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‘The book completes its mission to show that climate change is a driver of
conflict, an obstacle to conflict resolution, and a creator of strategic shocks,
tensions, opportunities, and risks… A must read for anyone interested in
defence, security, or climate change.’
General Tom Middendorp, International Military Council on Climate &
Security (former Chief of Defence of The Netherlands)

‘Climate change is the single most significant long-term defence issue. Its
consequences will shape threats, challenge governments (as competition for
food, water increases) undermine military capabilities, and drive economic
instability. The book offers insights that are at once timely, important, and
alarming.’
Tobias Ellwood MP, Chair of the UK House of
Commons Defence Committee

‘The climate crisis is the top geopolitical issue of our time. From the High
North to equatorial Africa, global heating will be the major driver of the
conflicts and threats we will face in the coming decades. This vital and timely
book challenges us to marshal a much better response, urgently.’
Tom Fletcher, University of Oxford (former UK
Foreign Policy Adviser to 3 UK Prime Ministers)

‘There are uncomfortable gaps between knowledge, practice, and reality

when it comes to how climate change is shaping human and hard security.
This book is an important contribution to closing that gap, showing how to
stop worrying about securitizing climate and start climatizing security.’
Hon. Sharon E. Burke, Ecospherics (Former US Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Operational Energy)

‘Climate Change and Insecurity is a clarion call for the military and security
sectors. This exceptional collection shows how climate change and its impacts
are reshaping the world and how nations must prepare for what is to come.’
Captain Dr Andrea Cameron, US Naval War College
CLIMATE CHANGE, CONFLICT,
AND (IN)SECURITY

This book offers a multidisciplinary exploration of how climate change is

impacting conflicts, contention, and competition in the world.
The volume examines how climate change is creating and exacerbating
insecurities for millions of people globally and how states, intergovernmental
bodies, and others are attempting to meet challenges today and in the near and
medium term. It shows that climate change insecurity is relevant to a battery of
security areas, including warfighting, stabilisation, human security, influence,
resilience, and capacity building. The volume provides insights into how climate
change has and will impact security at different scales and in different localities,
including national and ethnic tensions, food and water security, resource
competition, mass displacement, and even the recruitment profiles and
operations of violent and extremist organisations. With contributions from
pioneering researchers and practitioners, the book discusses shifting operational
requirements and responsibilities and the need for clarity around the size and
shape of capacity gaps.
In addition to practitioners and policy-makers working in these areas, the book
will be of significant interest to researchers and students of defence studies, peace
and conflict studies, climate change and environmental security, and international
relations.

Timothy Clack is the Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK.
He is co-editor of various titles including Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict
(2022) and The World Information War (2021).

Ziya Meral is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Louise Selisny is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, UK.

Routledge Advances in Defence Studies
Series editors: Timothy Clack, University of Oxford, UK, and Oliver Lewis,
University of Southern California, USA
Advisory Board: Tarak Barkawi London School of Economics, UK Richard
Barrons Global Strategy Forum, UK Kari Bingen-Tytler Center for Strategic
and International Studies, USA Ori Brafman University of California, Berkeley,
USA Tom Copinger-Symes British Army, UK Karen Gibsen Purdue University,
USA David Gioe West Point, USA Robert Johnson Oxford University, UK
Mara Karlin John Hopkins University, USA Tony King Warwick University,
UK Benedict Kite, British Army, UK Andrew Sharpe Centre for Historical and
Conflict Research, UK Suzanne Raine Cambridge University, UK

Routledge Advances in Defence Studies is a multi-disciplinary series examining

innovations, disruptions, counter-culture histories, and unconventional approaches
to understanding contemporary forms, challenges, logics, frameworks, and tech­
nologies of national defence. This is the first series explicitly dedicated to examining
the impact of radical change on national security and the construction of theo­
retical and imagined disruptions to existing structures, practices, and behaviours in
the defence community of practice. The purpose of this series is to establish a first-
class intellectual home for conceptually challenging and empirically authoritative
studies that offer insight, clarity, and sustained focus.
Cultural Heritage in Modern Conflict
Past, Propaganda, Parade
Edited by Timothy Clack and Mark Dunkley
How Wars End
Theory and Practice
Edited by Richard Iron and Damien Kingsbury
Understanding UK Defence Exports
The International Trade in Defence Capabilities
John Louth
Climate Change, Conflict, and (In)Security
Hot War
Edited by Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Advances-in-Defence-Studies/book-series/RAIDS
CLIMATE CHANGE,
CONFLICT, AND
(IN)SECURITY
Hot War

Edited by Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and

Louise Selisny
Cover image: © British Army’s Long Range Reconnaissance Group (LRRG) in
central Mali in 2021 (credit: UK PJHQ; Crown copyright)
First published 2024
by Routledge
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605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and
Louise Selisny; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Clack, Timothy, editor. | Meral, Ziya, editor. | Selinsy, Louise, editor.
Title: Climate change, conflict, and (in)security : hot war / edited by Timothy
Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge
advances in defence studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023030301 (print) | LCCN 2023030302 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032455808 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003377641 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003377641 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changes. | Security, International. | National
security‐‐Climatic factors.
Classification: LCC QC903 .C55234 2024 (print) | LCC QC903 (ebook) | DDC
304.2/8‐‐dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023030301
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023030302
ISBN: 978-1-032-45580-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-45579-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-37764-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003377641
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
 Pyrrhic Wisdom

Do you know:
How the mountains melted?
When the seas rose and claimed the shores?
Why the tempest-tossed found no harbour, found no open doors?
How the poisoned air filled the lungs of the little ones?
What made the bees all fly away?
When the tomorrows were lost to the mistakes of yesterday?
Where nothing is and nothing grows?
How ascent of man was chastened by the sun?
I know; it is a pyrrhic wisdom.

– Louise Selisny
CONTENTS

List of Contributors xii

Foreword xix
Preface xxi

Introduction: Climate change and (in)security 1

Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny

SECTION I
Climate security contexts 33

1 Cascading and systemic risks from environmental

change 35
Tim Benton, Neil Morisetti, and Oli Brown

2 Geopolitics and security in the changing Arctic 55

Kimberly Marten

3 Geopolitics and security in the changing Antarctic 77

Samuel Jardine and Timothy Clack

4 Security politics of climate change in the Levant 100

Ana Maria Kumarasamy and Simon Mabon
x Contents

5 Decentring climate security: The research and policy

implications of sudden-onset and slow-onset climate
change 120
Tom Deligiannis

6 A new framework for understanding risk: A Closer

Look at the Climate-Violence-Migration Connection in
northern Central America 132
Lauren Risi and Cynthia Brady

7 Climate change, insecurity, and economic transformation 153

Matthew Paterson

SECTION II
Defence and security implications 169

8 Towards a greener alliance: NATO’s energy efficiency

and mitigation efforts 171
Katarina Kertysova

9 The evolving climate change threat: UK defence

preparations 189
Richard Nugee and Timothy Clack

10 Maritime response to climate change 213

Sherri Goodman, Pauline Baudu, and
Rachel Fleishman

11 Climate disruption to hidden networks: Understanding

human–animal–ecological relationships for conflict and
security 241
Alex Tasker

12 Climate intelligence in theory and practice 254

Louise Selisny, Timothy Clack, Tristan Burwell, and
Richard Nugee

13 Operational risks and opportunities from climate change

on Western militaries’ conservation activities 281
Richard Milburn
 Contents xi

SECTION III
Framings and reflections 303

14 Ecological security: The new military operational

priority for humanitarian and disaster response 305
Thammy Evans and Gary Lewis

15 The hyperthreat and politico-military response:

Outcomes from a military appreciation of entangled
security 333
Elizabeth Boulton

16 A reflection on 30 years of climate and conflict 356

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Index 365
CONTRIBUTORS

Pauline Baudu is a Research Assistant with the Polar Institute and

Environmental Change and Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and a Research Assistant with the Center for
Climate and Security and works with the French National Asylum Court. With
extensive experience in human rights and migrations, her current research
focuses on environmental migrations and on the security implications of climate
change in the Arctic. She holds an MA in Defense, Security and Crisis
Management from the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs
and an MA in Crisis Analysis and Humanitarian Action from Université Savoie-
Mont-Blanc. She holds a BA in Applied Linguistics from Université de Tours.

Tim Benton is Director of the Environment and Society Programme and a

Research Director of Emerging Risks at Chatham House. He joined
Chatham House in 2016 as a distinguished visiting fellow, at which time he
was also dean of strategic research initiatives at the University of Leeds.
From 2011 to 2016, he was the ‘champion’ of the UK’s Global Food Security
Programme, which was a multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies.
He has worked with the UK government, the EU, and G20. He has been a
global agenda steward of the World Economic Forum and is an author of the
IPCC’s ‘Special Report on Food, Land and Climate’ (2019) and the UK’s
‘Climate Change Risk Assessment’ (2017, 2022).

Elizabeth Boulton is an Eco-Military Theorist with Destination Safe Earth

and a Research Affiliate with the Climate Change and (In)Security Project.
She investigates what happens if climate and ecological crisis are prioritised
 Contributors xiii

as the central threat. Her background is in emergency logistics, as an officer in

the Australian Army and humanitarian NGO sector. After completing a
Master’s in climate policy at the University of Melbourne in 2007, she moved
into climate policy and risk communication work, including at the Australian
National Climate Centre, before completing a PhD at the Australian
National University in 2020.

Cynthia Brady is a Global Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Environmental

Change and Security Program. Previously, she served as a Senior Peacebuilding
and Conflict Advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s
Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, where she
spearheaded the Agency’s technical work on environment, conflict and fragility
and led the field support division of the Office of Conflict Management and
Mitigation. Her applied research has focused on the nexus of international
development with conflict, fragility and peacebuilding.

Oli Brown is an Associate Fellow in the Energy, Environment and Resources

Programme at Chatham House. Between 2014 and 2018, he was based in
Kenya where he coordinated the UN Environment’s work to minimise the risks
and impacts of disasters, industrial accidents, and armed conflicts. Between
2010 and 2012, he managed a UN Environment programme in Sierra Leone,
and before that, he was a Senior Researcher and Programme Manager with the
International Institute for Sustainable Development. He has specialist
knowledge in environmental management, peacebuilding and conflict
analysis, trade policy, migration policy, climate change, and extractives.

Tristan Burwell was commissioned into the British Army’s 9th/12th Royal
Lancers and deployed to Afghanistan as an Afghan Army Mentor in 2011
and Brigade Reconnaissance Force Liaison Officer in 2013. Later, he was an
Exchange Officer in the Italian Army’s Acqui Division HQ. He is currently a
Research Associate of the Climate Change and (In)Security Project. He has
an MA in Global Diplomacy from SOAS and a Master’s in International
Strategic Military Studies from the University of Turin. Awarded the British
Army’s Farmington Fellowship, he researched the role of non-state actors in
processes of security sector reform at the University of Oxford.

Timothy Clack is the Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow at the School of Anthropology

and Museum Ethnography (SAME), University of Oxford, UK. He is also an
Associate Fellow of the British Army’s Centre for Historical Analysis and
Conflict Research (CHACR). His anthropological work has focused
primarily on issues of conflict, identity, and heritage in the Horn of Africa,
Central Asia, and the South Atlantic. Keen to apply theory to practice, he
xiv Contributors

spent a decade in UK government service, including with the Cabinet Office

and Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is the Director of the Climate
Change and (In)Security Project, a collaboration between Oxford and
CHACR. He is also general editor of the Routledge Advances in Defence
Studies (RAiDS) book series and co-editor, with Mark Dunkley, of Cultural
Heritage and Armed Conflict (2022), and, with Robert Johnson, of The World
Information War (2021), Before Military Intervention (2018), and At the End
of Military Intervention (2015).

Tom Deligiannis is an Instructor in Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier

University. He also teaches in the Peace Studies Program at McMaster
University, Hamilton. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in
2020. He holds an MA in International Relations History (Toronto) and BA
in History and Political Studies (Guelph). Between 2008 and 2017, he was a
part-time faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Western
University. Between 2005 and 2007, he was a resident Assistant Professor at
the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica.

Thammy Evans is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the GeoTech Center of the

Atlantic Council and a member of its Global China Hub. She is also a member
of the Council for Security Risks Alliance for Ecological Security and a Senior
Research Associate of the Climate Change and (In)Security Project. Having
worked for NATO, the UN, UK MOD, private sector, and various NGOs, her
career spans systems sustainability, security sector reform, gender and security,
and public information and political advising. She has worked around the
world and published with Carnegie Europe, Chatham House Journal, British
Army Review, Modern Asian Studies, and Small Wars Journal.

Rachel Fleishman is a Senior Fellow for Asia-Pacific at the Center for Climate
and Security where she focuses on the Asia-Pacific region. She also delivers
Asia-Pacific liaison at the International Military Council on Climate and
Security (IMCCS). She started her career in national security policy, working
in nuclear arms control at SAIC, the Pentagon, and NATO. She currently
advises businesses and non-profit institutions on climate change and circular
economy issues at Insight Sustainability. She holds a BA from Tufts
University, an MA from the University of Maryland, and an MBA from
Northwestern University.

Sherri Goodman is the Secretary General of the International Military

Council on Climate and Security. She is also the Chair of the Board at the
Council on Strategic Risks, a Senior Strategist and Advisory Board member
at the Center for Climate and Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow
 Contributors xv

Wilson International Center’s Polar Institute and Environmental Change and

Security Program. Previously, she served as the US’ first Deputy
Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security) from 1993 to 2001. As
Senior Vice President and General Counsel of CNA (Center for Naval
Analyses), she founded the CNA Military Advisory Board where she
published a number of landmark reports, including National Security and
the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is a multi-award-winning academic author and teacher,

policy consultant, and speaker. As well as being the Director of the Cascade
Institute, he holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of the Environment
at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His current work focuses on threats to
global security in the 21st century, including economic instability, resource
scarcity, and climate change. Since receiving his PhD in Defence and Conflict
Theory from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1989, he has
produced over three decades of ground-breaking research and analysis that has
illuminated the field of Environmental Security and informed the judgements of
senior decision makers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Adding to his interdisciplinary work, he has most recently published
Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril in 2020.

Samuel Jardine is a geopolitics specialist and historian. He specialises in the

geopolitics, policy, and security of the Polar regions and space, with a specific
interest in climate conflict, mineral politics, and multipolar competition. He
holds an MA in Modern History from King’s College London and a BA
(Hons) in History from the Open University. He is the current Head of
Research at London Politica, a global political risk consultancy. He is also a
Research Associate of the Climate Change and (In)Security Project, a
military sciences ‘Rising Star’ at the Royal United Services Institute
(RUSI) and a former 2021 Fellow of the Arctic Geopolitics Program,
working on the militarisation and national security working group, jointly
hosted by the Arctic Institute, Ecologic Institute Berlin, and the Migrations in
Harmony Research Coordination Network.

Katarina Kertysova is a Policy Fellow at the European Leadership Network

(ELN) in London, a Global Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Polar and
Kennan Institutes, and a Research Associate with the Climate Change and
(In)Security Project (CCIP). She writes on Arctic geopolitics, NATO’s
climate security agenda, military innovation and decarbonisation, and the
climate-nuclear nexus. She contributed to the NATO 2030 Reflection Process
and authored the climate chapter of the NATO 2030 Young Leaders Report.
She holds degrees from the University of St Andrews and Sciences Po Paris.
xvi Contributors

Ana Maria Kumarasamy is a PhD Student in politics at Lancaster University. Her

thesis focuses on environmental inequalities, identity politics, and governance in
Beirut. She is also a PhD fellow at the Sectarianism, Proxies, and De-
sectarianism (SEPAD) project and an associate fellow at the Middle East and
North Africa Programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

Gary Lewis is a Former UN Resident Coordinator in Iran (2013–2018). During

a nearly 35-year career in the UN, he has served in director-level positions in
UNODC (drugs/crime), UNEP (environment), and UNDP (development). A
native of Barbados, his work has taken him to duty stations in Switzerland,
Kenya, Iran, Thailand, India, South Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Austria,
and Barbados. He is a published author on Barbadian history and has written
and contributed to academic articles related to drug control and security.
Currently, he mainly presents on ecological security issues. His main academic
interests are paleo-anthropology and evolutionary psychology.

Simon Mabon is Professor of International Relations in the Department of

Politics, Philosophy and Religion at the University of Lancaster. His research
sits at the intersection of Middle East Studies, international relations, and
political theory. He is the Director of the Richardson Institute, the UK’s oldest
peace and conflict research centre, and the Sectarianism, Proxies & De-
sectarianism (SEPAD) Project. His books include Houses Built on Sand:
Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East (Manchester
University Press), Sectarianism in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge),
and Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East (IB Taurus).

Kimberly Marten is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College,

Columbia University, specialising in international relations, international
security, Russia, and environmental politics. She is a faculty member of
Columbia’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European
Studies and Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. She is a founding
member of PONARS-Eurasia and a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her books
include Warlords: String-Arm Brokers in Weak States (2012); Enforcing the
Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (2004); Weapons, Culture, and Self-
Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (1997); and Engaging the
Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (1993).

Ziya Meral is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services

Institute, a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Navy’s Strategic Studies Centre,
and a Senior Associate Fellow of the European Leadership Network. He is
also a Senior Research Associate and Co-Founder, with Timothy Clack, of
 Contributors xvii

the Climate Change and (In)Security Project and a member of the Advisory
Board of the British Institute in Ankara. He was previously the Director for
Research and Programmes at the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict
(CHACR), the British Army’s civilian and military think tank providing
independent analysis and research on defence and security based at the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst.

Richard Milburn is Director of Research of the Marjan Study Group at

King’s College London (KCL). His research studies armed conflict and the
environment. He completed his PhD within the Department of War Studies
at KCL, exploring the links between wildlife conservation, security,
peacebuilding, and development, conducting fieldwork in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo. He acts as the UK representative of the
Pole Pole Foundation, an award-winning Congolese conservation charity
based in Bukavu. He is also co-founder of a social enterprise, Tunza Games,
which uses gamification to engage people in conservation and raise funds to
support global conservation projects.

Neil Morisetti is the Vice Dean (Public Policy) for the Faculty of Engineering
Sciences and a Professor of Climate and Resource Security in the Department
of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy at University College
London. Formerly, Commander UK Maritime Forces and Commandant of
the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He was UK Government
Climate and Energy Security Envoy and the Foreign Secretary’s Special
Representative for Climate Change (2009–2013). He is an Associate Fellow of
Chatham House, a Member of the Military Advisory Board for the US Think
Tank CNA (Washington DC), and an International Fellow of the Australian
Security Leaders Climate Group.

Lieutenant-General (Retired) Richard Nugee is currently the Climate Change

and Sustainability Non-Executive Director at the UK Ministry of Defence.
He was previously the Climate Change Policy and Sustainability Lead for the
Ministry of Defence until his recent retirement. His career saw service as
Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Personnel and Training) and Defence
Services Secretary; Chief of Staff to the ISAF Joint Command in Kabul;
Army Director General Personnel; Director of Manning (Army); and the
Chief of Defence People at the UK MOD. In addition to being appointed
Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1998, Commander of the Order of
the British Empire (CBE) in 2012, Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
(CVO) in 2016, and Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 2020, he
was awarded the US Legion of Merit for his service in Afghanistan in 2014.
xviii Contributors

Matthew Paterson is Professor of International Politics at the University of

Manchester and the Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute. His
research focuses on the political economy, global governance, and cultural
politics of climate change. His latest book is In Search of Climate Politics
(Cambridge University Press) and previous publications include Climate
Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy
(with Peter Newell, Cambridge University Press) and Transnational Climate
Change Governance (with Harriet Bulkeley and others, Cambridge University
Press). He was a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.

Lauren Risi is the Director of the Environmental Change and Security

Program at the Wilson Center. She works with policy makers,
practitioners, donors, and researchers to tackle security challenges related
to environmental change and natural resource management. She is also the
managing editor of New Security Beat. She has authored and edited a number
of reports, including ‘On the Horizon 2021: Environmental Change and
Security’; ‘21st Century Diplomacy: Foreign Policy is Climate Policy’; and
‘Climate, Migration, and Conflict in a Changing World’.

Louise Selisny is a Senior Research Associate of the Climate Change and

(In)Security Project and an Expert Participant of the International Military
Council on Climate Security (IMCCS). She is also a Research Associate at
the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of
Oxford. A qualified barrister, with experience across the UK MOD, the
United Nations, and Amnesty International, she currently supports policy
development within a number of defence and security forums, including the
All-Party Parliamentary Group for Climate and Security where she is the
Secretariat Coordinator. She has a wide range of local governance and
stakeholder relations experience in Eastern Africa and Central Asia. Whilst
her practical expertise relates mainly to human security and conflict, she
maintains a distinct focus on promoting gender equity.

Alex Tasker is an ESRC Policy Fellow in International Relations and

National Security and a Lecturer in Human Ecology at University College
London. He is also a Research Associate at King’s College Conflict and
Health Research Group (CHRG). He is a dual-trained veterinary surgeon
and development anthropologist whose research focuses on One Health
explorations of human–animal–environmental relationships in complex
settings, including forced migration, climate uncertainty, and conflict.
FOREWORD

Climate change is an immediate global security threat and one that national
governments must take steps to address. Around the world, the indications
are clear that climate change is leading to food and water insecurity and risks
escalating the number, length, and complexity of armed conflicts, accelerating
and multiplying disasters, triggering and scaling migration, exacerbating
inequalities and grievances, and weakening international law and governance.
Adaptations and mitigations in these areas are, in turn, crucial for the
development of climate resilience.
Our collective ability to respond to climate change threats is underpinned
and potentially frustrated by a complex web of political, economic, and social
realities at home and abroad. The World Bank has estimated that in response
the world will need to make significant investment in infrastructure – around
US$90tn by 2030. Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) has reported that an annual investment of US$2.4tn is needed
globally in the energy system alone through to 2035 to keep temperature rise
below 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels. Also relevant is resistance from
countries dependent on hydrocarbon exports, a public discourse often
characterised by climate misinformation and disinformation, inter-state
competition over the minerals required to scale the transition to renewable
energy technologies, and the political difficulties of meeting climate ambitions
without compromising diplomatic priorities, trade, and supply chains.
The geopolitics of the near-term future will be further complicated by
tensions around cross-border water access and management, for example,
linked to the Euphrates, Indus, Mekong, Nile, Omo, and Tigris rivers. The
escalating acquisition of the world’s agricultural lands and food production
infrastructure by certain overseas nations will secure access for some at the
xx Foreword

expense of others. There will also likely be tensions between countries feeling
the worst and immediate effects of climate change and those most responsible
in historical and present terms for the emissions driving it. This will be
associated with tensions between countries that do take action to reduce
carbon emissions and those that do not.
Mass migration caused by climate change also has the potential to generate
strategic shocks, and, as was seen in 2021 when Belarus propelled migrants
into Poland and Lithuania in an attempt to get EU sanctions lifted, it may
become increasingly weaponized. There is also a risk that growing climate
activism, which to this point has remained largely peaceful, could become
violent.
No nation is immune to the security effects of climate change. As Chair of
the UK’s parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee and All-Party
Parliamentary Group for Climate and Security, I’m conscious that the
international character of many climate risks holds the potential for driving
cascading effects across borders and sectors. The changing oceanic
temperatures driving the migration of global fish stocks, for example, will
have not only implications for access to and cost of fish, but also transform
ecosystems, create wider economic harm, and increase competition for
resources. The potential for conflict will also increase as nations – those
who previously relied on the fish, those who find the fish in their territorial
waters, and those who need to diversify their economic and subsistence
options – seek to protect access to diminishing stocks.
As part of the Routledge Advances in Defence Studies (RAiDS) series,
Climate Change and (In)Security offers insight into a range of important
thematic areas, including systemic risk, climate intelligence, military
preparations and mitigation efforts, and frameworks of entangled and
ecological security. It also offers a geographical focus on the polar regions,
sub-Saharan Africa, the Levant, and Central America. Together, the
contributors illuminate the scale and breadth of the security threats nations
and global humanity now face due to climate change. Armed with greater
understanding, the right responses can be developed and delivered.
Climate Change and (In)Security makes clear that climate change must be
seen as a priority security and defence issue. The book is timely and
important and demands a broad readership not only in academe but also
amongst practitioners and policy makers.
Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP
House of Commons, 2023
PREFACE

This book has come together during a period of heightening military

awareness as to the implications of climate change for defence and security,
particularly in the West. Through the Climate Change and (In)Security
Project (CCIP), a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the
British Army’s Centre for Historical and Armed Conflict Research
(CHACR), we have taken the opportunity to explore the insecurities
created by climate change and how to respond to them and created
ongoing conversations between researchers, policy makers, and decision
makers.
CCIP has been fortunate that, in the main, the attitude of relevant
stakeholders has been at once positive and pragmatic about engagement.
For most, the evidence of anthropogenic climate change is abundant and
clear. The implications for the threat environment are being registered and
considered. Importantly, the conversation, in places, has now turned to the
challenges of what to do and how to do it.
It is important to remain mindful that the focus of those in the policy,
security, and military sectors can be diverted, understandably, by other
priorities and world events. The Russia–Ukraine War has, of course, shifted
the dial on overseas commitments, force composition, defence procurement,
and much else. Yet the threats from climate change – some baked into and
exacerbating current conflicts, including in Ukraine – still require the
affordance of significant capacity. As many of the chapters in this book
make clear, the clock is ticking. If the first duty of government is to keep its
citizens safe and the country secure, then it is crucial to also recognise that the
window to mitigate and prepare is diminishing and, as the scale of the
challenge grows, costs associated with the response are rising.
xxii Preface

Responding to the threats from climate change requires cooperation. Even

the world’s largest polluters and militaries will be unable to restrain global
heating and mitigate attendant threats unilaterally. This book is a testament
to a newfound awareness of climate security issues and the value of a
cooperative posture. The collaborative attitude of assorted militaries,
services, government departments, and NGOs, as well as researchers, is
captured in the pages here. As such, we thank the contributors for their
insights and commitment to the project. Many of the authors have also
assisted CCIP in other ways, including sharing their insights at our
conferences and institutional briefing sessions.
We must thank the CCIP team for their efforts. What started out as a small
undertaking funded by the University of Oxford has grown into a significant
enterprise in no small part due to their collective efforts. Amongst others, the
project has also worked with, and supported, the British Army, Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Global Interagency Security
Forum (GISF), International Military Council on Climate Change (IMCCS),
NATO, Peers for the Planet, Princeton University’s Global Systemic Risk
Group, Royal College of Defence Studies, Royal Navy, UK Ministry of
Defence, UN, and the Westminster Energy Forum. Since December 2022,
CCIP has delivered the Secretariat for the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary
Group for Climate and Security.
We would also like to offer particular thanks to Richard Brewin,
Programme Manager of NATO’s Climate and Energy Security Section,
General Tom Middendorp, Chair of the IMCCS, Major-General (Retired)
Andrew Sharpe, Director of the CHACR, Erin Sikorsky, Director of the US
Center for Climate & Security, and colleagues at the University of Oxford in
the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Environmental
Change team at Reuben College, and Changing Character of War Centre at
Pembroke College for their collegiality and support.
SIPRI and Chris Hodder kindly gave their permission for the reproduction
of Figure 0.1, IPCC Secretariat for Figures 10.1–10.3, and PJHQ, Sergeant
Simon Coakley, and Lance Corporal Joshua Simms for Figure 12.2. Vicki
Herring deserves thanks for redrawing the illustrations in the introduction
and Chapters 8, 14, and 15. This book has enjoyed the support of Andrew
Humphrys and Devon Harvey at Routledge.
The CCIP website and other resources can be found at: https://
cciproject.uk.
Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny
Oxford, 2023
INTRODUCTION
Climate change and (in)security

Timothy Clack, Ziya Meral, and Louise Selisny

Introduction
Attention in politics is often afforded to the urgent at the expense of the
important. Moreover, defence and security policies and practices tend to
focus on the most immediate threats a nation is facing and how those threats
can be addressed. Longer-term trends that map across national boundaries
might feature in ‘horizon scanning’ exercises and forecast studies that look at
the shaping of the world a few decades ahead, but they tend to be seen as
issues ‘out there’, which might or might not actualise. Thus, insights and
recommendations about the future are often set aside in the pursuit of high-
level priorities articulated by governments. The security of the present trumps
that of the forecasted future.
To some degree, this is at once understandable and rational. There are
limits to the resources any nation can deploy; therefore, a state will always
use a triage to assess risks and decide on how to structure and use its defence
and security capabilities to meet the most immediate, significant, and likely
risks. While this is a ‘cost saving’ exercise in some sense by seeking to ensure
precious and finite resources are not spent injudiciously, it is also a ‘cost
occurring’ weakness. A defence and security policy and structure that limits
its thinking to today will almost always fail a nation by leaving it unprepared
for the challenges and contexts of tomorrow. As threats that were not taken
as ‘important’ yesterday become the dominant threats of today, those
responsible for defence and security rush to make sense of what is happening;
often assuming a reactionary posture in search of rapid fixes. These ‘late in
the day’ responses are often described by practitioners as ‘stable door’,
‘sticking plaster’, and ‘impermanent’ solutions, but they are, nevertheless,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003377641-1
2 Timothy Clack et al.

accepted on the bases of being ‘good enough’, ‘where we are’, and within the
‘art of the possible’. No charge is directed at practitioners at the sharp end for
such delivery but it has long been noted both anecdotally and in Western
military doctrine that ‘prevention is better than cure’ (Houghton 2015;
Johnson and Clack 2019, pp. 1, 18–19). Preparedness and management of
resource are crucial in order to navigate national security threats and this
means thinking about tomorrow, today.
The competition between the urgent and important in the security arena
is a long-standing issue. The pattern has been clear across 20th-century
defence thinking. In the United Kingdom, the United States, and France,
the lead-up to both World War I and World War II, for example, was
characterised by dismissals from most political and military leaders of what
was ahead and then a frantic rush to adapt and respond to conflicts of
unprecedented scale and threat (Kupchan 2020; Stedman 2011; Wapshott
2015). In the 2000s, a similar rush was evident to meet the challenges posed
by international terrorism, with substantial mistakes committed in failures
to understand the nature of the threat and ways to address it (Cook 2020;
Cox and Rosoux 2002; Kilcullen 2016). Since 2014, the invasion of Crimea
and then Eastern Ukraine by Russia has borne witness to another historic
shift in defence and security posture: the return of geopolitics, inter-state
rivalry, brutal invasions, territorial annexations, and the potential for
escalatory peer-on-peer conflicts. Within a comparatively short amount of
time, the West has gone from a world that was, in historical perspective,
stable with a low likelihood of inter-state wars to a world characterised by
defence budgets rises, investment into emerging warfare technologies, a new
generation of nuclear weapons, and calls from elected officials and military
leaders for increases in conventional forces and equipment. Amongst other
things, Western publics see wars and conflicts unfolding 27/4 on their TV
screens and social media feeds, witness the displacement of millions of
people from their homes in Ukraine and in other parts of the world, and
face shortages, inflation, and cost of living increases in their daily lives. The
relative peace and prosperity that had been taken for granted since the end
of the Cold War are now distant. A telos the West assumed was given and
shared for all now seems to be abandoned.
But what if the West and others are committing the mistake by allowing the
clear defence and security risks posed in the current geopolitical space to
consume all of our thinking, planning, and adaptation. Is adequate attention
also being given to a threat that is already here and altering our futures? And
what if the said threat is not the kind that we can meet through the usual ‘late
in the day’ decision making and action which we have seen characterises
defence and security thinking in crises, i.e. a rush to respond only when it
becomes the most dominant, present threat? And what if this threat is not
only to our defence and security but ‘our way of life’ and is, actually, the only
 Introduction 3

truly ‘existential threat’ we have ever faced and one that simply dwarfs any
threat that we have hitherto been defending ourselves from?
For many in defence and security policy and practice, climate change might
still feel like a topic well outside of their profession, domain, and interests, left
optimally to activists, aid, and development agencies, and broader govern-
ment structures. Such a position, however, would reflect a profound lack of
understanding of what climate change is, how it is impacting our world, and
what it all means for defence and security. It is these understandings, impacts,
and implications that this book foregrounds for both academic and practi-
tioner awareness.

Impacts of climate change

There is a large body of scientific studies and climate forecasts available. The
UK Met Office, for example, leaves no space for ambiguity when it comes to
global warming. It notes that ‘[c]limate change is already having visible effects
on the world. The Earth is warming, rainfall patterns are changing, and sea
levels are rising … average global temperatures have risen by more than 1°C
since the 1850s … [and] 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were the
hottest years ever recorded’ (UK Met Office 2022). It further warns that ‘the
ice in the Arctic is melting fast. It is already 65% thinner than it was in 1975.
Late summer Arctic Sea ice area is currently the smallest in at least 1,000
years … [W]e could see ice-free summers in the Arctic by the middle of this
century. When ice sheets and glaciers melt, freshwater flows into the sea’. As
well as making the sea-level rise, freshwater also reduces the salinity (salti-
ness) of the water, which can slow or change ocean currents (UK Met Office
2022). The outcomes of these shifts vary across the world from flood risks in
coastal and riverine areas to heavy rains and more frequent storms in some
localities and droughts, prolonged extreme heat waves, and forest fires in
others. The security implications of these climate outcomes are at once sig-
nificant and diverse.
The death toll and economic losses caused by natural disasters in the world
have increased substantially between 1970 and 2019 and compared to all
preceding years on record. According to the World Meteorological
Organisation (WMO) and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
(UNDRR) weather, climate, and water extremes have accounted for, ‘50 per
cent of all disasters, 45 per cent of all reported deaths and 74 percent of all
reported economic losses. There were more than 11,000 reported disasters
attributed to these hazards globally, with just over two million deaths and
[US]$3.64 trillion in loses. More than 91 per cent of the deaths occurred in
developing countries’ (UN 2022). The WMO and UNDRR also note that in
the 1970–2019 period, ‘of the top 10 disasters, droughts proved to be the
deadliest hazard … causing 650,000 deaths, followed by storms that led to
4 Timothy Clack et al.

577,232 deaths; floods, which took 58,700 lives; and extreme temperature
events, during which 55,736 died’ (UN 2022).
UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) reports that ‘hazards resulting from the
increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as abnor-
mally heavy rainfall, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental deg-
radation, or sea-level rise and cyclones are already causing an average of more
than 20 million people to leave their homes and move to other areas in their
countries each year’ (UNHCR 2022). Droughts, heavy rains, and unreliable
and fast-changing climate patterns create a further fundamental challenge:
food security. The UN World Food Programme estimates that a ‘2°C rise in
average global temperature from pre-industrial levels will see a staggering
189 million additional people in the grips of hunger’ and reports that, ‘large
swathes of the globe, from Madagascar to Honduras to Bangladesh, are in
the throes of a climate crisis that is now a daily reality for millions. The climate
crisis is fuelling a food crisis’ (WFP 2022).
The fact that these outcomes are set to impact some of the world’s poorest
states with limited capacity to respond to such grave humanitarian conditions
within their borders only adds further difficulties for hundreds of millions of
people. It also creates and galvanises deep cleavages and fault lines within
countries and between communities. Furthermore, as the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC 2020) points out, while climate change is
not seen as a primary causal driver of conflicts, 14 of the 25 states assessed to
be most vulnerable to climate change are mired in conflict, which restricts
their ability to mitigate risks posed by climate change and limits their
opportunities to receive humanitarian aid. Thus, for such states, the complex
relationship between conflicts and climate change forms a vicious cycle:
climate change adds additional stresses, challenges, and suffering to people
facing violent conflict, which, in turn, hinders their response to, and con-
tributes to, climate change. As the International Crisis Group puts it, ‘[t]he
relationship between climate change and deadly conflict is complex and
context-specific, but it is undeniable that climate change is a threat multiplier
that is already increasing food insecurity, water scarcity and resource com-
petition, while disrupting livelihoods and spurring migration. In turn, deadly
conflict and political instability are contributing to climate change – including
through illegal logging’ (ICG 2022).
Here it must be noted that climate change is creating liability risks for certain
nations, particularly those that are the largest carbon out-putters and/or were
the earliest to industrialise. On the basis of advances in attribution science,
countries, particularly those in the Global South, are increasingly likely to seek
damages from others for loss and damage resulting in economic, physical, and
cultural harms (Minnerop and Otto 2020; Otto 2022). Some claims are already
reaching court (see Lloyd and Shepherd 2021) whilst the merits of many others
feature repeatedly in political and diplomatic discourses.
 Introduction 5

There is also increasing awareness of how climate change is contributing to

conditions that might supplement the emergence of, and exacerbate, violent
extremism and terrorism. The Wilson Center’s Africa Program has released a
study on climate change and its impact on extremism in the Lake Chad Basin,
for example, which notes:

In the 1960s, Lake Chad had an area of more than 26,000 km2. By 1997, it
had shrunk to less than 1,500 km2, and further to 1,350 km2 by 2014.
Decades of depletion due to climate variabilities have contributed to
fuelling insecurity in local communities whose economic livelihoods
depend on the lake, leading to a humanitarian crisis across the Lake
Chad Basin. Countries surrounding the Lake Chad Basin, including
Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, have been confronted with violent
extremism and terrorism, in addition to ethnic, religious, and farmer-
herder conflicts.
(Frimpong 2020)

Climate change can be an indirect contributor to terrorism, including as an

ideological driver and as a means to control communities (Benjaminsen and
Ba 2018; Boyd and Henkin 2022). Furthermore, recruitment into Violent and
Extremist Organisations (VEOs) under conditions of climate-related depri-
vation and/or conflict has been indicated in many studies (see Adelphi 2017;
Chaturvedi and Doyle 2015; King 2023; Vestby 2014). The Malthusian logic
which underpins such models is that deteriorating environmental conditions
and sustained population growth are exacerbated by climate change which, in
turn, fuels competition over resources and drives recruits into radical groups
and political violence. Even if direct causal links between climate change and
terrorist recruitment remain debated (see Telford 2020; Raineri 2020), it is
clear that conditions of environmental scarcity shape contexts and do
not promote stability. The abundance of resources relevant to climate
adaptation found in certain areas, for example in the DRC, has been called a
‘green curse’ due to the associated security challenges around access and
extraction (Vinke et al. 2023, pp. 13–15).
The point should be made, in line with Selby et al. (2022, pp. 57–58), that
‘scarcity’ and ‘abundance’ are imprecise and relational concepts. Moreover,
conflicts can also be driven by local political forces and strategies rather than
shifts in availability. The so-called ‘blood diamond’ conflicts, for example, in
Angola and Sierra Leone were not triggered by changes in either supply or
demand but were, in large part, caused by local responses to global price
fluctuations (Selby et al. 2022, p. 57).
Various VEOs seemingly recognise these links – or at least the emotive
resonance of the issues – for climate change and environmental conditions
feature in the propaganda outputs of various terrorist and insurgent groups.
6 Timothy Clack et al.

In 2002 and 2010, for example, Osama Bin Laden criticised the United States
for not signing the Kyoto Protocol and the scale of its ‘industrial waste and
gases’ (The Guardian 2002). After the Abbottabad raid, an open letter for
future distribution was located which described the ‘catastrophic conse-
quences’ of global warming and encouraged people in the United States to
‘rise up’ (Landay 2016). There are many other attempted mobilisations of the
climate/ environment in VEO propaganda. In 2019, Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP) repaired wells to win hearts and minds and achieve a
propaganda effect in various parts of Yemen (Bodetti 2019), in 2018, al
Shabaab put a prohibition on plastic bags and the logging of certain trees
which is still in force in the territories the group governs today (Binding 2018)
and, in 2017, the Taliban encouraged Afghan farmers to plant more trees
because of their ‘important role in environmental protection’ (BBC 2017).
There are myriad security issues relating to climate change, including food
insecurity, large-scale displacement, natural disasters, and violent conflicts.
Given the limited ability, or will, of most states to significantly mitigate the risks
of climate change, the world is highly likely to be entering an unprecedented era
of instability at a global scale, with a deepening rift of conditions and living
standards between those in wealthier nations and those living in the Global
South. This poses substantial moral questions and duties, as while we share the
same planet facing the same conditions, respective experiences and capacities to
respond to them and maintain meaningful futures differ dramatically (Brooks
2022; O’Brien et al. 2022). Even if the forecasted climate contexts and ability to
adapt and mitigate are comparatively better for wealthier nations, it must be
recognised that the security problems ‘out there’ in time and space seldom stay
distant. As such, even when they might not feel so now, ultimately, they will in
some form reach all of us. Understanding and preparation will be crucial.

Implications for defence

The breakdown of outcomes noted above will have already given the reader a
sense of why climate changes pose substantial questions for defence and
security. Breaking down areas of defence and security helps to further con-
textualise implications.
Defence planning and operations describe ‘three levels of warfare’ – stra-
tegic, operational, and tactical – which ‘provide a framework within which to
rationalise and categorise military activity’ (UK MOD 2014, p. 19). The
strategic level refers to policy-level decisions taken by a government to establish
goals and allocate resources in their pursuit. The operational level refers to the
level of military activity which plans, prepares, and coordinates military
operations in pursuit of strategic aims. The tactical level refers to the front line
of military operations: the level at which military units operate in their mis-
sions, may it be fighting against an adversary, undertaking humanitarian
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 In the distance on the other side of the line the Western Yomans now
appeared: they are lower than the Eastern Yomans, and do not rise much
above four thousand feet. The window pictures went on changing: little
streams full of tree-climbing perch; small fisheries—everyone of them taxed
to swell the revenue; bright coloured bee-eaters, the only insectivorous birds
that build in the earth and not in trees; corrugated iron—oh! very much
corrugated iron—even in the smallest villages, it is used for the hut roofs
wherever the railway goes.

I was now passing through the home of the hamadryad, that serpent of
temerity and unprovoked assaults, but soon came nearer to the foothills and
the edge of the jungle. It was about five o'clock, the time when at this season
of golden paddy-fields the jungle fowl come out to steal the rice—peacocks
with tails longer than they grow in captivity, and even more numerous than
those unnumbered I have seen in the grounds of Warwick Castle. About this
time of year, when he has been feeding on rice for a few weeks, your
peacock is considered very good eating and is not difficult to get on a
moonlight night. He gives three calls before he settles to sleep, just to tell
anyone who may be interested which tree he is in.

Pale and feathery the tall tufts of elephant grass quivered gently, and
through them I could see a village stockaded against dacoits. A fellow-
traveller told me that any man who owns ten houses has to fence the village,
and remarked that two hundred dacoits were killed hereabouts during the
previous year. My companion was a well marked man. He had a white scar
on his chin where he had been clawed by a leopard, and a mark on one arm
where he had been shot by boxers in China.

We were passing Kanutkwin, which means "the crooked place," and was
the scene of great man-eating operations a few years back, when one tiger
killed twenty-five people before he was accidentally shot! A man was out in
the jungle after birds with a shotgun, and seeing something move near him,
fired precipitately and with great luck ended the career of that four-footed
dacoit.

The night was cold and the early morning colder still. I noticed that the
third-class carriages were crowded with passengers—long compartments
with a third row of people on a long bench down the middle. Rolled up in
shawls or thick wadded and quilted coats, the natives kept their heads in
woollen wrappers, hoods or "Balaclava helmets," while up on the racks and
heaped at the open ends of the carriages were the huge bamboo hats, looking
like savage shields or targes, which would be needed in the heat of the day.
Some men also carried long swords, for here in the Shan States a man may
go armed without question.

At Sedaw, a little after seven o'clock, I reached the beginning of the hills,
and about three of that afternoon, with a live hen and some provisions
obtained while the train waited at Maimyo (a station where there is a native
Indian mountain battery), I got out at Gokteik—Gokteik of the famous
bridge—Gokteik of the gorge and the cave and the highest graded railway in
the world. But if you asked a Shan to take you to Gokteik, it is not here he
would take you, but to a Shan village many miles away, surrounded as all
Shan villages are by thick clumps of bamboos.

Along the steepest part of the railway track are laid a second pair of rails,
which lie covered with sand between wooden side-slips, so that in case of
brakes failing a runaway train could be switched on to these as retarders. At
Gokteik Bridge I think the only purpose for a railway station is for the
convenience of the engineer, who has occasionally to come up and examine
the structure. I found a dak bungalow near the station, with clean rooms but
without any cook, so that Tambusami, my servant, had an opportunity of
showing his skill with the pots and pans placed there for the stranger's use.

I left him to attend to the kitchen and crossed the long trestle bridge of
steel girders—it is 820 feet above the torrent at the bottom of the gorge;
then, following the railway line through a couple of short tunnels, I climbed
out on to a spur of the mountain from which I could look back at the gorge.
The torrent below comes out through a vast stalactite cave or tunnel, the
lower opening of which is like part of some great cathedral dome. The rock
above crosses like a natural arch 500 feet high, and it is upon that arch that
the stupendous, though spidery-looking structure of the viaduct has been
raised by an American firm. Their tender was very much less than that of
any English house, and although it is possible that American engineers have
had more experience in this kind of work, it is suggested that the lowness of
the tender was partly to ensure a big advertisement. Walking alone high in
air across the 750 yards of that narrow bridge, which has no kind of railing,
was certainly one of the "sensations" of my journey, and in a thick mist the
experience must be weird in the extreme.

The present engineer of the line was, at the time of my visit, also staying
at Gokteik (investigating a suspected change of curve through heat
expansion), and he took me in the early hours of the morning through some
of the dense jungle in the gorge above the feet of the bridge. The engineer
carried a Winchester repeater, and I was armed with a good double-barrelled
rifle, but our hopes of seeing certain stripes reported to be near were vain.
We crept for a long time stealthily through dense jungle-growth, with a
variety of prickles and spikes, and came upon fresh hoof-marks of wild boar,
small deer, saumbur and buffalo but no sign of a tiger, and I could not
remain for a second attempt.

My next stopping-place was Hsipaw, a town of some size, in which is the

palace of Sawche, the Sawbwa of Hsipaw. I was sorry to find that this
gentleman's English adviser, to whom the authorities had promised to write
about my coming, was away on leave. There was no other English resident
at Hsipaw except the keeper of the refreshment-room at the railway station,
which included the usual accommodation of a dak bungalow. This was a
man with a pronounced Cockney accent and a humorous twinkle in his eye,
and in view of the approaching Christmas season he had laid in a large
number of cured hams, which hung all round the room. At Hsipaw that
evening there sat at table with me two other passengers who were changing
trains; one, the medical officer for the Shan States, whom I had joined on
leaving Gokteik, and the other, a mining engineer who had had blackwater
fever at Buluwayo and had come to Burmah for a change of air.

The doctor was on the look-out for plague cases, and where he had
native assistants they waited at the railway stations to report to him as he
passed through. Thus at Kyankine I had heard a native assistant tell the
doctor that a Shan woman, who was selling bringalls in the market, had
declared she had seen four or five people dying at an outlying village.

"Can you rely on her statement?" said the doctor.

"I can't exactly say."

 "You should have sent for the poogi" (the "poogi" or "pudgy" is the
village headman who collects the taxes and takes them to the "Nabang," the
head of a circle of villages and responsible to the Government). "You should
have sent for the poogi," said the doctor.

"I did, sir," the assistant answered, "but he said he had not heard
anything about it."

"What about the Jaremai Nabang—isn't he here?"

"He is away from here, sir; he goes sometimes to Lashio—the woman

said it was seven or eight days ago, but the poogi did not know anything
about it."

"Well, keep your ears open and find out all you can. I'll run that poogi in
—wire for Chatterjee for any bad case."

I was amused at the Cockney talk of the keeper of the refreshment-room

as he brought in the dishes, when the mining engineer said to him as he came
up to the table:—"I don't want to be offensive, but a man at Tongu told me
you have committed bigamy."

"Let 'em prove it," said the Cockney, "let 'em prove it—that's what I say.
I'm not a going to give myself away to you gentlemen nor to my own frens
—what I say is, they've got to prove it. I'm not a-saying, mind yer, that there
isn't nothin' I've been foolish about or no mistake as I 'aven't made in the
past. They tried 'ard to arrest me yesterday—yes, they did, doctor, but they
couldn't do it, not they."

"But the man at Tongu showed me a marriage certificate," said the

mining engineer. Here the doctor applied the closure and we got on with our
dinner.

When it was over I took a Shan boy as a guide to find the Sawbwa's
house. Tambusami, my own Hindoo servant, was, of course, useless here as
regards conversation. The Shan boy knew some English, being able to say
"yes," "no," and "railway station." It was just after eight o'clock when we
started, and after walking one and a half or two miles along a white road and
turning twice, we crossed two small bridges over a stream or moat, and I saw
in front of us some large buildings. When I asked at a guess if this were the
house of the Sawbwa, the boy assented "Sawbwa."

Under a covered arcade two men were crouching in the cold over a fire
of sticks, watching a giant kettle, which I think was copper and not brass.
The arcade led into the hall of a large house whitewashed and with a
coloured pattern running round the wall and across several doors. At one
side was a staircase leading to the floor above, and at the bottom of the stairs
eight or ten pairs of plush slippers were scattered about untidily near a large
red-lacquered box and a cat, which was eating from a round dish.

Some kind of guard or policeman in a red turban and bearing a long

sword outside his ample cloak came to have a look at me, and was soon
joined by another in similar uniform. I talked to them and the men by the
kettle and thought they understood that I wanted them to take my card to the
Sawbwa, and that I wanted to see him. They all put their heads on one side
with cheek on hand and shut their eyes, by which I supposed they meant he
had gone to bed. It was not yet nine o'clock, however, and as I had been told
that Sawche had been educated in England, I doubted such early hours and I
persisted in pretending that I did not understand.

I walked up and down the covered way, and presently a little lady, with
her face painted white, crept gingerly down the stairs and into the hall,
furtively peeping at me. As soon as she knew that I could see her she
scurried back like a frightened rabbit, and there was another long silence.
Two big hounds, as tall as great Danes but with sharper noses, came strolling
up and allowed me to pat them. It was bitterly cold, but at last I persuaded
one of the men with swords to go into the house and presently he returned
with the following message:—

"His Highness the Sawbwa has gone to sleep. If there is anything to be

said please leave a chit to the policeman or come to-morrow again at about
noon. Nothing is able to wake His Highness at present. This note is sent to
explain what the policeman at the gate wanted to say."
 IN THE SHAN STATES: GUARD AND POLICEMAN.

The next morning I was calling again at the house of the moat, when I
beheld the Sawbwa approaching through the grounds carrying a black
umbrella and followed by a dozen men, walking slowly behind him. He was
rather thin and small-limbed, had dark eyes, not Mongolian in type, and a
small moustache over a delicate mouth with a small narrow chin. On his
head was a yellow turban, which added a little to his short stature, and he
wore a dress or gown over-all of black silk with woven black pattern, fine
black silk rolled round his neck for about five inches up to the chin. Thin
white trouser-ends showed beneath the gown over dark socks and patent
leather dancing-pumps with black ribbons. Of jewellery he wore little, his
chief ornament being a fine ruby in a gold finger-ring.

The Sawbwa shook hands delicately and said, "How do you do?" and
chatted in good English for a few minutes. He explained that he was
extremely busy with an important case at the Court and asked me to join him
there. He is a busy man, whose position is by no means a sinecure involving
the direction of the three Shan States of Mihung, Hsunhai and Mintoung, and
all the magisterial work of the district.

The Court-House was a two-storeyed wooden building, with a veranda

and a balcony opposite the gate of the palace compound on the other side of
a white dusty road. In the Court-Room the Sawbwa sat on a rotary chair
upon a raised platform, and an arm-chair was placed for me beside him.
Sawche had now discarded the yellow turban and wore a piece of rose-
coloured silk round his head in the ordinary Burmese fashion. Behind us
hung a portrait in black and white of Queen Victoria, and in front, on the top
of a wooden railing, was a red narrow box, two feet long, tied in the centre
with crossed tapes and containing some sacred writings for oath
administration. On the platform beside the Sawbwa's chair, upon a low,
round stool of red lacquer ornamented with a gold pattern, were china cups
and teapots.

A man stood in one of two small docks or railed enclosures, and a

number of people with documents in their hands squatted upon the floor
outside.

I could not understand any of the speaking, and after he had been talking
quite a long time to the man in the railed enclosure, the Sawbwa turned to
me and proposed in his soft voice that he should send someone to show me
round his compound. The moated house I had called at previously was far
from here within the town.

Conducted by one man who spoke a few words of English and followed
by another who did not, I crossed the road and entered the compound
through red gates. It was surrounded by tall wooden palings, ten or eleven
feet high, which were roughly whitewashed, and in the centre of the road-
front, with small doors in the hoarding at each side, were these large wooden
gates with a little rude carving about the top of them. Within, upon a rough
cylinder of red brick in the middle of a level space of poor coarse grass,
flying a little white fork-shaped flag, a tall flagstaff was set in front of the
palace, which is built of wood upon a raised platform of cement and stucco-
covered bricks, five or six feet from the ground. It is partly old and in the
centre is surmounted by a series of gables, one above another, with well-
carved barge boards. In the middle of the front, as well as at the two ends of
the building, a flight of steps with low side walls leads to the top of the
cement platform, and the centre flight is closed below by a small green
railing with a wicket gate. Within, through the outer square-cut wooden
pillars, you can see the red round stucco columns of the hall of audience.
Outside, from the centre of the roof, a tall, very narrow spire shoots up
above and behind the gables, and the top of this is richly ornamented and
gilded like the "hti" of a pagoda.

The residence of the chief queen, the Maha Devi, a Shan woman, adjoins
the palace immediately behind. A girl stood on the veranda bending forward
and combing out her long black hair, which fell to the ground, and behind
her between two of the posts of the veranda hung a large piece of tapestry
with figures worked upon it in gold thread. Further back among trees are the
houses of the second, third and fourth queens, and two for the twenty-six
wives of minor importance. Here they live from one year's end to another,
very rarely leaving the compound, and dwelling, though without its austerity,
in the same seclusion as that of a nunnery.

Whatever influence it has had upon his ideals, an Oxford education has
not led the Sawbwa to adopt Western practice in his matrimonial relations;
yet it is doubtful if the Cockney keeper of the railway refreshment-room
would have so far discounted his sense of superiority to an Asiatic as to have
envied him even such privileges as these.

Soon after I returned to the Court-House the Sawbwa adjourned the

sitting, and we were talking together upon the balcony when he went up to
the railing and pointing to a figure upon the ground below said to me, "This
is one of my gardeners."
 I had noticed the man earlier; he was a thin tall Hindoo who had walked
very slowly to the Court-House, and as if with much difficulty. He was
dressed in a white robe and had squatted upon the ground, wrapping the
drapery round him and over the top of his head. A fat man with a large buff
turban had strolled after him and was walking up and down. It appeared that
the latter was a doctor. The Hindoo gardener was suffering badly from
dysentery, but was unwilling to go away to the hospital because he had a
Shan wife and feared she would run away while he was shut up. "If he
goes," said the Sawbwa, "I will keep his place for him and let him come
back to work when he is cured." The man, however, was still unwilling and
resisted all persuasion. "Then let him die," said the Sawbwa, and went on
talking to me about England.

Although Sawche has so many wives he has only one son, a boy of
twelve or thirteen, named Maung Nyo. I saw him coming through the central
avenue of the bazaar, dressed in rich silks and with his face whitened like a
woman's with ground sandalwood. He was being wheeled slowly along upon
a smart plated bicycle by two men, while another pair of attendants carried a
long-handled gold umbrella on each side of him. In a few days Maung Nyo
was to enter upon his period of Hpoongi or priest-training, in accordance
with orthodox Burmese custom.

The bazaar at Hsipaw was chiefly interesting on account of the Kachins

who had come in from a distance. They carried gaily ornamented
haversacks, and their women-folk, strong-looking and heavy-faced, wore
about the waist and ankles large coils of bamboo as thin as fine string and
black in colour.

The usual rows of bazaar shops were ranged under long arcades roofed
with corrugated iron, and out in the roadway double and treble lines of
sellers from outlying places had spread their market produce on plantain
leaves. Of dried fish there was certainly an extraordinary variety—thirty
kinds at the very least, but there was no profusion of strange fruits and no
showy display of silks or finery, and the scene was animated without being
gay.

The air was free and wholesome at Hsipaw, and the Shans had that
healthy look which seems to be the common heritage of all people of the
hills.

CHAPTER III

UP THE IRRAWADDY TO BHAMO

A group of white pagodas glowing in the sunlight: a flat shore rising to

little hills further up the river—little hills with more pagodas on top of them,
and beyond in the distance pale ghostly mountains almost lost in a faint
haze. Perhaps there is no scene more typical of Burmah than this I looked
upon from the deck of a steamer at Ferryshaw Siding, that meandered slowly
across the wide water, just stirred by the least possible ripple.

A train waited on the far side above a stretch of loose grey sand. I was on
my way to Katha to join there one of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's boats
on its way up to Bhamo, and my dinner was eaten that Christmas evening in
a small railway refreshment-room decorated with some prints after Landseer,
and one of a sentimental girl's head called "The Soul's Awakening." Another
man shared the same table in unbroken silence until, with some very bad
coffee, the Hindoo "butler" brought the bills. "Excuse me," I said to the
stranger, "but you are an Englishman, and this is our Christmas dinner—will
you drink a glass of wine with me?"

So we drank toasts in port that was thick enough to have pleased Alfred
Tennyson, and slept none the worse for it on the jolting lumbering train.

There was a dense mist at Katha when I left the railway for the river-
boat, and progress was slow until the air cleared and long flat sandbanks
became visible and a green tree-clad plain with blue mountains to the north-
west. Teak rafts drifted past us downstream on their long journey to
Poozoondoung Creek, and the old tusker Mpo Chem and his "lady helps."
Many rafts of bamboos passed us also, supporting heavy teak logs below
them, for teak is not easily rafted till it is three years dead, and recently-
felled logs float reluctantly as if possessing still enough of life to tell their
sorrow at leaving the upland forests.

Katha.

It is not many decades since rafts freighted with human bodies, more
nearly still in touch with life than the new teak logs, floated down this river.
Our captain, whose name was Teeldrup, a Dane with Icelandic blood, ran
boats for the Irrawaddy traffic some years before the final annexation, and
described to me a passage on this very piece of the river when no less than
thirty unfortunate Kachins came floating down the stream crucified upon
bamboo frames. "A lot has been talked of the cruelties," said Captain
Teeldrup, "but I think the poor devils were generally soon put out of their
misery."

Mora and Segaw we passed—villages on the banks—taking on a few

native passengers from small boats that came out to us, and at eight o'clock
in the evening we anchored in mid-stream. The deck was quite covered in
with canvas, and canvas also covered all the cabin windows.
Notwithstanding these precautions, however, the mist in the morning was so
thick that when I came to dress all my clothes were thoroughly damp. At
half-past seven the fog began to lessen somewhat, but there was no question
of starting, although we were already many hours behind time. Lumps of
brown spongy froth kept appearing to float past and out of sight again in the
little space of thick muddy water visible round the boat.

Hours later we got away, and at length sighted Bhamo late in the
afternoon. I could just make out the red building of Fort C and a white spot,
which I was told was the "bell" pagoda. Of the two existing forts, A is for
the military police and C for the regulars, B, the intermediate fort, having
been done away with a few years ago.

The broad river with its innumerable eddies comes swirling down
between its level sandbanks, and as the scenery was at Katha so it was at
Bhamo—just a level plain of tall grasses and trees and beyond these, distant
mountains now the colour of a ripe plum's bloom. Then suddenly slate-grey
landing-flats appeared against the sand, and in a few minutes I was again on
shore.

At Bhamo the agent of the Flotilla Company is a white-haired

Frenchman, who once held an influential position in Burmah as minister to
King Thebaw. He had gone to the East as a Bourbon exile and after years of
unsuccessful schemes and vain intrigue, discredited and ruined by the failure
of his own plans, Monsieur D'Avera, in a steamship office, now lavishes the
distinguished courtesy of an old French family upon American tourists and
such wayfarers as myself, and is said to have written an astounding book of
memoirs for posthumous publication.

It is in trade that Bhamo's claim to attention lies, and in the street of

Chinese offices and stores for the exchange of Manchester for Chinese
goods. A Burman, to whom I had been talking on the boat, was related by
marriage to the family of a Chinese merchant, and in the evening he took me
to call at a house with the top of the gateway curved up at the ends in a way,
he said, only affected by Chinamen of official position. The merchant was
apparently some kind of consul, and over and above the details of his own
business, watched on behalf of the Chinese Government the interest of his
Bhamo compatriots.

The Chinese merchant himself was away, but his sons showed me over
the warehouse and gave me tea in a living-room, where there was an
aquarium of goldfish, and which was decorated with a few pieces of lacquer
and long strings of Chinese New Year cards nearly a twelve-month old,
which hung across the room near the ceiling.

Sitting there drinking tea I could see through the series of now dusky
storerooms to the street entrance, and from little lattices at the sides of these
rooms noted the glint of lamplight and saw that the clerks were busy over
their books.

That night I went to another "Pwe," given this time under cover. A large
bamboo structure upon the sandy shore of the river, which had been erected
by Government for a recent durbar, had been rented by the "Pwe" impresario
for use as a theatre, and as the affair was, in this case, entirely a business
venture (a kind of Burmese touring company), a charge was made for
admission, varying from four annas to one rupee.

The orchestra was very similar to the one I had seen at Rangoon, but
being nearer to it I could see the performers better. It consisted first of a big
drum slung in the air from a long horizontal dragon, whose fantastic head
rose above the front of the stage; next, a circular wooden well frame or box,
within which were placed a series of between twenty and thirty small drums,
each about four to six inches across; then a lower circular enclosure with
metal balls and cups in place of the drums. These three items were put in a
line immediately in front of the stage, and inside the circle of small drums,
with candles round him on the edge of the surrounding woodwork, sat the
chef d'orchestre, who tuned up his drums, which he struck with his bare
fingers, through all the intervals between the passages of music.
 On one side of the chef sat a man at the big dragon drum and on the
other one playing on the metal cups, while behind squatted several players of
wind instruments and three or four men with split bamboo rods, four or five
feet long, which made a loud clapping noise when suddenly closed. The
playing of the tiny drums was extremely skilful, but the wind instruments
were wheezy and screechy, though I thought the general effect of the whole
orchestra was rather pleasing.

AT A BURMESE PWE.

My Burmese acquaintance had come with me to the "Pwe"; and his

knowledge of English, which he spoke with a peculiarly soft and gentle
intonation, enabled me to understand the thread of the narrative. The
entertainment was sophisticated enough to include some simple drop-scenes
which, however, had no appropriateness nor any connection with the story,
and a curtain which rarely descended as the divisions of the drama were of
great length.

There was again a terpsichorean heroine, the daughter of a powerful

nobleman, and after she had danced for half an hour there followed a very
long scene between a king and his ministers. In dancing the hands and arms
were moved more than the feet, and there was much jerky and angular
movement of the body. The costumes were again of old Burmese court style,
and a curious detail was that the hats worn by the four ministers were tall
domes, which curved over at the top in the same manner as the head-gear of
Venetian doges. The king, who wore on his head a veritable pagoda, was
haranguing his ministers about revenue and the unsettled state of his
frontiers, but my Burmese friend explained that he only instructed his
ministers by suggestion and not with direct orders. The story was wrapped
round the raids of a great dacoit who had been harassing border country and
had carried away and married the ever-dancing heroine. There was a very
amusing scene between the lady's father and her two servants, comic parts
which were acted with such droll and humorous gusto that it was a delight to
watch them, even without a key to their words. Indeed this scene had a
motive worthy of Molière, and recalled to me at the same time the incident
in Yeats' play—Where there is nothing there is God,—in which an English
owner of land is tried for the uselessness of his life by Irish tinkers in a barn.

The foolish master agrees that one of the servants, who has explained
that he is himself very wise and the master very foolish about all things,
shall take the place of judge and bids him sit in the middle of the stage to
conduct a mock trial in which he, the master, is the accused. The scheme
breaks down, of course, and when the master finally goes for his servant and
trounces him well, there is wild rough and tumble on the stage and riotous
laughter from the audience.

No people in the world can give themselves more gladly and light-
heartedly to enjoyment than the Burmese, and there was not a single member
of the audience—man, woman or child—who looked as if there were such a
thing as care.
 BURMESE ACTORS AT BHAMO.

Another droll scene was in the house of a timorous villager. This was
supposed to be at night and quite in the dark, though the lamps hanging
along the top of the stage (there were no footlights) were not lowered at all,
so that the acting of the dark was not obscured by any attempt at realistic
effect. The dacoit and his followers were groping and feeling about the stage
to find the villager, who quaked and shook as if paralysed with terror; then
one of the searchers would come upon him and touching some part of his
motionless body would describe it to the dacoit as something other than the
part of a man, and go on groping round the room till he once more
encountered the quaking villager.

Men, women and children shouted, shook and rolled in a very ecstasy of
delight at this piece of pantomime. Really it should not be difficult to govern
such people as these! Unfortunately, however, his natural love of pleasure is
combined in this short dumpy man, Jack Burman, with an indolence fatal to
business success. His mortgaged land falls into the hands of the chetty, and
in commercial matters he is being quietly walked over.

Burmah, so rich in natural resources, in spite of the statements of school

geographies, must look for the future to be exploited not for peaceful
improvement of its own comparatively small native population, but for the
speculators of Capel Court and Wall Street, and the hordes of Hindoos and
Chinamen flocking through its doors. There is in all countries a clash of
interests between practical success (which implies the largest possible
aggregation of healthy, well-nourished bodies having freedom of action) and
ideal success (of which I might dream indefinitely without continuing this
book), and it is that eternal combat that makes at once the bitter and sweet of
government.

I left the "Pwe" at last to go on unravelling its long story till dawn, and
myself got some hours of sleep in readiness for a morning in the Chinese
quarter of Bhamo.

This is a wide street with a gulley or gutter about 4 feet wide along the
front of the shops, with four or five wooden planks laid across it close
together as an approach to each. There were coolies under bamboo yokes or
shoulder-poles bearing crates and baskets, Shan men on ponies bargaining
green fodder, and Chinese women, with the traditionally contracted feet,
making quilted woollen coats, while fat babies played securely in movable
wooden pens. An Indian policeman, khaki-clad, with his legs in puttees, was
trying to make himself understood by a party of Kachins—two men and an
old and young woman. Three out of these four possessed large goitres,
hanging wallets of flesh, which made them look dewlapped like bulls. La
Naung was the name of the older man, and both the women were named
Makaw. The girl was bare-headed and had her short hair cut in a thick fringe
over the forehead, and had round her neck three large stiff rings. They
carried the same gay-coloured haversacks I had seen at Hsipaw, and wore
upon waists, arms and legs similar coils of thin black bamboo.

In the chief Chinese temple or joss-house two standing figures, about

four times life-size—Shotsa and Quan Pin—were placed on either side of a
central grille high up in the wall, through the meshes of which could be seen
the long-bearded face of Quansa. The latter's expression might be described
as benevolent; but that of the giant Shotsa, who held a mighty blade in the
air with his left hand, was horrible enough to draw from an American lady,
who came in while I was there, the remark:—"I guess if I stayed here that
face'd just skeer me into religion," (Her companion replied:—"That's the
only way you would get it!")

In a hall of this polytheistic temple beyond the one of Quansa, was a

Buddha with small figures all round the walls, and in front of these as boxes
for offerings an incongruous series of Huntley & Palmer's biscuit-tins, still
decorated with their original paper coverings.

The Burmese houses at Bhamo are very different from the Chinese
shops, being built on tall wooden piles with long flights of wooden steps up
to them, and in sunset light a group of such houses is a pretty sight,
especially if some silk cloths are spread to dry and some girls are looking out
over the veranda.

Of course Bhamo has its pagoda too, and of more recent years its race-
course and polo-ground, but I had only a peep at these before rejoining the
river steamer.

On the return journey I had good views of the defile below Sinkan
village, where the hills rise steeply from the edge of the water, and in some
places sheer walls of bare rock rise precipitously several hundred feet—
gaunt perpendicular cliffs more like some piece of scenery near Balholm or
Dalen in Norway than any I had yet seen in the East, and doubly welcome
after the comparative monotony of sandbanks. Most of the hillside was
clothed with dense jungle, which made more effective contrast with the bare
treeless places.
 A VILLAGE ON THE IRRAWADDY

On the right bank, a little distance from the big rock of the defile, there is
a village and this is where Lala was lost. Lala was a little black bear an
engineer told me about. "It was one of those honeybears," he said—"had a
white V-shaped mark on the chest." They kept chickens on board in a coop
and one night Lala pulled a chicken out of this coop, practically skinning it
between the bars; the Sakunny, the wheelman, declared that Lala took a
piece of his bread and deliberately placed it in the chicken's trough outside
the bars and waited till the bird put its head out. He was not the sort of man
to make up such a story, but the engineer could hardly believe him and asked
to be called the next time the Sakunny could see the bear was after the coop.
Whether the engineer was in bed or not, Lala used to sleep not far from him
on a mat by the engine-room door. One night the wheel-man called him up,
and he actually saw the bear take along a piece of his bread and drop it into
the trough. He was ready to cuff Lala if he touched a fowl, but the bear was
too quick for him, and the very moment a hen put her head through the bars
whipped it out clean through. The engineer never gave Lala meat, but
somebody got feeding him on "bully beef," and that seemed to make him
restive. He never really bit anybody, but the engineer felt it was safest to get
rid of Lala. He got off one day at the village near the defile and took the bear
a mile and a half away into the jungle and "lost" him.

Soon after the villagers petitioned the engineer to take the bear on board
again. It seemed that Lala was haunting the village and stole chickens
persistently. So there was nothing for it but to take him on to the steamer
again. Then he gave him to the Rangoon Zoo.

It was months after that the engineer went to see Lala. He took with him
a retriever, which had been a great chum and playfellow of the bear. When
he asked about it at the gardens they said it had got very wild and would not
take its food. I'll give the rest of the story in the engineer's own words.

"They were just going to give it rations, so I said, Give me the food and
I'll go into the cage myself. I took the retriever in with me, and I'll never
forget the way that bear looked at me as long as I live. The poor thing just
stood up and put its forepaws on my chest and looked into my eyes as much
as to say:—'Is this what you've done to me?' No, I'll never keep a wild
animal again."

Below the defile the stream widened again and the banks were low sand-
flats as before. The sun blazed on the water, but little pieces of tin tied to
floating bamboo marks gleamed brighter than the water surface. In the
evening a long wraith of white mist lay across the grey-blue of the
mountains, and in the reflection of the afterglow bamboo stakes swung from
side to side with the current, tied to the bottom by their sand-bags and
shaken to and fro as a soul tethered to mortality quivers in the stream of
circumstance.

On each side of the steamer a man was now trying the depths with a long
pole, which he swung round in the air; like some monotonous prayer he
chanted the depths of the water—Sari ache balm—ache balm—ache hart—
chanted these words again and again.
 BURMESE MURDERERS.

The easy charm of the river-road gains a hold upon the traveller. There is
none of the irksome noise and shaking of the railway, and even the huge
cockroaches seem friendly. At every riverside village stopping-place there is
a bright scene of talk and laughter. The people on shore get all their news
and do all their shopping on the steamer's arrival, and friendliness is as
pervasive as the sunshine.
 One night on the Irrawaddy I slept on deck among a crowd of
passengers, and my immediate neighbours were three chained criminals.
Two of them had killed somebody and were handcuffed together, a chain
from the handcuff being fastened to an iron stanchion. When brought on
board they were roped as well, but the ropes were removed and they smoked
cheroots comfortably enough. Two Punjabis and a couple of smart little
Burmese policemen had charge of them, and the Punjabis slept, but all night
the Burmese police took turn about to watch. Whether it was the influence of
the river or of the tobacco I know not, but the murderers seemed no more ill
at ease than the rest of us; only, whenever there was a little chink or jingle,
the policeman's eyes brightened.

Slowly the mountains darkened and the mirrored magic of a little moon
floated upon the ever-moving stream.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEAD HEART OF A KINGDOM

How the wheels of that bullock-cart did creak!

The reason they had never been greased was because the driver loved the
sound. He believed that the Nats (who are supposed to throng the
neighbourhood) dislike it, and that while the wheels creaked the Nats would
keep away.

I had just come down the Irrawaddy by steamer from Mandalay, and
very early on the second morning had reached Nyaungoo. At three o'clock
Tambusami (my Hindoo servant) appeared at my cabin-door in a state of
excitement. I looked out and saw the boat's searchlight playing about the
shore, three or four brown bodies jumping into the water, and the usual
Flotilla Company's landing-stage—then the steep sandbank and collection of
stalls with their oil-lamps. The air was full of the shrill voices of women
talking, shouting and laughing. I dressed hurriedly, while fellow-passengers
lay peaceful in the ghostly seclusion of mosquito curtains. The electric fan
whirled on with fitful spits. There was no mist and the stars were bright.
Cocks crowed and dogs barked—the red ends of many cheroots glowed
from the bank, where people squatted smoking and talking.

When the steamer moved slowly away I and my servant were left, a little
before dawn, upon the steep sandy bank pitted with innumerable foot-treads.

Tambusami had laid in food supplies at Mandalay, and dividing

ourselves and our belongings between two bullock-carts at the top of the
bank, we jolted along the road through Nyaungoo. The higher clouds were
just caught by the new daylight as we passed under the tamarind trees of the
village. The walls of the houses were mere screens of plaited bamboo,
though often there was also an outer fence of bamboo posts 6 feet high.

A wan amber light now began to bathe the tops of a grove of 50-foot
toddy-palms.

After leaving the village I began to pass tall cactus hedges and then a
dilapidated pagoda with old grinning leogryphs, pale lemon in colour, and a
gilded dome. There were broken masses of crumbling red brick, and under
the now dove-coloured sky the glass facets of tall bird-topped votive poles
gleamed brilliantly. Then the road entered the district of a myriad ruins and
long lines of broken gods. Purple and violet and fiery orange-red, a
multitude of small clouds scattered across the pale steely-blue. Tall trees of
cactus with small leaves on spreading branches, as well as the upright
column cactus springing green from the sand, now bordered the road.
Suddenly all the red of the clouds changed to gold, the purple to pale soft
heliotrope, and in a burst of golden light the sun rose over a line of violet
mountains. Past stray bushes of wild cotton, with their mauve blossoms and
pale-bluish leaves, men were carrying loads of red lacquer bowls. These
bowls, packed in column and swinging in nets from the shoulder crosspole,
looked like bundles of giant red sausages.

Mile after mile we jolted and creaked and presently passed between two
great piles of red brick with a Buddha in a porch on the exterior of either
side—all that remained of the great gateway—or one of the great gateways
—of the ancient city of Pagan.

The building of Mandalay was only commenced about fifty years ago;
Pagan was founded before A.D. 200. In Mandalay there are now close upon
200,000 inhabitants; at Pagan there are eight miles of brick-strewn sand and
a few poor villages. Mandalay, situated where the Irrawaddy is joined by its
chief tributary, is likely to become a great railway centre; Pagan, in the
dryest part of the dry zone, has had no practical importance since it was
sacked by Kubla Khan in 1286. But in that wilderness of rubble and cactus
the remains of 5000 pagodas and monasteries (it is said there were once
13,000) can still be traced, and among them are certain buildings in a good
state of preservation, vast in size and of quite peculiar interest.

A few small black pigs and a number of very mangy dogs loitered about
some huts. I was now in a land of ruins. Dismantled shrines, broken pagodas
and dilapidated temples stretched in every direction, but here and there were
vast structures of plaster-faced brickwork, either unharmed by time or
restored in spite of the popular belief that there is no merit in mere
reparation.

The Circuit House which I reached at last is a substantial building of iron

and teak, and letting daylight and air into the empty rooms, which reeked
with new varnish, I chose a suite upon the upper floor which has a wide
covered balcony. Hitherto travellers who wanted to visit Pagan have had
either to take camping equipment with them or else to sleep at Nyaungoo,
five miles away. In preparation for a recent visit of the Viceroy, however, a
large and comfortable circuit house was built near the riverside, in the very
centre of the ruins, and for the future there need be no difficulty in obtaining
"lodging for the night." The Viceroy, on the occasion of his visit, abode in
his launch, and I was told I was the first stranger to sleep at the Circuit
House. I had obtained the key of the cupboard, which harboured plate and
kitchen utensils, and while I went off to look round, Tambusami prepared a
welcome breakfast.

From the house you look over the wide river, which is not more than a
quarter of a mile away, to a range of mountains beautiful at every hour of the
day. I walked inland a little way to the Thatbyinnyu Pagoda (the Temple of
Omniscience), the loftiest of the buildings at Pagan, 200 feet high and
standing upon rising ground. It is square in plan but with a large projecting
porch on one side. The middle portion is a huge quadrangular mass of
brickwork supposed to be solid, but between this solid centre and the outside
there are upon the lower three of the five storeys of the building external
terraces and internal corridors with stairways connecting the floors, in the
thickness of the walls. Dark and sombre within, it is easy on descending
from the upper storeys to choose wrong stairways and to wander about as in
a maze. Upon the third storey, on the side of the great projection, there is in a
recess against the inner wall a colossal seated Buddha.

PAGAN.

Again and again I found myself groping alone in the silence of dark
passages, and after such an approach there is a strange solemnity about
sudden intrusion on the presence of a mighty seated figure so grandly
peaceful, so splendidly aloof and so serenely lasting.

Looking towards the river from the white terraces of this pagoda, another
of somewhat similar design to the Thatbyinnyu, appears on the right among
a number of smaller buildings mostly in ruins. This is the Gawdawpalin
Pagoda, built as a thank-offering by Narapatisezoo, a king who reigned in
Pagan through the last quarter of the twelfth century A.D. One day he
boasted "I am the best of all kings who ever sat on the throne of Pagan,"
whereupon he was struck blind, nor could any doctor cure him; but when
told what he had said, his ministers advised him to make images of the great
kings he had insulted by such a boast of superiority and to do homage to
them. Narapatisezoo did this and regained his sight, and then had the
Gawdawpalin Pagoda erected in gratitude to Buddha.

I came again to these terraces in the late afternoon when the more
mellow light of a low sun made everything glow with warm colour, as if it
wanted to give back the heat of the day before night came. And standing
then with my back to the river and looking inland I saw in front of me the
great Ananda, the most beautiful as well as the most curious of the Pagan
temples.

In the Ananda there is a large projecting porch on each of the four sides
of the square, adding about 40 feet on each side and making thus a cruciform
plan 280 feet across. The highest of its seven diminishing storeys is shaped
like a tall pyramid with four sides curved vertically as in Hindoo temples.

An ingenious feature of the Ananda is the lighting of the four colossal

figures of the Buddha which stand in niches of the central mass and face the
four porches. They are all standing figures and are higher than the arches,
the pointed arches of the entrance porches, and are lighted from above by
hidden openings in the wall. Running round the central portion are two
colonnades which cross the porch approaches to the four shrines. The gilded
figures of the four Buddha dispensations, Gautama, Kathaba, Gawnagon and
Kankkuthan, tower up gigantic, and in each case the mysterious illumination
of the head and shoulders adds to their grandeur. Under tall white arches, as
in some Gothic church, I walked slowly along the pavement, watching the
upper portion of the statue appear as I advanced. In the west porch there is,
about the middle of the transept, a raised circular slab with a pair of Buddha
footprints cut in stone in conventional arrangement, and covered with
engraved symbols. In the niche facing this porch the gilded figure is that of
Gautama himself.

The horizontal circular slab is raised upon a four-sided white plinth to

about the height of a man's waist. Looking across it the next tall archway is
seen flanked on either side by 'guardian' figures, each with the arm towards
the arch close to the body, except for the hand which is stiffly bent outwards
and upwards. The other arms are bent sharply at the elbows and have the
hands raised. To right and left of these figures the transverse colonnades
cross parallel to the outer walls.

From the stone slab with the impress of the feet you cannot quite see the
head of the great image in the distance, the top of the farthest arch still
hiding the upper part of the face. The figure is gilded all over and stands
upon a lotus. In front there is a low railing composed of thick glass balusters,
and having two little doors in the centre. Approaching nearer you see at last
in brilliant light the benign countenance.

Of the four of these colossal statues that called Kankkuthan on the north
side is believed to be the original figure, though it has been frequently
repaired. The hands are pressed together in front of the breast. The figure
wears a garment with sleeves close-fitting from the elbow to the wrists, but
from the elbows hanging straight down in a line with the upper arm to make
a conventional shape, which stops at an angle and ends in a slightly curved
border which meets the legs just above the ankle. The background of the
niche is covered with very elaborate glasswork, and on the silvery face of
some of this are patterns in a kind of gesso.

About the white walls of the corridors are numerous small niches in
which in high relief, coloured in red and gold, are representations of scenes
in Buddha's life. Parts of the corridors have tier above tier of similar niches
right up to the top of the wall, almost as in some Roman columbarium.

In a similar niche on the right as you walk towards the centre through the
western portico there is a small figure of the builder of the Pagoda, King
Kyansittha, a remarkably intrepid warrior whose chief adventures happened
before he came to the throne in the reign of his mightier predecessor, King
Naurata.

Naurata was the greatest of all the kings of Pagan—it was under his rule
that its territory increased till it stretched from Siam to Kachin and China,
and from Chittagong to Tonquin, and it was Naurata who destroyed Thaton
and brought 30,000 prisoners thence to Pagan, including artists and
craftsmen, as well as a king and queen.

Kyansittha was in disgrace for some years before Naurata was killed by a
white buffalo in the jungle. It was all about a certain present to Naurata from
his vassal, the King of Pegu. The present was a princess in a golden
palanquin, the King of Pegu's very beautiful daughter; and Kyansittha, who
seems to have been able to resist everything except temptation, lifted the
purdah, with the disastrous consequence of Naurata's jealous wrath. He only
returned from banishment upon Naurata's death, and the building of this
Ananda Pagoda was the chief event of a reign apparently much quieter than
that of his stormy and zealous predecessor. Verily, great building is more
lasting than the kingdoms of men!

On the outside of the Ananda Pagoda I saw a line of green glazed tiles
upon the outer walls. All round the base a series of such tiles a foot square is
let in just above a lower flange in the position of a dado. Each of them is a
separate figure illustrating a Jataka story, and each has the title underneath it
upon the tile in old Burmese characters. Many have been restored in an
absurd way (which has led to their being wrongly described) and some have
disappeared, but a great number remain, and careful drawings should be
made of these spirited reliefs before it is too late.

Near the Ananda there is a small museum containing a number of stone

slabs found at Pagan, covered with inscriptions in the old Burmese square
lettering. Among the objects in the museum are some good small bronzes,
wooden figures of Nats and some small votive bricks in the shape of a
pointed arch, within which Buddhas have been stamped upon the clay. So
little interest, however, are any English visitors expected to take in these
objects that the labels are only in Burmese characters.
 On one of my days at Pagan, Tambusami drew my attention to someone
riding towards us on a white horse. This was Mr Cooper, who had come over
from Nyaungoo to call upon me. Tambusami and a Burman did the best they
could to make a show with our diminished stores, and after dinner on the
wide veranda we found that we both knew Haslemere and the old
Portsmouth Road and Paris, and then Mr Cooper, who was a subdivisional
magistrate, told me about the kind of cases that are brought before him in the
Pagan district,—about an island for one thing. Now at Salay, just along the
river, there is an island which has been steadily growing in size. Originally it
was the property of one village on the mainland. It had been allotted to the
villagers after it had first appeared, and then some time ago it increased
suddenly in size a great deal more, coming up out of the river. Then the
headman of another village, on the strength of saying that he had a verbal
order from the Barman township magistrate, allotted plots to his own friends
and relations. Naturally the people of the first village were objecting.
BURMESE DWARF (3FT. 5IN. HIGH) SUFFERING FROM CATARACT.

Most of the cultivated land here pays revenue at the rate of four annas an
acre, and as assistant collector in revenue work, Mr Cooper had to put things
right.