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i

Market Power Politics

ii
iii

Market Power
Politics
War, Institutions, and Strategic
Delay in World Politics
zz
STEPHEN E. GENT
AND
MARK J.C. CRESCENZI

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gent, Stephen E., 1976– author. | Crescenzi, Mark J.C., 1970– author.
Title: Market power politics : war, institutions, and strategic delay in
world politics / Stephen E. Gent and Mark J.C. Crescenzi.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034295 (print) | LCCN 2020034296 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197529812 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197529805 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197529836 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: International economic relations. | Natural resources. |
Globalization—Economic aspects. | War—Economic aspects.
Classification: LCC HF1359.G4688 2021 (print) | LCC HF1359 (ebook) |
DDC 355.02/73—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034295
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034296

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197529805.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
v

For Nick and Anita

vi
vi

Contents

Figures  ix
Tables  xi
Preface  xiii
Abbreviations  xvii

1. Introduction 1

PART I : A Theory of Market Power Politics

2. Markets, Institutions, and Property Rights Disputes 23

3. Market Power, War, and Strategic Delay 44

PART II : Market Power Politics in Commodity Markets

4. Empirical Cases 81

5. Iraq: Fighting for Market Power 94

6. Russia: Cornering the Gas Market 125

7. China: Capturing Seabed Resources 170

8. Conclusion 206

Bibliography 229
Index 247
vi
ix

Figures

1.1. Mischief Reef in the South China Sea 3

1.2. Russia’s borderization strategy in Georgia 7
1.3. Model of market power politics 13
3.1. Motive and constraint in property rights disputes 48
3.2. Conditions leading to war 72
3.3. Conditions leading to strategic delay 75
3.4. Conditions leading to dispute settlement 76
5.1. Iraqi forces invading Kuwait 95
5.2. Neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia 98
5.3. OPEC production, January 1990 104
5.4. Iraq’s motive and insufficient constraint 105
5.5. Iraqi forces and their proximity to Saudi Arabia 107
5.6. The Coalition’s use of force to prevent Iraqi market power 110
6.1. Russian gas pipelines to Europe 131
6.2. Disputed territories in the Black Sea region 153
6.3. Russian market power and gray zone tactics 163
7.1. East China Sea and the Diaoyu/​Senkaku Islands 174
7.2. South China Sea and China’s maritime claim 178
7.3. Strategic delay in the East China Sea 183
7.4. Strategic delay in the South China Sea 184
7.5. Rare earth mine production, 1990–​2019 187
x
xi

Tables

3.1. Theoretical Expectations about Dispute Outcomes 77

4.1. Cases of Market Power Pursuit 88
4.2. Cases of Market Power Prevention 88
6.1. Top Ten Importers of Russian Pipeline Gas, 2017 129
6.2. Percentage of Pipeline Gas Imports Coming from Russia, 2017 129
xi
xi

Preface

In its broadest strokes, Market Power Politics is a book about politics, eco-
nomics, and law in the global arena. The politics we cover here deal with peace
and conflict between countries (we will call them states in the book). With
respect to economics, we are interested primarily in trade and investment that
crosses international borders. Lastly, we care here about the use of international
laws and institutions that states have created to manage either the first (politics)
or the second (economics) component, or both. Sometimes these three things fit
together efficiently, making it easier for firms and their governments to exchange
goods, services, and capital in ways that tie the world together and make it more
peaceful. When that happens, the three components start to work together as a
team. Legal institutions make it easier to trade goods and services or invest cap-
ital, for example, and increased wealth from trade may minimize the desire to
interrupt that trade with political violence.
Other times, however, at least one of the pieces is out of alignment with the
others. When that happens, the same connectivity that brings these three dimen-
sions of human interaction together as a team can lead to difficult or even disas-
trous consequences. When institutions cannot offer a legal solution to disputes,
states will seek their own solutions, often at the expense of others. When those
disputes are motivated by market power, or the ability to influence prices, supply,
or demand within markets—​particularly in markets that are important to gov-
ernments and their leaders—​then the logic of minimizing political violence in
the interest of wealth can flip on its head. This is a book about the consequences
of that flip. The consequences can be quite dramatic, resulting in the use of mili-
tary force and even the outbreak of war. But often the consequences of market
power fall in between the two extremes of prosperous peace and the catastrophic
consequences of war. Instead, states sometimes opt out of cooperation with one
another; but rather than jumping right into a fight, they delay a resolution to
their dispute. They may even push one another around while they are doing it,
xvi

xiv Preface

engaging in bellicose talk and small territorial or maritime grabs without ever
boiling over into full-​scale war.
The view we take in this book is that even in these situations where the syn-
ergy of politics, economics, and law fails to materialize and market power oppor-
tunities trigger conflict, the three components still work together in important
ways. By studying their interaction even when things aren’t going smoothly, we
believe we can identify why some states boil over into war while others seem to
simmer incessantly. We illustrate our intuition by applying our theory of market
power politics to three of the most important places and moments in the last fifty
years: the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s, Russian conflict with its neighbors such
as Georgia and Ukraine in the previous decade, and China’s interactions with its
neighbors in the East and South China Seas over the last thirty years.
This already sounds complicated, so let us pause here to reassure the reader
that we have designed this book to be widely accessible. Our hope is that anyone
with an interest in world politics can read the book, and we have removed as
much of the technical jargon as we could in pursuit of this goal. Non-​academic
readers may want to skim through Chapter 4, however, as we do spend a little
time talking about how we chose these cases and why that matters. Even so, any-
one who has taken an introductory course in international relations should have
the tools to read the entire book.
In some ways, this book represents the partnership of its two authors. Stephen
Gent has long held an interest in the interactions between international institu-
tions and peace. His expertise in the goals and structures of these institutions
helped us see the cause of their failure to resolve the disputes that we examine in
the second half of the book. Mark Crescenzi has studied the link between eco-
nomics and conflict in world politics for a quarter of a century. When he wrote
his first book on economic interdependence and conflict, and how interdepen-
dence can sometimes keep states from fighting, this flip side of the relationship
nagged in the back of his mind. Both of us found that we were unable to complete
our thoughts on these matters on our own. But while sitting on a bench on the
balcony of the UNC Student Bookstore, we hatched a plan to work together.
This book is the product of those efforts.
Along the way we have had a tremendous amount of help. We presented nascent
pieces of the research at academic conferences and meetings, gathering feedback
from scholars such as Kyle Beardsley, Stephen Chaudoin, David Cunningham,
Scott Gartner, Paul Hensel, Kelly Kadera, Pat McDonald, Sara Mitchell, Desiree
Nilsson, Jack Paine, Michael Reese, Aisling Winston, and especially Krista
Wiegand, whose work was also foundational for our own. At UNC we sought
feedback and moral support from Cameron Ballard-​Rosa, Navin Bapat, Graeme
Robertson, and Tricia Sullivan. We simply could not ask for more supportive
xv

Preface xv

colleagues. Our students were amazing, too, and we would like to thank Michelle
Corea, Tyler Ditmore, Bailee Donahue, Derek Galyon, Dan Gustafson, Austin
Hahn, Rebecca Kalmbach, Justin Kranis, Emily Rose Mitchell, Lauren Morris,
Eric Parajon, Michael Purello, Steven Saroka, Maya Schroder, Stephanie Shady,
Zach Simon, Michelle Smoler, Kai Stern, Anna Sturkey, and Rob Williams for
all of their research assistance. Thanks also to David McBride, Holly Mitchell,
Gopinath Anbalagan, and the production team at Oxford University Press for
guidance and support throughout the publication process. We are also grateful to
Don Larson and the team at Mapping Specialists, who created the original maps
for the book.
Finally, Stephen would like to thank Ed and Joy Gent for providing unwav-
ering support and encouragement over the years. He would also like to thank
Michael Cain and J. P. Singh, who introduced him to the study of political sci-
ence and international relations as an undergraduate at Ole Miss. Their classes
undoubtedly laid the seed for many of the questions tackled in this book. Mark
would like to thank Jim Crescenzi for patiently serving as an early reader, but also
for a lifetime of inspiration, friendship, and encouragement. And, of course, we
never would have made it to the end of the project without extraordinary support
from Nick Siedentop and Anita Crescenzi. We couldn’t imagine better partners
as we sorted this out, and we are so thankful that they put up with us.
xvi
xvi

Abbreviations

BIS Bank of International Settlements

DPR Donetsk People’s Republic
DSB Dispute Settlement Body (of the World Trade Organization)
EEZ exclusive economic zone
EU European Union
FDI foreign direct investment
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
ICJ International Court of Justice
INOC Iraq National Oil Company
ISA International Seabed Authority
JCG Japanese Coast Guard
KOC Kuwait Oil Company
LNG liquified natural gas
LPR Luhansk People’s Republic
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NEE normal economic exchange
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PCA Permanent Court of Arbitration
PRC People’s Republic of China
REE rare earth element
TANAP Trans-​Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline
TAP Trans-​Adriatic Pipeline
tcm thousand cubic meters
UAE United Arab Emirates
UN United Nations
UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
WTO World Trade Organization
xvi
1

Introduction

A midnight invasion of Iraqi troops into Kuwait in 1990 set off a chain of
events that have reshaped politics in the Middle East with devastating and deadly
consequences. Nearly twenty-​five years later, Russia annexed the Ukrainian ter-
ritory of Crimea and pushed the envelope of using military might without trig-
gering war. Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, China has made bold moves to
expand its territory island by island, triggering legal disputes from its neighbors,
and yet the fear of militarized violence seems relatively low compared to Russia
or Iraq. What do these crucial geopolitical moments in history have in common,
besides their importance in the lives and prosperity of dozens of countries and
millions of people? Could it be that all three cases are being driven by a common
political-​economic process? If so, what explains the variance in their outcomes?
How do we know when a situation like these will become violent?
Answering these questions is the goal of this book. Here we develop a theory
of market power politics that helps us understand why states abandon the post–​
World War II institutions that help states navigate territorial disputes such as
these. In this analysis we identify three potential outcomes when market power
politics dominate: war, cooperation, and strategic delay. Understanding the
context of political institutions and economic ties that surround market power
opportunities is key to knowing which outcome is likely to result when states
pursue a strategy of dominating a market. In an era where we have come to expect
institutions, trade, and investment to knit governments together and prevent vio-
lence, in this book we identify one source of motivation that unravels the fabric of
peace and increases the risk of war.
2

2 M ark et Power Polit ics

Strategic Delay in the “Gray Zone”

The ambition of states to expand their geographic reach can create or exacerbate
disputes over the control of territory or maritime areas. We refer to such disagree-
ments as international property rights disputes because they involve competing
claims over the sovereign control of resources. States have several strategies to
choose from as they try to resolve these property rights disputes in their favor.
Some, like Iraq in 1990, choose to press their claims on the battlefield. In fact, dis-
putes over territory have historically been one of the most predominant causes of
international war.1 Alternatively, states may try to avoid a costly war and instead
work toward a peaceful resolution of their dispute. Through bilateral negotia-
tions or with the assistance of international institutions, states can reach agree-
ments over how to divide disputed territory or maritime areas.
However, sometimes states choose to go down neither of these paths. Instead,
they opt to pursue a policy of strategic delay. Strategic delay is the purposeful
postponement of a violent or nonviolent settlement of a dispute with the hope
of achieving a more preferable outcome in the future. The use of strategic delay is
not uncommon in property rights disputes, which are often long lasting.2 In some
cases, these delay strategies are largely passive in nature. States may simply want
to maintain the status quo because they do not expect that they would achieve a
more favorable outcome through military force or negotiation.3 At other times,
though, we see states taking a more proactive approach and using strategic delay
as a way to further their expansionist goals. By delaying, these states have the
opportunity to pursue so-​called gray zone tactics that allow them to gradually
shift the strategic environment in their favor over time.
Gray zone tactics lie somewhere in the “gray zone” between diplomacy and
war. They do not involve the overt use of lethal force by a country’s military, so
they fall short of what we would call strategies of war. On the other hand, they
also fall outside the bounds of the behavior traditionally acceptable within inter-
national diplomacy. These gray zone activities often take the form of salami tac-
tics. Like consuming an entire salami by cutting a series of small slices, salami
tactics involve a country taking small steps that accumulate and achieve a larger
goal over time.4 In property rights disputes, such a gradual approach can be very
effective, as each of the individual steps is less likely to provoke an armed response

1. Holsti 1991; Vasquez 1993.

2. Wiegand 2011.
3. Fravel 2008; Huth, Croco, and Appel 2011.
4. Schelling 1966.
3

Introduction 3

than more aggressive actions. In this way, gray zone tactics allow states to press
their territorial and maritime claims while also hoping to avoid major armed con-
flict. To get a sense of how this combination of strategic delay and gray zone tac-
tics plays out empirically, let us take a look at some of the expansionist activities
pursued by China and Russia in recent years.

Mischief in the South China Sea

Consider, for example, the case of Mischief Reef and the ongoing dispute
between China and the Philippines. Mischief Reef (Figure 1.1) is an atoll in the
South China Sea, roughly 135 miles west of the Philippines. Part of the Spratly
Islands, it consists of a narrow coral reef that surrounds a large lagoon. Up until
a few years ago, Mischief Reef was what hydrographers and international lawyers
would call a low-​tide elevation, as it only rose above the level of sea during low
tide. Needless to say, for most of its history, Mischief Reef has been home only to
marine life and was primarily visited by fishermen. All of that began to change in
the mid-​1990s, however, and today the atoll lies at the center of one of the world’s

Figure 1.1. Mischief Reef in the South China Sea.

Copyright: CartoGIS Services, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University,
Creative Commons License, CC BY-​SA 4.0.
4

4 M ark et Power Polit ics

most contentious maritime disputes. What was once a tiny slice of earth that only
poked its head above water at low tide has now been launched out of obscurity
and is a serious source of international tension in the Asia-​Pacific region.
While four countries—​China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—​make
claim to Mischief Reef, China and the Philippines have taken the most active
steps to assert control over the atoll.5 China’s claim to Mischief Reef is historical.
Based upon mid-​twentieth-​century maps that include the so-​called Nine-​Dash
Line, China contends that it has jurisdiction over almost all of the South China
Sea. Thus, despite the fact that Mischief Reef lies over 600 miles from China’s
Hainan Island and about 800 miles from the Chinese mainland, China claims
that the reef is part of its territory. The Philippines, on the other hand, claims
that Mischief Reef lies within its own exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a maritime
area in which it has jurisdiction over the exploration and exploitation of marine
resources.6 The Philippine government’s claim is based upon its interpretation of
the rules for drawing international maritime boundaries laid out in the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Both China and the
Philippines are parties to UNCLOS, which prioritizes the type of rules-​based
claim made by the Philippines over historical claims. However, this international
institution designed to improve cooperation does not seem to be working in
this case.
In 1995, China established control over Mischief Reef by building four plat-
forms on stilts that housed several bunkers equipped with a satellite dish, which
it claimed were shelters for fishermen.7 Three years later, China expanded and
fortified these structures with the support of armed military supply ships.8 Since
then, China and the Philippines have engaged in on-​and-​off-​again bilateral nego-
tiations to try to resolve their competing claims over Mischief Reef, as well as
other Spratly Islands and the nearby Scarborough Shoal, but they have not been
able to reach an agreement on the matter. Similar attempts to resolve the many
other overlapping, competing maritime claims of the seven countries that sur-
round the South China Sea have also largely been unfruitful. Notably, China has
been reluctant to turn issues of maritime control in the South China Sea over
to a tribunal established under UNCLOS. In 2013, the Philippines decided to

5. Throughout the book, we will use the terms “China” and “Chinese” to refer to the People’s
Republic of China and the terms “Taiwan” and “Taiwanese” to refer to the Republic of China.
6. An EEZ is an area in international waters in which the state has a sovereign right to all eco-
nomic resources below the surface of the sea.
7. Shenon 1995; Storey 1999.
8. Zha and Valencia 2001.
5

Introduction 5

take matters into its own hands and notified China that it was going to unilater-
ally bring its case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). China quickly
refused to participate. While the Philippine government was eager to use legal
institutions to resolve this dispute, China seemed equally eager not to do so.
While the Philippines turned to the courts, China began to take more aggres-
sive steps to expand its presence in the South China Sea. A significant part of
China’s strategy involved the construction of artificial islands on its occupied
features in the Spratly Islands, including Mischief Reef. In January 2015, China
began dredging sand and pumping it on top of the coral at Mischief Reef while an
amphibious warship patrolled the entrance to the reef ’s lagoon.9 By June of that
year, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative estimated that over two square
miles of land had been already been reclaimed.10 Since then, Chinese develop-
ment on Mischief Reef has moved apace, and it continues to construct more per-
manent facilities on the island. A three-​kilometer-​long runway was completed
in 2016, along with several hangars for large aircraft. Additional construction
projects on the island have included underground storage for ammunition, com-
munications towers, and structures to house defensive weapons systems.11
An adverse ruling by the PCA in June 2016 hardly provided a speed bump to
China’s expansionist plans on Mischief Reef. The Court ruled that the reef was
a low-​tide elevation before China’s reclamation efforts and thus does not gener-
ate any entitlement to a territorial sea. Moreover, the Court found that Mischief
Reef lies within the Philippines’ EEZ. China, however, refused to accept the
court’s ruling and continued to claim sovereignty over much of the South China
Sea. Rather than taking a step back, China pushed forward with its efforts to
militarize the Spratly Islands, including Mischief Reef. By mid-​2018, the Chinese
military had quietly installed communications jamming equipment, anti-​aircraft
guns, anti-​ship cruise missiles, and surface-​to-​air missile systems on its outposts
in the Spratly Islands.12
The pattern of activities on Mischief Reef mirrors similar Chinese projects
on other islands in the Spratly archipelago, including Fiery Cross Reef and Subi
Reef. Whether or not it had initially aimed to just build structures to provide
shelter for fishermen in the mid-​1990s, China has clearly moved toward a slow
but steady militarization of its claimed territory in the South China Sea. Rather

9. Sanger and Gladstone 2015.

10. Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative 2015.
11. Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative 2018.
12. Macias 2018.
6

6 M ark et Power Polit ics

than accepting a legal settlement or turning to military force, China has preferred
a policy of strategic delay. By delaying, China has been able to pursue a campaign
of gray zone activities to expand its presence in the South China Sea. In the case
of Mischief Reef, China’s strategy provides a textbook example of salami tactics.
China first installed platforms on the reef, followed by the construction of an
artificial island that could house larger structures and an airstrip. It is now moving
forward with the installation of military weapons on the island. These steps have
allowed China to gradually consolidate its control of Mischief Reef and other
islands the South China Sea without sparking a major armed conflict.

Russian Expansion: A Land-​Based Analogue

While China has been building islands to expand its reach into the South China Sea,
Russia has pursued territorial ambitions of its own in the Black Sea region. South
Ossetia is a landlocked breakaway region of north-​central Georgia that borders
Russia. It has little in the way of natural resources, and its citizens largely rely upon
subsistence farming. In the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union, South Ossetia
declared independence from Georgia, sparking the first of a series of civil wars
that Georgia suffered in the early 1990s. Since then, South Ossetia has often been
described as being a “frozen conflict,” and the region has largely remained outside the
effective control of the Georgian government, relying upon the support of Russia for
survival. As part of the civil war peace settlement in 1992, Russia deployed a peace-
keeping force to the region that has never left. In the mid-​2000s, Russia gradually
increased its military capabilities in South Ossetia, and during a brief five-​day war
in August 2008, Russian and Ossetian troops pushed out any remaining Georgian
presence in the region. Later that month, Russia officially recognized South Ossetia’s
independence, but very few other countries followed suit.
Since the 2008 conflict, Russia has continued to expand its influence in
South Ossetia, as it gradually integrates the region militarily, politically, and
economically with Russia. To secure the territory of South Ossetia, Russia
routinely engages in a “borderization” strategy that Georgia calls a “creep-
ing occupation.” Since South Ossetia was not a formal administrative unit of
Georgia, its boundaries were not clearly defined. Thus, Russian forces have
taken it upon themselves to demarcate this largely unrecognized “interna-
tional” border by erecting border fences and signs. As part of the strategy, on
multiple occasions since 2013, Russia has literally shifted the boundary posts
of the border to expand South Ossetia’s territory.13 For example, in a land

13. A report by the Heritage Foundation identifies ten cases of borderization from May 2013
7

Introduction 7

Figure 1.2. Russia’s borderization strategy in Georgia.

grab in July 2015, South Ossetia gained access to a mile-​long stretch of the
Baku-​Supsa oil pipeline and pushed the border to within 500 meters of the
E60 highway connecting Azerbaijan and the Black Sea (Figure 1.2). Media
reports indicate that residents have gone to bed thinking that their house
was located in Georgia proper and have woken up finding themselves living
in South Ossetian territory.14 Slowly but surely, these Russian encroachments
into Georgian territory continue unabated, despite objections from Georgia
and the West.
As Russia pursues its borderization strategy in Georgia, it has also utilized
unconventional methods to expand its territorial reach in another neighbor,
Ukraine. Crimea is a strategically located peninsula in the northern Black Sea.
Home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and a largely Russian-​speaking population,
Crimea had been part of Russia from 1783 to 1954, until the Soviet Union trans-
ferred control of the peninsula to Ukraine. In late February 2014, in the midst
of the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, reports of sightings of “little green men”
emerged in Crimea. These men in question were Russian-​speaking armed sol-
diers wearing green military gear without any insignia. While it was commonly

to August 2017 that resulted in additional Georgian territory falling within South Ossetian
territory (Coffey 2018).
14. North 2015.
8

8 M ark et Power Polit ics

understood that the men were Russian military personnel, likely including
members of the 810th Marines Infantry Brigade and Russian special forces, the
Kremlin denied the presence of any Russian military forces in Crimea. Instead,
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that they were merely members of
local “self-​defense groups.”15
These non-​uniformed soldiers played a key role in Russia’s annexation
of Crimea. On February 27, armed men seized the parliament building in
Crimea’s capital, Simferopol, and raised the Russian flag.16 In the following
days, unmarked Russian soldiers occupied and blockaded the Simferopol
airport and several military bases in Crimea.17 With their help, Russia then
moved arms and military equipment into Crimea and eventually took control
of the peninsula. Under Russia’s guidance, Crimean officials quickly scheduled
a referendum on Crimea’s political status, and within a month of the appear-
ance of the “little green men,” Russia annexed Crimea into its own territory.
Following this success in Crimea, non-​uniformed Russian troops appeared in
eastern Ukraine to support the pro-​Russian separatist forces in Donetsk. The
use of such deniable forces appears to have become a standard tactic in Russia’s
strategic playbook.18
Like China, Russia has largely relied upon gray zone tactics to pursue
its territorial ambitions in recent years. Russia’s expansion into Georgia has
largely consisted of a series of salami tactics. It has gradually consolidated its
power in South Ossetia over the past quarter-​century and is slowly expand-
ing its reach into Georgian territory through its borderization strategy.
Moving border fences to redraw borders though a “creeping occupation”
is a strategy designed to incorporate small steps that will likely not trigger
a significant reaction on their own. Russia’s annexation of Crimea provides
an example of a related tactic common in gray zone campaigns known as a
fait accompli, or land grab.19 In this case, Russia seized control of the entire
territory, hoping that it would not provoke an armed response from other
states. Through this combination of salami tactics and faits accompli, Russia
has been able to strategically advance its interests without resorting to open
warfare.

15. Shevchenko 2014.

16. Booth and Englund 2014.
17. Oliphant 2014.
18. Altman 2018.
19. Altman 2017; Mazarr 2015; Tarar 2016.
9

Introduction 9

Two Puzzles
In many ways, the expansionist behavior of China and Russia cuts against the gen-
eral trend in international relations in recent decades. For one, since the end of
World War II, the international community has largely embraced a norm against
the use of coercion to revise territorial borders.20 Historically, major powers rou-
tinely used their military might to try to expand their territorial control, and
borders often shifted as a consequence of these conflicts. However, such coercive
territorial revision is no longer widely seen as acceptable behavior. Additionally,
in an increasingly interdependent global environment, uncertainty about borders
can have greater economic consequences. Mutually recognized boundaries clearly
define property rights and jurisdictional control, facilitating economic activity
and international trade.21 Thus, one might expect that these economic incentives
would push countries to settle any outstanding disputes over territorial and mari-
time control. However, as China and Russia have become more integrated into
the global economy in the first two decades of the twenty-​first century, they have
actively perpetuated these property rights disputes with the aim of expanding
their territorial reach.
The expansionist activities of China and Russia are also notable in that they
have, by and large, not escalated to major armed conflicts. The desire for territory
has historically been one of the predominant causes of war between countries.
However, both China and Russia have preferred to pursue tactics that remain in
the gray zone between traditional diplomacy and war. Only during its brief five-​
day war with Georgia in 2008 has Russia engaged in significant active combat
with a neighboring country, and China has largely avoided violent international
military clashes to advance its claims in the South and East China Seas.22 At the
same time, both countries have deferred negotiating settlements over these terri-
torial claims. By strategically delaying the resolution of boundary disputes, China
and Russia have been able to pursue salami tactics to achieve their expansionist
goals over time.
These patterns highlight two key puzzles. First, why do China and Russia
pursue policies of territorial expansion in the face of widely accepted norms of
territorial integrity and their increased interconnectedness with the global econ-
omy? Second, why have China and Russia largely relied upon gray zone tactics

20. Atzili 2011; Zacher 2001.

21. Simmons 2005.
22. The two notable exceptions to this were the brief naval disputes between China and
Vietnam over the Paracel Islands in 1974 and the Spratly Islands in 1988.
10

10 M ark et Power Polit ics

to pursue these goals, rather than overt military force or negotiations through
international institutions? For example, why has Russia not launched a full-​scale
war to occupy its neighbors, as Iraq did against Kuwait in 1990? On the other
hand, why has China refused to settle its maritime boundary disputes in the East
and South China Seas in an international court? The goal of this book is to solve
these puzzles.

Market Power, Economic Interdependence, and

International Institutions
To explain the behavior of states like China and Russia, we develop a theory of
market power politics. This theory helps us to solve these puzzles by identifying
factors that motivate and constrain the expansionist behavior of states involved
in property rights disputes. Competition for market power can motivate states to
take aggressive actions to expand their territorial reach or to prevent others from
doing so. At the same time, economic interdependence and international institu-
tions can place constraints on the strategies that states take to achieve these goals.
To help set up our argument, let us briefly introduce these three key pieces of the
puzzle: market power, economic interdependence, and international institutions.
Then we can show how they fit together to form our model of market power
politics.

Market Power Motivation

Market power is the ability to generate prices that diverge from what would result
from a fully clearing competitive market. In normal economic exchange environ-
ments, prices are set by supply and demand conditions in the market. Thus, for
all practical purposes, buyers and sellers are price takers. However, in markets
of imperfect competition—​like monopolies, monopsonies, and oligopolies—​
opportunities emerge for firms to gain price-​setting abilities. For example, when
a producer controls a significant share of a market, it may be able to use its market
power to raise prices above the market price. On the other hand, if a buyer suf-
ficiently dominates a market, it may be able to benefit from below-​market prices.
When firms set prices in their favor, they are able to generate extra profits, which
are known as rents. Given the value of these potential rents, firms have strong
incentives to accumulate market power.
While the ability to set prices is clearly valuable to firms, our analysis primar-
ily focuses on the benefits that this market power can provide to leaders of states.
Economically, the rents that firms generate from price setting can provide a source
1

Introduction 11

of revenue for the state. Additionally, market power in key markets can promote
domestic political stability and provide leaders with international bargaining
leverage. These economic and political benefits will likely be greatest when states
own or have significant control over firms that have the ability to set prices for
a key good in the state’s economy. In these cases, states have strong incentives to
take steps to increase their firms’ market power. At the same time, other states will
be motivated to prevent these states from capitalizing on market power oppor-
tunities. As we will see, this creates a competitive international environment that
can potentially lead to armed conflict.
We mainly focus our attention on market power competition in hard com-
modity markets. Hard commodities are natural resources that are mined or
extracted, such as energy resources and metals. In Part II of the book, we will
take a close look at the market power motivations of three hard commodity pro-
ducers: Iraq (oil), Russia (natural gas), and China (rare earth elements). Since
the production of hard commodities typically requires a state to have access to
resource reserves, market power in these markets is often a function of who con-
trols the territory where these reserves are found and the supply routes by which
the commodity is transported. Thus, if a state wants to increase its firms’ market
power or prevent another state from doing so, it may need to expand its territo-
rial control. If the benefits of market power are sufficiently high, the state may be
motivated to take aggressive steps to do so.

Economic and Institutional Constraints

While competition over market power provides a motivation for territorial
expansion, states can be constrained from taking escalatory actions in pursuit of
these goals. One such constraint is economic interdependence. Observers of inter-
national relations often equate economic interdependence with high levels of
economic interaction between states. However, interaction does not necessarily
imply interdependence. Instead, economic interdependence exists when the costs
of exiting an economic relationship are high. These exit costs depend upon the
availability of substitutes and the costs of adaptation. For example, if a state that
relies upon natural gas for home heating has only one supplier of natural gas and
cannot easily access alternative sources, exiting the relationship with that supplier
would be very costly. Such economic interdependence between states increases
the costs and risks of using violence. If armed conflict would result in economic
exit, states that are dependent on one another will face potentially destabilizing
economic costs that may be sufficient to deter them from escalating property
rights disputes.
12

12 M ark et Power Polit ics

International institutions provide another constraint on aggressive state

behavior. Institutions are sets of rules that govern human behavior.23 To help
achieve efficient outcomes in the global political economy, states have created a
variety of international institutions that promote coordination and cooperation
through the reduction of transaction costs. In the context of territorial conflict,
institutions reduce the need for states to turn to violence by providing an avenue
for states to peacefully resolve their property rights disputes. They do this in two
primary ways. First, institutions provide rules to guide states on how they should
allocate property rights. For example, international law articulates principles to
follow when drawing territorial borders, while UNCLOS outlines a set of rules
for determining the boundaries of maritime areas. Second, institutions provide
procedures to help states reach durable settlements that are in line with those
rules. When states are not able to reach a negotiated settlement on their own,
they have the option of turning to an international organization to mediate the
dispute or an international court to lay down a legal ruling.
In some situations, however, the presence of institutions can discourage
dispute resolution. For one, institutional rules may limit the ability of states
to achieve their political goals. For example, in the South China Sea dispute, a
settlement consistent with the rules laid out by UNCLOS would likely require
China to give up its claim to much of the sea. This politically unacceptable out-
come makes China less willing to pursue an institutionally based settlement.
Additionally, the difficulty of altering legally established boundaries raises the
stakes of any settlement reached in a property rights dispute. This can reduce the
willingness of states to make concessions over territory or submit their claims
to an international court. Thus, some of the same factors that make institutions
effective dispute-​resolution mechanisms can make states less willing to reach a
settlement in the first place. For this reason, the ability of institutions to con-
strain aggressive behavior in the face of market power opportunities will vary
depending upon the strategic situation.

A Model of Market Power Politics

Figure 1.3 shows how these pieces fit together in our model of market power poli-
tics. When a state faces an opportunity to increase or preserve its firms’ market
power through the acquisition of territorial or maritime resources, it has incen-
tives to take aggressive steps to do so. This expansionist motivation can create or
exacerbate a property rights dispute between two or more states. The decision to

23. North 1990; Ostrom 1990.

13

Introduction 13

Economic
Interdependence
Constraint

Market Power DISPUTE

Motivation OUTCOME

Institutional
Constraint

Figure 1.3. Model of market power politics.

escalate these disputes is conditioned, however, by economic and institutional

constraints. The economic constraints emerge from any interdependence that
exists between the economies of the disputing states. These constraints can pro-
vide friction to slow down the dispute and limit one or more states’ abilities to use
force to obtain the market power opportunity. International institutional con-
straints work a bit differently. They can sometimes provide a similar friction if the
structure of the institutional membership allows. However, their primary role is
to provide more efficient, nonviolent pathways for states to resolve the dispute.
The outcome of the property rights dispute depends upon the combination
of motivations and constraints that the states face. When economic and insti-
tutional constraints are low and the benefits of market power opportunities are
high, states will be more willing to turn to violence. This can lead the dispute
to escalate to war. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to gain the ability to affect
oil prices provides a clear example of this path. At the other extreme, when dis-
putants face significant constraints, they will be more willing to turn to peace-
ful dispute settlement. If there is a high level of economic interdependence and
strong institutions can facilitate a mutually beneficial agreement, the economic
benefits of resolving a property rights dispute may outweigh the potential gains
from aggressively pursuing a market power opportunity. In these cases, we expect
that disputants will likely agree to negotiated settlements or pursue legal dispute
resolution through an international courts or arbitration panel.
In between these extremes, states with expansionist motivations may face
a mix of strong and weak constraints. For example, a state may be economi-
cally dependent upon its rival but not find any of the available institutional
14

14 M ark et Power Polit ics

settlements politically acceptable. Such a state would be constrained from vio-

lence but would also be unwilling to agree to peaceful dispute settlement. In
these situations, the state may instead opt to pursue strategic delay. This delay
strategy could allow the state to wait until it is in a better bargaining position
and take advantage of the market power opportunity at that point. Alternatively,
delay could provide the state with an opportunity to gradually expand its ter-
ritorial reach through gray zone tactics. Such strategic delay characterizes the
activities of China in the South China Sea and Russia in Georgia and Ukraine.
Thus, the interplay between economics, institutions, and expansionist behav-
ior in international relations is multifaceted. The existing academic literature
largely focuses on the pacific effects of economic exchange and international insti-
tutions, but this is only part of the story. While interactions in global markets can
increase the costs of fighting, the desire for increased power in these markets can
motivate countries to expand their territorial reach. Similarly, strong institutions
can help countries effectively resolve disputes over property rights, but they also
limit the range of potential settlements and raise the stakes of any agreement that
is reached. Only by taking these competing incentives into account can we under-
stand the varying strategies countries take to pursue their economic ambitions.
This helps us to solve the puzzles outlined in the preceding sections. Increased
economic interconnectedness and institutional developments have indeed
helped to reduce the propensity of the large-​scale territorial wars of previous
centuries, but motivations for territorial expansion have not gone away. Among
these motivations is the desire for increased power in global and regional markets,
which can sometimes outweigh the economic benefits of settling disputes over
international boundaries. In some cases, countries are able to resolve property
rights disputes that arise from market power motivations through international
institutions. However, when major powers in this economically interconnected
world are constrained from using violence and cannot reach their market power
goals through an institutionally prescribed settlement, they instead turn to gray
zone tactics. Pursuing a strategy of delay, these countries use these tactics to try to
shift the strategic environment in their favor and gradually achieve their expan-
sionist goals over time.

Contributions of the Book

In this project, we set out to understand some emerging patterns in the conflict
behavior of key players on the global stage, and we find that an important piece
of the puzzle lies in disentangling the economic and institutional incentives that
these countries face. For this reason, the discussion in this book cuts across many
of the established research communities within the field of international relations,
15

Introduction 15

from conflict and security studies to international organization to international

political economy. The contemporary academic environment encourages and
values specialization, and this has undoubtedly led to a great accumulation of
knowledge that has pushed the study of international relations forward. As a
consequence, though, these separate research communities have fewer and fewer
opportunities to speak to each other. We believe that this can hinder our abil-
ity to tackle many of the pressing issues that we face in international relations
today, which often requires us to take a broader perspective. For that reason, our
research necessarily draws from and speaks to a wide range of literatures in the
field. We briefly highlight three examples of that dialogue here, leaving a more
extended discussion of the contributions and implications of this research to the
book’s conclusion.
First, we provide new insights into the relationship between economics and
international conflict. Scholarship in this area has largely focused on whether
trade and economic interdependence reduce the likelihood of war. Following in
the footsteps of Immanuel Kant, proponents of the liberal peace argue that trade
dampens the prospect of international conflict.24 Others challenge this claim,
arguing that the relationship between trade and war is logically indeterminate
or at least more complicated than a simple negative relationship.25 Here we show
that a different economic incentive—​the desire for market power—​can be an
instigator of conflict. However, we also build upon the insights of the literature
on the liberal peace by integrating the constraining effects of economic interde-
pendence into our theory to identify contexts where competition motivates con-
flict but interdependence constrains one or more parties from escalation to war.
By exploring the market factors underlying strategies of territorial expansion, we
shed light on the critical nexus between territory, trade, and war.26
Second, we provide a unique analysis of the role of institutions in the con-
text of territorial disputes that coincide with market power opportunities. In
so doing, we reveal the pernicious incongruence between promoting efficiency
and avoiding market power ambitions. The existing literature tends to focus
on the ability of international institutions to help states efficiently resolve dis-
putes.27 However, we show that the development of such institutions can have

24. Polachek 1980; Russett and Oneal 2001.

25. Barbieri 1996; Chatagnier and Kavaklı 2015; Crescenzi 2005; Gowa 1995; Morrow 1999.
26. Schultz 2015.
27. In the context of property rights disputes, examples include Allee and Huth 2006; Gent
and Shannon 2010; Huth, Croco, and Appel 2011; Mitchell and Hensel 2007; Powell and
Wiegand 2014; Simmons 2002.
16

16 M ark et Power Polit ics

unintended consequences. In particular, institutions can constrain disputants to

such an extent that they may be unable or unwilling to reach a dispute settle-
ment. Many international institutions developed in the twentieth century were
designed to add efficiency and transparency to international interactions. This
focus on efficiency often comes at a price, however, if these institutions are
unable to accommodate attempts to reshape markets. As a result, these insti-
tutions provide suboptimal solutions for disputing states when market power
opportunities exist.
Third, our analysis of strategic delay in economically motivated territorial
disputes provides a new understanding of the factors that lead countries to pur-
sue gray zone strategies that lie between traditional diplomacy and war. Both
experts in and practitioners of US national security policy have cited the emer-
gence of gray zone campaigns as a critical concern in the contemporary global
environment.28 However, while the “gray zone” may have become a buzz word
in Washington, the academic community has somewhat lagged behind in inves-
tigating these phenomena. Recently, international relations scholars have begun
to put more theoretical rigor into our understanding of gray zone strategies.29
Our research aims to contribute to the emerging literature on gray zone tactics
by examining the economic motivations that can underlie the decision to turn
to these tactics. Additionally, we show how the structure of international norms
and institutions may be unexpectedly encouraging the pursuit of gray zone cam-
paigns. Thus, our research on the strategic delay tactics pursued by Russia and
China will be of interest to academics and policymakers alike.

Overview of the Book

The remainder of the book is primarily laid out in two parts. In Part I, consist-
ing of Chapters 2 and 3, we lay out our theory of market power politics. Here
we explain how market power motivations, in combination with economic and
institutional constraints, influence countries’ strategies in territorial disputes. In
Part II of the book, we explore how these factors play out in the empirical world.
In these chapters, we trace how market power motivations led to armed conflict
between Iraq and Kuwait, expansionist gray zone tactics by Russia in neighboring
Georgia and Ukraine, and strategic delay in the maritime disputes in the East and

28. Brands 2016; Green et al. 2017; Mazarr 2015.

29. Altman 2017; Altman 2018; Cormac and Aldrich 2018; Green et al. 2017; Lanoszka 2016;
Mazarr 2015; Tarar 2016; Zhang 2019.
17

Introduction 17

South China Seas. We then conclude with a discussion of the implications of our
research for both scholars and policymakers.
Chapter 2 sets the stage for our theory of market power politics. Before we
can analyze how the desire for market power can drive states to seek big changes
in international relations, we must first map out the way things work in what we
call normal economic exchange environments. In such environments, economic
exchange takes place in perfectly competitive markets where both buyers and sell-
ers are price takers. Whenever this characteristic holds, states have an interest in
using institutions to maximize coordination and efficiency. These international
institutions facilitate global commerce by reducing the transaction costs that
political and economic actors face.
Territorial and maritime boundaries promote economic production and trade
by establishing and clarifying property rights between states. International prop-
erty rights disputes arise when states disagree over the sovereign control of ter-
ritorial and maritime resources. Resolving these disputes can provide significant
mutual economic benefits to the states involved, but it is often difficult for states
to do so on their own. In normal economic exchange environments, international
institutions can help resolve these territorial and maritime disputes by providing
rules for allocating property rights and procedures to reach durable settlements.
We illustrate the process of institutional management with a brief discussion of
the resolution of the maritime boundary dispute between Romania and Ukraine.
In Chapter 3, we establish an argument for why property rights disputes that
contain market power opportunities are particularly difficult for institutions and
states to navigate, leading to interesting and important outcomes such as strategic
delay and even the onset of war. To understand the emergence of war or delay in
these disputes, we need to understand why states would be motivated to engage
in non-​cooperative behavior. One such motive is economic competition. When
states are faced with an opportunity to achieve a significant increase in market
power through the acquisition of territorial or maritime resources, they may have
incentives to use force to seize the territory in question. This can lead these dis-
putes to escalate to military conflict.
However, while states may have motives to achieve market power through
violence, they are often constrained from doing so. We identify two forms of
international constraints that shape decisions to pursue market power opportu-
nities: economic interdependence and international institutions. When one state
is economically dependent upon another, it is unwilling to incur the economic
costs that would result from an escalation of conflict. Additionally, as we discuss
in Chapter 2, institutions can help states effectively resolve disputes. However,
when institutional rules and procedures prevent states from achieving market
power opportunities, the same factors that make these institutions so effective
18

18 M ark et Power Polit ics

can sometimes deter states from pursuing institutional solutions in the first place.
When considered in tandem, the set of constraints created by economic inter-
dependence and incompatible international institutions can help us understand
when and why states seem to wait in a holding pattern we describe as strategic
delay. Such a strategy allows states to bide their time until they are able to resolve
property disputes in their favor or engage in gray zone tactics that allow them to
gradually achieve their market power goals.
Chapter 4 begins Part II and transitions the book from theory to empirical
evaluation. Here we explain and justify our empirical strategy and case selection.
First, we explain the motivation behind our use of qualitative cases as plausibility
probes. Next, we outline the criteria that we use to select our cases. In particu-
lar, we focus our attention on hard commodity markets and limit our analysis
to states that have significant control over their firms in these markets. We then
introduce our three empirical foci: Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and its
desire to become a price setter in the global oil export market; Russia’s territorial
expansionism and contestation in Georgia and Ukraine as a result of its desire to
preserve Russian market power in the regional natural gas market; and China’s
extended territorial expansionism in the South and East China Seas in the con-
text of competition over seabed resources, including rare earth elements.
In Chapter 5, we examine how a desire for market power led to the decision
of Iraq to invade Kuwait in August 1990. This case highlights the use of force to
improve Iraq’s position within the global oil market at a time when it desperately
needed new resources. The existing institutions governing oil export revenue,
such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), could
not provide effective solutions for Iraq’s needs following a decade of war with
Iran. Given the absence of normal political solutions, Saddam Hussein explored
the annexation of Kuwait and its oil reserves. This opportunity to improve Iraq’s
oil position worked in tandem with the classic commitment problems that plague
international bargaining environments, leading to conflict. Kuwait was able to
fend off the attack only with the help of the world’s major oil consumers, who
stood to lose from Iraq’s increased market power. The United States and its part-
ners feared that Saddam Hussein’s pledge to not invade Saudi Arabia was not
credible, and the subsequent shift in market power for Iraq in the event of seizing
Saudi oil reserves would represent a major transition for Iraq to a price setter for
global oil.
The Coalition of the Gulf War formed and successfully expelled Iraq from
Kuwait’s borders. But even after Hussein learned that the United States and
Operation Desert Storm would successfully compel his forces back home, he
maintained his strategy of using force to revise Iraq’s competitiveness in the oil
market. In the wake of the initial conflict, when Iraq made a hasty withdrawal,
19

Introduction 19

Hussein’s army endeavored to irrevocably alter the competitiveness of Kuwait by

dismantling the Kuwaiti oil infrastructure. This destruction was economic war-
fare by Iraq. While Hussein’s first preference was to horizontally integrate this
infrastructure and resources into the Iraqi economy, his second preference was
to destroy it. Compared to leaving Kuwait intact, this option had the potential
to improve Iraq’s power in the oil market. The sanctions imposed by the interna-
tional community in the wake of the war likely undid any of this advantage, but
Hussein could not have predicted these costs accurately. As such, this case repre-
sents the causal path from market power opportunities to war.
In Chapter 6, we explore how market power incentives in the regional natural
gas market have shaped Russia’s foreign policy activities since 2000. Russia is the
largest exporter of natural gas in the world, and the Russian economy is largely
dependent upon the production of hydrocarbons. Most of Russia’s gas exports
flow to Europe, and Russia would greatly benefit if it could monopolize Europe’s
consumption of natural gas and thus control the regional market price for gas.
This would give Russia the ability to extract rents and use its price-​setting capa-
bility as a lever for political gains. However, Russia’s position in the European
gas market is threatened by a number of factors, including the politics of transit
states, the emergence of competitive suppliers, and changes to the pricing struc-
ture of European gas.
In light of these challenges, Russia has pursued a multipronged strategy to
maintain its market power. Part of this strategy involves moves by the Russian gas
company, Gazprom, to increase its control of the supply chain through vertical
integration and the construction of bypass pipelines. However, most importantly
for our discussion here, Russia has also pursued a policy of territorial expansion
in Georgia and Ukraine to achieve its market power goals. By increasing its pres-
ence in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and engaging in a
gradual “creeping occupation” of territory in Georgia, Russia has moved to desta-
bilize a critical transit state for gas exports from Azerbaijan. On the other hand,
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine have opened
up additional offshore gas reserves in the Black Sea and have disrupted Ukraine’s
ability to increase its own domestic gas production. In these disputes, Russia has
largely pursued strategic delay, which has allowed it to gradually expand its terri-
torial reach through salami tactics. Economic interdependence constrains Russia
from pursuing significant military escalation, and international institutions do
not provide a viable avenue for Russia to achieve such territorial gains.
In Chapter 7, we turn our attention to the ongoing property rights disputes
in the South and East China Seas. Over the last half-​century, China has increas-
ingly invested in its ambitious territorial and maritime claims in both the East
and South China Seas. By making and pressing these claims, China has entered
20

20 M ark et Power Polit ics

into prolonged disputes with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other states.
An ability to gain exclusive rights to mine the deep seabed in the East and South
China Seas would preserve China’s current power in the rare earth elements mar-
ket, ensuring that China will have steady and affordable access to these minerals
for its downstream economies focusing on high-​end electronics manufacturing
and green-​energy infrastructure. Preserving this market power is key to reduc-
ing risk as China pursues its “Made in China 2025” economic policy. With the
International Seabed Authority’s recent development of a mining code that pri-
oritizes the environmental concerns surrounding deep seabed mining for rare
earths, China is reluctant to cede authority to this international institution.
Yet, full throttle territorial expansion has been slow to arrive in the South
China Sea, and China has shown little indication that it seeks to force the issue
with Japan in the East China Sea. Asymmetric economic interdependence
between China and its South China Sea rivals prevents the Philippines and
Vietnam from escalating their territorial disputes militarily. Without fear of esca-
lation, China has pursued a practice of strategic delay in which it resists conflict
resolution by international regimes and slowly but determinedly moves to con-
solidate de facto control of the South China Sea through salami tactics. Similarly,
in the East China Sea, both China and Japan have pursued a practice of strategic
delay. As China has become emboldened in the last decade, Japan has used the
combination of economic and institutional constraints to prevent the resolution
of this dispute in China’s favor, which could lead to a spike in Chinese market
power. Japan’s key role as a trading partner and contributor of foreign direct
investment prevents China from escalating to more aggressive tactics, while the
design of institutions such as UNCLOS makes legal dispute resolution too risky
for either side.
In the concluding chapter, we return to our theoretical road map and the
broad strokes of our empirical analysis to examine the contributions of the book
and the lessons it offers for scholars, students, and practitioners of world politics.
To complement our extended case studies of violence and strategic delay, we pro-
vide a brief discussion of Russia’s decision to abandon strategic delay and agree to
a settlement of the long-​running dispute over the Caspian Sea. We also outline
a set of questions for future research on market power politics. Then, to reflect
upon how our research informs our understanding of international relations, we
contemplate the effects of market structure on conflict behavior, the limitations
of international institutions, and the future role of gray zone tactics by countries
like Russia and China. We conclude the book with a discussion of some of the
policy implications that follow our study of market power politics.
21

PART I

A Theory of Market
Power Politics
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
46
O. W. Holmes.
47
Merry-Mount is more readable than its predecessor. Such
characters as Sir Christopher Gardiner and his ‘cousin,’ Thomas
Morton with his hawks and his classical quotations, Esther
Ludlow and Maudsley, Walford the smith, Blaxton the hermit,
together with the human grotesques Peter Cakebread, Bootefish,
and Canary-Bird, repay one for the trouble he takes to make their
acquaintance.
48
For a defence of the part played by the Secretary of State in this
affair see John Bigelow’s paper entitled ‘Mr. Seward and Mr.
Motley,’ in the ‘International Review,’ July-August, 1878.
49
John Jay: ‘Motley’s Appeal to History,’ in the ‘International
Review’ for November-December, 1877.
50
J. R. Green.
51
Dutch Republic, i, 162.
 XIV
Francis Parkman

REFERENCES:

Edward Wheelwright: ‘Memoir of Francis

Parkman, LL.D.,’ Publications of the Colonial
Society of Massachusetts, vol. i, 1895.
C. H. Farnham: A Life of Francis Parkman, 1901.
H. D. Sedgwick: Francis Parkman, ‘American Men
of Letters,’ 1904.

I
HIS LIFE

The Parkmans are descendants of Thomas Parkman of Sidmouth,

Devon, whose son Elias settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in
1633. Francis Parkman was a son of the Reverend Francis
Parkman, pastor for thirty-six years of the New North Church in
Boston. Through his mother, Caroline (Hall) Parkman, he was
related to the famous colonial minister, John Cotton. Two of his
maternal ancestors used to preach to the Indians in their own
tongue. Parkman’s deep interest in the ‘aborigines’ may have been
‘partly inherited from these Puritan ancestors.’ ‘It does not appear,
however, that he ever learned their language, and it may be
regarded as certain that he never preached to them.’
Born in Boston on September 16, 1823, Parkman prepared for
college at Chauncy Hall School and was graduated at Harvard in
1844. During his college course he ‘showed symptoms of Injuns on
the brain,’ as a classmate phrased it. In 1841 he began those
vacation wanderings which gave him such an intimate acquaintance
with the American wilderness. Before taking his degree he had
planned a book on the conspiracy of Pontiac. The year after
graduation he visited Detroit and other scenes of the historic drama,
collected papers, and, wherever it was possible, ‘interviewed
descendants of the actors.’
At his father’s instance Parkman then entered the Dane Law
School at Cambridge and obtained his degree (1846), but took no
steps to be admitted to the bar. He studied by himself history, Indian
ethnology, and ‘models of English style.’ The passage in Vassall
Morton describing the influence of Thierry’s Norman Conquest in
directing the hero of the novel towards ethnological study, is thought
to be autobiographical.
Having weakened his sight by immoderate reading, Parkman (in
1846) made a journey to the Northwest, ‘partly to cure his eyes and
partly to study Indian life.’ He was accompanied by his friend Quincy
Adams Shaw. For some weeks he lived in a village of Ogillallah
Indians, sharing the tent of a chief and following the wanderings of
the tribe in their search for enemies and buffalo. The hardships of
the life ruined his health. His sight was made worse rather than
better, and his first book, The Oregon Trail (1849), describing these
52
western experiences, had to be written from dictation. It was
followed by The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), and that by Vassall
Morton (1856), an attempt at fiction. This ends the initial period of
Parkman’s literary life.
In 1850 Parkman married Catharine, a daughter of Doctor Jacob
Bigelow of Boston. She is said to have been a woman of a sweet
and joyful disposition, having a keen sense of humor, and, above all,
endowed with ‘the high courage requisite to tend unfalteringly the
 53
pain and suffering of the man she loved.’ It was a perfect union,
but unhappily it was not to last long. Mrs. Parkman died in 1858.
The historian’s health steadily declined. For years together his
chief study was to keep himself alive. As a part of this study he took
up floriculture, and soon found himself absorbed in it for its own
sake. He became famous for his roses and lilies, and was the
54
recipient of prizes innumerable from horticultural societies. Yet at
no time did he lose sight of his main object, the history of France in
North America. Little by little his store of materials accumulated.
Even when he was at his worst physically, some progress was
made. It might be only a step, but the step had not to be retraced.
As his strength returned he began to travel. To renew his
acquaintance with the Indians he went to Fort Snelling in 1867. He
was repeatedly in Paris consulting archives and doctors. He visited
Canada in 1873 and explored over and over again the region
between Quebec and Lake George.
The great historical series to which its author gave the title of
France and England in North America began to appear just at the
close of the Civil War. The volumes in the order of their publication
are: The Pioneers of France in the New World, 1865; The Jesuits in
North America, 1867; The Discovery of the Great West, 1869;55 The
Old Régime, 1874; Count Frontenac and New France under Louis
XIV, 1877; Montcalm and Wolfe, 1884; A Half-Century of Conflict,
1892.
The merits of this extraordinary series were recognized at once
as many and varied. It is a question to which of three types of reader
the books most appealed,—the scholar, who is bound to read
critically whether he will or no, the utilitarian in search of facts chiefly,
or the mere lover of literature. Each found what he was seeking in
these narratives, and each paid homage to the author in his own
way.
As is often true of historians far less notable than he, Parkman
was the recipient of academic honors, and was made a member of
numerous historical societies. The mere catalogue of these
distinctions fills a page of printed text. His membership of the
Massachusetts Historical Society and his degree of LL. D. from
Harvard College (1889) will serve as illustrations. Parkman was
influential in helping to found the Archæological Institute of America.
He was one of the founders of the St. Botolph Club in Boston, and its
president during the first six years of its existence.
The history of France and England in North America was
completed the year before he died. Had time and strength been
allowed him, he would have recast the material in the form of a
continuous narrative. There might have been a gain in the new
arrangement, as on the other hand there might have been a loss.
Parkman died at his home at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, on
November 8, 1893.

II
PARKMAN’S CHARACTER
Parkman had prodigious will power and unequalled pertinacity. No
barrier to the accomplishment of his object was allowed to stand in
the way. He was beset by the demons of ill health, and their number
was legion. Unable to rout them by impetuous onslaught, he tired
them out, thinning their ranks, one by one. He was infinitely patient,
full of devices for outwitting the enemy. Beaten again and again, he
stubbornly renewed the fight. Threatened with blindness, he set
himself to avoid it, and did. Threatened with insanity, he declined to
become insane.
Nothing could be more admirable than the spirit in which he
faced daily torment. He was that extraordinary being, a cheerful
stoic. Four times in his life it was a question whether he would live or
die. Parkman admitted that once, had he been seeking merely his
comfort, he would have elected to die. That must have been the time
when, in response to his physician’s encouraging remark that he had
a strong constitution, Parkman said: ‘I’m afraid I have.’ In ordinary
conditions of ill health he was bright, cheery, philosophical, but when
he suffered most he was silent. At no time was he capable of
complaining.
Parkman loved to face the hard facts of life and was apt to
admire others in the degree in which they showed a like spirit. He
had a sovereign contempt for everything not manly and robust. He
contradicted with amusing emphasis the statement in some
biographical notice that he was ‘feeble.’ By his philosophy the
militant attitude toward life was the true one. He believed in war as a
moral force; it made for character both in the man and in the nation.
‘The severest disappointment of his life was his inability to enter the
army during our civil war.’
He was wholly free from certain narrow traits which are too apt to
be engendered in a life devoted to books and authorship. Manly,
open-hearted, unspoiled, he neither craved honors nor despised
them. It has been remarked that while he was gratified by the
recognition accorded his work in high places, he was equally
pleased with a letter from ‘a live boy’ who wrote to tell him how much
he had enjoyed reading about Pontiac and La Salle. He himself kept
to the last a certain boyish frankness of mind and heart. The year
before he died he wrote to the secretary of the class of ’44: ‘Please
give my kind regrets and remembrances to the fellows.’
There have been not a few attractive personalities in the history
of American letters. Parkman was one of the most attractive among
them.

III
THE WRITER
The style is clear and luminous. Short sentences abound, giving the
effect of rapidity. The mind of the reader never halts because of an
obscure term or some intricacy of structure. Neither is the page
spotted with long words ending in tion, and which coming in groups,
as they do in Bancroft, are like grit in the teeth. Parkman did not
attain the exquisite grace and composure which characterize Irving’s
prose, but he came nearer to it than did Prescott. The historian of
Ferdinand and Isabella had a self-conscious style. Agreeable as it is,
it reveals a man always on guard as he writes. In his most eloquent
passages Prescott is formal, precise, even stiff.
Parkman’s style is wholly engaging. There is a captivating
manner about it, the result of his immense enthusiasm for his theme.
Infinitely laborious in the preparation, sceptical in use of authorities,
temperate in judgment, when, however, it comes to telling the story,
he allows his genius for narration a free rein, and the style, though
losing none of its dignity, is eager and almost impetuous. The
historian speaks as an eye-witness of all he describes.
This explains Parkman’s popularity in large degree. Fascinating
as the subject is, the manner adds a hundred fold. He who reads
Bancroft gets a deal of information, for which he pays a round price.
He who reads Parkman gets facts, eloquence, philosophy, besides
no end of adventure, and for all this he pays literally nothing.

IV
EARLY WORK
OREGON TRAIL, CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC, VASSALL
MORTON

The Oregon Trail ranks high among books which, though sometimes
written for quite another purpose, are read chiefly for entertainment.
Such was Two Years before the Mast, such was The Bible in Spain,
that skilful work of a most accomplished poseur.
In addition to its value as literature, The Oregon Trail is a
trustworthy account of a no longer existent state of society. It is a
document. The range of experience was narrow, and the adventures
few, but so far as it goes the record is perfect; and when read in
connection with his historical work, the book becomes a commentary
on Parkman’s method. Here is shown how he got that knowledge of
Indian life and character which distinguishes his work from that of
other historical writers who touch the same field. The knowledge was
utilized at once in his next work.
The Conspiracy of Pontiac is the sort of book people praise by
saying that it is as readable as a novel. The comparison is
unfortunate. So many novels are disciplinary rather than amusing.
One wishes it were possible to say of them that they are as readable
as history.
Nevertheless it is quite true that the virtues supposed to inhere
chiefly in a work of fiction are conspicuous in this the first of
Parkman’s historical studies. The Conspiracy of Pontiac is a story,
filled with incident and abounding in illustrations of courage, craft,
endurance, stubbornness, self-sacrifice, despair, triumph. The plain
truth shames invention. Pontiac lives in these pages describing his
towering ambition. So do the other actors,—Rogers, Gladwyn,
Campbell, Catharine the Ojibwa girl. The supernumeraries are
strikingly picturesque,—Canadian settlers, trappers, coureurs des
bois, priests, half-breeds, and Indians, the motley denizens of
frontier and wilderness. A forest drama played by actors like these is
bound to be absorbing were it only as a spectacle.
One fact becomes apparent on taking up this book. History as
Parkman writes it is both dramatic and graphical, filled with action
and movement, filled with color, form, and beauty. With such an eye
for effect it is impossible for him to be dull. Open the volume at
random and the wealth of the author’s observations seems to have
been showered on that page. But the next page is like it, and also
the next.
The vivacity of youth explains much in this narrative. Parkman
was but twenty-six when he wrote The Conspiracy of Pontiac. Being
young, he was not afraid to be eloquent, to revel in descriptions of
sunrise and sunset, tempests, the coming of spring, the brilliant hues
of autumn foliage, the soft haze of Indian summer. His chapters are
richly enamelled with these glowing pieces of rhetoric. He is no less
brilliant in his martial scenes; the accounts of the Battle of Bloody
Bridge and of Bouquet’s fight in the forest are extraordinarily well
done.
The historian is severe on writers who have idealized the Indian.
Here is one of Parkman’s own characterizations: ‘The stern,
unchanging features of his mind excite our admiration from their very
immutability; and we look with deep interest on the fate of this
irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the child who will not be weaned
from the breast of his rugged mother. And our interest increases
when we discern in the unhappy wanderer, mingled among his vices,
the germs of heroic virtues,—a hand bountiful to bestow, as it is
rapacious to seize, and, even in extremest famine, imparting its last
morsel to a fellow sufferer; a heart which, strong in friendship as in
hate, thinks it not too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade; a
soul true to its own idea of honor, and burning with an unquenchable
thirst for greatness and renown.’ Neither poet nor novelist really
needs to embroider such an account of the Red Man.
This successful historic monograph was followed by an
unsuccessful novel, written, it is thought, for recreation. Without
being an autobiography, Vassall Morton abounds in autobiographical
passages. Its failure was not of the kind that proves inability ever to
master the art of fiction. The loss to American letters however would
have been incalculable had Parkman’s genius for historical narrative
been sacrificed in any degree to novel writing. And this might have
happened had Vassall Morton been a success.

V
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH
AMERICA
The history of France in North America abounds in everything
appealing to the love of the heroic. Parkman writes in a spirit of frank
and contagious admiration. Himself of Puritan blood and appreciative
of the best in Puritan character, he makes the pale narratives of the
contentious little English republics seem colorless indeed when laid
beside his glowing pages. The great warriors, the brave and fanatical
priests, the adventurous rangers, and the iron-hearted explorers of
New France were born to be wondered at and extolled. Without
assuming that these men had a monopoly of virtue, Parkman
scatters praise with a free hand.
The germ of this massive and beautiful work is contained in the
introductory chapters of Pontiac. Here is outlined the history of
French exploration, religious propagandism, and military conquest or
defeat up to the fall of Quebec.
The first three narratives (The Pioneers of France, The Jesuits,
and La Salle) cover the period of inception. They abound in
illustrations of heroism, self-sacrifice, and missionary fervor. The last
three volumes (Count Frontenac, A Half-Century of Conflict, and
Montcalm and Wolfe) describe the struggle of rival powers for
supremacy. They are characterized mainly by illustrations of
commercial greed, ecclesiastical jealousy, personal and political
ambition. Midway in the series and related alike to what precedes
and what follows is the fascinating volume, The Old Régime in
Canada.
The title of the initial volume, The Pioneers of France in the New
World, exactly describes it. The ‘Pioneers’ are the Basque, the
Norman, and the Breton sailors who, from an almost unrecorded
past, crossed the sea yearly to fish on the banks of Newfoundland.
They are Jacques Cartier of St. Malo, who first explored the St.
Lawrence, Roberval, La Roche, and De Monts. Men of their time,
they were both devout and unscrupulous. Among them and their
followers were grim humorists. When, after the arrival of De Monts’s
company in Acadia, a priest and a Huguenot minister died at the
same time, the crew buried them in one grave ‘to see if they would
lie peaceably together.’
Chief among the great names of this period is that of Samuel
Champlain, the ‘life’ of New France, who united in himself ‘the
crusader, the romance-loving explorer, the curious, knowledge-
seeking traveller, the practical navigator.’ Such a man has a breadth
of vision and strength of purpose in comparison with which the sight
of common men is blindness and their strength infirmity.
The second narrative in the series, The Jesuits in North America,
is an amazing record of courage, fanaticism, indomitable will,
perseverance, and martyrdom. The book contains the gist of the
famous Jesuit Relations. A man may be forgiven for not wearying
himself with the tediousness of those good fathers who were often
as long-winded as they were brave. But he is inexcusable if he has
not learned to admire them through Parkman’s thrilling account of
their physical sufferings and spiritual triumphs. Those giants of
devotion, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, and Jogues, seem both
human and superhuman as they move across the stage of history.
In La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West we have a story
of zeal of another sort. La Salle is a pathetic figure. Yet to pity him
were to offer insult. He stood apart from his fellows, misunderstood
and maligned, but self-centred and self-sufficient. His
contemporaries thought him crack-brained; suffering had turned his
head. They mocked his schemes and denied the truth of the
discoveries to which he laid claim. His history is one of pure disaster.
But no one of Parkman’s heroes awakens greater sympathy than
this silent man who found in the pursuit of honor compensation
enough for incredible fatigues and sacrifices.
The Old Régime in Canada treats of the contest between the
feudal chiefs of Acadia, La Tour and D’Aunay, of the mission among
the Iroquois, of the career of that imperious churchman Laval, and
then, in a hundred and fifty brilliant pages, of Canadian civilization in
the Seventeenth Century. This section is a model of instructive and
stimulating writing, grateful alike to the student of manners and to the
amateur of literary delights.
The last volume shows the construction of the ‘political and
social machine.’ The next, Count Frontenac and New France, shows
the ‘machine in action.’ The period covered is from 1672 to 1698.
Frontenac’s collision with the order which controlled the spiritual
destinies of New France led to his recall in 1682. La Barre, who
succeeded Frontenac, was a failure. Denonville, the next governor,
could live amicably with the Jesuits, but religious fervor proved no
substitute for tact in dealing with the savages. There was need of a
man who could handle both Jesuits and Indians. At seventy years of
age Frontenac returned to prop the tottering fortunes of New France.
One learns to like the irascible old governor who was vastly jealous
of his dignity, but who, when the need was, could take a tomahawk
and dance a war-dance to the great admiration of the Indians and to
the political benefit of New France.
The story of the struggle for supremacy is continued in A Half-
56
Century of Conflict. That phase of the record relating to the border
forays is almost monotonous in its unvarying details of ambuscade,
murder, the torture-stake, and captivity. The French and their Indian
allies descended on the outlying settlements of New England with
fire, sword, and tomahawk. Deerfield was sacked, and the country
harried far and wide.
In the mean time French explorers were advancing west and
south. Some, in their eagerness to anticipate the English,
established posts in Louisiana. Others, with a courage peculiar to the
time rather than to any one race, pushed beyond the Missouri to
Colorado and New Mexico, to Dakota and Montana, led on by mixed
motives such as personal ambition, love of gain, patriotism.
A spectacular event of the period was the siege and capture of
Louisbourg by a force largely composed of New England farmers
and fishermen. The project was conceived in audacity and carried
out with astonishing dash and good humor. That was singular
military enterprise which in the mind of an eye-witness bore some
resemblance to a ‘Cambridge Commencement.’ ‘While the cannon
bellowed in the front,’ says Parkman, ‘frolic and confusion reigned at
the camp, where the men raced, wrestled, pitched quoits, and ... ran
after French cannon balls, which were carried to the batteries to be
returned to those who sent them.’
The volumes entitled Montcalm and Wolfe crown the work. With
stores of erudition, a finely tempered judgment, a practised pen, and
taste refined by thirty years’ search for the manliest and most
becoming forms of expression, Parkman gave himself to the writing
of this his masterpiece. The work is the longest as well as the best of
the seven parts. Every page, from the account of Céloron de
Bienville’s journey to the Ohio to the story of the fall of Quebec, is
crowded with fact, suggestion, eloquence. The texture of the
narrative is close knit. The early volumes are often disjointed. They
resemble groups of essays. Chapters are so completely a unit that
they might be read by themselves with little regard to what preceded
or what was to follow. Not so the Montcalm and Wolfe, which is a
perfectly homogeneous piece of work.
This series of narratives has extraordinary merits. Let us note a
few of them.
Among Parkman’s virtues as a historian are clarity of view, a
singularly unbiased attitude, an eye for the picturesque which never
fails to seize on the essentials of form, color, and grouping,
extraordinary power of condensation, a firm grasp of details, together
with the ability to subordinate all details to the main purpose. But
other historians have had these same virtues; we must find
something more distinctive.
History as Parkman conceived it cannot be based on books and
documents alone. The historian must identify himself with the men of
the past, live their life, think their thoughts, place himself so far as
possible at their point of view. Since he cannot talk with them, he
must at least talk with their descendants. But the nature of the
‘habitant’ cannot be studied in the latitude of Boston, it must be
studied on the St. Lawrence. A city covers the site of ancient
Hochelaga, nevertheless the historian must go there, and under the
same sky, with many features of the landscape unchanged,
reconstruct Hochelaga as it was when Jacques Cartier’s eyes rested
upon it in 1535. This indicates Parkman’s method. When he visited a
battle-field it was not as one who aimed at mere mathematical
correctness of description, but as an artist whose imagination took
fire at the sight of a historic spot, and who had there a vision of the
past such as would not come to him in his library.
 Would we see Parkman in a characteristic rôle we should not go
to his literary workshop, but for example to the little town of Utica,
Illinois. There one summer night, sitting on the porch of the hotel,
Parkman described to a group of farmers gathered about, the
location of La Salle’s fort and of the great Indian town. The
description was based on what he had learned from books ‘nearly
two hundred years old.’ His improvised audience gave hearty assent
to its accuracy. Parkman was there to obtain accuracy of another
sort. The next day he visited all the localities which formed the
background of the historic drama and reconstructed the life of the
time. This is but one instance among hundreds which might be
brought forward to show the pains he took. Herein lay the distinctive
feature of his method. He used imagination not to embroider the
facts of history, but to give to dead facts a new life. A faculty of the
mind which is supposed to vitiate history becomes in Parkman’s
hands a means for arriving at truth.
Parkman was a fortunate man. He was happy in his choice of a
subject. The theme was a great one, worthy the pen of so profound a
scholar and so gifted a literary artist. To this theme he gave his life,
working with singleness of purpose and under incredible difficulties.
No trace of this suffering can be detected in the temper of his
judgments, or in the even flow and bright radiance of his narrative.
He was not only happy in his mastery of his subject, he was most
happy in his mastery of himself. Parkman’s life is a reproach to the
man who, working amid normal conditions of health and fortune,
permits himself to complain that there are difficulties in his way.

FOOTNOTES:
52
The Oregon Trail was first published serially in ‘The
Knickerbocker Magazine.’
53
Sedgwick’s Parkman, p. 217.
54
His Book of the Roses was published in 1866.
55
Later renamed La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.
56
A Half-Century of Conflict was not published until after the
Montcalm and Wolfe. The historian became fearful lest some
accident should prevent his completing the part of his narrative
towards which all his study had tended.
 XV
Bayard Taylor

REFERENCES:

Marie Hansen-Taylor and H. E. Scudder: Life and

Letters of Bayard Taylor, 1884.
A. H. Smyth: Bayard Taylor, ‘American Men of
Letters’ [1896].

I
HIS LIFE

Bayard Taylor in 1841, when he was sixteen, contributed to the

Philadelphia ‘Saturday Evening Post’ the verses entitled ‘Soliloquy of a
Young Poet.’ In 1878, the year of his death, he was still planning new
literary enterprises, and in so far as declining health permitted, carrying
them out. If unwearied devotion through nearly forty years to the literary
life, great fecundity in production, much taste, no little scholarship, and
unquestioned sincerity in the exercise of his art entitle one to be called
by the honorable name of man of letters, who is more deserving than
the author of The Masque of the Gods? To be sure, only a few of his
many books are read. But Taylor is in no worse case than many men
who tower giant-fashion above him. They likewise have written forty
volumes and are known and measured by two or three.
 Taylor was partly of German, partly of English Quaker stock, and
could boast an ancestor (Robert Taylor) who had come to America with
William Penn. The fourth of the ten children of Joseph and Rebecca
(Way) Taylor, he was born at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on
January 11, 1825. His education was got at the neighboring academies
of Westchester and Unionville. He was a rhymester at the age of
seven, and had become an industrious writer by the time he was
twelve.
Having no inclination towards school-teaching and still less towards
his father’s vocation, farming, Taylor was apprenticed to a printer. He
was presently seized with a passion for travel, and in 1844, with one
hundred and forty dollars in his pocket, payment in advance for certain
letters he was to write for Philadelphia journals, he set out on a
pedestrian tour of Europe. He had a few remittances from home.
Greeley promised to print some of his letters provided they were ‘not
descriptive’ and that before writing them the young traveller made sure
that he had been in Europe ‘long enough to know something.’
Seventeen of Taylor’s letters appeared in the ‘Tribune.’
By rigid economy Taylor managed to get on. But one must have
youth to endure the hardships of such a journey. Especially must one
have youth if he proposes, as Taylor did, to walk from Marseilles to
Paris in the cold winter rains. The history of these two years of
wandering is recounted in Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack
and Staff (1846).
Taylor returned to America and took up journalism. Failing in an
attempt to make of the ‘Phœnixville Pioneer’ a paper according to his
ideal, he went to New York (December, 1847). After various
experiences he secured a place on the ‘Tribune,’ was rapidly
advanced, and became in time a stockholder. He was sent to California
to report on the gold discoveries. This journey furnished him with the
matter for his second book of travel, El Dorado, or Adventures in the
Path of Empire (1850).
His whole subsequent career is but a variation on the themes of
1846 and 1850. He went everywhere,—to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia
Minor (1851–52); to Spain and India, then on to China, where he joined
Perry’s expedition to Japan (1853). He was in Germany, Norway, and
Lapland in 1856, in Greece in 1857–58, in Russia in 1862–63 (where
for a while he held the post of secretary of legation), in Switzerland, the
Pyrenees, and Corsica in 1868, and in Egypt and Iceland in the same
year (1874).
All his adventures were transmuted into books: A Journey to
Central Africa, 1854; The Lands of the Saracen, 1854; A Visit to India,
China, and Japan in the Year 1853, 1855; Northern Travel, 1857;
Travels in Greece and Russia, 1859; At Home and Abroad, 1859; At
Home and Abroad, ‘second series,’ 1862; Colorado, 1867; By-Ways of
Europe, 1869; Egypt and Iceland, 1874.
A part of the great success of these books was due to causes far
from literature. Doubtless, if written to-day, the volumes would be read,
but it were idle to suppose that they could have the vogue they enjoyed
in the Fifties. The American public of a half-century ago was not
nomadic. It had few ways of gratifying its thirst for knowledge of foreign
lands. Photographs were so expensive that one seldom ran the risk of
being obliged to sit down with a friend ‘just back from Europe’ to admire
such novelties as the Leaning Tower and the Bridge of Sighs. The
oxyhydrogen stereopticon was imperfect, the panorama clumsy and ill-
painted. Therefore the writings of a man who had the knack of telling
agreeably what he had seen were most welcome. The home-keeping
public enjoyed also hearing the traveller talk. When Taylor lectured (for
he became one of the most popular lecturers of the day) they crowded
the hall and thought two hours of him not long enough.
Timeliness, however, does not explain all the success of Views
Afoot and its companion volumes. Taylor was an excellent writer even
when he wrote most hastily. If his word-pictures were often highly
colored, they possessed, among other virtues, the great virtue of
having been painted on the spot. Through their aid one could really see
what Taylor had himself seen.
But Taylor was a poet before he was a traveller. In 1844 he
published (under the patronage of R. W. Griswold, his first literary
adviser) a little volume entitled Ximena, or, The Battle of the Sierra
Morena, and Other Poems. It was followed by Rhymes of Travel (1848)
and The American Legend, the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard
(1850). To these must be added A Book of Romances, Lyrics, and
Songs, 1851; Poems and Ballads, 1854; Poems of the Orient, 1854;
Poems of Home and Travel, 1855; The Poet’s Journal, 1862; The
Picture of St. John, 1866; The Masque of the Gods, 1872; Lars, 1873;
The Prophet, 1874; Home Pastorals, Ballads, and Lyrics, 1875; The
National Ode (read by the author at the opening of the ‘Centennial’),
1876; and Prince Deukalion, 1878. The great translation of Goethe’s
Faust, with the commentary, appeared in 1870–71.
Not content with his commercial success as a writer of travels, and
his artistic triumphs in poetry, Taylor tried fiction. The first of his four
novels, Hannah Thurston (1863), is in part a satire and shows in their
most disagreeable light the people who abhor meat and swear by
vegetables, the people who profess to hold communication with spirits,
the people who think other people ought not to buy and sell human
flesh, and so forth.
John Godfrey’s Fortunes (1864) embodies not a few of Taylor’s
journalistic experiences in New York. Here are glimpses of literary
society such as the soirées at the home of Estelle Ann Lewis, the
Mademoiselle de Scudéry of that time and place. The Story of Kennett
(1866) is a Pennsylvanian study, a true and lively picture of a phase of
civilization which the author perfectly understood. Joseph and his
Friend (1870) closed the series of efforts by which Taylor tried to earn
money enough to free him from the thraldom of the lecture platform.
His other publications were Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of
Home (1872), The Echo Club (1876), the posthumous Studies in
German Literature (1879), and Essays and Studies (1880).
Of Taylor’s private life a few important facts remain to be recorded.
The pathetic story of Mary Agnew, the beautiful girl whom he had loved
since they were school-children together, and whom he married on her
death-bed, is a romance which fortunately has been well told by both of
Taylor’s biographers. In 1857 (seven years after Mary Agnew’s death)
Taylor married Marie Hansen, daughter of Professor Hansen of Gotha,
the astronomer. How devoted and helpful she was to him during his
arduous life, and how loyal to his memory, are facts too well known to
require emphasis.
The home at Kennett known as ‘Cedarcroft’ was built in 1859–60.
Taylor lavished on it both money and affection; and while for a few
years it gave him a deal of happiness, it proved in the end a burden he
could ill afford to carry.
 Robust and vigorous though he seemed in middle life, Taylor by
unremitting activity had sapped his powers. He gave no evidence of
declining literary ambition, but at fifty he was worn out by overwork. A
notable recognition of his worth came to him in 1878, when President
Hayes appointed him Minister to Germany. He was not to enjoy the
honor for long. In May, 1878, he took up the duties of his office, and on
the fifteenth of the following December he died while sitting in his
armchair in his library.

II
HIS CHARACTER
Ambition was a ruling motive in Taylor’s life. Yet there has seldom
been an ambition which, albeit as consuming as fire, was at the same
time so free from selfish and ignoble elements.
Taylor aspired to fame through cultivation of the art of poesy. This
was the real object of his life. To gain this object he toiled unceasingly
and made innumerable sacrifices. Baffled in the attempt to reach his
ideal, he was a little comforted when he could persuade himself that he
had not fallen completely short of it. And there was exceeding great
reward in the knowledge that if wide recognition as a poet was denied
him, his friends, Whittier, Longfellow, Stoddard, Boker, and Aldrich,
knew for what he was striving and commended him in no uncertain
tones.
Whittier described Taylor as one who loved ‘old friends, old ways,
and kept his boyhood’s dreams in sight.’ Life was intensely interesting
to Taylor. Although the zest of travel disappeared and his large
experience of the ways of men had had its customary disillusioning
effect, he never really lost his youthful enthusiasm. And it is touching to
find in his private correspondence the repeated proofs of how
inexhaustible was his fund of hope and of courage, and how quick he
was to recover after real or fancied defeat.
Notwithstanding his successes, and he had his share of the good
things of life,—contemporary reputation, money of his own earning, and