadequacy of their type of warfare became obvious.1 Although strongmen
continued to control the largest part of the Pashtun tribes, the resulting mili-
tary pressure resulted both in the emergence of non-tribal, ideologically moti-
vated groups,18 and in the demand for military leadership skills. Warlords
exploited this demand, as well as the availability of foreign patronage, to seize
control of specific tribal groups or geographical areas. Such examples of Pash-
tun warlords are only found in the southern part of Afghanistan, among the
ruthavi Durrani tribes, which would seem to confirm that these tribes are more
prone to warlordism than qaumi ones. The Durrani tribes dominate southern
Afghanistan, although a significant minority of Ghilzais also exist (see map
1). In order to illustrate the different issues related to the role of warlords in a
Pashtun environment, three cases will be discussed here. One of them is an
example from Kandahar province (Esmatullah Muslim), while the others are
from Helmand province (the Akhundzadas and the militia commanders of
Lashkargah). We aim not only to chart their rise to power, but also to show
how reliance on tribal legitimization or lack thereof determined patterns of
expansion and of re-integration in the post-conflict environment.
Esmatullah Muslim: Tribal Warlord of the Achakzais
Of all the southern military leaders, Esmatullah Muslim is the one who was
most often labelled a warlord by both Afghans and foreigners. Certain aspects
of his curriculum vitae are doubtless consistent with that label. He had a mili-
tary background, and was trained as an officer in Afghanistan and in the
1
See on this point Olivier Roy 'Nature de la guerre en Afghanistan', Les Temps Mod-
ernes,]\in. 1998, pp. 1-37.

18
This is argument developed by Olivier Roy Afghanistan: la guerre comme facteur
du passage au politique', Revue Fran$aise des Sciences Politiques, December 1989.
Although ideologically motivated groups existed among the Pashtuns and during
the 1990s they had an important role in altering the tribal patterns in politics and
warfare, they existed and operated side by side with tribal warlords, often actually
fighting them. In this study, I am trying to isolate 'tribal' society from the problem
of ideological influences, in order to assess the role of warlords.
140
Map 1: Main tribes of Southern Afghanistan. Except Ghilzai and Baluch, all the other
tribes indicated belong to the Durrani confederation.
Sachar _/ \ Taywara u
Kuman URUZGAN-
Shindand .GH
Pur Chaman
Alizai Achakzai,
Amam Dama . Bachran
Bala Bulur Chora
Gulistan Alizai,
FARAH .Alokozai'
'usht Mod 'NawZadN N Alizai Popolzai Noorzai .ZABUL"
Calay-i-Kah ^Noorza Nawa
Farah Bakwa Ghilzai Mizan
Washer Alokozai
i ShahWali L -i,Ghilzai
Noorzai Eshaqzai Kot \Shamu
Labh Wa Juwayn Alokozai
Khash Moo Eshaqzai i Barakzai Mohammadzai
NaoAli '/Maywand,
Ghilzai PoPolzai /Noorza PopolzaifK^1 Barakzai
Alizai
-Barakzai )
Chakhanbur Noorza
Baluch Noorzai
Ghilzai 'Daman
Alizai HI Achakzai 1 EshaqZai i
Achakzai
/
NIMROZ -Ghilzai KANDAHAR PAKISTAN
Barrech.
Chahar Bulak
Dishu
Baluch
Baluch
Sources: interviews with locals and UN and NGO officials.
USSR, later serving as a major at the time of the Saur coup. Perhaps this is why
he was more successful than others in organising a large militia, which was a
comparatively proficient fighting force. His base in the district of Spin Boldak
was very close to the supply lines of the mujahidin in Pakistan and exposed his
group to a constant military pressure. Yet it was only in 1988, after the Soviet
withdrawal from Kandahar, that the mujahidin were able to defeat him, thanks
to an onslaught coordinated by the Pakistani Security Service (ISI).19
Under the agreement with Kabul, Esmatullah was given the task to guard
all the Achekzai settlements and 130 kilometers of the border with Pakistan,
as well as the road connecting the important border post of Spin Boldak with
Kandahar. A variety of sources recognize his high degree of activism against
the mujahidin. He himself claimed to have successfully carried out twenty
ambushes against the mujahidin and to have captured six caravans loaded with
weapons in the second half of 1985. Thanks to government resources and his
own charisma, he could extensively recruit among the unemployed youth,
mainly of the Achekzais. He definitely had the reputation of a brave com-
19
Mark Urban, War in Afghanistan, Basingstoke: Macmillan, p. 241.
141
mander and knew how to reward his fighters.20 In addition to this, many
Achekzai smugglers, who were busy in fierce rivalry with Noorzai smugglers,
also supported him for securing the lucrative smuggling route of Spin Boldak.
By 1988 General Esmatullah (though he styled himself'Marshal') could field
at least 3,000 men, with some sources estimating as high as 6-10,000, equipped
with armoured vehicles and heavy guns. Even after the loss in 1988 of his HQ
in Spin Boldak, he continued to fight alongside the Afghan Army around Kan-
dahar, where he took part in a victorious counter-offensive in Tor Khowtal.21
If he was definitely a military leader, he also had other characteristics typi-
cal of warlords, namely a lack of interest in political ideology and his resis-
tance to any control from the political authorities. During his days as a jihadi
commander in 1979 and early 1980s he refused to integrate into any of the
existing parties based in Peshawar and he formed his own group, which he
called Fidayan-e Islam. This group of a few hundred followers did not have
any discernible organizational structure—it was essentially Esmatullah's pri-
vate militia. Until 1983 he was paid by ISI (the Pakistani Inter-Service Intel-
ligence). He later developed differences with his patrons over supplies, with
the ISI and fellow mujahidin accusing him of having stolen weapons and deal-
ing with the Kabul government. He was also isolated from traditional elites
who were hoping for an eventual restoration of the king and held him in con-
tempt for his lowly lineage.22 Although he appears to have been a friend of
President Karmal, he was keen to distance himself from the 'communist' gov-
ernment; after 1987, he emerged as an admirer of President Najibullah. In
1989 he was reported to have again offered his services to ISI, who however
refused to hire him anew. Throughout the 1980s he maintained complete
authority over his territory (Spin Boldak district of Kandahar) and was seen
by the government as an unruly character, an attitude strengthened by his
fondeness for alcohol and drugs.23
20 Anatol Lieven, 'Mujahidin fail to subdue the pirate turncoat', The Times, 26 Jan.
1989.
21
Ibid.; TASS, 3 Feb. 1986; J. HilTAfghanistan in 1988: Year of the Mujahidin,
Forces Journal International, Mar. 1989; Le Monde, 5-6 Feb. 1989; A. Bonner,^^^^
the Afghans, Durham: Duke University Press, 1987, p. 257; G.P. FtFon Afganistan:
kratkii hiograficheskii spravochnik, Moscow: Kliuch S, 2002, p. 209.

22
The Barakzai elite, to which traditionally the Achazkais referred for leadership, was
strongly pro-monarchy and had opted for a wait-and-see attitude, showing little in-
terest for the war itself.

23
Urban, War in Afghanistan,^. \A0\G\{csDonomoico, Revolution Unending, London:
142
Contrary to those warlords of the north and west, who managed at some
point to rise above their strictly military role,24 Esmatullah did not display any
sense of the importance of public relations. He was widely rumored to have
personally killed hundreds of innocent people without reason A His victims
included many tribal chiefs and road travellers and even popular celebrities,
such as singer Ubaidullah Jan, a fact which magnified the impact of his abuses.
He himself and his followers were involved in forced marriages, rape and tor-
ture and he boasted to have ten young wives.
He did not show much diplomatic judgement either. In November of 1987
he was involved in a shoot-out in the Loya Jirga, to which he was a delegate,
when the security services refused to let him enter while armed. At least four-
teen people were killed in this incident, and more bloodshed followed when
he was placed under arrest in Kabul. One year later he was back in Kandahar.26
He did not refrain from challenging the authorities, as demonstrated when he
clashed with Minister of Interior Gulabzoi, who had tried to stop him from
taking a female singer hostage and trying to strip her off and dance.2 In
another instance he was reported to have slapped the face of the head of mili-
tary counter-intelligence over a dispute.28
This attitude, while certainly related to his own character and bad habits, is
likely to have had something to do with his acquired status of important leader.
His role as leading, and for a long time only, militia commander in Kandahar
made him very precious to the government. Therefore he was under little pres-
sure to behave well. Significantly, when he died in 1991 in Moscow, where he
was receiving treatment for cancer, rumours spread in Afghanistan that he had
been poisoned by the government, who wanted to get rid of him without los-
C. Hurst & Co., 2005, p. 187; Lieven, 'Mujahidin fail to subdue the pirate turncoat';
Christopher Walker, 'Turncoats and eccentrics revel in intrigues of Kabul', The Times,
10 Mar. 1989. President Najibullah himself once described him in public as a drunk-
hard and an addict.
See A. Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: War and Warlords in Afghanistan, London:
C. Hurst & Co., 2009.
^ Lieven 'Mujahidin fail to subdue the pirate turncoat'.

26
Asiaweek, 29 Jun. 1986, p. A\ \ Reuters, 30 Mar. 1989; Victor Korgun, 'Natsional'noe
primirenie i vnutripoliticheskaya situatsiya v 1988 g.', SpetsiaTnyi Byulleten AN
SSSR—IV, no. 2, 1990, pp. 56-7.

2
Walker, 'Turncoats and eccentrics'.
28
Interview with former KhAD ofEcial, London, Aug. 2005.
143
ing the support of his fellow tribesmen.29 A member of the Adozai branch of
the Achakzai tribe, he rapidly became influential within the tribe. He claimed
to lead 100,000 people, although more realistic estimates would put the num-
ber at around 50,000.30 Some sources claim that his original plan was to unify
Durrani opposition to the communist regime, as the leaders of the other Pak-
istani-controlled parties were all Ghilzai or non-tribal. In any case, this project
must have been dropped soon as a result of the deterioration of his relations
with other mujahidin groups in Kandahar. Once he had firmly established
himself as a leader of the Achakzais, he had both little incentive and potential
to try and expand beyond these limits.
His military legitimacy was eroded somewhat during the second half of the
1980s, as he spent most of is time in Kabul rather than leading his men in the
field. By then, however, he had consolidated his tribal leadership, thanks to his
ability to secure patronage and other advantages for his fellow tribesmen. Like
the tribal aristocracy which he aimed to replace, he could still distribute ben-
efits from Kabul. In part because of this, he remains popular within his tribe
even today, despite his record of abuses and the widespread loathing of almost
everybody else. During the Taliban era his corpse was removed from the
Khirka Sharif cemetery of Kandahar, but after the fall of the Taliban his tribes-
men once again buried him in the same graveyard. A tribal militia under the
command of his nephews joined the Barakzai strongman, Gul Agha Sherzai,
in his fight against the Taliban in Kandahar in late 2001. After the fall of the
Taliban, once again his men were appointed in Spin Boldaks border force,
despite the fact that Gul Agha's father and Esmatullah had been bitter enemies
during the time of jihad.31 The lasting popularity of the eponymous tribal war-
lord is consistent with our claim here that military skills have long been a key
source of legitimization in tribal environments.32 However, his case also shows
the inability of tribal warlordism to bypass social segmentation. He remained
29
Information gathered by Noor Ullah during his tenure as UN official.
30
TASS 3 Feb. 1986; Hill Afghanistan in 1988'; Le Monde 5-6 Feb. 1989; Bonner,
Among the Afghans, p. 257. There are certainly less then 100,000 Achakzais in Kan-
dahar province, although Esmatullah might have meant to include in his claim some
fellow Achakzais living in Pakistan.

31
Interview with UN sources, Kandahar, May 2005; Jeft B. Harmon 'Toe-to-toe with
Russians in Kandahar's holy war', The Times, 11 Aug. 1985.

32
See also Bernt Glatzer 'The Pashtun Tribal System', in G. Pfeffer & D. K. Behera
(eds), Concept of Tribal Society, Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies, vol. 5, New
Delhi: Concept Publishers, 2002, pp. 265-282.
144
trapped in his role of Achakzai leader and his greater ambitions were com-
pletely frustrated. This fate was by no means characteristic only of Esmatullah,
as we shall shortly see.
Esmatullah Muslim's case shows how the state was instrumental in generat-
ing warlords out of tribally based leaders, suggesting at least that violence can
be 'private' to various degrees. The other case studies which follow confirm the
role of the state in sustaining warlords in a variety of ways.
The Akhundzadas: Tribal Warlords of Helm and
A confirmation of tribally-based warlords' potential for resilience conies from
an example of a family who fought on the jihadi side during the 1978-1992
war. The Akhundzadas played an important role since the very beginning of
the conflict in the southwest. Belonging to main tribe of Helmand, the Alizais,
they hailed from the Musa Qala district in northern Helmand. While the new
districts of Nad Ali and Nawa, where farmers tended to be immigrants from
mixed tribal backgrounds and tribal rhetoric had little impact, in the other
districts tribal networks remained much more solid, especially in the north. It
was first Mullah Mohammad Nasim Akhundzada who became a prominent
commander of Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi's Harakat-e-Inqilab-eTslami,
the \c2idmgjihadi party in Helmand. The information available on Nasim is
contradictory. He appears to have been a relatively charismatic military leader,
who could count on a big number of devoted fighters. He is still seen as having
led many successful battles against the Russian and Afghan government forces,
although the extent of his actual successes has probably been exaggerated, par-
ticularly as far as the Soviet Army is concerned. He was also always involved
in fierce fighting against other jihadi parties, particularly Hizb-e-Islami of Gul-
buddin Hikmatyar. He is described as a very pious man with a very narrow
understanding of Islamic dictates.33 Yet he was also notorious for atrocities
against prisoners of war. Reportedly, he would kill prisoners, bury their bodies
and have a stage built where he would sit and dine along with his companions.
This treatment was reserved not just for ideological enemies like the commu-
nists, but also for his enemies among the jihadis?A
Nasim was not a tribal leader at the start of jihad. He was a taleb at that time
and like other mullahs, his status within Pashtun society was quite modest.
33
Interview with Afghan notable from Helmand, London, Jun. 2005.
34
145
His rise to prominence was a by-product of the war, as he overtook the tradi-
tional khans and accumulated a much greater power than they themselves
could muster. In 1978, when the Khalqis started antagonizing the landlords,
many of these khans fled. Following a successful anti-government uprising in
Sangin district a group of insurgent from Sangin attacked Musa Qala and took
it from the government. As they returned to Sangin, they left in control the
only group of insurgents. The small group inherited weapons left behind by
the Sangin insurgents. When the government retook the district centre, they
moved to the mountains, where they continued their activities and rapidly
became one of the main insurgent groups in the province. As the government
started losing control over the countryside, the khans came back and tried to
reassert themselves against the new generation of military leaders who were
consolidating their hold. In the fighting, the khans had the worst of it and were
wiped out in most of the province.
Despite his clerical background, Nasim appears to have moved to a position
of tribal leadership, rather then use the jihad movement as an opportunity to
build bridges across the tribes. In the following years, three families led the
jihad movement among the Alizais of northern Helmand. Apart from the
Akhundzadas, the two other families were Abdul Rahman Khan's and Abdul
Wahid s. Among them, the one important survivor among the khans was Abdul
Rahman, whose family of well-established traditional khans was locked in a
conflict with the Akhundzadas. Abdul Wahid and Abdul Rahman Khan joined
hands against the rising star of the Akhundzadas.3^ The two sides fought a
bloody war, which peaked in autumn 1987, when Nasim Akhundzada brought
the war deep into Abdul Rahman's territory in Kajaki district. The fighting was
so violent that the locals welcomed Soviet troops as peacemakers when they
deployed in the area.36 Abdul Rahman Khan was under so much pressure from
Mullah Nasim that he had joined Hizb-e Islami, a party not normally known
for being friendly to khans. In northern Helmand, like in much of Afghanistan,
Hizb-e Islami was considered somewhat heretic and viewed as an Ikhwani
group. Much of the fighting between Harakat-e Enqelab and Hizb-i Islami was
in fact a fight between two families, Nasim's and Abdul Rahman's. Other com-
manders Hizb-i Islami, like Moalim Ubaidullah and Moalim Mir Wali, were
35
36
Urban War in Afghanistan, p. 240; George Arney 'The heroes with tarnished haloes:
The ruthless and murderous conflicts of Afghanistan's other war', The Guardian, 5
Jan. 1988.
146
from the 'detribalized' south and were educated and therefore relied more on
ideological arguments for recruitment. After the 1987 fighting, Abdul Rah-
man Khan withdrew back to Girishk, which he held until 1990, when, follow-
ing Nasim Akhundzada's assassination, his brothers unleashed a major offensive
against Hizh-i Islamts last stronghold and wiped it out.3
The Akhundzadas' seem therefore to have have been charismatic military
leaders, but also showed a considerable organizational capability and a flair for
business. Starting from the time of jihad, but accelerating after the Soviet with-
drawal, Nasim appears to have actively worked for the expansion of the narcot-
ics business in Helmand. The poppies were a traditional crop in northern
Helmand, but Nasim favoured their expansion towards southern Helmand, a
territory which he conquered once he had gained an edge over his rivals thanks
to the poppy revenue. His exact role is a matter of controversy. Barnett Rubin
reports that he established a system called Salam (peace), which allowed him
to buy the harvest at the time of sowing, at low prices. According to this inter-
pretation of how Nasim's sytem operated, he also forced all farmers in the area
to cultivate poppies. Those who refused were punished with torture and execu-
tion. There seems to have been a clear difference between northern Helmand,
Akhundzadas' home territory, where they relied on the respect of their fellow
tribesmen to rule, and southern Helmand, where Nasim's rule was imposed by
force. Rubin speaks of a 'personalistic dictatorship' over the peasantry of the
south. Like some of his fellow warlords of northern and western Afghanistan,
he did invest some of his resources in the provision of services to the popula-
tion, such as hospitals, clinics and madrasas, or at least so he claimed.38
Other sources, however, could not find any trace of forced cultivation of
the poppies among the farmers. They attribute the spread of the poppies mainly
to market factors, although Nasim likely encouraged the process. An example
of this can be found with his 1981 fatwa legitimising the cultivation of the
poppy.39 Farmers from the northern districts migrated to the government lands
of the south and took the poppy crop with them.40 In other words, Nasim's
and other Akhundzadas' role might always have been closer to that of a patron-
3
The Washington Times, 18 Apr. 1990.
38
Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1995, p. 245.

39
Alain Labrousse Afghanistan. Opium deguerre, opium depaix, Paris: Fayard, 2005,
p. 109.
40
147
age-dispensing tribal leader than of an authoritarian leader. What is certain is
that he benefited from their role of proctectors of the narcotics trade and due
to their control over the trading routes. In part, the expansion of the territory
under his control was also the result of the need to control the transport routes
of the poppies. In 1989 Nasim fought a bloody battle with Commander Yahya
of rival jihadi party Ittehad-i Islami, for the control of a bridge. Yahya tried to
levy a tax on poppies in summer 1989, only to have Nasim attack his area and
conquer it.41 His businessman-like pragmatism allowed him to send the harvest
to the refineries o£Hizb-i Islami, from where the final product was then smug-
gled into Iran and Pakistan.42
Despite his alleged simplicity', Nasim did show on occasion significant dip-
lomatic skills and certainly more than Esmatullah Muslim. The best example
is his proposal to the US embassy in Pakistan of a deal, whereby he would ban
the cultivation poppies in exchange for $2 million worth of aid. He actually
implemented the deal, although he was assassinated shortly thereafter, alleg-
edly by Hizh-i Islami, which was losing revenue from this deal.43 During the
days of Taliban, the Akhundzadas had taken refuge in Pakistan and there they
developed an intimacy with the Karzai family. After the fall of the Taliban, this
would have allowed them to maintain the position of governor of Helmand
for four years, despite their obvious involvement in the narcotics business.
It is remarkable that Mullah Nasim's system survived his assassination, and
indeed did so quite smoothly. His brothers Mullah Mohammad Rasool and
Mullah Abdul Ghaffar simply took his place. Like some other warlords else-
where, they had developed an easy rapport with government officials. In 1992,
they managed to strike a deal with the head of KhAD in Lashkargah44 and
attacked the city. They were expecting an easy victory, but were defeated by
Allah Noor, Khano, Gul Ahmad Akhond (see further) and their allies in the
Afghan regular army. The Akundzadas subsequently turned their search for
allies westwards and eastwards, coming closer to President Rabbani in Kabul.
Yet at the same time they were also cooperating with Ismail Khan in Herat to
remove the former communist militias from Lashkagah.45 After taking Lash-
11
Ahmed Rashid 'Chief ousted as British troops head for Afghan drug region', The
Daily Telegraph, 23 Dec. 1989; Rubin The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 263.

42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
^ Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending, p. 245. See also the next section on the militias
of Helmand.
148
Map 2: Areas of activity of the Akhundzadas
SAGHAR
TAYWARA
PUR CHAWAN
BAGHRAN
LABULUK
GUUSTAN
NAWZAD KAJAKI
BAKWA
WASHER /SANGIN/ GHORAI
NAHRI
SARRAJ
KHASH ROD
MAYWAND
NAD ALI
LASHKAR
GAH
NAWA-I \
BARAKZAYI
Akhundzada's
core area
REG
Area of
expansion of
Akhundzada's
power
GARMSER
DISHU
149
kargah in 1993, Rasul Akhundzada became the governor of the province, a
position that he kept until the arrival of the Taleban in 1994.
Despite the Akhundzadas' military and business successes, which would
seem to endorse interpretations based on the 'criminal warlord' theories,46 the
case of Helmand also confirms that the job of warlord is a risky one and that
rent-seeking is unlikely to be the sole motivating factor. It is unlikely that, if
the Akhundzadas had been accumulating several millions of dollars every year,
they would have stayed in such a dangerous enviroment. The size of the revenue
generated by their involvement in the poppy trade has been estimated at several
millions of dollars,4 but the Akundzadas' share must have been a fraction of
that. This is demonstrated by the fact that Nasim was ready to give everything
up for $2 million. It is obvious that much of his earnings were redistributed,
particularly to his fighters.
While Rasul died of natural causes, his brother Mullah Ghafar was, like
Nasim, assassinated in Pakistan, this time allegedly by the Taliban. In a further
display of extreme resilience, after the death of the three brothers Mullah Sher
Mohammad, son of Mohammad Rasul, replaced them at the head of the family
and became governor of the province in 2001. He would serve to be the second
longest lasting provincial governor of post-Taliban Afghanistan. He was
removed from his job only in December 2005, at the insistence of the British.
They did not want to deploy their troops in Helmand in the presence of a gov-
ernor notoriously compromized with the narco-trafficking.48 Like Nasim, Sher
Mohammad displayed a remarkable diplomatic ability in staying in his post
despite, the growing problem of Taliban insurgency, his obvious involvement
in the opium trade and the fact that Helmand rapidly recovered its place as
one of the leading production areas for the poppies.49 The most important
move was when (after the fall of the Taliban) the Akhundzada family linked
itself to the clan of President Karzai through marriage/0
A key weakness of the Akhundzadas remained their prevalently bad press
and the lack of reliable foreign sponsors. Although they benefited like many
46
See Giustozzi, The debate on warlordism.
4
Labrousse, Afghanistan, p. 118.
48
Ahmed Rashid, 'Chief ousted as British troops head for Afghan drug region', The
Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2005.

49
See US News, 8 Aug. 2005, on the discovery of a stash of nine tonnes of opium in
Sher Mohammad's office.

50
Interview with Afghan notable from Helmand, London, Dec. 2005. Arif Noorzai's
two sisters married Ahmad Wali Karzai and Sher Mohammad Akhundzada respec-
150
others from American and Arab profligacy in the 1980s, they later became
largely self-sufficient, which added to their resilience. Their large patronage
base meant that tribal support for the Akundzadas was still strong as shown
by the fact that Amir Mohammad was the candidate with the highest votes in
the parliamentary elections despite being disqualified^1 The lack of a foreign
sponsor, however, turned out to be a major liability in the post-Taliban envi-
ronment. As governor of Helmand, the young Sher Mohammad Akhundzada
cunningly tried to show up a secular face to western interlocutors and allowed
the establishment of cinemas, girls' schools, and so forth,52 but the odds were
against him. The relationship with US troops in the province and with the US
embassy was always tense53 and during 2005 the family took a number of hits.
Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, Sher Mohammad's brother, was banned from
taking part in the September 2005 parliamentary elections because of his link
to armed militias. This development was clearly a blow to the family's prestige.
Worse still, the British government pressed to get Sher Mohammad removed
from the position of governor at the end of 2005. President Karzai was still
willing to support the Akhundzadas and he appointed the disqualified Amir
Mohammad as deputy to a new and weak governor of Helmand, and the dis-
missed Sher Mohammad as senator of the Meshrano Jirga. However, the ques-
tion has begun to arise, whether even the most resilient warlord can survive
politically without foreign sponsorship. The Akhundzadas were faced with the
options of abandoning their provincial role and to withdraw back to their dis-
trict and their sub-tribe, or intensify their lobbying of President Karzai in order
to recover their former position.
Importantly, the Akhundzadas did little better than Esmatullah Muslim
in terms of expanding their power base beyond their own tribe. Even if they
had managed to militarily occupy almost all of Helmand province before the
arrival of the Taliban, they failed to permanently absorb other tribal groups
under their own leadership. In 2001-2, Sher Mohammad had to allow the
group of the old rival of the Akhundzadas, Abdul Rahman Khan, to return
to Girishk. Soon, this group rediscovered its ambition to move beyond the
niche it had carved for itself in Girishk. As the old khan families were raising
their head again, time appeared to be on its side, despite its lack of connec-
^ Based on the official results as released by JEMB (www.jemb.org).
",2 Information gathered by Noor Ullah during his tenure as UN official,

53
Waldman 'In Afghanistan, U.S. Envoy Sits in Seat of Power', New York Times, 17
Apr. 2004.
151
tions with the US.54 As many other former Hizbis were being welcomed
among Karzai's supporters, even the family's affiliation with Hizh-i Islami no
longer appeared as much of a problem as it could have been in the early years
of the Karzai administration.
Sher Mohammad also had to come to terms with the other great rival of the
family, Abdul Wahid, despite the fact that he had sided with the losing party
during the American intervention in 2006. An Alizai like Mullah Nasim
Akhundzada, but from a different sub-tribe, Abdul Wahid was not a complete
newcomer when he had emerged as a leader in Baghran district. He came from
an established if not very prominent family, which helped him with building
strong tribal support. Rather then fleeing like the Akhundzadas did when the
Taliban arrived, Abdul Wahid remained in control of his mountain redoubt
of Baghran.When in 1995 Ismail Khan advanced into Helmand after defeating
the Taliban in Shindand, Abdul Wahid intervened decisively in support of the
Taliban and played an important role in helping them first to resist the
onslaught and then decisively defeat Ismail Khan. Abdul Wahid then became
quite a prominent Taliban commander. With the fall of the regime, Abdul
Wahid's plight seemed hopeless, to the extent that he initially seemed inclined
to surrender. Only the hostility of Coalition officials and of Sher Mohammad
deterred him.55
Sher Mohammad did launch a major initiative, aimed at establishing contact
with him and even succeeded in having the two families temporarily bury all
the differences of the past and reportedly arrange some marriages. After long
efforts, Governor Sher Mohammad even managed to persuade Coalition forces
and President Karzai to forgive Abdul Wahid in March 2005. The deal negoti-
ated with Abdul Wahid allowed him to surrender without any sanction in
exchange for $2 million worth of aid to the Baghran district/6 Abdul Wahid
started openly supporting Sher Mohammad and was later a candidate in
the parliamentary elections of September 2005, but narrowly missed being
elected? However, the two families soon fell out again, following local clashes
of their militiamen. The fact that despite investing considerable energy in
bringing Abdul Wahid over to his side, Sher Mohammad's failure to incorpo-
rate him among his followers, once again highlights how tribal warlords have
^ Abdul Rahman Khan was still living in exile in France in 2005.
^ Michael Ware 'Into the Heart of Baghran', Time Magazine., 9 Jan. 2002.
,6
57
Pajhwok Afghan News, 27 Jun. 2005.
152
the strong tendency to remain trapped within their own relatively narrow net-
works and struggle to rise above inter-tribal rivalries. The case of the Akhun-
dzadas shows once more how the support of the state became essential to the
Akhundzadas' political survival after 2001, even if out of all 'tribal warlords'
of southern Afghanistan they had the strongest economic base.
The Khalqi Militias of Helmand: Warlords Without Tribes
The importance of the tribal element in explaining the resilience of the
Akhundzadas and probably Esmatullah's too is highlighted by the case of the
Khalqi pro-government militias of Lashkargah. Of all the case studies we are
examining here, this is the one where the role of the state was stronger. South
Helmand is a relatively new settlement, where large tracts of land were
reclaimed from the desert following an irrigation project sponsored by the
US before the war started. As mentioned earlier, the tribally mixed popula-
tion did not favour tribal 'entrepreneurs' here. Instead, the area became a
fertile ground for the recruitment of party militias by Khalqis after the arrival
of the Soviets. One such militia was Khano's, the nickname of Khan Moham-
mad. He had migrated to Helmand from his original province of Farah.
Because his elder brother was a member of HDK (the party in power) and
closely associated with one of the leaders, Dr. Saleh Mohammad Zerai, Khano
became the commander of a small party militia. Since he proved to be a suc-
cessful fighter, his value to the government gradually grew. He mainly
recruited among the unemployed youths of the province, who were for the
most part not very ideologically committed. Nor were they recruited through
tribal networks, unlike Akhundzadas militia. The main factor driving recruit-
ment was the rather generous pay and Khano's personal charisma as a com-
mander. Khano's soon developed an alliance with the other leading militia
commander of Helmand, Allah Noor.58
A Barakzai from Nawa district, Allah Noor was an uprooted individual who
before the war resided mostly in Iran and was involved in human trafficking
between Iran and Afghanistan. As with Khano, he became involved in the
militias through a relative. One of his brothers was a member of Khalq and a
close associate of President Noor Mohammad Taraki (1978-9), who after the
installation of Karmal in power was appointed as chief of administration in
Helmand province. Allah Noor then easily got a job as the driver of the pro-
^ Information gathered by Noor Ullah during his tenure as UN official.
153
vincial governor. From there he started climbing the social ladder. He soon
became the first chief driver in the transport department, where he had the
possibility to accumulate resources, embezzling cash and material. He then
went on to organize a tribal militia at the time of President Najibullah. This
militia expanded considerably over time as Allah Noor's military successes
brought increasing rewards and the financial capability to recruit more troops,
as well as access to key personalities of the regime like the Defence Minister.
Given his attraction for material wealth and his penchant for corruption, his
decision to form a militia seems to have been financially motivated. In this sense,
he appears as a sort of military entrepreneur. The tide started to turn with the
Soviet withdrawal. His militia was committed to the defence of Qalat in Zabul
province, suffering heavy casualties. However, his and Khano s militia succeeded
in maintaining hold of Lashkargah and some other parts of Helmand province
until the fall of Najibullah. They were forced to look around for allies, given
that the Akhundzadas were likely to try to take over Lashkargah. Tribal politics
came into play at this point. Allah Noor made a deal with a fellow Barakzai
strongman from the ]ami at and delivered Lashkargah Town to him. Khano
was also part of the deal. The alliance of the three commanders succeeded in
defeating the Akhundzadas' attempt to take Lashkargah after two days of heavy
fighting. They subsequently proceeded in sharing power with the Jamiatis, but
not without Kabul's endorsement. Allah Noor took the position of military
commander, and Khano that of chief of police. They had succeeded in establish-
ing good relations with both the Rabbani government in Kabul and Dostum
in the north, from both of which they received cash and supplies. Rabbani even
promoted both Allah Noor and Khano to the rank of General^9
Since Rabbani had accepted a fait accompli when he had endorsed the Lash-
kargah trio, the administration of Helmand in 1992-1993 could be described
as a warlord polity, whose existence rested exclusively on military strength.
Moreover, the political legitimization deriving from Rabbani's or Dostum's
support was very weak, as neither of them had much support in the region.
The Lashkargah warlords therefore remained surrounded by a hostile environ-
ment. The Akhundzadas continued to control the outlying districts of Hel-
mand, but there was considerable hostility against the Lashkargah trio, even
among other commanders who were also in bad terms with the Akhundzadas.
Given the situation, it was only a matter of time before somebody seized the
initiative and tried to mobilize support by launching an offensive against these
-9 Information gathered by Noor Ullah during his tenure as UN official.
154
remnants of the former regime. Ismail Khan, the ruler of western Afghanistan,
who was at that time trying to strengthen his jihadi credentials, was the one
who took the lead. He was joined by commander Sar Katib of Hizh-i Islami.
Ismail Khan first sent a letter to the local leader of Jamiat, asking him to expel
the former communists, which he refused to do. Despite the diplomatic efforts
of Rabbani, the Lashkargah forces were not strong enough to withstand a joint
offensive of the commanders of Herat, Farah and Helmand. The warlords and
the Jami'atis displayed considerable diplomatic skills and succeeded in making
a deal with Sar Katib, surrendering arms and men to him before fleeing to
nothern Afghanistan. This allowed them later to return on the scene, although
only Allah Noor successfully resumed his former role of militia commander
and with less power and influence, thanks to his Barakazai connections. Khano
settled back in Lashkargah and tried to set up his own militia, but found him-
self isolated and soon targeted for disarmament.60
The example of Khano and Allah Noor shows at least two things. First,
long-term alliances and expansion into larger structures were easier for the
pragmatic, non-tribally bound warlords. They only used tribal networks as
channels of communication, not as source of legitimization, and were more
independent of local rivalries. If they had not been successfully challenged by
an Ismail Khan-led coalition and if they had managed to secure stable sources
of financial support, their alliance had some potential for further expansion.
Neither of them stood out as a political mind or as an experienced political
player. However, the successful alliance with the Jami'atis shows that with some
good advice, they could have developed into a polity capable of acting as an
interface among tribal groups and integrate them. The second point, which is
also the flip-side of the first, is that in the absence of strong tribal connections,
these former commanders of non-tribal militias proved much more vulnerable
to defeat. They did not have the resilience of tribal warlords like the Akhun-
dzadas and a military setback proved fatal.
Conclusion: Tribal Society Reabsorbs the Warlords
Within the context of Pashtun tribal society, warlordism could find little space.
Like in most other regions of Afghanistan, the competition coming from ideo-
logical groups was modest until the mid-1990s61 and they were certainly not
60
Afghanistan: Warlord attacks provincial disarmament team', IRIN, 14 Apr. 2005.
61
For the case of Herat, see Giustozzi, Myth and Realities of Jihad.
155
favoured by the patronage politics adopted by the political leadership of the
parties based in Peshawar. At the same time, however, warlordism faced the
competition of tribalism, which ended up imposing a logic different from mili-
tarism, even when warlords did emerge to play an important, if often tempo-
rary, role. In the more general terms of the study of warlordism as a social
process, the experience of southern Afghanistan suggests that warlords can
only prosper in social environments that allow them to easily acquire political
control over a territory. It is the intrinsic political role of the tribes that pre-
vented warlordism from finding a fertile ground.62 Warlordism, since it implies
the existence of autonomous players not bound by political or social loyalties,
could not find roots in Pashtun territory. The closest thing to a pure warlord
to be seen in the south, Khalqi commanders Allah Noor and Khano after the
fall of Najib's government, were also forced to seek to establish tribal connec-
tions. In the end, they were perceived as strangers by the local society. This,
coupled with their weak tribal respectability, prevented their re-legitimization
and led to the formation of a large alliance against them.
In terms of social analysis, the development of the new type of heavily armed
'tribal entrepreneurs' did not represent a clear break with the previous trend
towards the feudalization of social relations in southern Afghanistan. Quite
the contrary, it was to some degree consistent with it, albeit with the addition
of armed force as a key ingredient of power consolidation.63
The consequences of the weakness or absence of warlords from the Pashtun
belt of Afghanistan were manifold. The Pashtun strongmen were seen as less
of a strategic threat in Kabul both after 1992 and after 2001. Most of them
were thus able to maintain good relations with both the international com-
munity and the Afghan government for a longer period than the northern
warlords. However, since neither the strongmen nor the hybrid tribal warlords
were able to exercise sufficient military pressure on their neighbours, or to
organize them into large structures, the political landscape remained much
more fragmented than in the west and north of the country. This fragmenta-
tion in turn translated into weak political influence over the centre, compared
to big warlords and party commanders. The price of the good relations, there-
fore, was subordination and inability to influence policy-making in Kabul.
62
With the term 'political role' I mean that tribes control their own territory and that
'the tribal system is still the main structuring and ordering principle of the local so-
ciety', Glatzer, "The Pashtun Tribal System', p. 11.

63
On the strongmen see Giustozzi (forthcoming).
156
In terms of the analysis of private violence and its relationship with the state,
what this case study underlines is the fluidity of the boundaries between the
public' and 'private'. Whether warlords are directly generated by the state or
only establish relations with it at a later stage, they represent more viable part-
ners than the tribes, because of the latter's fluidity. At the same time, finding
a 'pure' warlord with no ideological/political sympathy or commitment is not
so simple. The category of private violence, therefore, faces this definitional
challenge: where does the difference between non-state and private stand? We
have argued in this chapter that the distinction between warlords, strongmen
and entrepreneurs of violence, made in the opening paragraph of this chapter,
offers a way out of the conundrum.
Glossary
Arbab literally master, a common type of village elder, mostly
responsible for water management,
Hizb-i Islami the largest radical Islamist organization in Afghan-
(Islamic Party) istan.
Ikhwan literally brother, expression derived from Jamiat al-
Ikhwan al-muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood), the name
of the first large Islamist organization, which developed
in Egypt from the 1920s. It was also used by the Waha-
bis of Arabia to indicate their militias. In current
Afghan usage the term is often used as an epithet
against Islamist activists, to imply the adoption of
imported ideas.
]amiat-i Islami one of the largest Islamist organizations in Afghan-
istan.
Jirga Pashtun tribal assembly,
Khad-e Nezami military counter-intelligence.
Khalq one of the main factions of the HDK and the latest one
in southern Afghanistan.
Khan literally ruler, a grand notable with a large following,
Kuchi nomad
Malik literally ruler, a village notable or man of influence.
157
7
THE CRIMINAL-STATE SYMBIOSIS AND THE
YUGOSLAV WARS OF SUCCESSION
Kenneth Morrison
Since the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in
the early 1990s, the Western Balkan region1 has been wracked by chaos
wrought by state collapse, ethnic conflict and economic crises. The legacy of
those awful years remains today, and although the former Yugoslav states—
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, FYROM
(hereafter Macedonia), and now Kosovo—are on the path toward Euro-
Atlantic (European Union and NATO membership) integration (Slovenia,
now an EU member state, and Croatia have moved quickest in this regard),
problems remain. Corruption, organized crime and the opaque relationship
between the state and criminality are frequently cited as the most problematic
of the post-conflict legacies—factors which could inhibit progress toward
eventual European Union (EU) membership.2 During the last two decades,
political elites, state security and organized crime became tightly intertwined
as Yugoslavia descended into economic crisis and vicious fratricidal war. As a
'The terms 'Balkans' and 'Western Balkans' are used throughout the following chapter.
The Western Balkans is used to denote the countries of the former Yugoslavia minus
Slovenia anci Albania. The term Balkans is used to denote the wider Balkan region—
which could include Turkey, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova.

2
Balkan Insight, 'A Look at the EC Report on the Balkans', 5 Mar. 2008.
159
consequence, a new class of criminals, war profiteers and 'businessmen'—
whilst claiming to be fighting in the name of the nation—became wealthy,
powerful and influential.3 Organized crime4 was a major driving force behind
the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and has subsequently become the most serious
obstacle to reform in the states that emerged from the ashes of the former
Yugoslavia.3 War, sanctions and economic crisis contributed to the rise of orga-
nized crime and an incremental corruption of society during the 1990s, and
such a significant legacy cannot be easily reversed. Not only did the area fall
victim to the worst excesses of extreme nationalists, it also became an impor-
tant link in the chain of global organized crime.6 While the wars raged in
Croatia (1991-95) and Bosnia & Herzegovina (1992-95), a new class of
political and criminal elites (using nationalism as their ideological cover)
emerged who made their fortunes in war profiteering and smuggling. Orga-
nized crime controlled politicians, formed paramilitary groups and fuelled war
between ethnic groups while they privately cooperated with their so-called
adversaries as friends and close business partners." Moreover, the security agen-
cies of the Yugoslav successor states all engaged in criminality in order to
achieve their objectives and finance their activities.
In those states directly affected by the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, a new
reality emerged after the signing of the Dayton Agreement in November 1995.
The traditional middle class had been destroyed and the 'new' wealth was con-
centrated in the hands of criminals, paramilitary leaders and corrupt politi-
cians. Organized crime and the criminal culture created during the wars stalked
the region and replaced conflict as the new challenge in the difficult post-war
3
Misha Glenny, McMafia: Crime without Frontiers, London: The Bodley Head, 2008,
p. 38.
4
For an excellent analysis of the problems associated with contemporary organized
crime see, Mark Galeotti (ed.), Global Crime Today: The Changing Face of Organised
Crime, Oxford: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2005.
^ The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) comprised six republics (Slove-
nia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia) and two
autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina). By 2008 all (with the exception of
Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina) had become independent states (although
Kosovo's status as an independent state has not been universally recognized by all UN
member states).
6
Ekavi Attanassopoulou, 'Introduction: Fighting Organised Crime in SEE', Southeast
European and Black Sea Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, May 2004, p. 217.
Glenny, McMafia: Crime without Frontiers, p. 38.
160
THE CRIMINAL-STATE SYMBIOSIS
years. Smuggling channels forged before the war to smuggle arms continued
to function (albeit to transit different forms of contraband), and by the late
1990s, the region had become the key gateway for illicit drugs, untaxed ciga-
rettes, arms, and illegal immigrants into the markets of the European Union
(EU).8 Located on the traditional frontier between Europe and the Near East,
wedged between the markets of Eastern and Western Europe and between
Europe and the Middle East, and wracked by the problems inherent in post-
conflict, transitional societies, the Balkans—and particularly the territory of
the former Yugoslavia—became the corridor into the EU for diverse crime and
criminal products emanating from Asia and the Caucasus.9 The United Nations
(UN), for example, estimates that 30 per cent of Afghan heroin enters Europe
through the Balkan route.10 But there were domestic implications also. The
thousands of UN peacekeepers and staff from international agencies in Bosnia
also created a domestic market (particularly for trafficked women within the
sex trade) which could be exploited. Moreover, some of the 'exported' contra-
band has also trickled into local markets. The region has become not simply a
transit area, but one with an increasingly strong 'domestic' consumer base
(although it remains relatively small by Western European standards).
Organized crime is neither new in, nor unique to, the Balkans. The histori-
cal evolution of smuggling and banditry in the territories of the former Yugo-
slavia is long and complex. Divided between the Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Empires from the late-fourteenth to the early-twentieth century,
the region nestled upon on the imperial boundary between these large
empires. As such, it held great strategic importance as a buffer-zone between
empires. But it also remained economically underdeveloped and a place where
smuggling, banditry and crime flourished. However, there is little in the
region's history to explain why organized crime in its current form grew so
quickly in the late-twentieth century. Its growth has little to do with the
ancient, familiar, historical forces that shaped the Balkans—it is more recent
8
Southeast Europe is no longer a destination market for arms, but surplus supplies of
weapons that were purchased during the 1990s have found their way to Western
Europe (where they are purchased by criminal gangs) and to war zones in the Middle
East and Africa. See Dejan Anastasijevic, 'Organised Crime in the Western Balkans',
HUMSEC Working Paper, Nov. 2006, p. 2.

9
Eugene Tomius, 'Balkans: Officials Pledge to Tackle the 'Cancer' of Organised
Crime', REE/Radio Free Europe, 26 Nov. 2002.

10
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The
Transnational threatfrom Afghan Opium, UNDOC Report, Vienna, 2009, p. 11.
161
events that may provide some elucidation.11 The collapse of Yugoslavia in
1992 (and the economic and social crisis that preceded it) created the condi-
tions for the growth of criminal groups and criminal activity.12 The collapsing
Yugoslav state dictated that criminals could operate with relative impunity
and (often) with the tacit support of their respective security services. A
decaying socialist system, the loss of legitimacy of the communist government,
the erosion of the power of state institutions and the erosion of social norms
and legal controls upon criminal behavior all determined that criminal indi-
viduals or groups could act with relative impunity, and in the absence of the
controlling mechanisms of a 'normal' economic, social and political context
they became exceptionally powerful. Criminals played a key role in the estab-
lishment of the Yugoslav successor states, and political elites relied upon them
to do the dirty work of ethnic cleansing. But these criminals, who were often
portrayed as national heroes, were primarily motivated by economic, as
opposed to political, factors.13 Political elites had, however, little reservation
in using them to meet political ends. Indeed, the criminal infrastructures that
emerged in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s became so well established
precisely because they were patronized by ruling political elites.14 This pact
between the state and the criminal fraternity would have significant conse-
quences for all of Yugoslavia's successor states.
The roots of the political-criminal symbiosis are complex. Although smug-
gling and banditry have been part of Balkan history (bandits played a key role
in the Central and East European state-building processes of the nineteenth
11
Krassen Stanchev, 'Economic Perspectives on Organised Qnmc,Journal of Southeast
and Black Sea Studies, 4, (2), p. 240.

12
Misha Glenny, 'Migration Policies and Organised Qnme, Journal of Southeast and
Black Sea Studies, 4 (2), p. 251.

13
This pattern is not unique to the Balkans or the twentieth century. As Charles Tilly
has pointed out in his pioneering study War Making and State Making as Organized
Crime, At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of
war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far
greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social
contract, the idea of an open market in which the operators of armies and states offer
services to willing customers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expecta-
tions call forth a certain type of government.' Charles Tilly, 'War Making and State
Making as Organized Crime, in Evans, Rueschemeyer & Skocpl, Bringing the State
Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 169-187.

14
Attanassopoulou, 'Introduction: Fighting Organised Crime in SEE', p. 217.
162
century),1 - there is insufficient scope here to address wider historical dynamics.
Instead, the focus of this chapter is on the period since the end of the Second
World War (whereupon each of the countries of the Balkan region fell under
the control of an authoritarian communist regime) and the end of the Bosnian
War in 1995, with particular emphasis on political and security developments
during the 1980s and early 1990s. Organized crime in the region is, for all its
deep and tangled roots, primarily a post-modern phenomenon, which has
intensified during the past two decades (the same could be said for Russian
organized crime) subject to certain political, social and economic conditions.16
Thus whilst this chapter analyses the growing nexus between the criminal class,
political elites and state security during the Cold War era, the primary focus
is upon how those links were exploited to devastating effect immediately prior
to and during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s (excluding the war in Kosovo in
1999). Given the complexity of the Yugoslav wars of succession and the role
of criminals in the conflicts, this contribution represents only a broad overview
of the role of organized crime and does not purport to give a comprehensive
analysis of organized crime in the region or of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.
Nevertheless, to understand the multiple factors that led to the unprecedented
rise of the power of organized crime and the development of the symbiosis
between criminal groups and state structures in the former Yugoslavia it is
necessary to give a brief overview of how these networks developed.
The Evolution of the State Security/Criminal Symbiosis
Organized crime thrived in the territories of the former Yugoslavia because
conditions that prevailed in the 1980s and early 1990s allowed for such
growth. Whilst similar trends can be seen in countries recovering from civil
wars or long periods of totalitarian rule, Yugoslavia had to undergo both the
transition to democracy and a violent disintegration of the state concurrently.1
15 See Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits, London: Abacus Books, 2001; and Wendy Bracewell,
'The Proud Name of Hajduks', in Naimark & Case (eds) Yugoslavia and its Histori-
ans: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2003, pp. 22-36.

16
Mark Galeotti, "The Russian "Mafiya": Consolidation and Globalisation', in Mark
Galeotti (ed.), Global Crime Today: The Changing Face of Organised Crime, Oxford:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2005, p. 55.

1
UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Crime and its Impact on the Balkans, Wenn^., 2008,
p. 47.
163
The socio-economic impact of these tectonic shifts created a context within
which organized crime could not only flourish, but enjoy the protection of the
state as they did so. Organized crime existed in Tito's Yugoslavia, but took a
very different form. Geography and geopolitics were the key factors in the
development of Yugoslav organized crime during the Cold War era. The coun-
try's (ideological and geographical) location between power blocs (NATO
and the Warsaw Pact) and markets (Europe and the Middle East) determined
that both the Yugoslav authorities and the country's criminal class could exploit
the advantages that were offered by the prevailing geopolitics of the age. This
favorable geographical location allowed for the rapid growth and consolida-
tion of organized crime groups. Moreover, Yugoslavs could travel freely around
(and work within) Europe, creating a strong diaspora network that could be
utilized to create effective smuggling channels.
Despite overarching commonalities, the communist regimes that came to
power in the Balkans in 1943 were by no means uniform, and each possessed
individual systemic and ideological idiosyncrasies (not to mention the differ-
ences in leadership cults).18 Yugoslavia fell under the control of the communist-
led Partisans (led by the charismatic Josip Broz Tito), and the early days of
their rule was characterized by the need to consolidate domestic control and
the legitimacy of the new regime following the social fragmentation caused
both by the wartime occupation (primarily by German and Italian forces), and
the fratricidal civil war that raged throughout the country between 1941-45.
The ideological underpinning for the new Yugoslavia came in the form of the
Partisan myth of the anti-fascist struggle' and the promotion of hratstvo ijed-
instvo (brotherhood and unity) among Yugoslavia's nations, nationalities, and
political and ideological factions.19 But whilst this may have been easily
absorbed into the consciousness of the masses, such ideological constructions
would not serve as an appropriate mechanism for controlling or coercing those
with an axe to grind against the regime. More persuasive methods had to be
employed to deal with political opponents, and, both at home and abroad, the
primary mechanism for achieving this was the Yugoslav secret police {Organ
18
For an excellent overview of communist leaders in the region see, Bernd Fischer (ed.),
Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of Southeast Europe, London:
C. Hurst & Co., 2007.

19
A succinct analysis of the creation of a synthetic supranational culture in Yugoslavia
post-1945 can be found in Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation:
Literature and Cultural Eolitics in Yugoslavia, California, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1998, pp. 128-72.
164
zastite narodna—OZNa), a powerful, well-funded, and centralized organiza-
tion. Headed by Aleksandar Rankovic, OZNa engaged in intelligence, counter-
intelligence and broader military security. Domestically, it was—at least in the
immediate post-war years—used primarily as an instrument to intimidate,
oppress or arrest wartime 'collaborators', potential subversives, and (after Tito's
bitter split with Stalin in 1948) to deal with supporters of Stalin, the iheovci.
Moreover, it was used as a mechanism to stem reform of the centralized system
and to promote Rankovic as Tito's heir apparent.20 Externally, however, the
organization would be used as a means of tracking and, if necessary, eliminat-
ing opponents of the Yugoslav communist regime within the large diaspora.21
By the time of the Tito-Stalin split however, OZNa had been subdivided and
much of its clandestine operations were subsequently conducted by the newly-
formed UDBa drzavne bezbednosti), which concentrated more specifi-
cally on maintaining domestic security and mitigating threats emanating from
abroad. Operating above and beyond the Yugoslav law, they engaged in myriad
secret activities, including cross-border narcotics smuggling, arms trafficking
and assassinations. Moreover, they established smuggling channels through
which arms could be trafficked to countries which may be under sanctions or
opponents of so-called 'allies' (when, for example, Yugoslavia was exposed for
selling weapons to Israel in the 1970s, despite their role in the Non-Aligned
Movement and the fact that they were closely allied to several Arab states).22
UDBa's membership was as diverse as it was extensive, and was further
enriched by a large network of informants within all of Yugoslavia's republics
and an extensive range of informants abroad. For those Yugoslavs who cooper-
ated with UDBa there was a basic logic—employment within the service
offered significant material benefits, possibilities to increase personal influence
and build strong networks. Acquiring the benefits that could be generated was
a key component in individual motivations for formally joining or informally
cooperating. While most UDBa agents were engaged in domestic intelligence
work, a different type of agent was recruited for overseas operations. These
20
Duncan Wilson, Tito's Yugoslavia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979,
p. 161.
21
For an analysis of the Cominform crisis and anti-Stalinist operations throughout
Yugoslavia after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, see Ivo Banac, With Stalin against Tito,
Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1987.

22
See Centre for the Study of Democracy, Partners in Crime: The Risks of Symbiosis
between the Security Sector and Organised Crime in Southeast Europe, CSD Report
13, Sofia, 2004, p. 42.
165
more complex, covert and politically sensitive 'jobs' required a specific type of
individual, and the need to conduct them inevitably brought UDBa agents
into contact with the criminal fraternity, who could be sub-contracted to con-
duct unpleasant and officially deniable 'dirty jobs' (such as murder, robbery or
blackmail, thereby conveniently exporting criminality).23 Given the need to
retain secrecy, these operations would be conducted in the absence of official
oversight, allowing the 'sub-contracted' individuals or groups tasked with spe-
cific objectives a significant degree of license to define their own modus ope-
randi, which included a range of secretive activities. The British Ambassador
to Yugoslavia in the mid-1960s, Duncan Wilson, noted that while UDBa may
have been created as the vanguard against the 'class enemies', it 'succumbed to
the temptation of economic corruption, including smuggling and misappro-
priation of funds.'24 Moreover, what began as very irregular use of criminals
increased throughout the 1960s, and by the time of Rankovic's fall from grace
in 1966, UDBa was actively recruiting criminals straight out of prison.25 Per-
haps the most notorious of these is Zeljko Raznjatovic (Arkan), who was
employed in the early 1970s by the then chief of the Yugoslav Ministry of
Interior, Stane Dolanc, the auctor intellectualis of the scheme.26 By then, the
23
Marko Lopusina, Svi Dolancevi ljudi-Ubij hliznjegsvog: Jugoslovenska tajnapolicija
1945-1997, Beograd: Narodna kniga, 1997, p. 34.

24
Wilson, Tito's Yugoslavia, p. 162.
25
Aleksander Rankovic had fought alongside Tito during the Second World War and
was one of his closest confidants (he was considered by many to be Tito's natural
successor). He was, until 1963, the Yugoslav Minister of Interior and the chief of
UDBa, although he remained the de facto head of the latter until 1966. Rankovic
was eventually forced into retirement by Tito after it emerged that he had been bug-
ging Tito's telephones. He was replaced by Koca Popovic following the so-called
'Brioni plenum'. See Wilson, Tito's Yugoslavia, pp. 161-63.

26
Frank Bovenkerk, 'Organised Crime in the Former Yugoslavia', in Siegel & Van Bunt,
Global Organized Crime: Trends and Developments, Dordrecht; Kluwer, 2003, p. 46.
Zeljko Raznjatovic was provided complete protection by UDBa. Stane Dolanc, al-
legedly stated that 'one Arkan is worth the whole of UDBa.' See Centre for the Study
of Democracy (Sofia), Partners in Crime: The Risks of Symbiosis between the Security
Sector and Organised Crime in Southeast Europe, p. 42. See also Marko Lopusina, Svi
Dolancevi ljudi-Ubij bliznjegsvog: Jugoslovenska tajna policija 1945-1997, Narodna
kniga, Beograd, 1997. For a colorful and in-depth account of Arkan's criminal en-
deavours see, Christopher S. Stewart, Hunting the Tiger, New York: Thomas Dunne
Books, St. Martin's Press, 2008.
166
Yugoslav government had cracked down on the so-called 'Croatian Spring'
that had produced a small wave of Croat refugees who harboured deep resent-
ments.2 Concentrated primarily in Western Europe, they became targets of
UDBa assassins.
Dolanc's scheme represented a relationship of convenience. A pact with the
devil it may have been, but it was one which proved mutually beneficial. The
state could rely on criminal elements to carry out such work, whilst the crimi-
nals were awarded a significant level of cover from the state. While the state
purged potentially dangerous dissidents, the criminals were given space, logis-
tics and finance to further develop into profitable areas such as extortion, rob-
bery, organizing and running prostitution rings and trafficking women.28 And
Yugoslav criminals did not limit themselves to conducting clandestine political
operations or the occasional bank robbery; they became key players in the
European drugs market. They were, after all, well placed to do so, operating at
the critical geographical juncture between European and Asian markets. The
Balkans (and the territory upon which lay the former Yugoslavia) is an ancient
smuggling route, with contraband traditionally flooding from the 'Golden
Crescent' (Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan) through the Caucasus toward Tur-
key, through the Balkans and into Europe.29 As heroin production increased
in the East and consumption levels increased in Western Europe throughout
the 1970s, larger volumes were being channelled by Yugoslav gangs through
the so-called 'Balkan Route'. The UN estimated that 75 per cent of heroin
destined for Western Europe passed through the Balkan route (Serbia, Croatia
and then through Slovenia into Europe) during the communist era.30 Though
highly profitable, it was affected by the outbreak of war in Croatia in 1991 —
the collapsing Yugoslav state, the wars that ensued, UN sanctions, and the
exponential growth of the black market or war economy presented criminals
with opportunities at home that outstripped those that existed in Western
Europe the 1970s and 1980s.
2
For an in-depth analysis of the events surrounding the Croatian Spring and the sub-
sequent suppression of the Croat nationalist intelligentsia see Dennison Russinow,
Yugoslavia: Oblique Insights and Observations, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 2008, pp. 199-233.

28
Bovenkerk, 'Organised Crime in the Former Yugoslavia, p. 46.
29
UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Crime and its impact on the Balkans, p. 58.
30
Ibid., p. 59.
167
The Forging of Paramilitary Structures and Smuggling Channels
The character of the disintegrative process and the brutality of the wars in
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina created divisions that generated deep,
perhaps irreversible, hatred and resentment.31 But to regard these conflicts
as bottom-up would be misleading (although, among ordinary people, war
was waged as mechanism for survival and to satisfy their basic material
needs). Instead, the wars were characterized by top-down violence, waged
by elite groups possessing essentially rational objectives—be it national
emancipation or profit.32 Mary Kaldor, using the Bosnian War as an example,
argued that the conflict represented a new form of warfare in which the
motivations were fundamentally different from ideological and rational
motivations of'old wars'. A new type of war in which existing differences
between war, organized crime and a massive violation of human rights were
revoked, she argued, had emerged.33 There is a lot of evidence to suggest that
Kaldor's assertion that these wars were driven by a multiplicity of interests
that transcended traditional military objectives. Indeed, while the wars were
raging between Serbs and Croats in Croatia in 1991-95 and between Serbs,
Croats and Muslims (and even between Muslims) in Bosnia between
1992-95, cooperation between paramilitary groups and former Yugoslavia's
criminal groups flourished. Ostensibly 'ethnic antagonists', the residual spirit
of hratstvo i jedinstvo (brotherhood and unity) lived on among the region's
criminal elite, and far from reflecting the ethnic antagonisms that pervaded
elsewhere, organized crime gangs cooperated across ethnic lines without
allowing these inconvenient matters to inhibit their profit-generating endea-
vours.34 They continued to work together throughout the war(s), only using
31
Mary Kaldor, New Wars and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge, Polity, 1999, p. 31.

32
David Keen, The Economic Function oj Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper, Oxford,
1998, p. 11.
33
Kaldor, New Wars and Old Wars, p. 70. There is much evidence to suggest that
Kaldor's assertion that these wars were driven by a multiplicity of interests that tran-
scended traditional military objectives is correct,

34
In a recent paper given at the London School of Economics (LSE), Tim Judah (the
Economist's Balkans Correspondent) made the case for the emergence of a Yugo-
sphere a developing economic cooperation between former Yugoslav states. He
noted, however, that criminals always lived within such a sphere and that they 'nev-
er stopped trading across the frontlines during the war.' See Tim Judah, Yugoslavia
is Dead: Long Live the Yugosphere, LSEE Paper, no. 1, Nov. 2009, p. 8.
168
nationalism and ethnic antagonism as a convenient vehicle when it suited
their 'business' interests.35
As we have seen, the symbiotic relationship between UDBa and organized
crime was already long-established by the 1980s, when the country slid into eco-
nomic and political crisis.36 A series of corruption scandals in the late 1980s
exposed the links between the degenerating communist regime and the new
mafia class.3 Corruption pervaded at all levels of society. Years of substandard
management of Yugoslavia's command economy and the increasing scarcity of
goods dictated that many businesses or individuals had to turn to the black mar-
ket to fill the void—and with the growth of the black market came the inevitable
proliferation of corruption (particularly among those who were tasked with
eradicating or combating it). A decade of growing economic problems simply
increased the incentives for ordinary people who could profit to do so.
By 1991, many of Yugoslavia's gastarheieters (guest workers) and exported
criminal elements were returning home to a country on the brink of collapse. In
Serbia, the SDB {Sluzba drzavne hezhednosti) replaced UDBa as a strictly Serbian
agency but continued with the practice of employing criminals for covert opera-
tions. The shift took place during a period when the prevailing political circum-
stances were hardly conducive to security sector reform, and the SDB (whilst
ostensibly there to protect Serbian citizens) became primarily an instrument of
the Milosevic regime, tasked with surveillance and oppression of opposition
figures, the formation of paramilitary structures, and establishing and consolidat-
ing smuggling and money laundering networks.38 The regime itself became essen-
tially a criminal regime, whose entire security sector was involved not just in war
crimes, but also in classic forms of organized crime such as drug smuggling,
weapons trafficking, extortion, kidnappings and assassinations.39 They also con-
tinued the tradition of using criminals to do many of the unpleasant jobs.40
^ Dejan Anastasijevic, 'Organised Crime in the Western Balkans', HUMSEC Working
Paper, Nov. 2006, p. 2.

36
For an excellent analysis of the incremental collapse of the increasing dysfunctional
Yugoslav socialist system see, Branka Magas, The Destruction oj Yugoslavia: Tracing
the Break-Up 1980-92, London: Verso Books, 1993.

3
Kaldor, New Wars and Old Wars, p. 36.
38
Centre for the Study of Democracy (Sofia), 'Partners in Crime: The Risks of Sym-
biosis between the Security Sector and Organised Crime in Southeast Europe',
p. 44.
39
Anastasijevic, 'Organised Crime in the Western Balkans', p. 2.
40
According to the Serbian daily Vecernije novosti, the list of known criminals work-
169
Primarily, however, the SDB were used were used to meet political and military
ends—firstly in Croatia. In May 1990, that first multi-party elections were held
in there, bringing the nationalist Croatian Democratic Community (Hrvatska
demokratska zajednica—HDZ), led by Franjo Tudjman, to power. They made
little secret that their primary objective was independence and were clumsy in
their treatment of their Serb minority. The country's 650,000 Serbs (who were
located mainly in the Krajina region of Croatia) became nervous and looked to
Belgrade to support a rebellion against Zagreb. As local clashes between the
Krajina Serbs and Croat government intensified in the wake of Croatia's declara-
tion of independence in June 1991, the SDB smuggling networks were utilized
effectively to arms local extremists bent on carving out Serbian Autonomous
Regions (Srpski autonomme ohlasti-SOA) in those parts of Croatia coveted
by Serbs.
In his benchmark study The Transformation of Wary Martin Van Creveld
argued that wars in the modern (post-Cold War) era would be fought, not
necessarily between states, but by terrorists, paramilitaries, bandits and
thieves.41 In Croatia, private militias (albeit supported by the state) engaging
in conflict with one another became a defining characteristic of the war in
Croatia (and later Bosnia). In the absence of a Serbian army (the Yugoslav
People's Army [ JNA] was not an entirely Serb force and could not be wholly
relied upon) and significant levels of desertion, Slobodan Milosevic's regime
used the SDB to arm Croatian Serbs and prepare paramilitary formations to
do much of the ethnic cleansing that began in earnest in the summer of 1991.
As members of these groups, criminals were given greater power to expand
their pre-war rackets. They were primarily organized through the SDB with
the acquiescence ofJovica Stanisic (the head of the SDB). He personally super-
vised the planning of covert operations in both Croatia and Bosnia before
those respective conflicts broke out, preparing the ground for conflict by radi-
calising Krajina Serbs. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), he helped to establish paramilitary groups and
criminal groups (the latter of which were used to increase ethnic tension
ing for the SDB in the 1990s was extensive. Among them were Zeljko Raznjatovic
Arkan', Darko Asanin (a key figure in the drug trade), Ljuba Zemunac, Djordje
Bozovie 'Giska' and many others. A number of them were assassinated in Belgrade
between 1995-2000. See Vecernje novositi, 11 Nov. 2002, p. 4.

41
Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991,
p. 197.
170
through violent actions).42 Simultaneously, Franko Simatovic, head of the
SDB s Intelligence Department also created the Jedinica za specijalne operacije
(Unit for Special Operations) known as Crvena heretka (The Red Berets)
which consisted mainly of convicted criminals.43 They were bestowed with
exceptional power, which allowed them to arrest civilians, enter private apart-
ments, to bear firearms and confiscate vehicles or communications equipment.
The group were partially funded by the state but received generous donations
from Serbian businesses (some of whom would have been coerced) and private
donors, supplemented by involvement in extortion, robbery and smuggling.44
While the motivations of many paramilitaries may have been rooted in politics
(there were numerous nationalist fanatics within their ranks), a significant
proportion were primarily motivated by economic interests (demonstrated by
the level of robbery that accompanied the violence). The right to loot and
plunder newly liberated territories and extort the terrified population was
viewed as a form of payment for their endeavors.
Unsure how to confront the threat from the Krajina Serbs, and having been
denied assistance with 'bolstering their police forces' by the US ambassador,
Warren Zimmerman, the Croat government elected to open illegal smuggling
channels to import arms for the approaching conflict.4^ Given that this was as
a 'noble cause', the smuggling of arms into Croatia were considered (by a major-
ity of the population) as legitimate acts that were necessary to protect the state
and its citizens—weapons flooded in to the country, primarily from Hungary,
Romania and Bulgaria. These new channels were developed and controlled by
former members of the JNA and pro-Croat members of UDBa (such as the
former JNA general, Martin Spegelj). Croatia's extensive, well organized
diaspora were also crucial players. Croatian emigres (many of whom had been
forced to flee Tito's Yugoslavia) contributed significant funds for the purchase
42
ICTY Case No. IT-03-69-PT (The Prosecutor V. Jovica Stanisic and Franko Si-
matovic), 2 Apr. 2007. See also Hannes Grandits & Carolin Leutoff, 'Discourses,
actors, violence: The organisation of war escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia
1990-9 T, in Koehler & Zurcher (eds), Potentials of Disorder, Manchester: Man-
chester University Press, 2003, pp. 23-45.

43
The story of the Red Berets (including interviews with many former members) is
told in some detail in the B92 film Jedinica, Vreme Film and B92 Productions (Dir:
Filip Swarm), Belgrade, 2005.

44
Centre for the Study of Democracy, Partners in Crime: The Risks of Symbiosis be-
tween the Security Sector and Organised Crime in Southeast Europe, p. 45.
45
Warren Zimmerman, The Origins of a Catastrophe, New York: Random House, 1996,
p. 95.
171
of weapons.46 These emigres, from as far afield as Argentina and Brazil, were
involved in the purchasing and shipping of weapons to Croatia. But as the
conflict wore on, the Croat government needed more finance, and smuggling
channels were opened up to include heroin and cocaine; the proceeds from
which were used to buy weapons. According to a Centre for the Study of
Democracy (CSD) report, a number of high-ranking Croatian officials
involved in drug smuggling enjoyed complete immunity from prosecution due
to their 'defenders of the homeland' status.47
As the conflict in Croatia intensified, the Red Berets and other Serb para-
military groups such as Beli orlovi (The White Eagles, a paramilitary formation
whose members came primarily from the Belgrade suburb of Vozdovac) and
Dusan silni (Dusan the Mighty) played a significant role.48 The 'mopping-up'
operations after the siege of Yukovar were, for example, primarily the work of
Arkan's 'Tigers', not regular forces.49 Perceived by a terrified Serb population
(who had been subjected to anti-Croat and anti-Muslim propaganda on Ser-
bian state TV) as 'defenders of the Serb national interest', paramilitary leaders
such as Arkan became 'national heroes', who were elevated to positions of
power and commanded tremendous respect.50 Paramilitary groups such as the
'Tigers', led by individuals who were often painted as 'national heroes' or mod-
ern-day Hajduks51 who were 'fighting the good fight', were lauded in the state-
46
Centre for the Study of Democracy, Partners in Crime, p. 9.
47
Ibid., p. 23.
48
These paramilitary groups had been formed by Serbian political parties and with the
assistance of the SDB. The 'Chetniks' were formed by the Serbian Radical Party
(Srpska Radikalna Stranka), led by Vojislav Seselj, and Dusan Silni and the White
Eagles by the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpska Narodna Obnova) led by Vuk
Draskovic.
49
ICTY Case No. IT-03-69-PT (The Prosecutor V. Jovica Stanisic and Franko Si-
matovic), 2 Apr. 2007.

50
UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Crime and its impact on the Balkans, p. 47.
^ In Balkan tradition, Hajduks were romanticized figures who would steal from, and
fight against, the Ottoman occupiers. They were reputed to be noble warriors who
would share their spoils with the poor and struggle against perceived injustices. This
tradition became somewhat distorted in the 1990s. See Wendy Bracewell, 'The Proud
Name of Hajduks', in Naimark & Case (eds) Yugoslavia and its Historians: Under-
standing the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, California: Stanford University Press, 2003,
pp. 22-36. For an analysis of the misappropriation of the Hajduk legend by para-
militaries in the 1990s see Ivo Zanic, Flag on the Mountain: An Anthropology of the
Wars in Croatia and Bosnia, London: Saqi Books, 2007.
172
run Serbian press (for example, following his death fighting in Croatia in 1991,
the Serbian gangster 'Giska' was proclaimed 'A Knight in the Heaven of the
Serbian people').52 Yet as well as conducting their 'patriotic' duties, these para-
military groups were motivated primarily by the spoils of war. After returning
from the front, many of those involved in the operations in Croatia and Bosnia
remained on the SDB payroll; controlling smuggling networks and the black
market, and conducting other criminal activities—all of which were conducted
with the knowledge and with the explicit support of key figures within the
SBD, such as Jovica Stanisic, Radovan Stojicic and Rade Markovic. Sharpened
by their experiences in Croatia, many paramilitaries headed for Bosnia.
War, Politics and Profit: Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-95
In April 1992, war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia's descent into
hell began two years earlier, when ethnically-based parties came to power, co-
existing as an uncomfortable coalition of nationalist parties. Within a year,
however, all of Bosnia's three major ethnic parties (Muslim, Serb and Croat)
were making preparations for war. As early as 1991, their leaders were attempt-
ing to carve out and dominate their private domains, over which they exercised
significant power.53 Throughout the subsequent war, paramilitaries and crimi-
nal groups (working in the service of nationalist politicians) profited signifi-
cantly through plunder, extortion, gaining control of the black market and
selling arms (sometimes to their adversaries). In a war where civilians were the
primary targets, ordinary people were relieved of all their material possessions,
1,2
Bovenkerk, 'Organised Crime in the Former Yugoslavia', p. 49. Wendy Bracewell
notes that Giska was portrayed as a modern-day Hajduk by sections of the Serbian
press. She notes that the 'Belgrade journal Duga published a long eulogy for Djord-
je Bozovic Giska, an underworld figure and the commander of the paramilitary
Serbian Guard, who had been killed by sniper fire in Croatia, fighting at the head of
a Serbian paramilitary band. The piece combined gangster imagery with evocations
of historic and folkloric bandits...Treating Giska as a latter-day hajduk made this
paramilitary and member of Belgrade's criminal underworld out to be a heroic throw-
back, a spontaneous rebel, motivated by above all by a love of his nation and a hatred
of state tyranny (in this case depicted as both anti-Serb and communist) and a rep-
resentative of true Serbdom, while at the same time obscuring the paramilitaries'
economic interests.' See Wendy Bracewell, 'The Proud Name of Hajduks', p. 32.
,3
Centre for the Study of Democracy, Partners in Crime: The Risks of Symbiosis between
the Security Sector and Organised Crime in Southeast Europe, p. 76.
173
and the citizens of Sarajevo, under siege for three years, were systematically
extorted by the very individuals who were tasked with 'protecting' them.54 As
the war progressed, a 'market of violence' emerged within which paramilitary
groups and criminal gangs became increasingly motivated by economic, not
political, imperatives.5^
The initial stages of the Bosnia conflict were characterized by violence
organized and executed by irregular troops rather than traditional (state)
armies. State actors were involved in the violence, but, in the main, it was
executed by a variety of non-state actors—paramilitaries, criminal gangs,
irregular militias and local defense organizations. As in Croatia, the lines
between these state and non-state actors were opaque. From the outset of the
conflict national armies were of little use—officially Croatia and Serbia were
not involved, the multi-ethnicJugoslovenska narodna armija (Yugoslav People's
Army—JNA) had become an army without a state to protect,56 and the Bos-
nian Muslims had no army of their own (and even when they had established
an army, many of their personnel were poorly trained and equipped).5 In a
climate of uncertainty, a profitable arms smuggling trade emerged, as Bosnian
Muslims began to import weapons from myriad sources. As the war began a
54
Peter Andreas, 'War Crime as Organised Crime', New York Times, 20 Sept. 2008,
p. 19.
According to Georg Elwert, 'markets of violence generally originate in conflicts of a
non-economic nature. The continuation of violence is, however, based on economic
motives or unconscious economic behaviour. From the perspective of the warlords,
violence can be used to maximize profit to such an extent that it is on a par with
other economic methods. The fact that the balance sheet is far from positive in its
effect on the overall system is irrelevant. This inherently rational economic behaviour
can continue as long as the warlords are able to exercise their power without the sup-
port of the majority,' See Georg Elwert, 'Intervention in Markets of Violence', Koe-
hler & Zurcher (eds), Potentials of Disorder, p. 219.

56
The JNA formally withdrew from Bosnia in May 1992. However, all Bosnian Serbs
serving in the JNA were transferred to the Bosnian Serb Army, meaning that around
80,000 remained in Bosnia. For a rather frank explanation of the motives behind
this see, Borisav Jovic, Posljedni dani SFRJ, Belgrade: Politika, 1995.
v
For an in-depth analysis of how the Bosnian government created the Army of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, see Marko Attila Hoare, How Bosnia Armed, London: Saqi
Books, 2004, For broad accounts of the war in Bosnia, see Branka Magas & Ivo
Zanic, The War in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina 1991-1995, London: Frank
Cass, 2001.
174
pattern emerged—ethnic cleansing operations would be carried out by irregu-
lar troops who sought not simply to protect their respective ethnic kin but to
profit from the 'booty' that could be generated by being the first to enter vil-
lages and towns after bombardment with heavy weapons. Although the SDB
networks were much weaker in Bosnia and much of the preparations for war
among Serbs in Bosnia were locally organized.58 Bosnian Serbs could, however,
utilize the forces harnessed during the conflict in Croatia (although tensions
would later emerge between the Serb paramilitaries and the Yojne Repuhlike
Srpske, Bosnian Serb Army—BSA). The early attacks on Bijeljina and Zvornik
in northern Bosnia in March 1992 were led by Arkan's Tigers (funded by the
SDB but free to retain their 'spoils of war')—a pattern of warfare that would
be mirrored across Bosnia. In Croat-dominated western Herzegovina, for
example, the so-called 'Convicts Battalion' led by Mladen 'Tuta' Natelitic and
Vinko 'Stela' Martinovic were not simply key players in the Muslim-Croat war
(they used the same methods of ethnic cleansing) but were involved in rob-
bery, extortion and trading in stolen goods (particularly luxury cars).59
But these combatants, using the language of national self-determination
and ostensibly committed to protecting their kin, were engaged in the exploita-
tion of their co-ethnics whilst trading with their apparent adversaries when
there was profit to be generated. The conditions created by the conflict and
the subsequent UN sanctions provided significant opportunities for criminal
groups in Bosnia and beyond. Many criminals and high-ranking politicians
exploited the numerous opportunities for enrichment that the war provided.
Unpalatable it was, but throughout the war numerous locations in Bosnia were
deemed 'business zones' which could be used as trading points between the
warring parties. In areas such as Cazin,60 Tuzla and Vares (places that were
largely spared the ravages of conflict), Serb, Croat and Muslim criminals would
58
Judah, The Serbs, p. 192.
59
ICTY Case No. IT-98-34-T (The Prosecutor V. Mladen Naletilic & Vinko Mar-
tinovic), 23 Oct. 2002, p. 8.

60
In a rather bizarre twist, the 'President' of the Cazinska Krajina region, Fikret Abdic,
announced in September 1993 that the area would secede from Bosnia and Herze-
govina and become the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia'. As such it would
not be subject to the UN-imposed oil embargo, and thus fuel could be legally im-
ported from Croatia with the knowledge of the UN officials. The imported quanti-
ties hugely exceeded the needs of the tiny province, however, and the remainder was
smuggled to Serb-held parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to Serbia proper
175
converge, meet and conduct business, be it in arms, fuel, cigarettes, or essential
foodstuffs.61 An economic logic (of sorts) and an unregulated economic system
developed and, increasingly, economic interests of competing groups predomi-
nated over ethnic or national issues. The Bosnian War became one in which
an alternative power structure, protection system and profit-making environ-
ment is constructed.62 Of course, smokescreens of ethnic, political and religious
legitimization were utilized to justify the actions of war profiteers.
This kind of legitimization was utilized by all sides in the conflict. The Bos-
nian Serbs, having already inherited much of the JNA's existing stocks, had less
need to generate finance for weapons. They did, however, require finance to
run the war (which between 1992 and 1994 was partly funded by Belgrade).
Racketeering became a crucial mechanism in securing finance for the Bosnian
Serb wartime cause. Ensconced in their 'capital' Pale, the leaders of Radovan
Karadzic's Srpska demokratska stranka (Serbian Democratic Party—SDS) con-
trolled much of the criminal activity in the Serb-held areas of Bosnia. Profits
from these enterprises (which included selling arms to Croats and Muslims)
were used primarily to fund the war, but also to enrich the SDS leadership and
cadres.63 Moreover, the siege of Sarajevo presented one such opportunity to
extort large sums of money, aid and other highly-valued commodities. The
Bosnian Serb leadership turned the siege of Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, into a
highly profitable enterprise. Large-scale looting, theft and diversion of UN
supplies; sanctions busting; clandestine trading of food, the trading arms and
other supplies across the battle lines, all ensured that the siege of Sarajevo
became a profitable endeavor—for all of the warring parties.64 In the Serb-
held sections of the city, the citizens were subject to what amounted to an
extortion racket by their local (Serb) mafia. They would sell basic goods to
61
Marko Hajdinjak, Smuggling in Southeast Europe: The Yugoslav Wars and the Devel-
opment of Regional Criminal Networks in the Balkans, Centre for the Study of De-
mocracy, Sofia, 2002, p. 24.

62
Keen, The Economic Function of Violence in Civil Wars, p. 11. For an in-depth analy-
sis of the economy of war in Bosnia see Judah, The Serbs, pp. 242-58.
63
The Bosnian Serb leadership were forced to find ways to finance themselves after the
split between Milosevic and Karadzic in August 1994. Following the failure of the
Bosnian Serb parliament in Pale to ratify the Vance-Own Plan (which they had
signed), Milosevic imposed a blockade upon Republika Srpska. See Robert Thomas,
Serbia under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s, London: C. Hurst & Co., 2000, p. 199-
209.
64
Andreas, 'War Crime as Organised Crime', p. 19.
176
their co-ethnics at hugely inflated prices, whilst selling the same products to
Croats and Muslims for much the same. This extortion was simply part of a
thriving black market in fuel, cigarettes, oil and essential foodstuffs that
emerged along Serb-controlled Sarajevo's boundary with Croat and (to a lesser
extent) Muslim-controlled areas of the city.6"5 Criminals and war profiteers (of
all ethnicities) profited from the enterprise, but the closest cooperation could
be seen between Croats from the town of Kiseljak (on the western edge of
Sarajevo) and the Serbs besieging the city. A consensus of sorts emerged. The
local Hrvatsko vijece ohrane (Croatian Council of Defence—HVO), having
taken control of the town began trading with both the Serbs besieging and the
black-marketeers within Sarajevo itself. As Sibler and Little noted, as a conse-
quence 'Kiseljak became a haven of peace, a land-locked Bosnian Casablanca,
as Croats there took commercial advantage of their position "in-between"
Muslims and Serbs.'66
Kiseljak criminals became increasingly wealthy as the trade flourished. They
would sell to their counterparts in the Serb-held suburb of Ilidza, who would,
in turn, trade with the mafias controlling Sarajevo, who sold goods at hugely
inflated prices to the citizens of the city. This meant that both the besieging
Serbs and the Croats from Kiseljak had a vested interest in the continuation
of the siege.6 For those within the siege lines, life became increasingly desper-
ate. Access to even the most basic goods was limited, but there was a supply
smuggled into the city (sometimes through the tunnel under Sarajevo's
airport).68 Even so, these were subsequently sold by Muslim war-profiteers who
operated a cartel system which ensured that goods on the black market
remained artificially highly inflated process—creating vast profits for the smug-
glers but ensuring that most ordinary Sarajevans were priced out of the
market.69 In what essentially amounted to a large-scale extortion racket, hard
65
Robert). Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography, London: C. Hurst & Co., 2006, p. 325.
66
Laura Sibler & Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, London: Penguin Books, 1995,
pp. 295-96.
6
Judah, The Serbs, p. 207.
68
Accusations persisted throughout the Bosnian war that some UN peacekeepers were
also profiting from the 'war economy'. According to Andreas, for example, "The UN's
Ukrainian soldiers were especially notorious black-marketeers, specialising in selling
gas siphoned from their armoured personnel carriers.' Peter Andreas, "The Clandes-
tine Political Economy of War and Peace in Bosnia', International Studies Quarterly,
48,2004, p. 38.
69
For a in-depth analysis of the dynamics of the siege of Sarajevo and the political
177
currency flooded out of the city and into the hands of the war-profiteers—the
Muslim gangs within Sarajevo, the Serbs besieging the city and the Croat
'middlemen' all took their cut. But cooperation was not always possible. The
Muslim-Croat civil war, which erupted in central Bosnia, was driven not sim-
ply by the Croat desire to establish a Community ofHerceg-Bosna but to control
the oil trade through central Bosnia (in which both Croat and Muslim gangs
were involved).
Such war profiteering had been common in Sarajevo from the outset of the
siege. In the absence of a real army—t\\cArmija Bosne i Hercegovine (Army of
Bosnia and Herzegovina-ARBiH) was not formed until May 1992 and
remained largely ineffective until 1993—much of the defence of the city was
organized locally and comprised diverse groups of'patriotic leagues', paramili-
tary formations such as Zelene heretke (the Green Berets), Crni labudovi (the
0
Black Swans), the Patriotic League, and local criminal gangs. They were
tasked with the defense of the city and often did so bravely and effectively. But
the union between the Bosnian government and the city's criminal elements
came at a price. Unsavoury characters such as Ismet Bajramovic, Razim Delalic,
Musan Topalic-Caco and Jusuf'Juka' Prazina, (a former debt collector and
petty criminal from Sarajevo) were cast as the 'saviors' of the city, yet they also
1
ruthlessly controlled the city's black market. Throughout the siege they con-
tinued to pursue their traditional activities of smuggling, theft, protection and

2
extortion—creating a siege within a siege. As Andreas notes:
economy of the siege, see Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Busi-
ness of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
2008. For a broad (and very lucid) account of Sarajevo before, during and after the
siege see Robert J. Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography, London: C. Hurst & Co., 2006.
0
In his memoirs the former Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic, described the at-
tempts to bring Sarajevo's fractured criminal gangs under the army's control. The
troops of the gangs, he stated, 'had bought their firearms at the beginning of the war,
and were intensely loyal to their commanders. To tame these mutinous people was
like trying to saddle wild mustangs.' Alija Izetbegovic, Inescapable Questions, Leices-
ter: The Islamic Foundation, 2003, p. 167.

1
Although they later acted against the criminal gangs, a number of high-ranking Bos-
nian officials 'protected' them. Even Alija Izetbegovic was rumored to have had a
close personal relationship with the Sarajevan gangster Musan Topalovic-Caco. See
Marko Attila Hoare, How Bosnia Armed, London: Saqi Books, 2004, p. 75.
2
Donia, Sarajevo, p. 291.
178
The siege of Sarajevo was actually two sieges: one external, the other internal. The inter-
nal siege was made possible by the external siege, and helps to explain how the interests
of some players within the city were served by the siege conditions even as the majority
of the population suffered. The siege provided an opening and cover for the abuse of
power ... and it created enormous economic opportunities for theft, war profiteering,
and redistribution of wealth, while most of the city's residents simply struggled to
survive.73
For the Bosnian government, the most problematic of the Sarajevo criminals
was Juka Prazina. He and his men had been key defenders of the city in the early
days of the siege, and as such had come to be celebrated. But, in reality, Juka
consistently abused the power that had been bestowed upon him; his men
robbed, abused and intimidated Sarajevo's citizens and used their status to loot
4
warehouses and shops. Initially celebrated for his defence of the city, he
became a thorn in the side of the Bosnian government. In late 1992, the ARBiH
issued an arrest warrant for Juka, forcing him and a number of his followers to
retreat to Mount Igman overlooking Sarajevo. After several months, however,
Juka (having been driven from the area) joined the Croat HVO in Mostar,
where he took part in the attack upon Muslims trapped in the East Bank of the
city. But even following Juka's mutiny, tensions between Sarajevo's criminal
gangs and the Bosnian government/ARBiH continued. The army, however,
were in the ascendant and finally acted against criminal gangs in late 1993
(although Juka Prazina was found dead in December 1993 near a main road
close to Liege in Belgium—killed, allegedly, by his own men). Yet the citizens
of Sarajevo, trapped in their 'siege within a siege' still remained in a better posi-
tion than those in other towns in Bosnia, not least those under siege in Sre-
brenica. Here the defenders of the town engaged in a lucrative exchange with
the Serb soldiers besieging the town despite the fact that they were in bitter
conflict (the Muslim attacks on the Kravica region on Orthodox Christmas
Day 1993 worsened already poor relations). Srebrenica's defenders, led by Naser
Oric, bartered with surrounding Serb forces to purchase UN food aid to sell to
5
the refugees amassed within the town at hugely inflated prices. Such exploita-
tion, however, was minor compared to the horrors that would face the residents
of Srebrenica in July 1995 when the town fell to the Bosnian Serb Army.
3
Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets, p. 90.
4
Ibid., p. 91.
/5
Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, London: Penguin Books, 1998, pp. 243-44.
For a detailed account of Oric s alleged role in Srebrenica see, ICTY Case No.IT-03
-68-T (The Prosecutor V. Naser Oric), 31 Mar. 2006.
179
Sanction-Busting in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
While the war raged in Bosnia, myriad opportunities for smuggling emerged
following the imposition of UN sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugo-
slavia (Savezna Republika Jugoslavija—FRY) on 30 May 1992 (a naval block-
ade to enforce fuel sanctions followed six months later). Created to strangle
the Serbian-Montenegrin war effort, the sanctions were in effect a gift for orga-
nized crime groups throughout the Balkans; not simply within the FRY, but
for neighbouring mafias in Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Romania. The
demand for banned products and services increased, as did the demand to
6
finance these products and services. Thus 'sanction-busting' schemes brought
together criminal and political interests who created them to circumvent the
problem of supply. These schemes served a dual (economic and political)
purpose—they generated vast profits for those involved and would provide
for the 'survival of the nation', simultaneously serving the interests of the crimi-
nals and the state. In Serbia, there were two main mechanisms for smuggling
oil and other in-demand commodities. The first was facilitated by cooperation
between the SDB and a number of select criminal gangs. The SDB would pro-
vide import licences to criminals who would then import oil from Macedonia,
7
Romania and Bulgaria. Whilst this was effective, it was dwarfed in compari-
son to alternative channels organized by the Serbian state, which involved the
shipment of large quantities of grain to Russia which would be used to barter
for oil. In both directions, the oil and grain would be transported through the
Danube and the Black Sea by commercial ships. No hard currency was
exchanged between the Serbian and Russian companies involved (in order to
avoid funds being seized by international bodies). Two Serbian companies—
Progres Trade and Jugoimport—were key players in the grain for oil scam, and
8
it is estimated that Serbia received up to $200 million worth of oil per year.
In Belgrade, the proceeds would then be used by the state to finance the SDB,
the police and the state-run media—although a significant proportion was
pocketed by those involved in the trade. During this period, the transportation
and handling of vital commodities were placed in the hands of a new class of
sanction-busting 'businessmen', war profiteers and criminals with close links
6
Stanchev, 'Economic Perspectives on Organised Crime', p. 240.
Hajdinjak, Smuggling in Southeast, p. 14.

8
International Crisis Group, 'Serbia's Grain Trade: Milosevic's Hidden Cash Crop',
ICG Balkans Report 93, Jun. 2000, pp. 5-7.
180
9
to the regime. The sanctions criminalized wider society and cemented the
nexus of political power, business and criminality .80As the war in Bosnia drew
to a close in late 1995, however, this cosy co-existence was threatened. There
were, simply put, too many sharks in a small pool. The SDB, which had estab-
lished many of the early smuggling channels to circumvent sanctions, gradually
transposed into a mafia-style organization. Some of Belgrade s most prominent
Mafiosi were on the SDB payroll but keeping hold of the majority of their
profits.81 Others were attempting to muscle-in on the drug trade—which pro-
vided significant finance for SDB operations. As a consequence, SDB assassins
murdered a number of gangsters (the perpetrators were never arrested).
Sanctions also had a significant impact upon the republic of Montenegro,
the junior partner in the rump Yugoslav federation.82 Circumvention of the
sanctions required that smugglers use the Montenegrin coast and the vast Ska-
dar Lake (which Montenegro shares with Albania) as exit and entry points for
oil and untaxed cigarettes.83 According to a report in the Croatian weekly
Nacional, cigarettes were sent to Montenegro from Cyprus by two offshore
companies, Dulwich and Wellesley (both of which were owned by SDB agents),
and imported by two Montenegrin companies—Mia and Zetatmns^ Planes
loaded with cigarettes would arrive in Montenegro via Golubovci Airport in
Podgorica, before being transported to the port of Bar and Zelenika and on
79
For a fascinating insight into the new criminal class in Serbia, see the documentary
Vidimo se u citulji (See you in the Obituaries), Dirs: Aleksander Knezevic & Vojislav
Tufegdzic, B92 Television, Belgrade, 1995. The critically acclaimed Serbian film-
maker Srdjan Dragojevic also directed a film entitled Rane (Wounds) about the
gangster culture in Belgrade in the 1990s and its effect on three Belgrade youths.
80
Robert Thomas, Serbia under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s, London: C. Hurst &
Co., 2000, p. 171.

81
Hajdinjak, Smuggling in Southeast Europe, p. 25.
82
For an analysis of Montenegrin politics during the period of UN sanctions see Ken-
neth Morrison, Montenegro: A Modern History, London: IB Tauris, 2009.

83
The accusation was that Djukanovic was part of a criminal group that smuggled large
amounts of untaxed cigarettes into the EU from the port of Bar in Montenegro—
generating significant profits for all the participants. Djukanovic, it was alleged, had
made significant profits from this venture. According to Glenny, 'two Montenegrin
companies, both controlled by Djukanovic and the secret service, levied £20 on each
case transited through the country.'—rendering this trade one with a high profit
margin. See Misha Glenny, McMafia: Crime without Frontiers, p. 38.

84
The Croatian weekly Nacional have published a number of controversial articles on
181
speedboat across the Adriatic to the Italian ports of Bari and Brindisi.85 The
smuggling of oil from Albania was no less organized or profitable. As many as
200 boats would leave Zeta (near Podgorica) cross Lake Skadar (part of which
is in Montenegrin territory, part in Albanian) to the small Albanian town of
Vraka where oil was loaded on boats and taken back to Montenegro. It was
then transported to different areas of the FRY.86 Montenegro's then (and cur-
rent) prime minister, Milo Djukanovic has been accused by his political oppo-
nents (and prosecutors from the Italian town of Bari) of being involved in
cigarette smuggling from the outset.8 In early 2002, the Croatian newspaper
Nacional published a series of articles implying Djukanovic's direct involve-
ment in the trafficking of cigarettes. Simultaneously, the former Italian finance
minister, Ottavio del Turco, publicly accused Djukanovic of having close links
to organized crime and being the lynchpin in the illegal mechanisms that con-
trolled the smuggling of cigarettes in the Balkans. By July 2002, the public
prosecutor in the Italian port city of Bari initiated investigative proceedings.
Djukanovic has constantly denied these charges, making the case that any prof-
its generated from smuggling were used to cover for the state's running costs
during the period of UN-imposed sanctions—a matter of patriotic duty, so
to speak.
But whilst the Bosnian 'market of violence' boomed, developments in neigh-
bouring Albania would determine that power shifted away from the former
Yugoslav criminals. Whilst much of the Balkan drug trade had been directed
by Yugoslav criminal elements and the SDB until the outbreak of war in Croa-
tia in 1991, the security problems in the region meant that the flow of heroin
cigarette and drug smuggling in the Balkans. In October 2008, the paper s editor Ivo
Pukanjic and his colleague, Niko Franjic were killed in a car bomb in Zagerb. Pu-
kanic was known for pioneering investigations into corruption and organized crime
in the Balkans. He was killed when an explosive device detonated underneath his car
outside his newspaper s offices in Zagreb. The Serbian Special Prosecution indicted
Sreten Jocic (akajoca Amsterdam), along with two accomplices in October 2009 on
charges of organizing Pukanic's murder, although it remains unknown who ordered
the murder.
8
- Ivo Pukanic and Berislav Jelinic. "The Crown Witness against the Tobacco Mafia:
The Interview with Srecko Kestner.' Nacional, no. 289, 31 May 2001.
86
Dragan Djuric, May God Support the Sanctions, AIM Press, 27 Jan. 1994.
8
For a broad overview of Milo Djukanovic s period in power see, Kenneth Morrison,
'The Political Life of Milo Djukanovic', Sudost-europa: Zeitschriji fur Politik und
Gessellschafi, Munich, 57, pp. 25-54.
182
from Turkey was inhibited. The traditional Yugoslav route became more risky
and although there were some opiates intercepted passing through this route
(350 kilos of heroin was seized by Yugoslav customs on the Bulgarian border
in 1997), the route had to be redirected.88 Alternative routes were sought
which would circumvent the need to pass through Croatia and Bosnia, and
the most appropriate solution was to divert the route through Albanian-in-
habited lands (South Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo). Towns such as Novi
Pazar (Sandzak), Veliki Trnovac (Presevo Valley), and Vratica (Macedonia)
may have seemed, on a superficial level to be backwaters, but by the mid 1990s
they were not only crucial hubs in the supply of heroin but also important
transit towns for trafficked women, untaxed tobacco and counterfeit goods.
They were also, be it the Muslim communities in Sandzak or the Albanian
communities in Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo, deeply conservative and
closely-knit communities which tended to close ranks when authorities dem-
onstrated interest in clandestine or illicit activities.89 Besides the wars in Croa-
tia and Bosnia, there were a number of additional, wider factors which
facilitated the ascendancy of the Albanians as the key players in the Balkan
heroin trade. Conflict in the Caucasus in the early 1990s provided them with
a unique opportunity. According to Hislope:
Tie Albanian mafia received preferential trading status from the emerging drug indus-
try in the Caucasus. Georgian and Armenian antipathy toward the Turks played into
Albanian hands and they became the couriers of choice. In this way, the Albanians
supplanted the Turks as the main suppliers of heroin into Western Europe.90
Moreover, the Albanian mafia had, since 1991, quickly become one of the
most powerful in the world. In the Albanian-dominated lands, organized crime
and politics were symbiotically linked—even more so than in the case of Ser-
bia, for example.91 A percentage of the money generated by the heroin trade
was diverted into political 'projects'. Indeed, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation
Army), NLA (National Liberation Army) and the UCPMB (Liberation Army
88
Anastasijevic, 'Organised Crime in the Western Balkans', p. 3.
89
Gus Xhudo, 'Men of Purpose: The Growth of Albanian Organised Crime', Trans-
national Organised Crime, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996, p. 3.

90
Ibid., p. 14.
91
Robert Hislope, "The Calm Before the Storm? The Influence of Cross-Border Net-
works, Corruption and Contraband on Macedonian Stability and Regional Secu-
rity', Paper given at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, San Francisco, California, May 2001.
183
of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac) emerged as the politico-military arm of
Albanian organized crime, as well as defenders of Albanian 'national' inter-
ests.92 The armed conflict in Macedonia in 2001 (initiated by the NLA) and
the conflict over the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia (between the Serbian
government and UCPMB) were as much about the control of the required
infrastructure as they were (and remain) about ethnic grievances.
Conclusion: The Post-Dayton Catharsis
The contemporary problems with organized crime in Serbia, Montenegro,
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina stem back to the symbiosis which devel-
oped between Yugoslav state security (UDBa) and the criminal fraternity dur-
ing the Cold War era. Both would play a key role in the wars which followed
the social, economic and political crisis which swept Yugoslavia in the 1980s.
The subsequent collapse of the SPRY state and the wars that followed created
a vacuum within which criminal (and paramilitary) groups could extend and
exercise their power and profit from the markets of violence which emerged.
After the war in Bosnia, Serbia (particularly Belgrade) became mired in con-
flict between criminal gangs. While much changed with the overthrow of
Slobodan Milosevic on 5 October 2000, the legacy of the early 1990s proved
a heavy burden for Serbia in the post-Milosevic era. Serbia's first post-Milosevic
Prime Minster, Zoran Djindjic elected to attempt to fatally weaken the crim-
inal-political-state security nexus by arresting, on the 13 March 2003, the for-
mer head of the SDB, Jovica Stanisic, and the founder and former chief of the
Red Berets, Franko 'Frenki' Simatovic. Shock reverberated among those who
feared they might be next. Thus on 12 March 2003, Djindjic, was assassinated
in central Belgrade. His killer, Zvezdan 'Zmija' Jovanovic, a member of the
notorious Red Berets, feared that Djindjic would extradite him and others to
the ICTY in The Hague. The subsequent crackdown, known as 'Operation
Sabre' was an attempt by the Serbian state to take some of the power back that
it had lost in the 1990s—a strategy that generated only a reasonable success.
Among the others arrested were members of the so-called 'Zemun Clan' such
as Milorad 'Legija' Ulemik and Dusan 'Siptar' Spasojevic.93 Both were former
92
Xavier Raufer, A Neglected Dimension of Conflict: The Albanian Mafia', Koehler
& Zurcher (eds), Potentials of Disorder, pp. 68-70.

93
Vjeran Pavlakovic, 'Serbia Transformed?', Ramet & Pavlakovic (eds), Serbia since
1989: Politics and Society under Milosevic and After, Seattle and London: University
of Washington Press, 2005, p. 40.
184
agents of the SDB (Legija was, additionally, the commander of the SDB's 'Unit
for Special Operations'—the Red Berets) and both were wanted for war crimes
by the ICTY. Attempts to deconstruct the nexus of criminals, paramilitaries,
politicians and the SDB proved an enormous task for the Serbian government.
In Bosnia the picture was not too dissimilar. Criminals involved in smug-
gling and extortion (as well as ethnic cleansing) had accumulated enormous
political capital in addition to their significant profits. New markets emerged
in the post-war environment, including the need to provide sexual services for
UN peacekeepers and other international staff who had come to the country
in their thousands. But the trafficking of women was simply one dimension in
the new crime environment. In a bitterly ironic twist, many criminals invested
their capital in construction firms (a highly profitable enterprise in an immedi-
ate post-war country), and as they were often the only companies in Bosnia
that could actually deliver, the international community unwittingly provided
these companies with huge funds to rebuilt what the very same people had
destroyed years earlier.94 As in Serbia, those who had accumulated great eco-
nomic and political capital during the war operated with impunity, and the
rule of law remained weak. According to Bosnia's former High Representative,
Lord Paddy Ashdown:
The Bosnian state in many of its aspects had become little more than an organised
conspiracy to rob from its citizens—from the international community, too ... vast
amounts of the $17 billion of international aid did not benefit the Bosnian citizens for
whom it was intended, but simply passed through the system of criminal pockets.9"'
Problematically, however, the international community left the tackling of
organized crime to local structures, essentially dictating that little was done in
this area (the relationships between politicians and criminals remain inter-
twined). EU forces (EUFOR) have sought to play a more significant role in
supporting these local structures, but there is little evidence that suggests this
has been effective. Organized crime remains a genuine problem in a country
still bitterly divided along ethnic lines and passing through its worst political
crisis since the war ended in 1995.96
94 UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Crime and its impact on the Balkans, p. 53.
95
Paddy Ashdown, Swords and Ploughshares: Building Peace in the IP1 Century, Lon-
don: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2007, p. 77.

96
Kenneth Morrison, Dayton, Divisions and Constitutional Revisions, UK Defence
Academy, Research and Assessment Branch, Aug. 2009.
185
The situation was somewhat better in Montenegro, which declared inde-
pendence from the union with Serbia following a referendum in May 2006.
But allegations of involvement with organized crime continued to haunt the
Montenegrin Prime Minster, Milo Djukanovic—a factor that may inhibit
the country's path toward EU membership. The Montenegrin authorities look
toward neighbouring Croatia as an example of what can be achieved. Progress
there has been slow but constant. Following the cessation of hostilities in
1995, the government of Franjo Tudjman remained authoritarian, and former
criminals, portrayed as national heroes, were protected by the state (at least
until Tudjmans death in 1999). Soon after, the new government unveiled a
strategy to combat organized crime and corruption, which has been moder-
ately successful. As a consequence of these actions, Croatia was given official
EU candidate status in June 2004 (negotiations for membership began in
October 2005).
The criminal-political symbiosis established in the Cold War era, initially
under Aleksandar Rankovic and later under Stane Dolanc, would have signifi-
cant consequences for all former Yugoslav republics. The relationship between
UDBa and organized crime represented the roots of a powerful symbiosis that
capitalized on the collapse of the Yugoslav state and, later, became the main
obstacle to reform in the post-war era. Even in those states not directly
involved, the growth of Yugoslav organized crime between the late 1980s and
the end of the Bosnian War in 1995 was striking. Macedonia, Albania, Roma-
nia and Bulgaria were not involved in the conflicts, nor were they subject to
the imposition of UN sanctions, but their proximity to the conflict zones
determined that there were many opportunities for criminals to engage in
sanction-busting operations, and no shortage of individuals and groups to
grasp the opportunities. Today, Southeast European governments are (with
the assistance of the EU) tackling organized crime, yet the legacy of the state-
criminal symbiosis remains, and it has proved deeply problematic to tackle the
residue left behind.
186
8
PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES
IN THE MALACCA STRAITS
MAPPING NEW PATTERNS
OF SECURITY GOVERNANCE
Patrick Cullen
International Relations theorists have always concerned themselves with the possible
formation of a supra-state, world-policing body. More attention should be paid to the
potential devolution of coercive authority to the "private sector".1 -Janice Thomson
Introduction
Less than fifteen years after Janice Thomson penned these words, today the
rapid expansion of private security in global politics leaves little doubt that
what Thomson referred to as the potential devolution of coercive authority to
the private sector has in fact become a reality. This theoretically provocative
proposition—which stipulates that both the implementation of politically
salient coercion2 and the ability to wield it authoritatively, have been de-linked
1
Janice Thomson, 'State Sovereignty in International Relations: Bridging the Gap
Between Theory and Empirical Research', International Studies Quarterly, 39, 1995,
pp. 213-33.
2
Here the word coercion refers to the use or the threat (implicit or actual) of lethal
violence that is an integral characteristic of armed private security companies.
187
from the state and devolved to the private sector—is based on a number of key
empirical observations.
The first observation suggests that as private security companies (PSCs)
expand their activity globally into transnational security functions traditionally
held to be the prerogative of the state, it is no longer plausible to assume that
the state monopolizes the ability to legally implement political coercion in
global politics. Far from holding such a monopoly, today's state security imple-
menters (e.g. its military and police forces) operate alongside a fragmented
host of other public, private and hybrid security providers that also have the
legal right to provide coercive security tasks—at varying locations, for different
durations and to different degrees of scale—across the international system.3
The second empirical observation suggests that as the number of legitimate
non-state actors (e.g. corporations, non-profits, NGOs) entitled to hire secu-
rity implementers increasingly turn to PSCs to provide coercive security tasks
on their behalf, it is no longer plausible or useful to suggest that the state con-
tinues to hold a monopoly on the legal power to authorize coercion in global
politics. Instead, at a practical level, the study of authority over political coer-
cion must be sensitive to these practices of non-state actors, or 'auspices',4 that
are legally entitled to hire and thereby authorize the implementation of secu-
rity governance by their PSC partners.
Together, these auspice-implementer partnerships may be thought of as
singular security actors in their own right. In the case study examined below,
such a hybrid security actor was formed by a commercial shipping firm auspice
contractually connected to a maritime PSC acting as its security implementer.
Each sub-unit of this hybrid security actor—the auspice and the implementer—
performed an integral and complimentary act that together constituted
3
This increase in both the scale and significance of non-state security providers is com-
monly referred to as 'pluralization' or 'multilateralization' within cross-disciplinary
studies of security governance. See for instance Benoit Dupont, 'Power struggles in
the field of security: implications for democratic transformation' in J. Wood and
B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2006, pp. 86-110.

4
The term 'auspice' is defined in Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary as
'patronage; support; sponsorship' derived from an institution. David Bayley and Clif-
ford Shearing introduced the concept of an 'auspice' within the study of private se-
curity. See D. Bayley and C. Shearing, 'The New Structure of Policing: Description,
Conceptualization and Research Agenda United States Department of Justice, Na-
tional Institute of Justice, Washington D.C. 2001.
188
PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES IN THE MALACCA STRAITS
participation in the political process of security governance. In line with a
Realist definition of the political, the shipping firm auspice was engaged in the
pre-eminently political act of promoting a particular definition of order by
designing rules that involved the organization of legal coercive force. In turn,
the PSC implementer was engaged in the quintessentially political act of using
or threatening the use of legitimate coercion to enforce third-party compliance
with this definition of order outlined by its auspice within a particular time
(e.g. the duration of the contract) and territory (e.g. the Malacca Straits).5
By modelling the de-coupling of the implementation and authorization of
legal coercion from the state and its dispersion into a plurality of public and
private nodes,6 this security governance model highlights an important shift
in the way security is being governed within the international system. The fact
that traditional state-centric theories within IR have proven ill-equipped to
perceive, let alone articulate, this process makes this model especially appealing
when analyzing private security. Moreover, this approach allows the analyst to
treat the practice of security governance as a question open to empirical inves-
tigation rather than as something '...to be decided a priori on the basis of con-
ceptual claims such as those of Hobbes and Weber.'7 Stated differently, it allows
the researcher to move away from IR's disciplinary assumptions regarding the
modern state s tripartite monopoly of coercion, territory and authority—and
thus its monopoly over security governance—towards a more open and explor-
atory process of empirically mapping the actual practice of security governance.
Here security governance is understood as being conducted by a panoply of
different actors deploying coercion, within discrete territories both large
and small, while implementing differing legal strategies to maintain their legiti-
mate authority.
There is a clear parallel between this theoretical model and the broader
global governance literature, which stipulates that the nature of governance
itself is shifting from the centralized hierarchies of the state towards a more
dispersed and fragmented horizontal network of public and non-state actors
- What these security governance programs and their 'definitions of order' meant in
empirical terms will be elaborated below.

6
Here, nodes are understood as 'locations of knowledge, capacity and resources that
can be deployed to both authorize and provide governance.' Clifford Shearing,
'Thoughts on Sovereignty', Policing and Society, 14(1), 2004, p. 6.
Clifford Shearing, 'Reflections on the refusal to acknowledge private governments'
in J. Wood and B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 27.
189
and structures.8 However, this chapter's approach to private security is more
narrowly rooted in an interdisciplinary research program being conducted by
security scholars interested in what has been described as a 'nodal' approach
to security governance.9 In juxtaposition to studies of private security that
viewed its growth in terms of a loss of state control over security, these nodal
studies have argued that the relationship between private security and the state
ought to be viewed as a complex form of networked security governance that
need not be understood in conflictual or strict zero-sum terms.10 To this end,
nodal security studies have emphasized that private security derives an impor-
tant degree of its authority from the state, often by working as a security imple-
menter on behalf of a state auspice, as well as by typically operating within the
legal parameters set by the states in whose territory their private security pro-
grams are situated.
However, by emphasizing that PSCs and their non-state auspices ultimately
derive their legal authority to engage in security governance from the state,
nodal security studies have ironically fallen victim to a form of state-centrism
themselves. Namely, they have discounted new techniques of legal entrepre-
neurialism engaged in by PSCs to use non-state sources of public legal author-
ity (e.g. international law) to legitimize their security programs. By offering a
positive critique of Janice Thomson's concept of'meta-political authority' to
include other public yet non-state institutions, this chapter makes an impor-
8
For two early examples of this literature, see: Bob Jessop, 'Capitalism and its Future:
Remarks on Regulation, Government and Governance', Review of International Po-
litical Economy, A{2>), 1997, pp. 561-581; Philip Cerny, 'Plurilateralism: Structural
Differentiation and Functional Conflict in the Post-Cold War World Order', Mil-
lennium: Journal of International Studies, 22(1), 1993, pp. 27-51.

9
This nodal approach to the study of private security—and the differentiation of aus-
pices and implementers of security governance—was largely pioneered by the work
within the field of Criminology. For a seminal text within this literature that uses
this terminology, see Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing, Governing Security: Ex-
plorations in Policing andJustice, London: Routledge, 2003.

10
See Peter Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003 and Deborah Avant, Market for Force: The
Consequences of Privatizing Security, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005,
for studies in IR that measured private security's relationship to the state in terms of
a loss of the state's political control over coercion. For an alternative non-zero-sum
view of this relationship taken from the field of Criminology, see Les Johnston, Po-
licing Britain, London: Longman, 2000.
190
tant theoretical contribution to nodal security studies by demonstrating how
legal authority over security governance is being de-linked from the state and
dispersed to alternative non-state sites.
For Thomson, the term 'meta-political authority' describes the state's claim
to ultimate political authority within its territory, undergirded by its legislative
capacity to draw and re-draw the boundary between the legal and illegal divide
as it sees fit.11 By logical extension, Thomson's understanding of meta-political
authority also refers to the state's purportedly unique ability to unilaterally
grant or withdraw the authorization of other non-state actors to legally engage
in coercion within its territory. However, as this chapter's discussion of PSC
operations in the Malacca Straits will demonstrate, while the state clearly main-
tains a privileged position of authority over security governance vis-a-vis other
auspices—and especially so within its own territory—today, this privileged
position is not always absolute in every instance.
Instead, the state's meta-political authority must be juxtaposed and under-
stood in relation to the 'expanding jurisdiction of institutions of international
governance and the constraints of, as well as obligations derived from, inter-
national law.'12 In other words, today, the power to legally authorize security
governance belongs to a broader complex of public institutions—from inter-
national law to supra-national organizations—that includes (but is not limited
to) the state. From this perspective, the law cannot be interpreted exclusively
as a tool by which the state imposes its 'supreme' rule-making authority onto
private non-state actors. Instead, the law should also be seen as a resource used
by private security to legitimize its security programs, opening up new possi-
bilities for private security to legitimately engage in independent forms of
security governance.
This process is demonstrated in this chapter's maritime case study on two
distinct levels. First, PSCs in the Malacca Straits engaged in strategies of'cre-
ative compliance' that adhered to the strict letter of the domestic law of the
states in whose territory they operated, while nevertheless bypassing the laws
original intent and deploying it in ways unforeseen and contrary to the wishes
of the littoral governments of Malaysia and Indonesia.13 For instance, Indone-
11
See Janice Thomson, 'State Sovereignty in International Relations: Bridging the Gap
Between Theory and Empirical Research', International Studies ^Quarterly, 39,1995,
pp. 213-233.
12
David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization, London;
Polity, 2007 p. 126.

13
For a short discussion of creative compliance see Jennifer Wood, 'Research and in-
191
sian laws pertaining to a citizen's right to self defense became part of a matrix
of domestic laws used by PSCs as tools to legally support their armed anti-
piracy security escorts.
Second, PSCs took advantage of the fact that as signatories to UNCLOS,14
Malaysia and Indonesia are not only the authors of security governance in their
nautical territory, but were also its objects. In concrete terms, these PSCs rec-
ognized that UNCLOS arguably limited Malaysia's and Indonesia's ability to
interfere with their private anti-piracy security programs being implemented
within the nautical territory of these states in the Malacca Straits.1^ Thus, inter-
national law was used by private security as an alternative source of public,
non-state meta-political authority to legally shield themselves from early claims
made by the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia that these PSC security
programs were illegal. In a fascinating—if rare—example of legal entrepre-
neurialism, these PSCs were able to use a matrix of littoral state legislation and
international law to help authorize their security programs in a way that actu-
ally conflicted with the political preferences of the very governments that
either penned or signed the relevant legal code these PSCs relied upon. As a
result, this chapter provides a clear example of the new dynamics and patterns
of security governance being organized by legally entrepreneurial private secu-
rity companies.
The rest of this chapter is divided into five sections. The first section pro-
vides a historical context of the political and security situation in the Malacca
Straits in 2005 during the course of the PSC anti-piracy vessel escorts discussed
below. The second section outlines the entrepreneurial legal strategies adopted
by two PSCs providing armed anti-piracy vessel escorts in the Malacca Straits
during this same period, with specific attention being given to PSC use of the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a source of
public non-state meta-political authority. Section three provides a detailed
study of the content of one of these security programs engaged in by a hybrid
security actor (e.g. a PSC and its commercial shipping firm auspice), while sec-
tion four maps the loosely networked relationship two PSCs had with the
regional littoral states Indonesia and Malaysia. The fifth and final section offers
novation in the field of security' in J. Wood and B. Dupont (eds) Democracy, Society
and the Governance of Security, p. 232.

14
UNCLOS is the acronym for United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
15
The observation that states may also be objects of regulation is also made Les John-
ston and Clifford Shearing in Governing Security, p. 35.
192
some concluding observations on the changing role of private security and the
evolving patterns of contemporary security governance.
Piracy, Private Security, and the Politics of Security Governance
in the Straits
Geographically speaking, the Malacca Straits is a 500-mile long waterway situ-
ated along a northwest-southeast axis between Indonesia, Malaysia and Sin-
gapore. It acts as a strategically vital maritime highway with an annual average
of over 50,000 ships—including oil tankers, cargo container vessels and slow
moving barge-towed oil rigs—passing through it each year. While the regular-
ity, density, and slow speed of this merchant traffic has made it a perennial
target of pirate attacks, during 2005 a number of issues had combined to make
the option of PSC anti-piracy escort services especially attractive to commer-
cial firms navigating their assets through the Malacca Straits.
First and foremost, incidents of piracy in the Straits increased dramatically
during this period. Between 1994 and 2004 respectively, there was an increase
from twenty-two to ninety-four annual reported incidents of piracy within
Indonesian waters alone.16 By 2005, piracy in the Straits had also become more
organized, sophisticated and violent, with pirates trading their traditional
machetes for automatic rifles and heavy weapons and supplementing their sea
banditry with the kidnapping and ransom of the deck officers from hijacked
vessels.1 Despite assurances from the Malaysian government that 'the littoral
states [were] capable of patrolling the Straits without external intervention,'18
an international commercial and governmental consensus had been reached
that Malaysia and Indonesia were not providing sufficient security in this
channel.19 Moreover, this issue had a particular resonance in a post-9/11 politi-
cal climate, and the possibility of al Qaeda synergising terrorism with piracy
16
ICC International Maritime Bureau 'Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships'
Annual Report, 2005, p. 5.

1
These ransom payments were occasionally reported as exceeding $ 1 million. Graham
Gerard Ong, 'Ships can be Dangerous Too: Coupling Piracy and Maritime Terrorism
in Southeast Asia's Maritime Security Framework', ISEAS Working Paper: Interna-
tional Politics & Security Issues Series, 1, 2004, p. 3.

18
Quote taken from Malaysian Defence Minister Najib Razak in 'Recent Attacks
Prompt International Pressure to Secure Malacca Straits' JINSA Online, ]\x\. 15
2005.
19
This was due in large part to the limited naval resources of these states and the po-
193
by targeting the international shipping and oil sector—called 'the umbilical
cord and lifeline of the crusader community' by Osama bin Laden—had
become a serious concern for states and industry alike.20
As a result of this dual risk from piracy and terrorism, a number of security
initiatives were discussed by various states and the commercial shipping indus-
try to increase the public provision of security governance in the Straits. In one
instance in the previous year, the United States had proposed a Regional Mari-
time Security Initiative complete with a presence of US Marines and elite
forces patrolling in fast watercraft to deter piracy and maritime terrorism in
this waterway.21 Similar proposals from the Japanese government suggested
that their Coast Guard patrol the Straits, and there were also calls from within
the commercial shipping sector for a multi-national naval force to patrol the
Straits under the authority of the United Nations.22
Invariably, however, plans involving the use of foreign naval vessels actively
conducting security patrols in the Malacca Straits were vetoed by the govern-
ments of Malaysia and Indonesia. The problem centred on the geographical
fact that the width of the Straits—only 1.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest
point—would require these foreign naval patrols to pass through Malaysian
and Indonesian territorial waters. While international maritime law stipulated
that foreign vessels—both naval and civilian—had a right to transit the Straits,
it did not provide foreign governments the right to engage in proactive efforts
to conduct security patrols in the Malacca Straits. As a result, any security gov-
ernance concept put forward for securing the Straits and requiring the use of
foreign naval vessels was interpreted by these littoral states as a challenge to
their sovereignty and roundly rejected.23 For Indonesia and Malaysia, this con-
cern over sovereignty had both symbolic and strategic elements. Symbolically,
the issue was tied to national prestige and a concern that any acquiescence in
liticized jurisdictional issues that hindered Malaysian and Indonesian naval vessels
from pursuing pirates into each others territorial waters.

20
Rupert Herbert Burns, 'Terrorism in the Early 21st Century: Maritime Domain',
paper presented at IDSS Maritime Security Conference 20-2 May, p. 8.

21
'Piracy and Maritime Terror in Southeast Asia', IISS Strategic Comments, 10(6), Jul.
2004.
22
Keith Bradsher, 'Warnings From Al Qaeda Stir Fear that Terrorists May Attack Oil
Tankers', A^ York Times, 12 Dec. 2002.

23
'Piracy in South-East Asia: Obstacles to Security Cooperation' IISS Strategic Com-
ments, 6(5), Jun. 2000.
194
a multi-national security patrol would be tantamount to a public acknowledge-
ment that they were incapable of fulfilling their security obligations as sover-
eign states. In strategic terms, both Malaysia and Indonesia were adamant that
they maintain the sine qua non of state sovereignty; namely their exclusive and
supreme right to security governance within their (nautical) territory. Indeed,
Malaysia and Indonesia had been in a decades-long conflict with the United
States, Russia and other states over the legal status of transit rights through the
Malacca Straits and were vehemently opposed to any perceived attempt at 'the
internationalization of the straits.'24
For PSCs offering commercial anti-piracy escorts for corporate clients tran-
siting the Malacca Straits, the results of this overall context in 2005 were two-
fold. First, the increased risk from piracy and terrorism—combined with an
international perception that there was an insufficient level of public security
governance in the Straits—meant that a market had been created for PSCs
providing anti-piracy vessel escort services.2^ Within this security context,
PSCs based in Singapore such as Glenn Defense Marine Asia (CDMA) and
Background Asia Risk Solutions (BARS) and the London-based PSCs Hart
Security and Olive Group began providing anti-piracy vessel escorts in the
Malacca Straits for various commercial clients.26 Second, and more impor-
tantly, these PSCs were providing security services in the Malacca Straits within
the context of an inter-state dispute over the degree to which security gover-
nance in the Straits ought to be monopolized by the littoral states or con-
ducted jointly by other naval powers.
Even more pointedly, these PSCs were offering armed anti-piracy vessel
escort services to commercial clients in a broader political context where foreign
armed vessels transiting the Straits were perceived by the governments of Malay-
sia and Indonesia as a potential challenge to their sovereign political authority.
24
See Raj Sativale, 'Transit Passage in the Straits of Malacca', Sativale, Mathew Arun
Advocates & Solicitors. Maritime Institute of Malaysia Bulletin, 15 Apr. 2003.
According to a senior employee of one such firm offering these services in the Mal-
acca Straits during this period, '[t]his company started looking at maritime security
as a possible business venture almost two years ago, not so much as a direct result of
queries from potential commercial clients, but as result of our own analysis of the
potential threats to shipping. Once we continued to explore the business, we began
to get queries.' Author email correspondence, 11 Feb. 2005.

26
Stephen Fidler and Aden Harris, 'Pirates hold Malacca Strait shipping hostage to
fortune', The Financial Times, 23 Jun. 2005, p. 20; Author interview correspondence,
private security personnel, Oct. 2005 and Aug. 2008.
195
In the words of one maritime security analyst, '[t]he PSCs, by ... offering their
services in the Strait of Malacca [had] inserted themselves into a seminal politi-
cal struggle regarding the nature of sovereignty and the right to enforce security
in the Malacca Strait.'2 This potential for conflict between PSCs conducting
armed escorts in the Malacca Straits and the governments of Malaysia and Indo-
nesia turned into a political scandal in April 2005, when a series of newspaper
articles published in The Straits Times first brought public attention to these
private security escort services.28 Local news articles appeared that stated, for
example, that '[a]s the convention on state sovereignty dictates, the legitimate
monopoly over the use of force in matters of security lies with the state and not
with vessels seeking passage.'29 These media editorials helped instigate a public
debate on armed private security escorts in the Straits by explicitly contextual-
izing these private security operations in terms of a challenge to the authority
and sovereignty of the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia.
As a result, these media criticisms were picked up and amplified by the gov-
ernments of Malaysia and Indonesia, with Malaysian government officials in
particular using the public media to criticize and even threaten the PSCs con-
ducting armed vessel escorts through the Straits with arrest. In April 2005,
Malaysia's Director of Internal Security, Othman Talib, stated that any ship
that provided an armed private security escort to a commercial vessel within
the Malaysian territorial waters of the Malacca Straits would be detained, and
argued that the members of armed private security anti-piracy escort teams
could be categorized as 'mercenaries' or 'terrorists' and charged under the
Malaysian Internal Security Act.30 Marty Natalegawa, a spokesperson for the
Indonesian Foreign Ministry, publicly stated that 'Indonesia won't allow any
private party to provide their own armed security in the Malacca Strait [and
that] responsibility for maintaining security should remain in the hands of
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.'31
2 Mark J. Valencia, 'PSC Operations in the Malacca Strait: Legal and Political Issues
and Options', paper presented at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia, 4 Dec. 2005.
28
Carolin Liss, 'The Role of Private Security Companies in Securing the Malacca
Strait', Maritime Studies, Nov.-Dec. 2007, p. 17.

29
Graham Gerard Ong, A Case for Armed Guards on Ships', The Straits Times, 26
May 2005.
30
Agence France Presse, Armed Escort Vessels Can Sail in Malaysian Waters: Defense
Minister', 5 Jun. 2005.

31
Marcus Hand, 'Malaysia furore fails to deter Malacca escort security firm: security
196
This public controversy culminated in a dispute over the location of legal
authority to engage in security governance within the Malacca Straits that
directly pitted the Malaysian and Indonesian governments against these PSCs
and the corporate auspices that hired them. Specifically, it pitted Malaysian
and Indonesian claims of holding the legal authority to arrest and detain pri-
vate security personnel engaging in armed anti-piracy escorts within their ter-
ritorial waters over and against the claims made by these PSCs that they had
the legal authority to conduct armed security escorts irrespective of the wishes
of these littoral state governments. Whereas Malaysian government officials
argued that PSCs '... have no power in this country and [anti-piracy escorts
are] a violation of our territorial sovereignty,' PSCs such as BARS and GDMA
insisted that they had the legal authority to operate armed anti-piracy escorts
in the Malacca Straits through the territorial waters of Malaysia and Indonesia
irrespective of these public government protests.32
Challenging the States Monopoly of Authority
Over Security Governance
The legal claim made by these PSCs that they had the authority to operate
armed security escorts through Malaysian and Indonesian territorial waters in
the Malacca Straits in defiance of the political preferences of these govern-
ments was based on a form of legal entrepreneurialism and creative compliance
with a series of domestic and international legal statutes. Approaching the law
as an exploitable resource capable of authorizing their security programs rather
than a tool used exclusively by states to restrict what they could or could not
do, both BARS and GDMA turned to legal counsel to assist them develop
their legal strategies. Prior to undertaking any escort activities, GDMA
approached a law firm in Singapore to have its overall business plan and armed
escort procedures reviewed by legal experts to make sure they complied with
the relevant legislation.33 The CEO of BARS, in turn, publicly stated that
prior to commencing our operations we researched the legal and regulatory
position for all jurisdictions.'34
outfit at center of new anti-piracy controversy', Lloyd's List International, 4 May
2005.
32
Ibid.
33
Interview with GDMA Director of Operations, author email correspondence, 28
Aug. 2008.
34
Marcus Hand, 'Malaysia Furore Fails to Deter Malacca Escort Security Firm: Secu-
197
In an exceptional example of the de-coupling of the authorization of secu-
rity governance from the state, both BARS and GDMA fundamentally based
their claims to legally engage in armed security escorts within the Malacca
Straits in international law. Specifically, these PSCs used the third United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and its articles per-
taining to 'transit passage' to give them the right to pass through the Straits
without being impeded or deterred in any way by the security forces of the
littoral states bordering this waterway.3^ Using language taken from UNCLOS,
both BARS and GDMA argued that as long as they began their ship escorts
in international waters outside of the jurisdiction of Indonesia or Malaysia and
transited 'continuously and expeditiously' through these territorial waters, they
had a legal right under international law to conduct armed security escorts
through the Straits. Indeed, the CEO of BARS publicly dismissed the legal
critics of his private security firm's armed ship escort services by claiming that
they did not have a sufficient understanding of... the international maritime
laws that clearly govern our operations.'36
GDMA and BARS also maintained that UNCLOS gave them the author-
ity to legally bypass two other types of control over security governance typi-
cally assumed to be the prerogative of states. First, both BARS and GDMA
argued that under the provisions of UNCLOS they did not need to—and
in actual fact they did not3—register as private security companies in any
of the states whose territorial water they traversed. Irrespective of the fact
that the Malaysian Director of Internal Security argued that any private
security company that wished to operate in Malaysia would need a permit
from his Ministry,38 the CEO of BARS rejected this legal claim and stated
'[i]t is wrong to assume that licensing is required ... we are not licensed
rity Outfit at Center of New anti-piracy Conroversy', Lloyd's List International,
4 May 2005.
35
For a legal discussion of the 'transit passage' clause in UNCLOS III and how it per-
tains to the inability of littoral states to hinder the 'continuous and expeditious
transit' of vessels, see Raj Sativale, 'Transit Passage in the Straits of Malacca', Sativale,
Mathew Arun Advocates & Solicitors, Maritime Institute of Malaysia Bulletin,
15 Apr. 2003.
36
Alex Duperouzel, 'BARS Clarifies' The Jakarta Post, 30 Jul. 2005.
37
Confidential author telephone correspondence with GDMA and BARS personnel.
38
'Malaysia Warns on Private Marine Security Escorts', Marinelog.com [Last accessed
on 10 Aug. 2008].
198
anywhere.'39 Second, these PSCs used UNCLOS to avoid licensing their
weapons. BARS explicitly stated that they were not legally required to—and
in point of fact did not—have their weapons licensed with Indonesia or
Malaysia for the purpose of armed anti-piracy escorts through the territorial
waters of these states.40 In effect, by assiduously avoiding security tasks that
would fall outside of the legal parameters of the right of transit passage
provided under UNCLOS, these PSCs claimed they had the legal authority
to conduct their armed escort work without any licenses whatsoever by
any state.41
However, the fact that these PSCs were able to use international law to over-
ride Malaysian and Indonesian attempts to deny these PSCs the right of con-
ducting armed vessel escorts through their territorial waters did not mean that
these states did not have a de facto capability to physically intervene in these
private security ship escorts. GDMA acknowledged that despite these legal
protections against state interference, in the eventuality of a private security
team member shooting (and wounding or even killing) a pirate assailant, the
auspice and/or PSC escort vessel could be subject to boarding by state mari-
time security forces. In this case, irrespective of the legal provisions of
UNCLOS, the private security team—and the 'shooter' in particular—could
potentially be subject to criminal investigation, arrest and detention.42
However, this defacto power of arrest did not directly translate into an auto-
matic legal right of the littoral states to treat a potential PSC shooting incident
as an illegal and criminal action on the part of the PSC or its commercial aus-
pice. In an effort to mitigate against this risk—and in an example of the way
PSCs have incorporated the state's own legal code to limit the state's ability to
39
Telephone interview with BARS CEO Alex Duperouzel, 20 Oct. 2005.
40
The practical problems associated with multiple jurisdictions also kept BARS from
trying to license weapons. The CEO of BARS stated this issue thusly: 'If you are a
terrestrial security firm you have one, maybe two jurisdictions to worry about. With
us, we might transit through as many as five or six jurisdictions in a single mission.
It [i.e. licensing] is not feasible for the type of work we do.' Ibid.
41
Other non-escort related security services may have required a license. For example,
Singapore requires that a PSC providing security for ships 'bunkering' (i.e. taking
on fuel at or near port) needs to be registered with Singaporean authorities. This
activity clearly falls outside the parameters of the right of transit passage, and BARS
claimed to have turned down requests to provide this service in order to retain its
unlicensed status. Ibid.

42
Author telephone interview, GDMA Director of Operations, 14 Oct. 2008.
199
interfere with PSC security programs—both GDMA and BARS incorporated
Malaysian and Indonesian legal statutes into their operating procedures. Spe-
cifically, these PSCs relied upon the common law tradition of'the right of self
defense'—as legally codified within each state jurisdiction they operated in—to
provide them with the authority to use their weapons and deploy deadly force
against pirates in self defense.43 By carefully aligning their rules for the use of
force within the parameters of each state s laws pertaining to self defense,
BARS and GDMA argued that they had created a legal defence for their
potential use of deadly force in the event of the Malaysian or Indonesian gov-
ernments threatening criminal charges against them or their clients.44
This interlocking matrix of international and national law used by these
PSCs to protect themselves from prosecution by littoral state governments
included the rights of private property owners to protect themselves and their
property from criminal attacks. For instance, the GDMA Director of Opera-
tions argued that 'we are no different to an armed security service protecting
a building on land in any country' and used his legal advisors to adopt laws
pertaining to private property into a legal justification for the potential use of
lethal self defence.4^ At the same time, other sources of maritime regulations
external to Malaysian and Indonesian law—including SOLAS, ISPS, the laws
of the client's vessel's flag state, and regulations from the International Mari-
time Organization were also explicitly adhered to by GDMA and BARS to
bolster the legitimacy and legality of their security escorts.
The conclusion of this legal-political dispute regarding the nature of author-
ity over security governance in the Malacca Straits was resolved in favour of
the PSCs, with government officials publicly acknowledging that they were
required under international law to allow PSC armed anti-piracy vessel escorts
to pass unmolested through their territorial waters. Importantly, this point
was conceded by referring to the same transit passage clause found in
UNCLOS that the PSCs themselves had used as their legal strategy, with the
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister admitting' [w] e are obliged under the straits
43
According to BARS, the requirements for legal right to self defense were different
in different national jurisdictions. BARS CEO Alex Duperouzel stated '[i]n Singa-
pore, for example, the right to use force in self defense does not exist unless you first
call for help, so [BARS security teams] are sure to issue a mayday distress call before
using force.' Author telephone interview, 20 Oct. 2005.

44
Multiple telephone interviews with BARS and GDMA personnel.
45
Agence France Presse, Armed Escorts in High Demand in Asia's Pirate-Infested
Waters' 8 May 2005.
200
regime to allow them transit passage ... passage that should be continuous and
expeditious.'46
In an exceptional display of a legally entrepreneurial use of international law,
these PSCs were able to exploit the fact that as signatories to UNCLOS,
Malaysia and Indonesia were themselves regulated by—and were not the exclu-
sive legislators for or the supreme regulators of—the legal codes relating to the
governance of security within their own nautical territory. Radically, in this
instance, this fact placed real limits on the ability of Malaysia and Indonesia
to legally regulate or otherwise legitimately interfere with the security pro-
grams conducted by these PSCs within their own territorial waters. As a result,
rather than insisting that armed PSC anti-piracy escorts remain consistent with
Malaysian law whilst transiting through Malaysian waters, the Malaysian
Deputy Prime Minister was limited in his insistence that '... these [private
security services] should remain consistent with internationallaw!A7 This fact
not only changed the locus of decision-making authority over which actors
were legally entitled to implement armed security programs in the public space
of the Malacca Straits, but also had important consequences for the content
of security governance within the Straits as well.
Mapping a Security Program: PSC Anti-Piracy Vessel Escorts
in the Straits
During the summer of2005, the Malaysian firm Ban Hoe Leong (BHL) began
considering the use of a PSC to provide its fleet of fuel tankers with anti-piracy
services.48 Though the raised bow and the aft pilot tower of the firm's tankers
were at a considerable height from the waterline, when fully loaded with fuel
the large mid-ship section of a BHL tanker could be as low as 6 feet from the
water. This fact made the BHL fleet particularly vulnerable to the increasing
number of regional piracy incidents because pirates attempting to gain access
to the slow moving BHL tankers needed little more than a small traditional
boat to cruise up alongside the tanker's mid-ship to gain access to the deck and
threaten the crew.
46
Agence France Presse Armed Escort Vessels can Sail in Malaysian Waters: Defense
Minister', 5 Jun. 2005.

47
Ibid.
'Bunker Supplier Turns to Maritime Security Escorts', Bunker world, Nov. 2005,
p. 10.
201
In order to deal with this risk, between May and August of2005 BHL hired
GDMA to design and implement a security program to protect its tanker fleet
from piracy as it transited through the Malacca Straits.49 While the majority
of these anti-piracy escorts during this four month contract involved the use
of unarmed GDMA security teams being placed onboard BHL tankers, on a
number of occasions BHL specifically requested that GDMA include a con-
tingent of armed security guards as part of their anti-piracy escort service.50
This request by BHL to incorporate firearms into the anti-piracy service is
significant for two reasons. First, by altering the service contract with GDMA,
this private auspice changed the content of the security program and hence
the practice of security governance in the Straits. It also provides a clear exam-
ple of the way that auspices may affect security governance through the hiring,
managing and directing of their PSC security 'implementer.'
During the course of this security program, the PSC GDMA devised and
implemented two distinct anti-piracy escort methods for the BHL tanker fleet.
The first involved GDMA using the Glenn Fearless and the Glenn Enforcer—
both ex-Japanese Coast Guard vessels—from the GDMA corporate fleet to
provide an actual PSC vessel to escort the BHL tankers through the Straits.51
The use of the GDMA Fearless and Enforcer—complete with a ship crew and
a ten person security team armed with automatic rifles—provided BHL with
a highly visible security deterrent. It also allowed the private security team to
physically place itself between the auspice's tanker and a (potentially) hostile
ship.52 The use of a PSC escort vessel also allowed GDMA to engage with and
extend an exclusionary security zone—within the bounds of'continuous and
expeditious passage' as stipulated by UNCLOS—around the BHL tanker.
Although GDMA had to operate within these legal constraints and needed
to maintain a purely defensive role, the creation of an exclusionary perimeter
around the BHL tanker inevitably meant that the GDMA escort vessel—
simply through its posture as an armed security vessel—altered the behaviour
of other actors within its immediate vicinity. In this respect, the GDMA-BHL
hybrid security actor also clearly affected the security governance experienced
by the other actors that it came into contact with in the Malacca Straits.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
51
Multiple author interviews with GDMA Director of Operations. Photographs of
these two GDMA escort vessels are available at www.glennmarinegroup.com [Last
accessed on 12 Jul. 2008].
GDMA Director of Operations, author telephone interview, 12 May 2008.
202
In practice, despite the advantages of physically placing a floating platform
between a potential pirate attacker and a BHL tanker, the Fearless and the
Enforcer had a limited cruising range, were expensive to fuel, and as a result
turned out to be too cost prohibitive for smaller firms such as BHL.53 As a
result, the second and more frequently employed armed escort method
GDMA provided to BHL involved placing a security team directly onboard
a BHL tanker. These teams were taken from a rota of sixty individuals com-
prised primarily of Nepalese Gurkhas with previous military experience in the
Nepalese, Indian, or UK armed forces.54 Each had also been given additional
tactical maritime weapons training and legal instruction in the rules for the
use of force by GDMA.35 When broken down into individual ship security
teams, they consisted of a total of ten men led by a GDMA team leader that
typically had a background in an elite unit in a Western military.36
When deployed onboard a BHL tanker, these GDMA security teams were
further divided into three units and worked a security schedule that rotated
on an eight hour shift; basis. According to GDMA protocol, three uniformed
and unarmed Glenn security personnel would stand watch on the deck of the
BHL tanker at all times, while a second security unit remained off-deck with
weapons at the ready to act as an armed rapid response force.5 The remaining
three members of the security team would be sleeping below deck and would
be woken in the event of a crisis to act as the second response—after the armed
team response—during a security incident.58
Control over the actions of this private security team was the hybrid prod-
uct of cooperation between the private auspice BHL and the private security
33
While major oil firms were allegedly willing to pay the higher costs—between
$50,000 and 100,000 per escort—associated with using a PSC escort vessel, smaller
regional firms like BHL were typically unable and unwilling to pay these higher
prices. Multiple interviews, PSC personnel, 2005.
Lee Hong Liang, 'Bravehearts Securing the Peace for Shipping', Bunkerworld, Nov.
2005, p. 10.
55
Multiple telephone interviews, GDMA Director of Operations.
56
For instance the GDMA Director of Operations often acted in the capacity as a
security team leader and was a retired member of US Special Forces.

57
Under security procedures designed by GDMA, these armed security personnel
would remain out of sight to avoid any potential misunderstandings with chance
encounters with Malaysian or Indonesian maritime patrols that might mistake these
armed GDMA guards as pirates.

58
Multiple telephone interviews, GDMA Director of Operations, 2008.
203
implementer GDMA. In practice, this meant a division of control between
the BHD shipmaster"59 and the GDMA security team leader. In his legal capac-
ity as the officer of the BHL merchant vessel, the shipmaster officially main-
tained overall command of the ship and the actions of its crew. However, in
actual practice, the GDMA team leader was given considerable authority via
the contract with BHL to advise the shipmaster in all matters relating to ship
security. The authority wielded by the GDMA team leader was comprised of
formal legal-contractual attributes and informal attributes. Formally, it was
based in the various stipulations of the actual legal contract drawn up between
GDMA and BHL. Informally, it was based on the 'authority of the expert'
and the fact that BHL had hired GDMA precisely because of its security
expertise.60
As a result, GDMA was responsible for designing the content of the security
procedures in the event of a piracy incident and also maintained tactical com-
mand over the private security force onboard the BHL tanker.61 In the even-
tuality of an actual pirate attack, the responsibility of the GDMA team leader
also extended to include overseeing the shipmaster's distress calls to state
authorities, as well as directing the ship master through a series of escalating
non-violent deterrence measures prior to any consideration of the use of fire-
arms. First, open channel radio communication and the use of loudhailers were
used to communicate with and warn off any suspicious approaching vessel. If
this failed, the speed of the tanker would be increased and evasive steering
manoeuvres would be enacted to communicate an active intent to hinder any
attempts at a pirate boarding. GDMA was also contractually authorized by
the auspice to initiate a series of other non-violent countermeasures, including
stationing men at the fire hoses mounted to the sides of the tanker. In the event
of a suspected pirate vessel continuing to approach the tanker, these fire hoses
would be manned by the private security team to repel any boarding attempt
-9 A shipmaster is the officer in command of a merchant ship and is typically also the
captain of the ship.

60
Though this study has thus far focused on the legal-formal attributes of authority, a
broader and richer sociological account of authority also involves the inter-subjective
understanding that an individual's subject matter expertise may also make them an
'authority'. See Thomas K. Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall 'Private Authority as
Global Governance' in T. Biersteker and R. Hall (eds), The Emergence of Private
Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002,
p. 220.
61
Telephone interview, GDMA Director of Operations, 8 Dec, 2008.
204
and to threaten these vessels with sinking under the weight of the pressurized
water shot into their boat.62
The significance of conceptualizing (and emphasizing) the relationship
between the PSC and its client auspice in terms of a hybrid private security
actor—comprised of the commercial auspice BHL and the security imple-
menter GDMA—becomes especially salient when analyzing the nature of the
control over the use firearms. The decision over whether or not to discharge the
firearms onboard the tankers was contractually divided and held jointly by BHL
and GDMA. In the event of a pirate attack, the shipmaster would first need to
authorize the GDMA team leader to use their firearms. Once this permission
was granted, the private security team leader then needed to give the order to
the armed members of the security team to fire before they would discharge
their M-16 rifles.63 In practice, since GDMA was hired precisely in their capac-
ity as a professional security advisor, this decision-making process involved the
private security team leader advising the civilian ship master if and when the
use of firearms was required. Interestingly, the PSC insisted upon a contractual
clause giving GDMA the right to refuse to fire its weapons in the event of the
shipmaster authorizing and then requesting that the GDMA security team
open fire on pirates attacking the vessel.64 Thus, while the auspice could not
force the private security team to fire its weapons, the private security team
could likewise not discharge their firearms without the permission of the aus-
pice. As a result of this, a crucial element of security governance—namely the
authority over the decision to use lethal force—was divided and held jointly
between the commercial auspice and its private security implementer.
To further understand the consequences that this private security program
had for security governance in the Malacca Straits, it is important to consider
the differences between commercial security actors and state security actors in
terms of both their referent objects of security as well as the 'mentalities' of
security.62 Whereas state practices of security governance focus on the public
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Specifically, the GDMA director of operations did not want to be ordered to dis-
charge GDMA weapons by a civilian shipmaster that was under duress during a
pirate attack who might give an order to fire before it was necessary to do so to pro-
tect the crew or vessel. Telephone interview, GDMA Director of Operations, 8 Dec.
2008.
65
Clifford Shearing and Les Johnston argue that a mentality is'... probably the most
205
and are informed by a punitive and restorative mentality, the practice of
commercial security is informed by a risk-based mentality whose focus is
instrumental, calculative, preventative, anticipatory and future-oriented.'66
From the analysis above, it is clear that the procedures put in place by GDMA
to prevent pirate attacks on BHD tankers involved a preventative approach
towards (or mentality of) security provision that was fundamentally different
from that of state security actors. In particular, the GDMA focus on piracy
prevention—rather than a public security force emphasis on piracy apprehen-
sion—brought with it a series of techniques and responsibilities divorced from
the question of public security more broadly.
Whereas Malaysia and Indonesia ostensibly defined the success of their anti-
piracy security program in terms of an overall reduction in the threat that
piracy presented to the public, the private auspices hiring PSCs to implement
anti-piracy escort services defined the success of this security program in terms
of the degree of security provided to BHL's property and crew. Moreover,
because the referent objects of security were different for the littoral states and
the PSCs, the very metrics used to measure the successful' provision of security
were different for these actors. This in turn meant that the same security prac-
tice was interpreted differently by these two groups of actors. Whereas the
littoral states interpreted the PSC anti-piracy escorts as a negative develop-
ment for security governance within the Straits, this same practice was inter-
preted by the PSCs themselves and their clients in terms of a positive
contribution to security governance. As will be demonstrated in the following
section, the relationship between these PSCs and Indonesia and Malaysia
revolved as much around attempts made by the PSCs to close this perception
gap and replace the potential for conflict between these state and non-state
security actors with coordination and cooperation.
Private Security, the State, and Networked Security Governance
Although BARS and GDMA were not legally required to coordinate their
anti-piracy security programs in the Malacca Straits with the governments of
significant dimension of governance' and define it as '... a mental framework that
shapes the way we think about the world.' See Governing Security: Explorations in
Policing and Justice, p. 29.

66
Les Johnston, 'Transnational Private Policing', in J.W.E. Sheptycki (ed.), Issues In
Transnational Policing, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 39.
206
Malaysia and Indonesia, the de facto power of these states meant that PSCs
operating in the Straits had a pragmatic interest in doing so. As a result, both
BARS and GDMA engaged in a series of informal meetings with Indonesian
and Malaysian authorities—at multiple levels within the government and secu-
rity forces—designed to build trust as well as to gain tacit approval for their
escort operations.67 In the case of GDMA, this occurred in a number of ways.
The fact that the company had been based in East Asia for decades providing
marine husbanding, naval logistics and other support services for the region's
navies meant that GDMA was able to facilitate informal agreements with local
authorities regarding its security escorts.68 Indeed, GDMA referred explicitly
to its 'network' of government contacts within multiple states by advertising
the following on its website:
... after many years of close working relationships with the relevant local authorities in
host countries that GDMA operates in, we have built for ourselves an impressive and
strong network of contacts and ground knowledge ... thereby allowing us to excel in
arranging critical diplomatic meetings and conferences where local protocols, security
requirements and logistics combine to offer unique challenges to our clients.69
Attempts by GDMA to create and exploit networks with littoral state
authorities also extended to the operational level. GDMA management made
it a point to directly contact and speak with the Indonesian and Malaysian
security officers responsible for running maritime patrols in the Malacca
Straits. Because these individuals were likely to be the first point of contact
with Malaysian or Indonesian authorities in the event of a security incident at
sea, these meetings were designed to familiarize the state security officers with
the concept of GDMA anti-piracy escorts as well as to answer any questions
and allay any concerns they might have about GDMA's work.
Both GDMA and BARS also used these meetings to review Malaysian and
Indonesian law with the state security personnel responsible for enforcing it.
6
In the words of the CEO of BARS: 'Until you sit down face to face with someone,
[security officials] distrust you, and are bound to think the worst of you.' Alex Dup-
erouzel, Telephone interview, 20 Oct. 2005. Reportedly, these types of informal
meetings also occasionally involved the 'informal' exchange of cash. See Carolin Liss,
'The Role of Private Security Companies in Securing the Malacca Strait', Maritime
Studies, Nov-Dec. 2007, p. 17.

68
These connections existed up to the Cabinet level within certain governments. Au-
thor telephone interview, GDMA official, 27 Aug. 2008.

69
See Glenn Defense Marine Asia website, www.glennmarinegroup.com [Last accessed
on 20 Aug. 2008].
207
In the words of the CEO of BARS:the law in Asia is often unclear. So it is
always a good idea to sit down with the person who enforces the law and ask
them "how do you read this ?" They are not going to give you a permission slip,
0
but they'll warn you off.' State security officials, for their part, used these
meetings to engage in an indirect form of political control by inducing the
PSCs to voluntarily self-regulate their security practices by making various
security-related concessions to littoral state authorities. In one instance, BARS
refrained from carrying fifty-calibre sniper rifles on board their escort ships—a
weapon BARS management claimed they were within their legal rights to
carry and operate—and also switched from using AK-47 automatic rifles to
M-I6s after littoral state police forces made these specific requests during these
informal meetings.71 Self-regulation and attempts to create norms of'best
practice' were also developed by these PSCs in a pre-emptive effort to alleviate
the concerns of state security officials before an issue came up. For instance,
GDMA and BARS explained to law state security personnel that they had
written up protocols of evidence preservation for 'maintaining the crime scene'
to assist law enforcement during any subsequent police investigation of an
incident involving the use of firearms by PSC employees.72
This was part of a larger attempt by GDMA and other PSCs to influence
and modify the local security forces' perception of both the PSCs themselves
as well as their anti-piracy escort services. This involved a discursive process
whereby PSCs refrained both their identities as security actors as well as the
concept of their relationship to the state. For instance, GDMA and BARS
continuously and repeatedly told state security actors that they were not 'mer-
cenaries' conducting illegal activities that challenged Malaysian and Indonesian
sovereignty; instead, they argued that they were traditional commercial secu-
rity companies that rigidly adhered to the rule of law and thereby helped to
support Indonesian and Malaysian sovereignty. BARS and GDMA also assidu-
ously explained to law enforcement officials that they only engaged in defen-
sive security measures and underscored the point that they did not engage in
0
BARS CEO Alex Duperouzel, author telephone interview, 20 Oct. 2005. In the
course of these meetings GDMA representatives also discussed their interpretation
of international and Malaysian or Indonesian law as it pertained to the right of armed
self defense and their armed escort services in general. Telephone correspondence,
GDMA Director of Operations, 12 Oct. 2008.

1
Author telephone interview, Alex Duperouzel, BARS CEO, 20 Oct. 2005.
2
Multiple telephone interviews, BARS and GDMA personnel, Oct. 2005.
208
any efforts of piracy eradication, apprehension, or other activity that fell into
3
the realm of law enforcement activity.
This imagery of PSCs assisting the state in creating a secure environment
without infringing on the state's role in law enforcement is precisely what the
managing director of BARS sought to convey to state security personnel while
delivering a presentation entitled 'The Role of Private Security in the Malacca
Straits.' In it, the BARS CEO stated in simple and straightforward language
that: '[p]rivate maritime security is only useful as a supplement to existing
sovereign security. It is not there to supplant the important and vital role of
navies, coast guards and marine police.'74
GDMA also made attempts to create positive inducements for the littoral
state security forces to participate in a degree of networked coordination argu-
ing that they could provide a valuable service to them. For instance, GDMA
communicated that they were willing to use their armed ship escorts as a means
of sharing intelligence, thereby extending the surveillance capacity of over-
stretched littoral state security forces capable of patrolling only a fraction of
their territorial waters.75 One form of operational coordination that did take
place involved GDMA providing local governments enough information on
their armed anti-piracy escorts in the Straits to allow their state security forces
to plot the general location of the GDMA armed security team and client dur-
6
ing their escort voyage.
GDMA institutionalized this practice for a number of reasons. First, this
notification acted as an informal acknowledgement of state authority over
security governance within their territorial waters, and helped assuage the
concerns of public security forces by giving them a degree of surveillance over
GDMA armed escort operations. Second, this information had the potential
to give Malaysian or Indonesian security forces a head start in offering assis-
tance in the case of a distress call made during one of these escorts. Third, and
in a related fashion, it allowed state security agents to have foreknowledge of
an armed private security contingent operating in the area in the event of a
73
Ibid.
4
Alex Duperouzel 'The Role of Private Security in the Malacca Straits' paper pre-
sented to LIMA Conference 2005, Langkawi, Malaysia.

/5
Specifically, GDMA said they would report the time of sighting and location of
suspicious vessels encountered during their journeys. Author telephone interview,
GDMA Director of Operations, 12 Oct. 2008.

76
Ibid.
209
distress call, thereby reducing the chance of an accidental shooting by police
or naval officials mistaking armed GDMA personnel onboard a client vessel
as pirates.
Yet there were also clear limitations to these informal security networks.
First, and foremost, there were no public security personnel embedded into
any GDMA or BARS armed escort operations in the Malacca Straits. Malay-
sian Marine Police personnel turned down repeated offers by GDMA to accept
employment and/or a per diem financial compensation package to participate
in GDMA ship escorts during operations that would pass through Malaysian
8
waters. Indeed, merely admitting to the existence of these informal arrange-
ments between local government officials and their security personnel with
these PSCs was politically problematic. Both Malaysian and Indonesian
authorities, for instance, publicly denied that these informal sessions even took
place.79 Nevertheless, GDMA and BARS clearly did engage in a limited degree
of networked coordination and cooperation with littoral state governments
and their security forces.
Two important observations can be made here. First, the interaction
between GDMA and BARS and the littoral states corroborate suggestions
that 'networks are best seen not in terms of crystallized structures, but as more
or less temporary hubs of practice' where different nodes, or actors in the net-
work simultaneously cooperate and compete within the field of security deliv-
ery.80 Second, the analysis of this security network allowed the efforts of state
and non-state security actors to enrol one another as well as other resources
(e.g. the media, legal statutes) into each other's security programs to come into
focus.81 Rather than making the more commonplace observation that state
auspices occasionally enlist PSC implementers to help the state achieve its
security goals, this section articulated a less state-centric alternative whereby
multiple public and private security actors continuously seek to activate or
enrol one another—with varying and contingent degrees of success—in pur-
suit of their own security programs.
77
Ibid.
78
Ibid.
79
Captain Noor Apandi Osnin, Armed Escorts in the Strait of Malacca: A Challenge
to Malaysia's Governance', paper presented at the MIMA seminar on Private Mari-
time Security, 17 Mar. 2006, p. 16.

80
J. Wood and B. Dupont, Democracy, Society, and the Governance of Security, p. 4.
81
Jennifer Wood and Clifford Shearing, Imagining Security, UK: Willan Publishing,
2007.
210
Conclusion
The anti-piracy security programs implemented by GDMA and BARS in the
Malacca Straits in the summer of 2005 provide a clear demonstration of the
way that security governance has been de-coupled from the state. While it
remains self-evident and obligatory to mention the state s continued impor-
tance in the field of security, it is no longer plausible to assume that the state
consistently remains the undisputed hegemonic security actor suggested by
traditional theories of IR. On the contrary, this study of PSC security pro-
grams in the Malacca Straits demonstrates the utility of setting aside a priori
assumptions regarding the practice of security governance in favour of empiri-
cal investigations that are sensitive to the security roles played by legitimate
non-state actors. This sensitivity to the pluralization of security implementers
and auspices is vital for highlighting important historical shifts in the way
security is governed that are left hidden by more static and state-centric models
of security governance.
Throughout the chapter, the specific claim that authority over security gov-
ernance should no longer be thought of as a state monopoly was elucidated by
the complimentary theoretical concepts of auspices and meta-political author-
ity. In turn, this claim was demonstrated empirically by looking at the legal
strategies adopted by GDMA and BARS during the course of their anti-piracy
security programs. Furthermore, through an analysis of the entrepreneurial use
of international law by these PSCs, this chapter illustrated how the legal regu-
latory structures pertaining to security governance cannot simply be imagined
as always empowering the state during disputes with non-state security actors.
Instead, this study suggests that PSCs can (and have) approached the law as a
tool to empower themselves over and against state attempts to use the law to
curtail or eliminate specific PSC security programs.
While it is true that the state's sovereign legal status and its legislative pow-
ers give it a formidable source of control over security governance, it is also
true that states can find themselves in competition with legitimate private
security actors capable of enrolling both the state's own laws as well as alterna-
tive sources of meta-political authority to challenge and defend themselves
against government interference. As a result, it may be accurate to say that both
PSCs and states are the targets of legislation emanating from different sites of
meta-political authority within the international system that limit and shape
their respective security programs and how they relate to one another. This
observation clearly has implications for global governance in general that
extend beyond the study of changes in the operation of security.
211
Finally, changing patterns in the authorization of security governance also
clearly speaks to broader concerns regarding the relative power relationships
between PSCs and the state. On one level, this study is theoretically sympa-
thetic and empirically consonant with the nodal security studies of private
security which have avoided placing PSCs within a binary and zero-sum rela-
tionship to state power.82 Indeed, in one sense, the incorporation of state law
into the legal strategies engaged in by GDMA and BARS corroborate claims
made within the nodal security studies literature that posit PSCs derive their
'... legitimacy precisely from their connections to the state' rather than by
standing in political opposition to it.'83 However, this study of private security
in the Malacca Straits also moves beyond this observation by demonstrating
how PSCs can implement legal security programs that directly contradict the
security preferences of a state—even within its own nautical territory—via the
entrepreneurial use of the meta-political authority embedded within interna-
tional law. In this sense, while PSCs and states need not always engage in zero-
sum conflict over security governance, it is important to be reminded that
these conflicts can and do occasionally occur.
Importantly, not only has this chapter shown that this situation need not
occur simply as the result of criminal activity on the part of a PSC; it has also
shown that the result of a legal contest over security governance between states
and legitimate non-state security actors is not predetermined in favour of the
state. On a broader level, this study of private security in the Malacca Straits
has also demonstrated some intriguing theoretical possibilities for our under-
standing of the state, private security, and new and evolving patterns in the
authorization and implementation of security. In particular, it has shown how
the relationship between territory, authority and coercion—theoretically
bundled neatly together within the traditional Weberian definition of the
modern state—is becoming decidedly unbundled in practice.
82
See Johnston, Policing Britain.
83
See the chapter in this volume by Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams p. 226.
212
9
SECURING THE CITY
PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES AND NON-STATE
AUTHORITY IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE1
Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams
State-centrism has been an enduring feature of International Relations theory.
Despite frequent recognition of the emergence of non-state actors and admo-
nitions to rethink the relationship between the 'global' and the 'local', what
John Agnew2 once termed the 'territorial trap' seems continually to ensnare
the discipline. As Michael Barnett laments, 'state, territory, and authority are
forever married in IR theory', and even the way in which IR has generally
approached the integration of the domestic and the global reflects a continuing
tendency to treat them as ontologically separate, pre-given realms.3 In recent
years, research on global governance has begun to overcome these limitations,
1
The research for this chapter was funded by the UK ESRC, grant no. RES-223-25-
0074.
2
John Agnew, 'The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International
Relations Theory', Review of International Political Economy, 1(1), 1994, pp. 53-
80.
3
Michael Barnett, Authority, Intervention, and the Outer Limits of International
Relations Theory', in Thomas Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir and Robert Latham (eds),
Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001, pp. 49-50.
213
drawing attention to the expanding role and importance of private, non-state
actors wielding authority in a variety of different spheres, including the econ-
omy, environmental protection, and development.4 This literature shows how
the authority of private actors helps give rise to institutional arrangements that
structure and direct the behaviour of actors in particular issue areas, and hence,
that governance cannot be exclusively associated with the state and with inter-
national institutions.
The realm of security has traditionally been largely resistant to claims about
the need to unpack state-centric conceptions of authority; indeed many studies
of security privatization have if anything served to reinforce it. For example,
to the extent that private security actors have been included in the literature
on non-state authority, they have generally been described in two main ways.
First, there is a tendency to associate the rise of private security with a corre-
sponding erosion of state sovereignty. This is, of course, a well-known theme
in studies of globalization, which is frequently seen as indicating a long-term
shift from state-centric forms of governance towards a dispersal of power and
authority towards private actors and international organizations.^ Given that
most definitions of the state centre on the monopoly of the means of violence,
it is not surprising that the rise of private security actors tends to be interpreted
4
See John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000; A. Claire Cutler, Private Power and Global Au-
thority, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; A. Claire Cutler, Virginia
Haufler, and Tony Porter (eds), Private Authority and International Affairs, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1999; Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach,
Polities: Authority, Identities and Change, Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1996; Edgar Grande and Louis W. Pauley (eds), Complex Sovereignty: Recon-
stituting Political Authority in the Twenty-first Century, Toronto: University of To-
ronto Press, 2005; Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas Bierstecker (eds), The Emergence
of Private Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002; Richard Higgott, Geoffrey Underbill, and Andreas Bieler (eds), Non-State Ac-
tors and Authority in the Global System, London: Routledge, 2000; Karsent Ronit
and Volker Schneider (eds), Private Organizations in Global Politics, London: Rout-
ledge, 2000; Robert Falkner, 'Private Environmental Governance and International
Relations: Exploring the Links', Global Environmental Politics IsiX) 2003, pp. 72-87;
L. Henry, Giles Mohan and H. Yanacopulos 'Networks as Transnational Agents of
Development', Third World Quarterly, 5(5), 2004, pp. 839-855.
- See Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
214
SECURING THE CITY
as a loss of, or threat to, state power. Second, when private security actors have
been considered in the literature on non-state authority and governance, they
are frequently regarded as illegitimate actors. Until recently, discussions of
security privatization, particularly in Africa, were primarily focused on the role
of 'mercenaries',6 with the image of the 'return of the dogs of war' hovering
ominously in the background. From this followed an easy, moral condemna-
tion of private security actors. Thus, in the most extensive treatment of private
security actors as a form of private authority they are classified as exercising
'illicit' authority, alongside mafias and militias.8
Neither of these interpretations is necessarily wrong, however both provide
an unhelpfully restricted means of grasping the shifting structures of security
and authority emerging from privatization. As regards the first, while there is
little doubt that private security may in certain settings be an indication of
state weakness or pose a threat to the state, this cannot be taken to be univer-
sally true. Authority is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and it is equally pos-
sible that private force can strengthen and support the authority of the state.
Similarly, while private security may under certain circumstances be 'illicit',
glossing over the differences between 'mercenaries' and corporate private secu-
rity companies9 provides an unduly narrow view of the range of security priva-
tization, ignoring the vast majority of activities which are entirely legal and
often conducted alongside and in co-operation with public security forces.10
6 Abdel-Fatau Musah and J.K. Fayemi (eds), Mercenaries: An African Security Di-
lemma, London: Pluto, 2000; Guy Arnold, Mercenaries: The Scourge of the Third
World, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999; Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (yAs), Peace,
Profit, or Plunder: The Privatization of Security in War-torn African Societies, Preto-
ria: Institute for Security Studies, 1999.
Bernedette Mutheun and Ian Taylor, 'Return of the Dogs of War? The Privatisation
of Security in Africa,' in Hall and Bierstecker, The Emergence of Private Authority,
pp. 183-199.
8
Rodney B. Hall and Thomas Bierstecker, 'Private Authority as Global Governance'
in Hall and Bierstecker, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance,
pp. 3-22.
9
See Abdel-Fatau Musah, Africa: Private Military Intervention and Arms Prolifera-
tion in the Process of State Decay', in J. Miliken (ed.), State Failure, State Collapse,
and State Reconstruction, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003; Meuthen and Taylor, 'Return of
the Dogs of War?'.

10
These tendencies have been recognized in some of the most recent literature, which
goes a long way towards recognizing the shifting boundaries of the public/private
215
In short, assuming that private security is either an erosion of state authority,
or that it stands outside legitimate (state) authority, obscures the breadth
of its operations and the conceptual and political challenges it poses to under-
standing the nature and functioning of authority in the contemporary
global order.
In this chapter we argue that the globalization of private security provides
a striking illustration of the shifting structures of global governance and high-
lights the importance of prying apart the 'state, territory, authority'—triptych.
To do so, we broaden the scope of analysis away from the preoccupation with
military privatization to focus instead on the globalization of private commer-
cial security, that is, the much more mundane, day-to-day activities of security
companies operating mostly (but not exclusively) in non-conflict environments
and dedicated to protecting 'life and assets'. We argue that private security can
be seen to wield considerable authority—defined as the right and ability legiti-
mately to speak and act in contemporary international politics. This authority
in turn arises from a multiplicity of sources that are intimately linked to global
discourses and transformations. Far from standing in opposition to state power
in a zero-sum game, private security actors often draw legitimacy precisely from
their connections to the state. The authority of global private security compa-
nies cannot be contained within the traditional distinctions of inside/outside,
global/local or public/private, but requires the dissolution of the 'state, terri-
tory, authority' marriage in favor of an analysis of new networks and interac-
tions between state and non-state actors.
While often presented as apolitical, as the mere effect of market forces and
moves toward greater efftciency in service delivery, the authority conferred on
private actors can alter the political landscape and in the case of private security
has clear implications for who is secured and how. We explore these shifts in
the context of security provision in Cape Town, South Africa, where highly
publicized security concerns, complex dynamics of political transformation,
and extensive security privatization come together in one of the country's most
politically and symbolically significant cities, and one the world's emerging
tourist destinations. What emerges from the analysis, is an illustration of
hybrid private/public governance involving both local and global actors, thus
entailed by military privatisation. See for example, Deborah Avant, The Market for
Force, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 and Peter W. Singer, Corporate
Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003.
216
SECURING THE CITY
drawing attention to what Evans has termed the changing conditions of'state-
ness' (the institutional centrality of the state) in an era of globalization.11
The Authority of Private Security
While there is no clear-cut distinction between private security companies
(PSCs) and private military companies (PMCs), and many companies take
on contracts in both the military and commercial sectors, the focus here is on
PSCs whose core activities consist of the day-to-day provision of security, or
the protection of'life and assets', as opposed to support for and involvement
in military operations. The past four decades have seen a remarkable expan-
sion in this part of the private security industry, whose client-base includes a
mixture of individuals, business, governments, and international organiza-
tions. Worldwide, it is estimated to have a total value of $139 billion, with
continually high growth rates predicted.12 The services offered by PSCs range
from basic manned guarding to alarm, patrol and response services, as well as
more sophisticated surveillance and satellite tracking systems. More recently,
risk management and consultancy services have expanded significantly, both
as a reflection of the more challenging overseas operating environments of
corporations and international organizations and the increased security
awareness associated with 'risk society'.13 Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that
the activities of private security firms are pervasive in modern societies. In the
UK, for example, private security officers outnumber public police by a ratio
of almost two to one, while in the US it is almost three to one. In Hong Kong,
the number is five to one, and in some developing countries it may be as high
as ten to one.14
As the private security sector has expanded, it has also become increasingly
transnational. While the majority of security companies in any one location
are likely to be small or medium-sized local businesses, the past decade has
witnessed the emergence of powerful global PSCs, which by virtue of their
reach, resources and revenues constitute an increasingly significant presence
11
Peter Evans, 'The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Global-
ization', World Politics, 50(1), 1997, pp. 62-87.

12
Sccmitis, Annual Report 2007, Securitas, 2008, p. 13.
13
Ulrick Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage, 1992.
14
Francesco Mancini, In Good Company: The Role of Business in Security Sector Reform,
London: Demos, 2006.
217
in international politics. A series of brief examples serve to illustrate the
growth of the global private security industry. Based in Sweden, Securitas is
the world's second largest private security company. Founded in 1934, the
company has grown to become a multi-faceted global actor. In the 1990s, it
expanded rapidly throughout Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe,
often by acquiring local firms. In 1999, the company moved into the North
American market, acquiring Pinkerton and, in 2000, Burns Security, thus
making it the largest private security provider on the continent. Securitas now
operates in more than forty countries, and employs over 240,000 people.
Listed on the Stockholm stock exchange, the company has annual revenues
in excess of $9 billion.
The recent history of Group4Securicor is an even more striking illustration
of the expansion and globalization of the sector. In a process that began with
the merger between the Danish company Falck and the UK's Group4 in 2000,
the company has grown at a startling pace. In 2002, Group4Falck (as it was
then named) acquired the second-largest US-based PSC, Wackenhut, thus
expanding from 148,000 to 230,000 employees and increasing its countries of
operation from approximately fifty to eighty-five. In the summer of2004, the
company merged with the UK-based firm Securicor, to form Group4Securicor.
Securicor had itself undertaken an aggressive strategy of global expansion, and
had through its acquisition of the South African company Gray Security in
2000 acquired a strong presence on the African continent. Group4Securicor
is today a London Stock Exchange-listed company with 585,000 employees,
operations in over 110 countries, and annual turn over in 2008 of £5.94 bil-
lion.15 Finally, Prosegur, a Spanish company, is the third largest PSCs. Founded
in 1976 it now employs about 80,000 people and has significant operations
across Europe and South America.
Another category contains PSCs that are part of even larger transnational
corporations. Chubb, for example, in July 2003 became a part of United Tech-
nologies, a $31 billion, NYSE-listed global corporation. Chubb itself has
annual revenues of $1.5 billion. Similarly, ADT Security Systems was acquired
by Tyco International in 1998 and is now part of a Fire and Security Services
company that operates in 100 countries, employs 267,000 people, serves 7.8
million customers around the world and responds to nearly 34 million alarm
signals every year.16
15 Basic information on both companies can be found on their respective websites:
www.securitas.com and www.group4securicor.com

16
See www.adt.com and www.chubbsecurity.com.
218
SECURING THE CITY
The authority of PSCs is, like the authority of non-state actors in general,
in large part linked to broad transformations in global governance. Before
discussing how these transformations give rise to non-state authority, a few
words on the concept of authority itself are necessary. A notoriously elusive
concept, authority is generally perceived to lie somewhere between coercion
and persuasion.1 In this sense, authority is linked to legitimacy and consent,
or a public recognition of the right of certain persons or institutions to rule
or exercise authority over a particular territory or issue area. At the same time,
it is clear that authority cannot be entirely divorced from coercion, and that
domination and persuasion exist as potentialities that can be employed should
trust or consent be in doubt.18 For the purposes of our discussion here, an
understanding of authority as the ability to establish a presumptive right to
speak and act is instructive.19 This view of authority takes account of its
socially constructed nature, that is, its dependence on an audience or society
whose norms and values recognize certain persons, institutions or statements
as authoritative. In this way, authority is an effect, rather than an entity.20 At
the same time, authorities cannot be seen as simply regulating the activities
and interests of actors, but are intrinsic to the construction and constitution
of the social world.21 While this applies as much to public as to private author-
ity, the fact that the latter is commonly assigned to the realm of the non-
political and voluntary has until recently prevented analysis of the role and
influence of non-state actors in increasing domains of international relations.
In contemporary global governance, non-state authorities not only help
regulate and co-ordinate already existing activities in trade,22 environmental
1
Richard Friedman, 'On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy', in Joseph
Raz (td). Authority, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, p. 63; Raz (ed.) Authority, Bruce
Lincoln, Authority: Construction and Corrosion, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995; Barnett, Authority, Intervention, and the Outer Limits of Internation-
al Relations Theory' discusses authority in IR.

18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.; Barnett, 'Authority, Intervention, and the Outer Limits of International Rela-
tions Theory'; Anna Leander, 'The Power to Construct International Security: On
the Significance of the Emergence of Private Military Companies', Millennium,
33(3), 2005, pp. 803-825.

20
Steven Lukes, 'Perspectives on Authority' in Raz {td). Authority, pp. 203-217.
21
Barnett, 'Authority, Intervention, and the Outer Limits of International Relations
Theory'.
22
Cutler, Private Power and Global Authority.
219
standards23 and development,21 but also help actively to change and reshape
preferences and practices so that they correspond more readily with dominant
economic, political and social modes of organization.2"1
Analyses of the emergence of non-state authority have pointed to the impor-
tance of broad shifts in global governance, and to a significant extent, the
authority of PSCs is also linked to these transformations. In particular, the
authority of PSCs is facilitated by three key developments; first, the dominance
of neoliberal economic policies; second, the commodification of security and
its concomitant constitution as a realm of expert knowledge; and third, the
integration of PSCs into 'hybrid' security networks. The first two sources of
authority are closely related. As analyses of the shifting nature of authority in
the global system have commonly stressed, the increasing dominance of neo-
liberal economic ideas and policies facilitate the social power and globalization
of private property and capital. It also facilitates the ability of private actors to
claim expertise over a given domain or issue area, and thus to wield authority
in relation to it.26 The 'market authority' of PSCs is inseparable from the ascen-
dancy of neoliberal ideas, and the most basic form of authority exercised by
PSCs is that which they derive from property rights, and from the 'principal-
agent' relationship between private security and the private property of its
clients. As Sarre points out, 'Unlike the public police, whose power is found
generally in the various law enforcement statutes, the power of private security
personnel derives principally from their being legal "agents" of those who con-
trol or own private property'.27 In a majority of cases, the authority of private
23
Jennifer Clapp, 'The Privatization of Global Environmental Governance: ISO 14000
and the Developing World', Global Governance 4(3), 1999, pp. 295-316.
24
Thomas Callaghy, 'Networks and Governance in Africa: Innovation in the Debt
Regime' in Callaghy, Kassimir and Latham (eds), Intervention and Transnationalism
in Africa, pp. 115 -148.
Barnett, Authority, Intervention, and the Outer Limits of International Relations
Theory'.
26
See for example, Cutler, Haufler, and Porter, Private Authority and International
Affairs-, V irginia Haufler, A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation
in a Global Economy, Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 2001.
2
Rick Sarre, 'The Legal Basis for the Authority of Private Police and an Examination
of Their Relationship to the "Public" Police', in Private Sector and Community In-
volvement in the CriminalJustice System, Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminol-
ogy, 1994, p. 169.
220
SECURING THE CITY
security arises from the right to enforce a combination of the 'law of contract'
dictating an implied or actual contract between the owners of property and
those who come onto it (such as, for example, conditions on the conduct of
visitors to a site); the 'law of property' declaring the right to control the use of
property and access to it (particularly the right of exclusion); and the 'indus-
trial law' concerning the relations between employers and employees (a typical
example being the rule that employees are subject to search when entering or
leaving the site). PSCs thus draw authority as the agents of legitimate princi-
pals, whose position is itself based in the legitimating principles and legal status
of property rights.
A second dimension of the authority of PSCs derives from broader pro-
cesses involved in the commodification of security. The neoliberal transforma-
tions of the last three decades have seen not only a substantial outsourcing of
public security functions, but also an increasing acceptance of PSCs' status as
market actors who provide a 'service' that can be bought and sold on a free
market. As part of this process, the provision of security has become less tightly
identified with the direct and exclusive authority of state officials, and recon-
figured as a market in which the public is composed of consumers rather than
clients—a realm of individuals actively engaged in making choices about their
security provision within a marketplace where public authorities are only one
(albeit an important and in many ways still privileged) provider.28 Belief in the
models of the commercial enterprise as the most efficient form of service deliv-
ery, of the public as consumers, and of a security market comprised of both
public and private providers have become important elements in the concep-
tualization and delivery of security. Security has now become to a significant
extent a technique and a form of expert knowledge that, while specialised, is
by no means the sole purview of public authorities and that may in fact be
more effectively exercised by private providers. These trends have facilitated a
28
For extensive and detailed analyses of these processes, see David Garland, The Culture
of Control, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Les Johnston, The Rebirth of Pri-
vate Policing, London: Routledge, 1992; Trevor Jones and Tim Newburn, Private
Security and Public Policing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Ian Loader,
'Thinking Normatively About Private Sccnnty, Journal of Law and Society, 24(3),
1997, pp. 377-94; P. O'Malley and D. Palmer, 'Post-Keynesian Policing', Economy
and Society, 27,1996, pp. 135-147; George S. Rigakos, 'Hyperpanoptics as a Com-
modity: The Case of the Parapolice', Canadian Journal of Sociology, 24(3), 1999,
pp. 381-410; Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing, Governing Security, London:
Routledge, 2003.
221
specific form of depoliticization, a de-linking of security from public authority
that is related to the growth of private security, as well as to its legitimation
and the authority it wields.
The combination of principal-agent relationships (where PSCs act on behalf
of the rights possessed by those who own or control property) and the treat-
ment of security as a service29 to be provided in the market is an important
foundation of the authority of private security in both its actions on behalf of
clients and in the process of expanding its own markets and global operations.
As a result of these various processes, contracting private security has become
increasingly commonplace. Although geographically varied, hiring private
security is now standard practice for many commercial enterprises, interna-
tional organizations and increasing numbers of private individuals, and it is
widely accepted—and often encouraged—by public authorities with which it
has entered into increasingly close relationships.
It is precisely this closer relationship to public authority that provides the
third source of authority for PSCs. Whereas the rise of private authority is
often interpreted as an indication of declining state power, there is increasing
evidence to suggest that the strict public/private distinction is losing its rele-
vance both empirically and conceptually. Rather than clearly delineated spheres
of private and public authority, the governance of particular realms emerges
more often than not out of a combination and co-operation of public and pri-
vate actors. Again, broader global discourses and practices such as New Public
Management strategies and moves toward public-private partnerships are of
key importance here, and although states are not necessarily the instigator of
such 'hybrid' forms of governance, they lend them strength and legitimacy
through official recognition and/or incorporation into domestic/international
law.30 States can also frequently be seen to benefit from the more widespread
use of private governance mechanisms, and may, as Robert Falkner argues in
the case of environmental governance, choose to let private actors establish
systems of self-regulation and thus be relieved of the arduous burden of nego-
tiation, implementation and enforcement.31
29 Indicative is the treatment of both Securitas and Group4Falck as exemplary models
of a service company in Waldemar Schmitt, Gordon Adler and Els van Weering,
Winning At Service, New York: Wiley, 2003, and the discussion in John Stees, Out-
sourcing Security: A Guide for Contracting Services, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-
Heinemann, 1998.
30
For an example of this in environmental governance, see Clapp, 'The Privatization
of Global Environmental Governance'.

31
Falkner, 'Private Environmental Governance and International Relations'.
222
SECURING THE CITY
In the security field, the development of hybrid public/private structures
has become increasingly widespread.32 Public policing in many countries has
undergone a process of reform in accordance with neoliberal reforms and
pressures. New Public Management strategies, outsourcing, marketization,
and consumer-driven logics have resulted in a pluralization' and 'fragmenta-
tion' of policing, so that the public police are only one among many security
actors. As a number of the most incisive analysts of security privatization have
stressed, private security cannot be grasped simply by contrasting it to public
authority. Instead, the distinctions between private and public security are
being blurred and reconfigured, fusing into networks of institutions and prac-
tices. As Ian Loader has put it: 'Security must now be taken to refer to a whole
range of technologies and practices provided, not only by public bodies such
as the police or local authorities, but also by commercial concerns competing
in the marketplace. We have unfolding ... an uneven, patchwork of security
hardware and services, with provision increasingly determined by people's
willingness and ability to pay'.33 In such contexts, far from being in opposition
to the state, PSCs often draw legitimacy precisely from their connections to
public authority.
This does not mean that traditional distinctions are irrelevant: the concepts
of public and private and their different forms of authority remain important.
In particular, public security authorities retain legislative authorization and a
breadth of jurisdiction that no other actors possess,34 and private security usu-
ally operates within a regulatory framework of some kind. However, the public
and private sectors need to be treated not as mutually exclusive kinds of actors
and realms of activity, but as broadly heuristic concepts that allow different
dimensions of a security network to come into focus. The key is to recognize
the complex relationships between private security and public authority, and
the way in which the authority of these various networks arises from a combi-
nation of different sources, including public authorization, private expertise,
private property rights, and neoliberal ideology. In other words, 'state, terri-
tory, authority' cannot be assumed to be coterminous, as private authority
32
Johnston, Rebirth of Private Policing-, Jones and Newburn, Private Security and Pub-
lic Policing-, David H. Bayley and Clifford Shearing, The New Structure of Policing:
Description, Conceptualization and Research Agenda, Washington DC: National
Institute of Justice, 2001.

33
Ian Loader, 'Private Security and the Demand for Protection in Contemporary Brit-
ain', Policing and Society, 7, 1997, p. 147.

34
Jones and Newburn, Private Security and Public Policing.
223
stretches across territorial boundaries, but not necessarily in a zero-sum game
with the authority of public forces and institutions.
Security and Private Authority in Cape Town
South Africa has one of the world s most highly privatized and globalized secu-
rity sectors, and as a percentage of GDP, the country has the largest private
security sector in the world.35 In the space of a short decade, the post-apartheid
private security industry has moved from being regarded by the Government
as largely illegitimate, and potentially politically subversive, to becoming
increasingly integrated into public-private partnerships and perceived as cru-
cial to the maintenance of law and order. This transformation has taken place
in a profoundly transnational space, where PSCs have derived authority from
global markets, claims to expert knowledge, as well as the turn to neo-liberal
modes of governance.
The context for South Africa's massive private security expansion is of course
the transition to majority rule, which was accompanied by high crime rates
and pervasive fear among the white minority. By the end of apartheid in 1994,
there were three times as many private security personnel as public police
officers,36 and from 1997 to 2000 the number of security officers grew from
115,000 to 166,000.3 As the armed forces were downsized and career oppor-
tunities for previously privileged groups were curtailed in both the police and
armed forces, scores of white officers fled the public sector to join the burgeon-
ing private security business. South Africa's security market became one of the
fastest growing in the world, experiencing annual growth rates of 30 per cent
in the mid-1990s.38 The rapid expansion of the market was paralleled by its
increasing globalization, as transnational PSCs looked to South Africa for
profitable acquisitions and opportunities. Three of the largest international
companies, Group4Securicor, Chubb and ADT, now have a significant pres-
ence in the country. Group4Securicor is one of the leading guarding firms,
35
Credit Suisse/First Boston, Review of the South African Private Security Industry, 7
Feb. 2001, Europe: Credit Suisse First Boston.

36
Mark Shaw and Clifford Shearing, 'Reshaping Security: An Examination of the
Governance of Security in South Africa', African Security Review, 7(3), 1998, p. 4.

3
Data supplied by private security company.
38
Credit Suisse/First Boston, Review of the South African Private Security Industry,
p. 7.
224
SECURING THE CITY
employing approximately 16,000 guards, whereas Chubb and ADT dominate
the lucrative armed response market. By 2004, the private security industry
was valued at R14 billion, an increase from R9 billion in 1997, with foreign
investment estimated at approximately R2 billion.39 A total of 6,392 private
security companies are registered with the Private Security Regulatory Author-
ity, employing 375,315 active security officers.40 By comparison, the South
African Police Services (SAPS) had 98,000 uniformed police officers perform-
ing policing functions as of June 2004.41
The immediate post-apartheid era saw considerable suspicion towards the
expanding PSC sector. As the relative balance between public policing and
private security tipped in favour of the private, both in terms of personnel and
firepower, the under-resourced police force at times jealously guarded their
status and role vis-a-vis a highly capitalized private sector that sported not only
new patrol vehicles, but frequently also the very latest in surveillance and com-
munications technologies. Police and politicians alike questioned private secu-
rity's 'real' commitment to the reduction of crime, pointing to the obvious
connection between commercial success and the continuation and fear of
crime. While the idea of companies 'profiting from crime' was antithetical to
the worldview of many ANC politicians, the police regarded it as an affront
to their professional obligation to 'protect life and property', regardless of abil-
ity to pay.
In addition to this ideological opposition and the police's defence of their
status, scepticism and distrust of private security arose from two additional
factors. First, the fact that a largely white-owned sector employed a predomi-
nantly low-paid, black labor force to guard white wealth was seen as an obstacle
to the creation of the 'new' South Africa. Moreover, many of South Africa's
PSCs were owned and managed by former officers of the apartheid state's
oppressive apparatuses and the predominance of former intelligence, defence
39
Martin Schonteich, '2001 Crime Trends: A Turning Point?', SA Crime Quarterly, 1
Jul. 2002; D. Albert, 'New Security Company Identifies Niche Market', Security Fo-
cus 22(1), 2004, p. 56; Anthony Minaar, 'Crime Prevention, Partnership Policing
and the Growth of Private Security: The South African Experience'. Paper presented
at Policing in Central and Eastern Europe—Dilemmas of Contemporary Criminal
Justice, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 23-5 Sept. 2004.

40
Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority, Annual Report 2008/2009, p. 29,
http://www.psira.co.za/pdfs/Annual_Report_2008_2009.pdf.
41
Minaar, 'Crime Prevention, Partnership Policing and the Growth of Private Secu-
rity', p. 13.
225
and police personnel gave rise to fears and allegations that the sector harboured
right-wing sympathies, and that private militias were being formed by security
companies.42 Private security was accordingly seen as an obstacle, and even a
potential threat, to South Africa's fledgling democracy.
Second, suspicions were voiced that foreign involvement in the sector might
be used to destabilize the new political order. In 1995, for example, the Deputy
Minister of Intelligence Services, Joe Nhlanhla, expressed concern that 'third
force elements see the private security industry as a haven from where to con-
tinue their third force activities of destabilization'.43 Similar opinions were
voiced by the Coordinator for Intelligence, Linda Mti, who maintained that
'the connection that some of the actors in the private security companies have
with foreign intelligence services and the similarity of objectives informed by
their past co-operation in the Cold War era ... makes them free agents to be
exploited for espionage activities'.44 In no small part because of such reserva-
tions, the Act currently regulating private security stipulates that all managers
of security companies must be South African citizens.4"'
This Act itself provides a striking entry point to the discussion of the author-
ity of PSCs and its links to global discourses and practices. The Act is a scaled-
down version of a proposal by the Committee for Safety and Security to ban
foreign ownership in the private security sector on grounds that it constituted
a threat to national security.46 The proposal, launched in October 2001,
brought a swift reaction not only from the companies, but also from the gov-
ernments of their countries of origin. Their key argument was that the pro-
posed regulation represented a restriction on trade in services, and that it
would be taken as a clear sign that South Africa was breaching liberal economic
i2
See Jenny Irish, Policing for Profit: The Future of South Africa's Private Security Indus-
try, ISS Monograph Series 39, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 1999; Martin
Schonteich, 'Fighting Crime with Private Muscle: The Private Sector and Crime
Prevention', African Security Review, 8(5), 1999, pp. 65-75; Mike Hough, 'Private
and Public Security in the RSA: Competition or Cooperation?', Strategic Review for
Southern Africa, 24(2), Nov. 2002: p. 78.

43
Hough, 'Private and Public Security in the RSA.
44
Ibid., p. 5.
^ Private Security Industry Regulation Act, 2001.

46
See Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams, 'Privatisation, Globalisation and
the Politics of Protection in South Africa', in Jef Huysmans, Andrew Dobson and
Raia Prokhovnik (eds) The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political
Agency, London: Routledge, 2006.
226
SECURING THE CITY
principles, and that foreign investment (which the government was actively
soliciting) was neither welcome, nor secure in the country. The appeal to the
authority of the market worked remarkably quickly, and the proposed legisla-
tion dropped from sight in a matter of days. The dominance of economic prin-
ciples of free trade successfully trumped claims about national security and
calls for the protection of domestic industry, and the ability of global PSCs to
present their activities as a service and to link their operations to the authority
of market principles (and sanctions) played a crucial role in this context.
Some unease towards the private security sector survives among the ANC
government and the SAPS, as evidenced perhaps in the recent launch of the
Government Sector Security Council to oversee security of certain national
key points and strategic installations. It is also unclear how the three-month
long strike among security guards in 2006, which saw fierce clashes between
trade unions and police, will effect the sector's relationship with public author-
ities.4 Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the South African private security sec-
tor at the moment enjoys an unprecedented acceptance and endorsement of
its contributions to safety and security. In part, this is due to the simple passage
of time without the occurrence of any major criminal or political misconduct
by the sector, making it difficult if not impossible to sustain arguments of con-
spiracy and threats to the state. Equally, the 2001 Private Security Industry
Regulation Act is also seen to have resulted in a more tightly regulated sector
with higher standards and better procedures, increasing the sense of its links
to public authority and thus bolstering its legitimacy. More important perhaps
is the extensive incorporation of PSCs in hybrid security networks, as South
Africa's security policy has become increasingly influenced by global trends in
policing and public management.48 The demands for improvement in service
delivery after 1994 led the SAPS to investigate various possibilities for out-
' The strike was highly conflictual and controversial. Fifty-seven security guards were
killed, according to the Private Security Industry Provident Fund, because they
wanted to return to work. The South African Transport and Allied Worker's Union
is suing the Ministry of Safety and Security following a march in Cape Town, where
the police fired shots and used teargas against demonstrators. See At Long Last, Se-
curity Strike is Over' Mail & Guardian, 22 Jun. 2006; 'Provident Fund: 57 Guards
Killed During Strike', Mail & Guardian, 19 Jun. 2006.

4s
' See Bill Dixon andjanine Rauch, Sector Policing: Origins and Prospects. ISS Mono-
graph no. 97, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2004; and Bill Dixon, 'Global-
ising the Local: A Genealogy of Sector Policing in South Africa', International Rela-
tions 1^7, pp. 163-182.
227
sourcing, privatization, and contracting of specialist services.49 These efforts
were necessary not only because of the new challenges facing post-apartheid
policing, but also due to the loss of expertise and personnel and a moratorium
on new recruitment. As such, the SAPS and the government were forced by
virtue of dwindling public resources and escalating crime rates to accept and
incorporate the private sector. In the words of SAPS, there was a need for 'the
police, the public, elected officials, government, business and other agencies
to work in partnership to address crime and community safety'.50 The Depart-
ment of Community Safety similarly concluded that the 'SA Police Service
can no longer be seen as the sole agency responsible for fighting crime ... other
sectors of society with a force multiplying capacity must be called on to sup-
port the SA Police Service in their efforts'.As part of this transformation,
some tasks have been specifically assigned as 'private'—all police stations across
South Africa are now, for example, guarded by private security companies in
recognition that commercial guards are cheaper than police officers—while
much day-to-day policing has been re-framed as a partnership with a multiplic-
ity of private actors and local communities. Public and private authority is thus
increasingly interwoven in South Africa's contemporary security practices.
The Cape Town Central City Improvement District initiative is one of the
most extensive examples of such public-private policing partnerships. The idea
of City Improvement Districts (CIDs) derives from international models for
urban renewal, and has numerous similarities with so-called Business Improve-
ment Districts exemplified by the Metro Tech Business Improvement District
in Brooklyn, New York.52 Like the Business Improvement Districts, the CIDs
are non-profit organizations that are established when property owners in an
area agree to levy an additional tax on their property, and the money collected
49
Minaar 'Crime Prevention, Partnership Policing and the Growth of Private Secu-
rity'.
,0
SAPS, quoted in Julie Berg 'Private Policing in South Africa: The Cape Town City
Improvement District—Pluralisation in Practice', Society in Transition, 35(2), 2004,
p. 227.
^1 Department of Community Safety 'Provincial Government Western Cape: Strategic
Plan 2003/04 to 2005/06', p. 6.
-2 See Tony Travers and J. Weimar 'Business Improvement Districts: New York and
London', London: Corporation of London, 1996; Robert C. Davies, Christopher
W. Ortiz, Sarah Dadush, Jenny Irish, Arturo Alvarado, and Diane Davis, "The Pub-
lic Accountability of Private Police: Lessons from New York, Johannesburg, and
Mexico City', Policing and Society, 13(2), 2003, pp. 197-210.
228
SECURING THE CITY
is used to promote business and economic development. In common with the
Metro Tech in New York, which has its own private security force, the primary
concern of the CIDs has been security. At present there are about fifteen CIDs
in and around Cape Town. The largest, and perhaps most controversial, is the
Central City Improvement District (CCID) focusing on downtown Cape
Town and its central business district. The CCID is an initiative of the Cape
Town Partnership, a not-for-profit company founded in 1999 by the City
Council and the local business community.53 The main aim of the Partnership
is to reverse urban decay and capital flight from the city centre to surrounding
suburbs and business parks. As part of this effort, the CCID was established
in November 2000, after the majority of property owners, or ratepayers, in the
area agreed to the payment of an additional top-up levy on their council bill.
Today, the Cape Town Central City Improvement District collects about R15
million annually from the 1,200 ratepayers within the area. Of this amount,
approximately 50 per cent is allocated to security. The remainder is spent on
the CCID s other three areas of responsibility—cleaning the city (25 per cent),
marketing (17 per cent) and social development (8 per cent).
The CCID is in effect a large-scale partnership policing effort aimed at mak-
ing central Cape Town safe and secure, an international city and a first class
tourist destination.54 Group4Securicor, trading in Cape Town as Securicor,
has been contracted as the main security provider. At the start of the initiative,
the CCID security force consisted of only seven officers, but it has since
expanded to a total of six patrol vehicles, ten horse mounted officers and sixty
foot patrol officers providing a twenty-four-hour security presence in the city
centre. At night, the city is patrolled by forty officers, supported by six vehicles.
As a result, the presence of security personnel in the city has increased signifi-
cantly, and during daytime, the CCID vehicles and foot patrols are frequently
encountered throughout Cape Town's relatively compact city centre.
To a significant extent, the security of Cape Town has been devolved to
world's largest security company. The visibility of Securicor's mounted, on-foot
or mobile patrols far exceeds the visibility of the police. Both the City Police
^ The Board of Directors consists of representatives from, amongst others, Business
Against Crime, The Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cape Town Tour-
ism, The South African Property Owners Association, City of Cape Town, and the
Provincial Administration of the Western Cape (www. capetownpartnership.co.za).
See also Berg 'Private Policing in South Africa: The Cape Town City Improvement
District'.
^ See www.capetownpartnership.co.za
229
and the SAPS concentrate their efforts in the poorer areas of town, where
crime rates are highest, and the City Police have dedicated only two mobile
patrols to the city centred5 Moreover, the police do not conduct foot patrols.
Yet, it would be incorrect to perceive the police as absent from Cape Town's
security arrangement. Securicor officers work in close collaboration with the
police, especially the City Police, but also the SAPS. The CCID/Securicor
branded patrol vehicles include a City Police officer, although there are no
police markings on the car. The CCID security patrols are also linked to the
City Police control room by radio. Furthermore, Securicor operates the Stra-
tegic Surveillance Unit (SSU), the control room that supervises Cape Town's
170 close circuit television cameras. The surveillance cameras were initially
financed by the association 'Business Against Crime', and then donated to the
city. The SSU is manned by around fifty Securicor officers, reinforced by eight
City Police officers, and is in direct contact with the SAPS as well as the City
Police, ensuring mobile response to incidents. As part of the move towards
community or sector policing, Securicor also participate in weekly sector polic-
ing forums to identify potential problems, share information and co-ordinate
the provision of security with the SAPS and the City Police. Securicor officers
in the CCID also frequently provide support to police operations within the
city, for example by providing perimeter security when police are searching a
building or area. This is indicative of the breadth of change, seen also in the
other CIDs in Cape Town. What is emerging is a network of public and pri-
vate, global and local security actors, and Securicor managers refer to the CIDs
as a 'paradigm shift' because of this close co-operationd6
The CCID is a striking example of the contemporary dissolution of the
'state, territory, authority' marriage. Within this security arrangement, signifi-
cant authority over domestic territory resides with a global PSC. This authority
is, in turn, linked in important ways to global discourses and practices. Market
principles exercise a particularly powerful influence, and the authority of Secu-
ricor derives in large part from the company acting as the agent of the city's
property owners, and it is seen as entirely legitimate that ratepayers fund and
to a large degree oversee a system with security at its core. CCID is a contrac-
55
The Cape Town City Police is a municipal police service established in December
2001. The main aim is visible policing, and they make arrests and issue fines for all
types of offences but do not have investigative functions, which is the responsibility
of SAPS.
56
Interviews with Securicor managers.
230
SECURING THE CITY
tual community between ratepayers, businesses and the City Council, and
security is regarded as a service like any other, to be bought from the most
qualified provider. The commodification of security enables the CCID to pres-
ent itself as a consumer (as opposed to a client) of security, actively making
choices about security provision within a market place where public authorities
are only one possible provider. Within this market place, Group4 Securicor as
a global brand with significant material resources can claim significant expert
knowledge and authority. The CCIDs' choice of Securicor was directly related
to the company's extensive organizational and financial resources, technical
and managerial capabilities, as well as its global reputation and brand recogni-
tion. Importantly, there is a key difference between the CCID and the private
guarding of'public private spaces'^ such as shopping centres, in that here a
private company is policing a public space.
At the same time, it is clear that the security arrangements in the CCID are
far from entirely private; the City Council makes up one third of the Cape
Town Partnership, and the public police play an important role in security
provision. The CCID derives considerable legitimacy precisely from its incor-
poration into hybrid security networks, and security governance in Cape Town
emerges out of a combination of private and public authority. These public/
private networks highlight the inadequacies of regarding private security as a
straightforward threat to the sovereignty of the state, or as 'illicit' authority. In
Cape Town, and South Africa more generally, PSCs have, to an important
extent, helped secure the authority of the state by allowing for the presence of
a much larger security force than the state alone could have afforded, thus pro-
viding important concrete and symbolic resources for combating post-transi-
tion insecurity, urban blight and capital flight. In brief, the utilization of
private security resources has made it easier for the government to claim that
it is 'doing something about crime'.
In the case of Cape Town, the exact achievements of the CCID in terms of
crime reduction are difficult to assess, given the South African moratorium on
the release on local crime statistics, but there is a clear sense that the city is safer
now than only a few years ago. Some sources claim a 60 per cent drop in crime
in the city, particularly in the most common forms of offence, such as pick-
pocketing, mugging and theft from cars. Research in 2002 showed that 52 per
,7
Clifford Shearing and Phillip Stenning, 'Modern Private Security: Its Growth and
Implications' in M. Tonry and M. Norval (eds), Crime and Justice—An Annual Re-
view of Research, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 193-245.
231
cent of respondents felt safe in the city centre, compared to 16.7 per cent only
two years prior.58 Urban capital flight has also been reversed, and the four-year
period from 2001 to 2004 saw new investment of about R8 billion in the
CCID.59 To the extent that the South African state relies upon income from
foreign investment and tourism, not to mention the symbolic status of Cape
Town as a 'world-class' city, the activities of private security companies can be
seen as crucial to its continued authority and legitimacy.
This is not to say that private security everywhere acts to support the author-
ity of the state, or that this is a permanent or static relationship in South Africa.
In part, the country's hybrid security networks have emerged at the instigation
of the state, and are part of a state-led policy to maximize security and effi-
ciency. In part, it is a reflection of broader social, economic and political trans-
formations in global governance, and a reaction to global market pressures and
demands from 'customers' empowered by the commodification of security.
Importantly, these transformations lie outside the control of any one state.
Thus, while South African official documents stress again and again that the
role of private security actors is 'one of partnership with the State',60 this might
depend on circumstances outside its direct control. Because the authority of
private actors arises not only from the state, it cannot be assumed that the state
will always and inevitably be in a position of control—or even of obvious
primacy—in such security networks. Sovereign state power, in other words, is
not static in these global structures of governance, nor can the primacy of the
state be automatically assumed. As Johnston has observed, state power, the
manner in which it is consolidated and distributed is contingent on social and
political conditions.61
The shifting boundaries of public/private authority also have political and
social implications. While the increasing authority of PSCs is commonly justi-
fied and explained in terms of economic logic and efficiency, it simultaneously
has implications in terms of who gets secured and how. In the CCID, those
who pay are also able to play a powerful role in determining the security
agenda. In Cape Town this has led to a focus on 'cleaning up the city'. In the
58
Sylvester E. Sylvester, 'It's Official: Cape Town is Clean and Safe', Cape Argus, 6 Mar.
2002.
59
Derek Bock, 'Cape Town Central City: An Urban Renewal Success Story', Public
PowerPoint presentation, Cape Town 2005.

60
Department of Safety and Security 'White Paper on Safety and Security: In Service
of Safety 1999-2004', Pretoria: Department of Safety and Security, 1998, p. 7.

61
Les Johnston, Policing Britain, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 162.
232
SECURING THE CITY
words of the Provincial Development Council of the Western Cape: 'In order
to become a "world class city"... we must vanquish "crime and grime" ... and
remove the "undesirable elements'".62 While this has resulted in an impressive
twenty-four hour cleaning service, it is also reflected in a security eflort focused
on 'order maintenance' and on reducing what are often described as 'minor
nuisances' like beggars, vagrants, informal parking assistants, and street chil-
dren. Securicor officers are instructed to 'move along' beggars congregating at
intersections. For 'undesirable elements', such as street children and vagrants
the CCID has meant increased harassment and more frequent arrest. Street
children are regarded as a special problem, allegedly perceived by Capeto-
nians and tourists alike as not only a nuisance, but as responsible for the major-
ity of petty crime.63 Securicor officers frequently transport street children
to so-called 'safe houses', in order to get them off the street, in full knowledge
that they will be back the next day. A number of by-laws have also been passed
to facilitate the clean-up of Cape Town, including prohibition of begging
which inhibits or obstructs the public, begging within six meters of an auto-
matic teller machine/cash point, and also the washing and drying of clothes
in city streets.
The CCID recognizes that the causes of vagrancy and homelessness are
social and cannot be solved by security measures alone, and has appointed a
social development officer and five street workers to help street children and
homeless adults. In addition, the Partnership sponsors one of the city's organ-
izations providing shelter for the homeless. Social services, however, account
for a relatively small amount of the CCID's budget (8 per cent), and the exclu-
sionary elements of the city improvement districts are hard to dispute. For
sections of the population in Cape Town, the altered politics of protection
brought about by the CCID is experienced as an increasing restriction of access
to public space, as a combination of public bylaws and private enforcement
serves to prevent the poor and the homeless from utilizing the city's public
spaces. Importantly for our argument here, the social fragmentation that fol-
lows from such exclusionary security practices may ultimately pose political
challenges for the state as the question of legitimate access to and activities
62
Quoted in Berg, 'Private Policing in South Africa', p. 242.
63
See E. Sylvester, 'It's Official: Cape Town is Clean and Safe',
64
See www.capetown.gov.za/by-laws. For a highly critical view of the CCID, see Tony
Roshan Samara, 'State Security in Transition: The War on Crime in Post Apartheid
South Africa', Social Identities, 9(2), 2003, pp. 277-312.
233
within public spaces has the potential to raise difficult questions in a net-
worked security environment.
Conclusion
The extraordinary growth and globalization of the private security sector pres-
ents complex analytical and political challenges. In particular, the development
of public/private, global/local security networks challenges too easy an ascrip-
tion of authority solely to the public security agencies of the sovereign state.
Indeed, the development of global private security firms, and the existence of
public/private/global/local security networks can be seen, as analysts of glo-
balization have pointed out in other realms, as part of increasingly important
structures of global governance in which the role of the state—and the nature
and locus of authority—is being transformed and rearticulated.
Seen in this context, the authority of private security arises from three
sources. First, the expansion of private security has been both a product and
an enabler of broader liberal processes of globalization, and the authority of
private security needs to be seen in light of its relationship to the authority of
private property. At one level, this involves its relationship to transnational
property rights and the expansion of global capital. But it is also a consequence
of broader shifts in the provision of security in both developed and developing
countries, and of widespread perceptions that public authorities cannot pro-
vide adequate security and that private security is a necessary response. Private
security firms have been empowered both politically and in market terms by
this shift, and by the broader process of commodification that has seen security
increasingly treated as a service to be sold on an open market, provided by the
most efficient and effective actors and, in consequence, significantly de-linked
from its status as a monopoly of public authorities.
Second, these processes of privatization and commodification have allowed
private security firms to acquire the status of being legitimate authorities in
these areas, possessing significant expert knowledge and technical, financial,
and organizational capacities specific to this field. Both private clients and
public actors now turn with increasing frequency to private companies as a
means of analyzing and addressing security situations, and while security firms'
authority to act is usually limited by statute, their ability to act as legitimate
and ever more pervasive private providers and public 'partners' is increasing.
Third, the authority of PSCs arises from their increasing incorporation in
hybrid security networks. These networks are neither disconnected from state
234
SECURING THE CITY
authority, nor reducible to it. They represent important new arrangements in
the delivery of security, as well as powerful actors able to wield significant
authority in the security field.
While security has often been seen as the sector most resistant to forms of
non-state governance, we hope to have shown that a focus on the broad pro-
cesses of globalization and privatization at work in the security industry dem-
onstrates the emergence of public/private, global/local security networks that
have considerable impact on the day-to-day provision of security, and that have
implications for broader issues of social stability and state legitimacy. This pro-
cess cannot be grasped simply by seeing it as the erosion of state authority, or
as the opposite: the straightforward strengthening of the state through the
integration of private capacities. What is emerging is a much more complex
structure, whose political effects challenge the conventional conflation of gov-
ernment, territory and authority that have for so long dominated thinking
about both security and international relations.
There is little doubt that private security raises key political and normative
issues. However, these debates must take place in light of a clear recognition
that the boundaries of the public and private, the global and the local have
already undergone significant transformations. While the example of Cape
Town's Central City Improvement District is unusual in its extensive integra-
tion of public/private, global/local security actors, public/private security
partnerships are spreading not only in South Africa, but also across the conti-
nent. In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, private security companies are
integrated into complex networks of authority that challenges any clear-cut
distinction of public/private and global/local authority. Far from being 'illicit',
security privatization as a form of private authority is at the heart of networks
of global governance and is crucial to an understanding of contemporary inter-
national politics.
235
CONTRIBUTORS
Alejandro Colas is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Birkbeck Col-
lege, University of London, where he directs the postgraduate degree in Inter-
national Security and Global Governance. He is the author of Empire,
International Civil Society and co-editor along with Richard Saull, of The War
on Terrorism and American Empire After the Cold War.
Rita Abrahamsen is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and
International Affairs and the School of International Development and Global
Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is the author ol Disciplining Democ-
racy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Afica and with Michael
C. Williams, Security beyond the State: Private Security in International
Politics.
Tarak Barkawi is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Centre of International
Studies, University of Cambridge. His work centers on armed conflict between
the Western and non-Western worlds in historical and contemporary
perspective.
Benjamin de Carvalho is a senior research fellow with the Norwegian Insti-
tute of International Affairs (NUPI) and works on peacekeeping in Africa. He
holds his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he worked on early
modern state formation in Europe. Other research interests include popular
culture and international relations, and early modern piracy.
Patrick Cullen holds a PhD in International Relations from the London
School of Economics. He is an expert on private security and has authored
numerous professional and academic publications on the subject. He currently
resides in Barcelona, Spain, as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut Barcelona
de'Estudis Internacionals.
237
CONTRIBUTORS
Antonio Giustozzi completed his PhD at the LSE in 1997 and is currently
Research Fellow at the Crisis States Research Centre (LSE). He is the author
of several volumes on Afghanistan, including of Mud: Wars and War-
lords in Afghanistan.
Halvard Leira is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs (NUPI), earning his salary studying Norwegian and US foreign policy,
and diplomacy in different forms. Outside of that, he has a penchant for
obscure and arcane themes in International Relations, like privateering and
early-modern International Political Thought.
Bryan Mabee is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Queen Mary, Uni-
versity of London. He is the author of The Globalization of Security: State
Power, Security Provision and Legitimacy, and articles on private violence, the
historical sociology of international relations, and US foreign policy.
Kenneth Morrison is a Senior Lecturer in Modern East European History in
the Faculty of Humanities of De Montfort University. He specializes in the
modern history and politics of the territories of the former Yugoslavia, and is
the author of Montenegro: A Modern History.
Patricia Owens is Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London and
Senior Research Associate in the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing
Character of War, University of Oxford. She has been a Visiting Professor in
the Department of Political Science UCLA, and has held research positions
at Princeton, UC-Berkeley, and USC. She is the author Between War and
Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt.
Eric Tagliacozzo is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University
(USA), where he primarily teaches Southeast Asian Studies. He is the author
of Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian
Frontier, 1865-1915, which won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Associa-
tion of Asian Studies (AAS) in 2007. He is also the editor or co-editor of four
books: Southeast Asia and the Middle East: Islam, Movement, and the Tongue
Duree\ Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries Between History and Anthro-
pology; The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics, and Chinese Circula-
tions: Capital, Commodities and Networks in Southeast Asia. His next
monograph, The LongestJourney: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca,
will be published by Oxford University Press.
Noor Ullah served with UNAMA as National Political Officer in Kandahar
in 2002-2004, and is now undertaking his doctoral studies in London.
238
CONTRIBUTORS
Michael C. Williams is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and Inter-
national Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His publications include The
Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations; Culture and Secu-
rity: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security, and with Rita
Abrahamsen, Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International
Politics.
239
INDEX
Afghanistan, 28,133,143, 147,155, 168, 173-4, 184, 186; government
167; and Iran, 153; Helmand of, 179; military of, 178-9;
Province, 140, 152, 154; heroin population of, 168, 174; Srpska
trade, 161; Hizb-I Demokmtik-e Demokkmtska Stranska (SDS), 176;
Khalq (HDK), 138, 153; Kandahar Vojne Republike Srpske (BSA), 175
Province, 140, 142-4; military of, Bremer, L. Paul: head of Coalition
142; mujahidin, 141; Pashtun belt, Provisional Authority, 16
134, 136-7, 156; Soviet Invasion of Bulgaria, 186; oil industry of, 180
(1979-89), 139-41,145; Taliban, Burma, 110-1, 116, 120-2; border
144, 148, 150-2; tribes of, 136-7, with Siam, 120, 125; border with
140, 155; warlords of, 135,139-40, Thailand, 117; Hrvatsko Vijece
147,155-6 Obrane (HVO), 177; law courts of,
Africa, 43; mineral deposits of, 17; 116; merchants of, 115; monarchy
security privatization, 215 of, 112, 125
Albania, 181-2, 186; mafia of, 183-4
Ancient Greece: concept of property, China, 40, 110-1, 127; and Islam, 116;
21; social structure of, 19 economy of, 115, 121; Emperor of,
Arrendt, Hannah: writings of, 20 112; merchants of, 126; opium trade,
Austria-Hungary: empire of, 161 117-8
Cold War, 18,42, 163, 186, 226;

Background Asia Risk Solutions conflicts of, 49; end of, 9
(BARS), 195, 197-8,212; and Crimean War (1853-56), 38
Indonesia, 200, 206; and Malaysia, Croatia, 159, 184; conflict in
200, 206; and UNCLOS, 199; (1991-95), 160,163, 168,182;
anti-piracy escorts of, 210-1; staff of, government of, 171; Hrvatska
197-8,208-9 Demokratska Zajednica (HDZ), 170,
Bonaparte, Napoleon: and France, 7; 179; Krajina region, 180; population
military campaigns of, 6, 10, 63, 84, of, 178
96,98
Bosnia & Herzegovina, 159, 184-5; Dayton Agreement (1995): signing of,
conflict in (1992-95), 160, 163, 160
241
INDEX
Djindic, Zoran: assassination of Group4Securicor: company history,
(2003), 184 218; presence in South Africa, 224,
Djukanovic, Milo, 186 229

Dolanc, Stane: chief of Yugoslav Guatemala, 51; and USA, 48-50
Ministry of Interior, 166
Hart Security and Olive Group, 195
East India Company, 26, 97; and Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan, 20;
Wellesley, Arthur, 46; dissolved writings of, 189
(1874), 46; loans from, 93; success Holland, 60-1, 71; Aceh War (1873),
of, 93-4 124; and Singapore, 119; empire of,
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 42; adminis- 108; navy of, 73

tration of, 49
Europe, 1,7, 13, 23, 50, 58; empires of, India: and UK, 45; government of, 46;
15, 104, 108; states of, 23, 25-6, military of, 40,45, 48
123, 128 Indonesia, 201, 209; and BARS, 200,
European Union (EU), 161, 186; 206; and GDMA, 200, 206; and
forces (EUFOR), 185; membership Russia, 195; and USA, 195;
of, 159, 186 government of, 192, 195-6, 207
International Criminal Tribunal for
First World War (1914-18): casualties Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 170,
of, 41 184-5
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedo- International Maritime Organization,
nia (FYROM), 159, 183-4,186; 83; regulations of, 200

coastline of, 181; National Libera- International Peace Organization
tion Amry (NLA), 183-4; oil Association, 15
industry of, 180; territory of, 182 Iran, 148, 167; and Afghanistan, 153
France, 9,42, 60, 67, 111, 121; and Iraq: invasion of (2003), 16, 28; private
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 7; and contractors in, 50
Norway, 70-7, 81; and Privateers, 9, Islam, 145; and China, 116
55-7, 61-2, 66,70-3,78-80, 94, Israel: and Yugoslavia, 165
98; and Seven Years War, 86; and
War of the Spanish Succession, 74; Japan: Imperial, 40
Foreign Legion, 38-9; military of,
38,41; navy of, 61-2, 69; ports of, Karadzic, Radovan: leader of SDS, 176
65; Revolution (1789), 22 Karzai, Hamid: administration of, 152;
Franco-Dutch War (1672-78), 64 support for Akhundzadas, 151
Kennedy, John R: administration of, 47
Germany, 52; military of, 41 Khan, Ismail, 155
Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), Kissinger, Henry, 48
195,197-9, 205, 208-9, 212; and Korean War (1951 -3), 42
BHL, 202-4; and Indonesia, 200, Kosovo, 159, 183; Kosovo Liberation
206; and Malaysia, 200, 206; Army (KLA), 183
anti-piracy escorts of, 207, 210-1;
policy focus of, 206; staff of, 200, Malacca Straits, 192-3, 196-7, 200,
209 202, 205, 210, 212; and UN, 194
242
INDEX
Malaysia, 201, 209; and BARS, 200, Thomson, Janice, 57, 61; and Treaty
206; and GDMA, 200, 206; and of Paris (1856), 56; and UK, 96;
Russia, 195; and USA, 195; Ban decline of, 101; Jacobites, 72
Hoe Leong (BHL), 201-06;
government of, 192, 195-7, 207 Rankovic, Aleksandar, 166, 186; and
Marx, Karl: view of capitalism, 10,45 Tito, Josip Broz, 165; head of
Mercenaries, 1, 4, 6, 16; and Thirty OZNa, 165
Years War, 8 Raznatovic, Zeljko, 166
Milosevic, Slobodan: overthrow of Romania, 186; oil industry of, 180
(2000), 184; regime of, 169 Russia, 58, 180; and Indonesia, 195;
Mohammad, Khan: and Noor, Allah, and Malaysia, 195; traders of, 70
153-4, 156; militia of, 153-4
Montenegro, 159 Second World War (1939-45), 36, 40,
45,49, 163; North African theatre,
Najibullah, Mohammad, 142, 154; fall 40
of, 154 Securitas: company history, 218
Nine Years War (1688-97), 61, 63, 94; Serbia, 159, 180, 184; Operation Sabre,
and Privateers, 71; outbreak of, 62, 184; Sluzba drzavne bezbednosti
65 (SDB), 169-80, 173,180-2, 185
Nixon, Richard M.: doctrine of, 42-3 Seven Years War (1756-63), 66, 97-8;
Noor, Allah: and Mohammad, Khan, and France, 76
153-4, 156; militia of, 153-4 Siam: and Singapore, 120; border with
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Burma, 120, 125; Burney Treaty
(NATO), 44, 164; membership of, (1826), 119; opium trade, 118-9;
159 Trengganu, 120-1
North Borneo Company, 109 Simatovic, Franko: creator of Red
Norway, 69; and France, 70-7, 81; and Berets, 171; head of SDB Intelli-
UK, 73; ports of, 72-4, 81; waters gence Department, 170-1
of, 55-7,70,73-4,78,80 Singapore; and Holland, 119; and
Siam, 120
Oman: air force of, 48; military of Smugglers, 1, 4, 6
(SAP), 48; Sultan of, 48 South Africa: apartheid regime, 225-6;
Ottoman Empire, 161 City Improvement Districts (CIDs),
228-31, 235; government of, 227;

Pakistan, 139, 144, 148, 167; and USA, Government Sector Security
148; Pakistani Inter-Service Council, 227; level of private
Intelligence (ISI), 142; Pashtun, 136; security companies, 224, 229; Police
Swat, 136 Services (SAPS), 225, 227-8, 230;
Pirates, 1,3, 101, 107; activity in North Private Security Regulatory
America, 99-100; activity in Authority, 225
Southeast Asia, 123; origin of term, South Korea: military of (ROKA),
3, 87 42-3
Privateers, 1,4, 60; and France, 9, South Vietnam: air force of (VNAF),
55-7, 61-2, 66,70-3,78-80, 94, 47; military of (ARVN), 42-3; US
98; and Nine Years War, 71; and embassy, 48
243

Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits, and Empires - Private Violence in Historical Context (PDFDrive)

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MERCENARIES,

Alejandro Colds | Bryan Mabee

Bandits and Empires

Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee, 2010

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

by Alejandro Colas and Bryan Mabee.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-70208-9 (alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-80052-3 (eBook)

1. Violence—History. 2. Political violence—History. 3. Non-state actors

(International relations). 4. Piracy—History. 5. Mercenary troops—History.

6. Imperialism. 7. Private military companies. 8. Private security services.

I. Colas, Alejandro. II. Mabee, Bryan. III. Title.

This book is printed on paper with recycled content.

changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Introduction: Private Violence in Historical Context 1

Alejandro Colds and Bryan Mabee

1. Distinctions, Distinctions: 'Public' and 'Private' Force? 15

2. State and Armed Force in International Context Tarak Barkawi 33

3. Privateers of the North Sea: At Worlds End—French Privateers

in Norwegian "Waters Halvard Leira and Benjamin de Carvalho 55

4. The Flow and Ebb of Private Seaborne Violence in Global Politics:

Lessons from the Atlantic "World, 1689-1815 83

Alejandro Colds and Bryan Mabee

5. Violent Undertows: Smuggling as Dissent in Nineteenth-Century

Southeast Asia Eric Tagliacozzo 107

6. 'Tribes' and "Warlords in Southern Afghanistan, 1980-2005 133

Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah

7. The Criminal-State Symbiosis and the Yugoslav Wars 159

of Succession Kenneth Morrison

8. Private Security Companies in the Malacca Straits: Mapping New

Patterns of Security Governance Patrick Cullen 187

9. Securing the City: Private Security Companies and Non-State

Authority in Global Governance 213

Rita Abrahams en and Michael C. Williams

and Terrorists: Privatised Violence in Historical Context', held at Queen Mary,

based (British Academy grant SG-48319). The chapters by Rita Abrahamsen

mission from the journals International Relations and International Affairs,

AIM Alternative Informativna Mreza (Alternative Information

ANC African National Congress

ARBiH Armija Bosne i Hercegovine (Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina)

BARS Background Asia Risk Solutions

BHL Ban Hoe Leong

BSA Bosnian Serb Army

CCID Central City Improvement Districts

CHAN Centre Historique dArchives Nationaux

CID City Improvement Districts

CSD Centre for the Study of Democracy

EIC East India Company

ESRC The Economic and Social Research Council

EUFOR European Union force

FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia {Savezna Republika Jugoslavija)

FYROM The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

CDMA Glenn Defense Marine Asia

GDP Gross Domestic Product

HDK Hizb-i Demokratik-e Khalq (Peoples Democratic Party of

HDZ Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (the Croatian Democratic

HMS Harbour Marine System