This chapter explores the long-term patterns of mainland south-east Asian strategic conduct and the variables behind it. In this region, the ancient Khmer Empire, the Tai polities and the Burmese, whose statecraft was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist belief, were warlike. The Hindu–Buddhist imperial concept of cakravati became the expansionistic norm shared among ambitious monarchs. Thereupon, the south-east Asian polities continually engaged in warfare to impose control over the population and tributaries. Wars were waged to displace the mass of the vanquished to enhance the victor’s economic capacity and prestige. The development of military strategy and war aims generally were geared towards the displacement and resettlement of the enemy population. Interestingly, territorial gains were minor objectives except for the crucial lines of communication and coastal areas vital for trade; polities would secure and expand their power spheres rather than dominating demarcated spaces. The fortification of the central polity also led to protracted siege warfare. In this war of attrition, stratagems, such as ruses and guerilla raids on enemy camps and supply lines, were widely employed against invading armies. There were continual shifts from forceful subjugation and vassalage to the strategic destruction of enemy polities from the twelfth to the nineteenth century in order to seize the centre. Failure to muster manpower and secure influences led to the decline and destruction of the state by more aggressive neighbors. Polities that survived or were revived then pursued a more expansionist policy and waged pre-emptive warfare against smaller states and peer competitors. The military means to achieve such strategic goals consisted of a mass of corvée forces that formed the main body. The core of the army consisted of skilled professional units comprising the aristocratic royal elite and foreign adventurer ‘specialist’ mercenaries. Gunpowder weapons became the crucial instruments to maintain tactical superiority on the battlefield and in siege warfare, as well as assuring control over the displaced population. War elephants and cavalry forces operated as shock units to smash and scatter enemy forces in set-piece battles. However, sieges were the majority of military conduct.

In chapter 7, Releasing the BIS credit (May 29 - June 5), the BIS credit of 150 million schilling is released to the ANB as a moratorium is averted and a guarantee. Meantime, the issue of an Austrian government loan, re-emerges and it becomes clear that the French may not be able to or wanting to take the lead in organizing the loan. In Basel, the BIS is getting ready for the upcoming board and governors’ meeting, where the decision about another credit to the ANB will have to be discussed. Rodd prepares several notes and a plan for the meeting.

As in other world regions, warfare played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical landscape of pre-Columbian North America. In contrast with many of these, however, written records are lacking for all but the last few centuries following European contact. The history of indigenous North American warfare and war strategy must therefore be reconstructed largely from archaeological remains. One of the most accessible types of information available on war strategy from this source pertains to defence, as archaeological features such as rock walls, palisades and lookout towers tend to preserve in the archaeological record. The type of defensive measures used reveals people’s degree of concern with attack and shows how they employed attributes of their environment to protect themselves. The location of features may also provide insight into the direction and identity of the threat. Burned houses and unburied bodies, on the other hand, document strategies used by enemies when defences were breached. Stone weapons also preserve in the archaeological record and can reveal the arsenal available to combatants at different times and places, as well as forms of engagement: shock weapons imply hand-to-hand combat, for example, whereas projectile weapons can be deployed from a greater distance, suggesting ambush or open battle. The skeletal remains of the victims provide some of the most definitive evidence for the existence and nature of active conflict, including the demographic characteristics of victims, the spatial relationship between victim and attacker(s), and the scale and lethality of conflict (e.g. a few victims versus 500 in a mass grave). In combination with early European written accounts, which inform on aspects of Native American warfare not readily apparent in the archaeological record, the collective evidence yields a picture of war in pre-Columbian North America that is both unique and reminiscent of war in other world regions, and argues for the importance of including North America in global histories of human warfare.

Chapter 7, which serves as the conclusion, describes the important role of the “mild thesis” in obscuring the history of slavery in Dutch New York. The chapter argues that the mild thesis is largely incorrect, and that slavery in New York was harsh and violent. Yet, more than previous historians, I point to the nuance of why the mild thesis came into being, and what it is not entirely without merit. Memories of slavery in Dutch New York came from those who viewed it positively and remembered its final years, when legal protections for the enslaved had been built in to the system.

Chapter 5 argues that the increasing number of female servants and resulting visibility of women at court had political ramifications. By exploring the more active roles played by ladies and damsels in political events of the realm, I demonstrate how female courtiers found ways to access privilege for themselves, their families, and other associates through intercession. For example, they dramatically assisted Isabella’s coup against her husband Edward II and courageously stood by Catherine of Aragon during her divorce crisis. On the other hand, when national sentiment turned xenophobic, a queen’s foreign attendants faced scorn, retribution, and even banishment during periods of conflict. Some female attendants faced misogynistic attitudes that attacked their perceived propensity toward immodest sexuality, greed, and darker forces like witchcraft and poisoning. This role of women at court – apart from queens and particularly notorious examples like Edward III’s mistress Alice Perrers – has been neglected in many discussions of medieval court politics and patronage. I contend that the hostility experienced by some female courters highlights how medieval contemporaries themselves recognized women’s potential access to insider information about monarchs and the favors that could be bestowed to their kin, friends, and associates.

Two strands of intellectual revisionism were essential to the project of this book, which set out to connect our historiography of the cuneiform sciences to an anthropology of science. The first was the rise of pluralism within the history of science, most famously but not exclusively represented by Thomas Kuhn, and the second was a more recent development, the “quiet revolution” within anthropology of the ontological turn.

In chapter 3, preparing for crisis, the narrative begins. It is told mainly chronologically and this chapter deals with the period between May 11 and May 19, but only after a brief focus on January 1931 where Harry Siepmann on the basis of the socalled Bagehot model considers what to do in case of a major financial crisis in Europe. The Bagehot model for a lender of last resort and its inadequacy in the face of an international crisis, is a theme that goes through the book’s narrative. On May 11 the Credit Anstalt failure is made known and the central bankers get ready to make sense of the information they get from Austria and elsewhere. The BIS sends Francis Rodd to Vienna and the chapter follows him closely as he communicates his findings back to the BIS and Bank of England. In a world where debt is abundant and credit scarce, Rodd presents a plan to the upcoming BIS board meeting.