Using the Natives against the Natives: Indigenes as ‘Counterinsurgents’ in the British Atlantic, 1500–1800
Taylor and Francis FDEF_A_439465.sgm 10.1080/1 702430903392877 Defence Studies 470-2436 (pr nt)/1743-9698 (online) Original Article 2 1 & F ancis -2 0 0 00March-June 2010 Way eLee wle @unc.e u A key component of most modern counterinsurgency efforts (hereafter, COIN) is not merely to pacify or appease a local population, but to actively use the locals as part of the solution. 1 Large portions of the US military’s new COIN manual discuss the issues involved with developing what it calls ‘Host Nation’ forces. 2 In any circumstance this is a complex problem, but it is even more complex when the ‘host nation’ is an indigenous people (as opposed to, e.g., colonists) whose social structure and military system is markedly different from the occupier. This paper examines how English or British administrators dealt with this problem in the early modern era in the two contexts of 16th-century Gaelic Ireland and Native North America – not asking just about the use of indigenous peoples as allies, but more specifically as allies in a counterinsurgent role – as like against like. English colonists and later British administrators pushing outwards into the Atlantic basin between 1500 and 1800 never had sufficient people or money relative to the scope of their ambitions, and the ‘Military Revolution’ notwithstanding, European military systems provided only limited solutions. 3 Improvements in European military technology and technique brought tactical superiority in most open-field confrontations, with famous exceptions like Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone’s early victories in Ireland in the 1590s, the Jacobite Highlanders’ successes in 1745–46, and Major-General Edward Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela River (Pennsylvania) in 1755. Battlefield superiority, however, did not convey rapid strategic conquest capability over land in either Ireland or North America. In navigable waters western European superiority was more marked at both tactical and strategic levels. In the long run improved gunpowder weapons and drilled infantry proved adaptable to most
"An headlesse Ladie" and "a horses loade of heades": Writing the Beheading
The savagery of the native Irish and, in particular, their predilection for severing heads, is repeatedly asserted, not only in the texts of conquest, but in representations of the "Wild Irish" on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. This essay tests this literary commonplace against the historical record of the early modern conquest of Ireland. Far from being merely the aberrant practice of the barbarous Gaels, beheading — and a form of judicial headhunting — became a cornerstone of the conquerors' policy of martial law. As atrocity was redefined as justice, so, in the hands of writers such as Spenser, Churchyard, and Derricke, was it aestheticized. But even as such writers wove inventive beheadings into their texts, Irish poets were elegizing the severed heads of patrons killed by the English. The poetry of beheading became a site of cultural confrontation and of unexpected assertions of humanity.
The Impact of EU Unfair Contract Terms Law on U.S. Business-to-Consumer Internet Merchants
When the Court of Appeals for Versailles issued its decision in AOL France v. UFC Que Choisir2 in September 2005, it sent the message to U.S. Internet businesses that even contractual boilerplate localized for European markets may be invalid in European consumer transactions. In that case, a French consumer advocacy group challenged the terms AOL offered its French customers after AOL had made extensive revisions to its standard form contracts to respond to the concerns regarding those terms expressed in an advisory opinion by a French consumer protection agency. In 2004, a trial court invalidated nearly every term in the revised agreement; the appeals court affirmed on all counts. Subsequently, in July 2006 following concerns raised by the Office of Fair Trading (“OFT”), a United Kingdom government agency charged with “making sure markets work well for consumers,”3 Dell Corporation Limited changed its online terms and conditions to make them fairer to consumers.4 European consumer contract law had an impact in both cases. At issue for AOL France and Dell Corporation Limited was the application of France’s and the UK’s consumer contract law which is based on the Unfair Contract Terms Directive of 19945 and calls into question the validity of many of the terms that U.S. courts routinely enforce in transactions involving American consumers and merchants.