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disruptive power
OXFORD STUDIES IN DIGITAL POLITICS
Series Editor: Andrew Chadwick, Royal Holloway, University of London

Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization

Jessica L. Beyer
The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power
Andrew Chadwick
Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics
Jason Gainous and Kevin M. Wagner
The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information
Technology and Political Islam
Philip N. Howard
Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring
Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain
The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American
Political Advocacy
David Karpf
Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from
Howard Dean to Barack Obama
Daniel Kreiss
Bits and Atoms: Information and Communication Technology in Areas of
Limited Statehood
Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop
Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity
Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, and William W. Franko
Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits of the Internet in the
Post-Soviet Sphere
Sarah Oates
Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics
Zizi Papacharissi
Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age
Jennifer Stromer-Galley
News on the Internet: Information and Citizenship in the 21st Century
David Tewksbury and Jason Rittenberg
disruptive
power
The Crisis of the State
in the Digital Age

taylor owen

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide.

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in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by

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© Taylor Owen 2015

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

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

“To: R & W”
 contents

Acknowledgments ix

1. Losing Control 1
2. Disruptive Power 22
3. Spaces of Dissent 48
4. New Money 67
5. Being There 98
6. Saving the Saviors 122
7. Diplomacy Unbound 148
8. The Violence of Algorithms 168
9. The Crisis of the State 189

Notes 211
Index 245
 acknowledgments

This book represents the culmination of three meandering

years exploring the intersection of digital technology and
international affairs and is ultimately the product of many
people’s work. It began as a lecture and working paper for
the Trudeau Foundation in the spring of 2012, and I am
appreciative of PG Forest giving me the chance to come
back to the Foundation and try out some new ideas on the
smartest (and most critical) crowd in Canada. At the time,
the ideas presented were nascent, and represented my ini-
tial explorations of what I increasingly saw as the profound
ways technology was reshaping the international system.
This essay became a larger research project funded by
a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant
called International Relations in the Digital Age, a part-
nership between the Canadian International Council and
UBC. My friend and colleague Anouk Dey was critical as
an RA on both of these initial stages. And my co-PI on the
SSHRC research project, partner at the CIC and Open-
Canada and close friend Jennifer Jeffs built the project and
team with me. We had a great group of UBC journalism
students helping out with a wide range of research, includ-
ing Sadiya Ansari, Lindsay Sample, Kate Adach, Alexis
Beckett, and Alexandra Gibb.
 a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

For the year I spent focusing on researching and writing

the book, I had the amazing good fortune of having two
wonderful RA’s, Tanzeel Hakak and Cherise Seucharan.
Both are wise beyond their years, and handled my ridicu-
lous schedule and wandering (they would say vague) ideas
with grace and persistence. Many of the ideas in this book
are theirs as much as mine.
While writing this book I was also working at the Tow
Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia with the ex-
traordinary and tolerant Emily Bell. The incredible op-
portunities that working with Emily on building the Tow
Center afforded me, as well as the time she allowed me to
binge write among the cramming undergrads in the Bodle-
ian, made this book possible.
As I have now learned, bringing a book into the world is
a process. Three people made this one happen. First, Ethan
Bassoff at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin took a chance on
me, and got this book into the hands of New York publish-
ers. Second, Angela Chnapko at Oxford University Press
was supportive, encouraging, and incredibly helpful at
every stage of the editing and publishing process. Finally,
Blake Eskin agreed to dive in to the project as an utterly
ruthless editor, and gave me the most educational writing
experience I have ever had.
Finally, and by far most importantly, I owe everything
to my amazing parents and to my best friend, confidant,
fiercest critic, partner and wife Ariel, and to our little man
Walter.

x
disruptive power
 chapter one

losing control

Information is power. But like all power, there are

those who want to keep it for themselves.
—Aaron Swartz

In January 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),

Scotland Yard, and intelligence agencies in Italy, France,
the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden created a task
force to counter Anonymous. These countries saw the col-
lective of activist hackers and its numerous offshoots as a
national security threat.
Anonymous—which is best defined as an Internet gath-
ering with a loose and decentralized command structure
that operates on ideas rather than directives1—came to
prominence in 2008 when it mounted an attack on the
Church of Scientology’s website after the church asked
YouTube to take down a video interview with Tom Cruise.
Anonymous saw the takedown as an act of censorship and
said it wanted to completely remove the Church of Scien-
tology’s presence on the Internet and to “save people from
Scientology by reversing the brainwashing.” Since then,
hundreds of digital actions have been undertaken in the

1
 disru p t i v e pow e r

name of Anonymous, ebbing and flowing in both scale and

frequency. The group has inserted itself into political con-
flicts in the United States and around the globe.
In November 2011, at an Occupy rally against budget
cuts and increased tuition at the University of California,
San Diego, a riot police officer was filmed pepper-spraying
a peaceful protestor. When video of the incident went viral
on YouTube, Anonymous responded by leaking the police
officer’s name, address, phone number, and email address.
He received over 17,000 threatening emails, 10,000 text
messages, and hundreds of letters. The group did the same
to Arizona Department of Public Safety officials in response
to the passage of Arizona Bill 1070, an anti-immigration
bill widely seen as racist. This attack was part of the bigger
operation called Anti-Sec in which Anonymous attacked
many Western governments for reasons ranging from Inter-
net censorship to racial profiling.
During the Arab Spring, Anonymous worked in support
of anti-government protestors in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya,
hacking into government websites, shutting them down with
distributed denial-of service (DDoS) attacks, and releasing
names, email addresses, and passwords of government offi-
cials. In December of 2011, in the name of revealing corpo-
rate and government corruption, Anonymous hacked into
the US intelligence consultancy Stratfor, obtaining, among
other data, 2.7 million corporate emails detailing often sen-
sitive conversations involving current and former govern-
ment officials and thousands of off-the-record sources.
While these operations have many common objectives
and use similar hacking tactics, Anonymous is hard to pin

2
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

down. It has no fixed leadership and no national affiliation.

Individuals loosely coordinate, then attribute their actions to
Anonymous. As one hacker who participates in Anonymous
told a Baltimore journalist, “We have this agenda that we
all agree on and we all coordinate and act, but all act inde-
pendently toward it, without any want for recognition. We
just want to get something that we feel is important done.”2
Describing Anonymous is a challenge when writing a
book. For an intelligence agency—and particularly one like
the FBI, which has a history of combating perceived US
threats ranging from the Communist Party to al-­Qaeda—its
amorphous structure, mandate, and tactics can cause much
greater concern. The United States, which created the Inter-
net as a defense research project, now considers cyberspace
a “domain” or potential battlefield equal in importance to
land, sea, air, and outer space. As a result, Anonymous and
other groups involved in cyberattacks are seen as actors who
need to be controlled. But Anonymous does not work like
other political or military actors. It does not use accepted
international conventions of protest—­political marches, pe-
titions, physical violence—to pursue its goals.
It does not need to. Over the past decade, rapid advances
in digital technology have empowered individuals and ad hoc
groups to do what was once available only to institutions run
by the state and to private organizations built on a similar
top-down, bureaucratic model. “Anonymous demonstrates
one of the new core aspects of power in a networked, dem-
ocratic society: individuals are vastly more effective and less
susceptible to manipulation, control, and suppression by tra-
ditional sources of power than they were even a decade ago,”

3
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard’s Berkman Center

for Internet and Society, wrote in 2012 in Foreign Affairs.3
As will be explored in these pages, individuals can now do
things that replace and threaten existing institutions in all
areas of international affairs, including: development, war,
diplomacy, finance, international reporting, and activism.
And intelligence gathering: On January 13, 2012, when
FBI agent Timothy Lauster wrote to task force members
to set up a conference call “to discuss the on-going in-
vestigations related to Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and
other associated splinter groups,”4 Donncha O’Cearrbhail,
a 19-year-old from Offaly County, Ireland, intercepted
his email. The next day, O’Cearrbhail asked a prominent
Anonymous activist known as Sabu for help over Inter-
net Relay Chat, a text-based messaging system. “I have ac-
quired info about the time, phone number, and pin number
of the conference call,” O’Cearrbhail wrote. “I just don’t
have a good VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) setup for
actually calling in to record it.”5
O’Cearrbhail got help. On January 17, he recorded the con-
ference call. He sent the file to Sabu, and when Sabu failed to
post the recording, an audio file was posted on YouTube on
February 3, which a well-followed ­anonymous-linked twitter
handle @AnonymousIRC promoted and then tweeted: “The
#FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read
their internal comms for some time now #OpInfiltration.”6
This act of transparency did not go unpunished. O’Cearrbhail
did not know that Sabu was an FBI informant, enabling crim-
inal hacking under agency guidance. The US government had
five individuals involved with the conference call arrested,

4
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

including O’Cearrbhail, and charged them with compu-

ter hacking conspiracy, computer hacking, and intentionally
disclosing an unlawfully intercepted wire communication.
O’Cearrbhail was ultimately released without charge. Other
Anonymous members, including alleged leaders of the move-
ment, have also been detained. Still, the network continues to
grow and to challenge the authority of democracies and auto-
cratic states.

In international affairs, the term “rogue” is applied to states

such as Iran and North Korea, which disregard the norms
of the international system. It has also been applied to al-
Qaeda, which seeks to destroy Middle Eastern and Western
governments and restore an international Muslim caliphate
of the sort that existed in the centuries after Mohammed.
In short, a rogue actor is one who isn’t constrained by ex-
isting controls on behavior. A state, for example, can be
belligerent, even violent, but do so within the bounds of in-
ternational law and accepted norms of behavior. States can
be constrained by the same methods. It is when an actor is
perceived as uncontrollable that it gets the label of rogue.
Is Anonymous a rogue group? Yochai Benkler argues
that Anonymous, unlike al-Qaeda, “causes disruption, not
destruction.” DDoS attacks on websites have not changed
the Vatican’s stance on abortion or overturned the gov-
ernment of Bahrain, but the line between destruction and
disruption is largely subjective. As cybercrime author Rich-
ard Powers observes, Anonymous is “attacking the whole

5
 disru p t i v e pow e r

power structure”—the international economic and polit-

ical systems that have developed over the past century.7
Like many of the individuals and organizations innovating
online, Anonymous confounds the institutions, boundar-
ies, and categories that have maintained the balance of
power since the end of World War II. Considering that the
nation-state has the most to lose, and has in the past main-
tained its control via the institutions now being disrupted,
governmental concern is understandable.
Rogue or not, Anonymous is not an anomaly, and taking
its leaders out of circulation will not stop it or like-minded
groups. It represents an early example of a new form of
digitally derived power that is disrupting a wide range of
once powerful 21st-century institutions, not just in inter-
national affairs.
Disruption has become one of Silicon Valley’s most pop-
ular, if cloying, buzzwords. One is hard pressed to find a
startup that does not describe itself as a disruptive tech-
nology, or a company founder who is reluctant to take
on the establishment. The concept has also come to stand
for a form of libertarianism deeply rooted in the technol-
ogy sector, a sweeping ideology that goes well beyond the
precept that technology can engage social problems to
the belief that free market technology-entrepreneurialism
should be left unhindered by the state. In a sense then,
Anonymous is an ideological manifestation of the most
doctrinaire of the new technology elite. It represents the
anarchistic end of a spectrum that includes everything
from the belief that private-sector massive open online
courses extend the benefits of higher education to more

6
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

radical notions of markets unencumbered by taxes and

regulation and offshore islands free from the control of
the state. At one end is the hope that technology can make
our social and governance systems more efficient. On the
other is a desire to burn down the house—to take down
the state.
The concept of disruption is rooted in the work of Clay
Christensen, a professor of business administration at the
Harvard Business School who was originally interested in
why unimpressive technologies, like the transistor radio,
allow upstarts like Sony to take over markets from estab-
lished companies like RCA and Zenith, with their refined
product lines and large markets. “Why is it that compa-
nies like these invest aggressively and successfully in the
technologies necessary to retain their current customers
but then fail to make certain other technological invest-
ments that customers of the future will demand?” Chris-
tensen asked in a 1995 Harvard Business Review article
written with colleague Joseph Bower.8 The authors argue
that well-established companies are ahead in developing
new technologies that meet the needs of established cus-
tomers, but they cannot see beyond the worldview that
made them successful. This blind spot allows new compa-
nies to innovate on the margins. Disruptive technologies
first find a niche audience, and once their value is proven,
they widen their market, taking down the establishment.
In short, hierarchical institutions with entrenched prac-
tices, interests, and consumers are bad at anticipating and
catering to new markets and are therefore vulnerable to
nimble innovators.

7
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Christensen wrote a series of influential books, begin-

ning with The Innovator’s Dilemma, which look at many
industries, including airlines, steel mills, and journalism,
through the prism of disruption theory.9 He has also applied
disruption theory to the public sector. In a 2006 article
Christensen and his co-authors argued that in the United
States too much social spending is directed at maintaining
the status quo rather than at reaching underserved popula-
tions. “Catalytic innovation,” they write, would “challenge
industry incumbents by offering simpler, good-enough al-
ternatives to an underserved group of customers.”10
Government has all the burdens of established corpora-
tions: institutionalized structures and norms that lead to
lethargy, waste, inefficiency, and a lack of innovation. But
their purpose is different from that of corporations, which
have a mission to maximize value for their shareholders. In
the capitalist model, we hope that the collective impact of
the private sector benefits everyone to some extent. In the
public sector, however, the very mandate is to serve every-
one. Disruption theory explains the failure of institutions
to innovate and their risks of collapse, not the social conse-
quence of that failure. The Kodak workers who lost jobs, or
towns where the steel mills closed, are not the core focus of
business theory. And herein lies the problem for the state.
Disruptive innovation—from Anonymous, to cryptocurren-
cies like Bitcoin, to grassroots mapping of natural d­ isasters—
is challenging many core functions of the international
system, functions once controlled by states and international
institutions. The difference, of course, is that the state won’t
go away so easily, and the costs of disrupting it can be very

8
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

high. A Foreign Ministry or Defense Department suffers from

the same institutional constraints outlined by Christensen, yet
it cannot creatively destruct. Or if it does, the risks are enor-
mous, because disruptive innovation could signal the end of
the centuries-long modes of state governance. And despite the
imaginings of the techno- and crypto-anarchists, the reper-
cussions would be vast. So the stakes are high, and the aspects
of the state’s traditional power are fundamentally threatened.
For now, the challenge posed by disruptive innovation
does not mean the end of the state, but it does suggest that
the state is in decline, exposing laws, ethics, norms of be-
havior, and hierarchical structures that emerged amid an
older set of technologies as constraints. Put another way,
the state is losing its status as the pre-eminent mecha-
nism for collective action. Where it used to be that the
state had a virtual monopoly on the ability to shape the
behavior of large numbers of people, this is no longer the
case. Enabled by digital technology, disruptive innovators
are now able to influence the behavior of large numbers
of people without many of the societal constraints that
have developed around state action. These constraints,
which disruption theory treats as weaknesses, have his-
torically been strengths of democratic societies: They
hold government accountable and ensure that it operates
within the rule of law and within the bounds of prevail-
ing moral and ethical norms. There are of course varying
degrees of success within this framework, but the idea
of collective representation via institutional governance
is what has separated modern democratic societies from
anarchy.

9
 disru p t i v e pow e r

What does it mean to disrupt the state? What does dis-

ruptive innovation look like in the world of international
relations? And how is the modern state, still with tremen-
dous power and capacity for violence, pushing back against
disruptions?

It is widely understood, while sometimes overstated, that

the Arab Spring movements in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt
were enabled in part by the use of digital technology and
social media. Protestors, traditional media, and citizen
journalists all used Internet-based technologies to organize
events, coordinate movement, and broadcast their activi-
ties to the watching world.
What was less clear at the time, but is now evident, is
that the autocratic regimes that they were protesting were
digitally equipped to fight back. Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak sought to shut down the Internet, and Bahrain
has proven to be adept at monitoring and censoring its citi-
zens. Nowhere, however, was this digital capability more
evident than in Syria, where a government was willing to
brutally kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of its citizens
to halt the spread of protests from North Africa. Syria, led
by President Bashar Assad, has almost total control over
the telecommunication of its citizens. At a national level,
state-owned Syrian Telecommunication Establishment
censored and filtered communications to crack down on
protestors, activists, and the main rebel organization, the
Free Syrian Army. In parallel to government initiatives,

10
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

a network of hackers calling themselves the Syrian Elec-

tronic Army operates in general support of Assad, both in
Syria and globally—for example, hacking the AP Twitter
feed and claiming that the White House has been bombed,
causing a $136.5 billion drop in the S&P 500. Both the
state and its allied hackers use sophisticated technologies
to track and target anti-government protestors.
Where do an autocratic regime and its supporters get
such technology? In Syria’s case, the Assad regime obtained
devices manufactured by Blue Coat Systems, a California
company. A research center at the University of Toronto
called the Citizen Lab uncovered this connection after
obtaining a set of log files from these devices. (After ini-
tial denials, Blue Coat acknowledged that its devices were
being used in Syria, but denied that the company sold them
directly to the Syrian government, which would violate a
US Executive Order banning the transfer to Iran and Syria
of technologies that facilitate computer or network dis-
ruption, monitoring, or tracking.) The Citizen Lab later
showed that more than twenty other countries, including
a long list of rights abusers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and
Venezuela, also use Blue Coat devices to censor or monitor
Internet activity.11 The US government is also a Blue Coat
customer and used its devices to block Pentagon access to
websites supporting gay rights from Department of De-
fense computers.12
Blue Coat is hardly the only Western corporation to pro-
vide surveillance services to autocratic regimes. Google
engineers in Egypt discovered contract proposals from a

11
 disru p t i v e pow e r

digital security software company called Gamma Interna-

tional to the Mubarak regime for €250,000 worth of tech-
nology that would “enable them to intercept dissidents’
emails, record audio and video chats, and take copies of
computer hard drives.”13 High-profile technology compa-
nies such as Gamma and FinSpy supplied surveillance ser-
vices to regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, and
Syria. An operation by WikiLeaks and the British non-
governmental organization (NGO) Privacy International
revealed 287 documents indicating that surveillance com-
panies, such as the French arms dealer Amesys, sold both
spyware and malware to Gaddafi in Libya.14 Narus, a US-
based Boeing subsidiary, sold surveillance equipment to
Egypt, and Trovicor, a German company, did the same for
a dozen Middle Eastern and North African countries.15
Five times a year, hundreds of vendors come together in
Prague, Dubai, Brasilia, Washington, and Kuala Lumpur
to sell upward of $5 billion in tracking, censoring, moni-
toring, and spying technology at the Intelligent Support
Systems trade show, also known as the Wiretappers Ball.16
These events attract the arms and surveillance industries,
blue-chip corporations, and officials from democratic and
autocratic governments alike. A 2012 event brought to-
gether more than 2,700 representatives from 110 countries,
including problematic regimes in Afghanistan, Belarus,
and Sudan.17 When asked whether he would be comfort-
able with Zimbabwe and North Korea buying technology
there, Jerry Lucas, who runs the Wiretappers Ball, told the
Guardian, “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a
bad country and who’s a good country. Do some countries

12
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

use this technology to suppress political statements? Yes, I

would say that’s probably fair to say. But who are the ven-
dors to say that the technology is not being used for good as
well as for what you would consider not so good?”18

Jerry Lucas is hardly the only one who expects autocratic re-
gimes to use such technology to spy on citizens. In fact, as the
Assad regime was monitoring dissent, the US State Depart-
ment was developing an ambitious project to “arm” opposi-
tion members with surveillance-­circumvention technology.
During the 2009–2010 Iranian “green revolution” pro-
tests, the concept of Internet freedom became a buzzword
in Washington. By the time of the Arab Spring revolutions,
the State Department was ready to help to develop and
provide new digital tools to dissidents. Via a $57 million
congressional allocation, and as a part their wider 21st-
century statecraft initiative, the department developed
programs to train and equip allies in the region with ano-
nymizing and circumvention tools.19
One such project was called the Internet in a Suitcase,
which uses cellphones and wifi routers to create distributed
networks that allow for secure communication. During the
2012 Internet outage where Assad effectively shut down
all cellphone and Internet activity, approximately 2,000
of these mesh network kits were distributed to opposition
members.20 “The United States is going beyond humanitar-
ian aid and providing additional assistance, including com-
munications equipment that will help activists organize,

13
 disru p t i v e pow e r

evade attacks by the regime, and connect to the outside

world,” Secretary of State John Kerry said.21
This means that the US State Department is provid-
ing circumvention tools (technology the FBI has labeled
an “indicator of terrorist activity”) to dissidents who are
being targeted by a government armed with digital surveil-
lance tools made in the United Nations. As Sascha Mein-
rath, who is leading the Internet in a Suitcase project, says,
“a lot of these technologies can be used for great good, but
they are also a Faustian bargain.”22
States now find themselves in a convoluted position, as
both enablers and targets of disruptive actors. And this
perfectly represents the complexity of power, agency, and
control on the Internet. This Faustian bargain is a manifes-
tation of a new arms race, between people who are empow-
ered through free, secure communication and governments
that want to monitor and limit this communication. But it
also tells us something about the way the state views, and
is increasingly reacting to, the capabilities of digital tech-
nology and to those that are empowered by them.
Until the summer of 2013, this tension was the focus of my
research for this book. Digital technology, I hypothesized, was
enabling nontraditional international actors to take on and in
some important ways replace the capacity of states and large
institutions in ways that were both filled with opportunity
but also fundamentally destabilizing to the established inter-
national order. States were taking notice and began to play
the delicate game of both supporting and in some cases even
funding what they perceived as beneficial disruptive behavior
(economic innovation, Syrian dissidents) while at the same

14
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

time cracking down on disruptions perceived as threatening

(Anonymous, terrorist communication, the black market).
What I didn’t know, which we now do, is that in the
wake of September 11,23 Western democratic govern-
ments were so concerned about the capabilities of the
digitally empowered that they became willing to subvert
these digital powers and reassert their control over com-
munications. We have now learned both how threatened
the state truly was and the extent they were willing to
go to control individuals and groups they perceived as
nefarious actors. This book then also became a study
of how democratic states were using technology and the
consequences of a digital arms race between states and
their citizens.
When Edward Snowden, an American defense contrac-
tor based in Hawaii, leaked a vast trove of documents de-
tailing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance
program, the breadth and audacity of the US surveillance
state shocked the world. Snowden provided data that ex-
plained how the United States and other democracies were
attempting to control as much of the global telecommuni-
cations system as possible. In a chilling graphic presented
to a meeting of the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance (made
up of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand) the NSA described their
“New Collection Posture.” The operational goals were
summarized in a mantra: “Collect it All; Process it All;
Exploit it All; Partner it All; Sniff it All; Know it All.”24 A
similar document from British Government Communica-
tions Headquarters describes a satellite communications

15
 disru p t i v e pow e r

surveillance program as a “Collect it All proof-of-concept

system.” A memo from the NSA to Japan brags that new
capabilities are “bringing our enterprise one step closer to
collecting it all.”25
The underlying military rationale for the surveillance
state is rooted in the mentality that one can control a battle-
field through situational awareness. The more one knows,
the more one can control outcomes. Digital omniscience
is incredibly difficult to accomplish, however, and it could
ultimately break a technological system, the Internet, that
is paradoxically the source of enormous personal freedom,
expression, and empowerment.
For the state to collect everything, to “know it all,” it
must first normalize pervasive surveillance. Because al-
Qaeda shares many of the attributes of disruptive innova-
tors, 9/11 afforded democratic states the pretext to pass
sweeping security legislation. The state’s appetite for om-
niscience is of course not new, but we now know that the
Patriot Act, drafted in a matter of days and passed by Con-
gress with only a single dissenting voice, enabled a vast
global surveillance infrastructure. As journalist Quinn
Norton notes, the security establishment can succumb to
paranoia as well as self-preservation: “When you’re an in-
credibly well-funded defense and intelligence community,
the lack of existential threats is an existential threat. There
is nothing to do but be scared of things.”26
And this is partly for good reason: Al-Qaeda posed a
new kind of threat. Its constituent parts were decentralized,
spread out around the world, based on an idea, and despite
their unconventional use of weaponry, connected and fueled

16
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

by their ability to communicate, both clandestinely and in

the media. They were not a national army that could be
defeated on a traditional battlefield. They have also proved
technologically adept. In the summer of 2014, analysis
demonstrated how they have responded to increased state
surveillance by developing their own encryptions tools.27
This fear coincided with an additional cultural, techno-
logical, and economic development: the creation of vast
amounts of data encompassing human communication
and movement. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s
information, a project that is rapidly growing to include
the use of robotic data collection, satellite footage, drones,
and artificial intelligence. Facebook seeks to connect ev-
eryone in the world, and in so doing has detailed social
and behavioral data on over a billion people. It is develop-
ing advanced facial recognition and moving into virtual
reality.
There is a perceived benign utopianism to these objectives
that the state has been able to co-opt. Technology became
pervasive enough for most people to use I­ nternet-connected
devices, corporations developed business models depen-
dent on mining data from these communications, and citi-
zens willingly (if not always consciously) exchanged their
personal data for free online services. For a government
that sought to know everything, to collect it all, corpora-
tions had built an infrastructure, and the public had filled
in much of the data. The same technological system that
empowers people to disrupt traditional and state institu-
tions has been shown to be incredibly effective at providing
the backbone of a surveillance state.

17
 disru p t i v e pow e r

When Edward Snowden showed the extent, breadth,

and audacity of the US surveillance state, he wasn’t just re-
vealing a program he saw as unconstitutional or unethical.
He was providing the data required to understand how the
US government had chosen to respond to the challenges of
digitally empowered actors. Just as the Syrian government
had chosen to use digital networks as a domain to control,
the US government had, in a post 9/11 state of panic and
fear, decided to exert power over the network itself. As
Snowden himself says, “These programs were never about
terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control,
and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”

Digital technology has empowered individuals and groups

to do things that previously only states and large institu-
tions could accomplish. Precisely those trends that have
weakened the power of the state—and that states have
thus been programmed to dissuade—have strengthened
a new set of actors who are well placed to advance the
rights and freedoms of individuals. But these networked
actors are no more morally bound than those that oper-
ate within the traditional state system. They can use their
power in many ways, for altruistic or malicious ends. It is
therefore their ability to act and the new forms of action
enabled by networked technology that are the primary
focus of this book.
The digitally empowered are only part of the story.
Threatened by this decentralized power and fearful of

18
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

nefarious actors wielding it, the state is fighting back. Since

digital technology challenges centralized command and hi-
erarchical control, the state is increasingly seeking to con-
trol the network itself. But in attempting to limit digital
empowerment, states could ultimately destroy the benefits
and freedoms of the network. States will have to choose be-
tween seeking absolute control and giving up some power
in order to preserve the emerging system. Democratic gov-
ernments in particular face a dilemma, as the attributes
that determine success in a networked world are ones that
their institutions were built to dissuade. Increasingly, the
capabilities of the state are at odds with its objectives. This
tension is not sustainable.
This 21st-century foreign policy challenge is explored in
three parts. The first part begins with Disruptive Power,
tracing the development of the modern state, which began
as a mechanism for centralizing and exercising power and
became hierarchical, bureaucratic, and, in democratic states,
accountable to the rule of law. In a networked world, how-
ever, groups like Anonymous wield power by being decen-
tralized, collaborative, and resilient. This disruptive power
threatens the institutions that have preserved the balance of
power since the end of World War II.
The next four chapters look at individuals and groups
fueled by digital technologies in ways that challenge the
power of established institutions. Spaces of Dissent ex-
plores digital activism through the example of a group of
hackers called Telecomix, who served as a form of tech
support for the Arab Spring. New Money examines the
rise of Bitcoin and what cryptocurrencies mean for the

19
 disru p t i v e pow e r

international financial system the state has long controlled.

Being There considers the evolution of international re-
porting by juxtaposing the death of seasoned foreign war
correspondent Marie Colvin during the bombing of Homs,
Syria, with the new digital tools Syrian citizens used to doc-
ument and stream the war to the world in real time. Saving
the Saviors looks at the impact of collaborative mapping
and advances in satellite technology on humanitarian and
development agencies.
The final three chapters focus on the state’s use of dig-
ital technology and its response to disruptive actors. The
emerging practice of digital diplomacy—public diplomacy
through social media as well as more invasive diplomatic
initiatives—is the subject of Diplomacy Unbound. The
Violence of Algorithms looks at how advances in com-
putational power and automation have produced military
weapons and surveillance tools that blur the boundaries
of the battlefield and the lines between domestic and in-
ternational. Finally, The Crisis of the State outlines four
challenges that together threaten the state’s traditional
mechanisms of power and control, but that also might
provide models for 20th-century international institutions
seeking to adapt—if they are structurally capable of trans-
formation or meaningful reform.
Digitally enabled actors, groups, and ad hoc networks
are creating new forms of organization and often share dif-
ferent values and have conflicting objectives from the insti-
tutions of the current international system. What remains
to be seen is whether the core characteristics of disrup-
tive power are conducive to principles of accountability,

20
 l o s i n g c o n t r ol

stability, and democratic engagement, or fundamentally

undermine them. In a world where the traditional state
model empowers both democrats and dictators, this is not
a new tension. But it is one that increasingly represents a
crisis for both the state and the host of other 20th-century
institutions that have long controlled power in the interna-
tional system. At the start of a potentially long struggle for
relevance, states will have to choose between seeking abso-
lute control and giving up some power in order to preserve,
and hopefully enhance, the emerging system.

21
 chapter two

disruptiv e pow er

The modern history of power is inextricably tied to the

development, interests, and capabilities of the state. The
power that the state has accrued is derived from its ability
to control its citizens, mobilize collective action, to regu-
late corporations and economic activity, and to ­influence
other states. State power is hierarchical, institutional, and
structural. It is also connected to the ability to control
information and broadcasts. A contemporary discussion
of foreign policy must move beyond the confines of state
power, however, and into the nebulous, networked world
emerging around us.
The rise of the nation-state as the primary unit of inter-
national politics coincides with the development of a new
information technology. Gutenberg’s printing press in the
15th century paved the way for a transition from the disag-
gregated feudal system of the Middle Ages to a more struc-
tured form of political power.
In addition to allowing information to be dispersed widely,
the printing press shaped how information was conceived.
To spread information, one had to put it in a linear, bound
form. Society moved from a decentralized, oral tradition
of knowledge-sharing with privileged access to books and

22
 disru p t i v e pow e r

literacy to one where information could be centralized, con-

trolled, and mass-produced. And with this centralization
of communicative and organizational authority came the
modern state. This societal shift has largely determined the
modern era. Some 350 years of governance, institutional
design, political evolution, media, and culture have been
dictated by humankind’s rapport with the printed word.
The Treaty of Westphalia, signed in 1648, 200 years into
the Gutenberg era, ended the Thirty Years’ War and marks
the birth of the modern nation-state system. Its core contri-
bution was to establish principles for legitimate rule. These
principles—sovereignty, the right of self-determination,
legal equality between states, and nonintervention in the
internal affairs of other states—would become norms for
state behavior. A state’s legitimacy was for the first time
sanctioned by an interstate agreement.
The treaty also established what has been called a
classic balance-of-power system, whereby large states
were roughly considered equal, and wars of contain-
ment kept the system in check. Political scientist Alan C.
Lamborn describes the goal of this system as preserving
“the independence of the key states by preventing any
one state from becoming so powerful militarily that it
could dominate all the others.”1
In the century before the Treaty of Westphalia, politi-
cal philosophers were exploring the nature of power and
social organization, looking at the bargains territorial
states could make with their citizens and with other states.
They were also publishing and widely distributing their
ideas.

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 disru p t i v e pow e r

Machiavelli, in The Prince, and Hobbes, in Leviathan,

argue that states gained power and legitimacy by protect-
ing the security and well-being of their citizens. Fighting
between states, they argued, could be minimized if the
power and independence of each was mutually recognized.
Although there are multiple definitions of statehood, the
generally used definition comes from Max Weber, who de-
fines the state as “a human community that (successfully)
claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force
within a given territory.”2 This basic notion of statehood
implies that a legitimate state can use force against, or in
favor of, its citizens without legal consequences.
Historians have identified two ways of looking at the
state: Political philosophers such as Hobbes, Rousseau,
and Locke held a Contractarian view of the state—that
is, without the existence of the state (i.e., in the “state of
nature”), there would be a foundation for anarchy and
chaos everywhere. According to the Hobbesian idea of
“war of every man against every man” in which life was
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” it is necessary
to have a “common power to keep them all in awe.”3 This
leads to the creation of a “social contract” or an implicit
agreement among individuals to empower the state and
follow rights and responsibilities vis-à-vis each other: “At
some point in their history, certain peoples spontaneously,
rationally, and voluntarily gave up their individual sov-
ereignties and united with other communities to form a
larger political unit deserving to be called a state.”4
More contemporary definitions of statehood focus on the
state as an organizational structure with a monopoly on

24
 disru p t i v e pow e r

the use of violence. Unlike the Contractarian view, which

locates the source of the state in the conflict between in-
dividuals, the Predatory view focuses on conflict between
the state and its citizens. In the Predatory view, the state
uses its comparative advantage over the use of violence to
enforce laws and rules upon its citizenry. This idea closely
relates to that of sociologist Charles Tilly’s notion of the
“state as organized crime,” in which the elites and the lead-
ers work together to maintain the status quo by acquiring
revenue and enforcing their power on the citizens. This
view holds that the rulers of the state are egotistic, maxi-
mizing, rational actors who are interested in their own sur-
vival and thereby curtail whatever might appear as a threat
to their monopoly over power. Tilly sees states as “rela-
tively centralized, differentiated organizations, the officials
of which, more or less, successfully claim control over the
chief concentrated means of violence within a population
inhabiting a large contiguous territory.”5 Economist Doug-
las North is even more direct: “A state is an organization
with a comparative advantage in violence, extending over
a geographic area whose boundaries are determined by its
power to tax constituents.”6
The primacy of control over the use of force is para-
mount in the Predatory view, but both have to do with the
power of the state to control people. Internally, the state
manifests its power via a social contract with its citizens,
whereby it is seen to legitimately provide for the common
good. And externally, it maintains power via the use or
threat of force. Both of these forms of control are at their
foundation, about power.

25
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Has the power of the state declined? The 20th century

saw the rise of the institutionalized and globalized state,
and in many ways the end of the traditional empires and
monarchist rule that had defined much of the previous cen-
turies. Global powers fought two world wars to define the
terms of this new global system. World War I essentially
reversed the economic relationship between Europe and
America. Whereas Britain and France had been the world’s
creditors, they became indebted to the United States. Fol-
lowing the war, the League of Nations was founded with
the goal of bringing order and control to the state system.
While ultimately without teeth, and thus ineffective at
stopping World War II, it did lay the foundation for the
United Nations.
Following World War II, once again, the result was more
international institutionalization with the goal of mitigat-
ing the costs of state power. World leaders questioned the
legitimacy of the state, appealing to universal principles
of human rights and justice. This led to the founding of
the United Nations to prevent another war between great
powers. Perhaps the most consequential shift, and one that
served to embed new powers with the state, were the fi-
nancial institutions of the Bretton Woods agreement. This
agreement implemented a largely free-market capitalist
system for the global economy, with the state, and in par-
ticular the United States, at its center. The fixed exchange
rate and gold standard systems were created, and the man-
agement of the international monetary system was placed in
the International Monetary Fund. The International Trade
Organization, later to become the General Agreement on

26
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Tariffs and Trade, promoted movement toward a system of

free trade between countries.
It is hard to imagine a more robust statement of state
power than the creation of the global architecture that
followed the two world wars. With it came the establish-
ment of an international system with the United States and
its economic model at the center. Beyond solidifying this
power, the state-based institutions that were created were
designed to address many of the world’s problems.
This move to interstate institutions proved a d
­ ouble-edged
sword for the nation-state. The success of the Bretton
Woods institutions at liberalizing international trade in-
evitably led to globalization, which is undermining tradi-
tional core elements of state control, such as governance,
populations, and territorial sovereignty. Whether it is the
Internet’s ability to transcend geographical boundaries or
the rise of multinational corporations beyond the control of
any one state, national governments have been challenged
by new systems of power.7 In their book Globalization/
Anti-Globalization, David Held and Anthony McGrew
argue that we are headed into a post-­Westphalian system
characterized by the increasing questioning of state sover-
eignty in subtle ways. New organizations and institutions
are wielding authority that once belonged only to the state.8
Eminent international relations scholars Joseph Nye Jr.
and Robert Keohane push back on such assessments.9 The
problem with such analyses, they argue, is that they under-
estimate the power of the state, which is more resilient and
continues to command loyalty from a vast majority of citi-
zens. These pundits of modernity, as Nye and Keohane call

27
 disru p t i v e pow e r

them, “failed to analyze how the holders of power could

wield that power to shape or distort patterns of interde-
pendence that cut across national boundaries.”
What has been grossly overlooked, they argue, is how
“the new world overlaps and rests on the traditional world
in which power depends on geographically based institu-
tions.” They call the resulting landscape one of “complex
interdependence,” in which actors have multiple relation-
ships depending on the nature of their interest, and each
relationship is governed by some set of norms, values, and
shared culture. This new ecosystem has not replaced state
power, they argue, because “information does not flow in
a vacuum but in political space that is already occupied.”
This is surely true, but it does not negate the possibility
that power is indeed shifting, and that the power of the
state could be diminishing.
Nor does it account for shifts in how the state itself
wields power, an argument that Nye himself has champi-
oned through his theory of soft power. States, he argues,
have two principal means of persuasion: the blunt force
of military or economic coercion and the more subtle
forms of coopting and attraction. In the latter, states make
others want what they want through the promotion of
their values—in the case of the United States, democracy,
human rights, and individual prosperity. According to
Nye, these values are promoted through a wide range of
non-state institutions, and his concept of soft power has
therefore come to be seen as a broadening of the mandate
of the state into untraditional areas. While he still sees the
state as the primary actor of the international system, the

28
 disru p t i v e pow e r

theory of soft power implicitly elevates a wide network of

other groups and individuals who had previously been left
out of the international conversation.
And they were about to get a lot more powerful. As
international-relations scholars were beginning to theo-
­
rize the changing role of the state, a revolution in infor-
mation technology was under way. Digital information,
and the forms of behavior which it allows, are unbound.
­Communications are no longer constrained by the linear-
ity of print or the hierarchy of the 20th century, existing
instead in fluid networks. They are emboldened by new
attributes, such as anonymity and constant change.
What forms of power are emerging in this new space?
And in what ways are scholars beginning to map out this
new ecosystem of actors and technologies? One answer is
the theory of networked power.

Networks are of course nothing new. Polynesian trade routes,

the Hanseatic League, the Rothschild banks, African talking
drummers were all non-hierarchical networks of nodes.
But thinking about them in an international relations
context never seemed necessary because state power has
been so hierarchical and dominant until recently. What’s
more, advances in information technology have vastly in-
creased the importance of networks. A group of citizens
could always organize an ad hoc protest, for example, but
now this can be done quickly and on a vast scale with
mobile phones over social networks.

29
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Renowned communication theorist Manual Castells has

in many ways pioneered the study of the social and policy
effects of digital communication networks. He argues that
digital technology enables different forms of behavior from
what was possible on non-digital networks.10
In this view, digital technology increases the power of
networks by overcoming the overwhelming challenges of
coordination, communication, size, complexity, and veloc-
ity that previously limited networked behavior.11
States, Castells argues, are no longer isolated actors
with enormous power. Their power is challenged and
influenced by other powerful nodes, sub-networks, and
alternative networks.12 Beyond state behavior, network
power has led to the re-creation of civil society at the
global and the local levels. Despite the diversity of cul-
tures and societies, networks knit civil society together.
And this is also true at the personal level, where Castells
sees a new form of networked individualism emerging.
He describes a synthesis between our individual-centered
culture and the desire to coexist online. Ultimately, for
Castells, in a network society, power continues to be
the fundamental structuring force. However, it does not
reside in institutions, states, or ­corporations—rather, it
is located in the network itself. And as such, it is the be-
havior within these networks that should be the object of
our analysis.
In its simplest form, a network is a set of interconnected
nodes (individual, groups, organizations, states, etc.) that
allows the sharing of ideas, goods, values, and other re-
sources. Networks produce patterns of relationships that

30
 disru p t i v e pow e r

influence those in and outside the network. Consequently,

the power of a network is either derived from its internal
structure or through the agency its structure derives.13
A network is an interplay between its structure and the
actors that participate in it. Nodes in a social network can
be analyzed as individual members, groups, or organiza-
tions; however, they are connected in ways that lead to
dependency and patterns. Or, put another way, networks
can have predictable, even determinative, structures akin
to hierarchies.14
In computer science terms, nodes in a network have
power because they can threaten to sever links with other
nodes, giving them a degree of influence over their behav-
ior.15 As such, they can define the nature of the network
by setting conditions and limitations on what information
the other nodes are able to share. In this construct, power-
ful nodes emerge in part by reducing transaction costs of
interacting within the network.
Actors within networks may view a network as a means
for coordinated or collective action aimed at changing
international outcomes and national policies. However,
because these networks lack a formal legitimate organiza-
tional ability that would arbitrate or resolve disputes, and
are non-hierarchical, have loose ties between nodes, and
have less precise boundaries than traditional institutions,
there is a fluidity to their behavior.
In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing
without Organizations, technology theorist Clay Shirky
sees networks as new formations of people and groups
that in many ways sit outside the social organizations of

31
 disru p t i v e pow e r

hierarchical institutions. For Shirky, the word “organiza-

tion” has several meanings: It denotes the state of being
organized and also the groups that do the organizing. Typ-
ical organizations are hierarchical with a distinct and clear
chain of command, which has meant that specific systems
of management preserve the structures of these organiza-
tions. The hierarchical organization was robust because
forming competing large institutional groups was relatively
hard. Now, however, forming a group or alliance online is
relatively easy. “Groups of people are complex, in ways
that make those groups hard to form and hard to sustain,”
he argues. “Much of the shape of traditional institutions
is a response to those difficulties. New social tools relieve
some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of group-
forming, like using simple sharing to anchor the creation
of new groups.”16
Yochai Benkler also sees networks as both a collection
of individual actions and as an underlying structure: “we
can think of individuals as discrete entities in multiple
intersecting networks, but also of organizations, or even
techno-organizational forms, like WikiLeaks, as opposed
to Julian Assange as the operative entity.” To this effect,
network power “describes the extent to which one entity in
a network can affect the behavior, configurations, or out-
comes of another entity, as well as the modality through
which it can do so.”17 To Benkler, power within a network
is the extent to which a node can influence other nodes
in their behavior, outcomes, or configuration. In a related
manner, freedom in a network is the extent to which indi-
viduals or entities can determine their own behavior.

32
 disru p t i v e pow e r

Twenty years ago only mainstream media could have dis-

seminated a video of the US helicopter attack on journal-
ists in Iraq, as WikiLeaks did. Effective distribution would
have depended on a small number of large-scale media
outlets. Instead, WikiLeaks posted the video on a series of
mirrored websites and it went viral in hours, ensuring its
widespread global dissemination before governments had
even had a chance to respond. In the networked society,
power can be exercised through new channels.18

Political scientist and public policy leader Anne-Marie

Slaughter has been influential in applying network theory
to the international domain through the articulation of the
idea of network power. While she ultimately argues that
all major elements of society are networked—war (organ-
ization between different terrorist groups), diplomacy (in-
tergovernmental cooperation), business (economic groups),
media (interactive journalism), social relations (social net-
works)—she places much of her focus on the role of the
state in these systems. She concludes, as we will see, that
in the end, “Hierarchy and control lose out to community,
collaboration, and self-organization.”19 Even in the heavily
institutional world of global trade, networks have become
the central organizing feature of markets. Global produc-
tion networks, not nation-states, dominate the most dy-
namic structures of the economy.20 Networks challenge the
very existence and viability of hierarchical structures.

33
 disru p t i v e pow e r

For Slaughter, power in networks lies in the ability to

exert soft power: in networks, authority cannot be en-
forced—it needs to be acquired through endearment and
obligation.21 The power that flows from connectivity, she
argues, is not the power to impose outcomes since “net-
works are not directed and controlled as much as they are
managed and orchestrated . . . and multiple players are
integrated into a whole that is greater than the sum of its
parts.”22 Networked power instead flows from the ability
to make a maximum number of valuable connections that
strive toward some common political, economic, or social
purpose.
According to Slaughter, global networks have funda-
mentally challenged the notion of Westphalian sovereignty
first because these nation-states are simply not as effective
in exerting power as they used to be. As Political Scientist
Robert Keohane said in 1993, “It is now a platitude that the
ability of governments to attain their objectives through in-
dividual action has been undermined by international po-
litical and economic interdependence.” This, according to
Slaughter, has been magnified by networked actors.23
Second, the Westphalian notion of absolute sovereignty
is declining. The idea whereby the state has complete con-
trol of its territory and the welfare of its citizens is being
challenged by any number of international legal regimes
and norms, most notably the idea of the Responsibility to
Protect, whereby a state’s sovereignty is conditional on the
protection of its citizens.
Following this qualification, Slaughter argues that there
is a need for a different conceptualization of sovereignty,

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one that focuses on a state’s capacity to participate in trans-

governmental regimes and international institutions; this
notion of sovereignty is inextricably linked to the existence
of “government networks” operating across borders and
the power that they wield.
The idea of “sovereignty as responsibility” also flows from
this notion of evolving sovereignty. According to Slaughter,
“The best illustration of the new sovereignty can be found
in the operation of ‘government networks’—­networks of
national government officials of all kinds operating across
borders to regulate individuals and corporations operat-
ing in a global economy, combat global crime, and address
common problems on a global scale.” Slaughter argues
that networked sovereignty is built on trust and relation-
ships between participants, the exchange of information
on a regular basis, collaboration on common issues, and
the offer of technical assistance and professional socializa-
tion to members from less developed countries.
This definition of sovereignty relies almost entirely on
the norms of state behavior. It includes many of the lessons
of network theory and applies them to networks of states.
However, there is a world of other actors participating in
networks that overlap and intersect with state interests.
What’s more, these actors are not constrained by the same
legal, ethical, and regulatory norms as states. And their
objectives and goals need not be based in either personal or
collective interests. Perhaps most important, they are very
difficult to control.
Slaughter’s argument for networked power, like Nye’s
soft power before it, ultimately privileges the state in the

35
 disru p t i v e pow e r

international system. They both recognize that hierarchies

are threatened by networks, that new groups have power
and influence, and that states need to adapt to remain rel-
evant. This in itself is a remarkable shift in thinking. In a
matter of a decade or two, a system of state-based power
that has held for half a millennium is in the middle of a
rapid transformation.
Ultimately, however, the network power and network
sovereignty arguments fail to take the logic that underpins
them to their conclusion. At their core, they are still about
the state. They focus on how the state should and must
adapt to remain relevant in this new world. But it could
equally be true that the attributes that empower individu-
als and groups to challenge dominant actors are powerful
enough to fundamentally threaten the viability of the state
as a social construct. This is a far more radical proposition,
and one with vast consequence. It poses a existential chal-
lenge to the viability of the state in a networked system,
one that could signal a revolutionary break from the slow
evolutionary history of the state system described earlier.
To me, the empowerment of digital actors raises funda-
mental questions for the international system. What are
the implications that significant state responsibilities will
be undermined or replaced by networked actors? Are the
ethical and legal norms that we have embedded into our
traditional institutions transferable to a networked world?
What are the risks that our global security and economic
institutions will be rendered obsolete or irrelevant? How
are states fighting back, and are their actions stemming
the tide or ultimately hastening their decline? And perhaps

36
 disru p t i v e pow e r

most important, how do we as a society engage those who

have power now, rather than with those that once did?
To answer these questions, we have to first look in more
detail at what gives networked actors power.

How has Anonymous, a seemingly disorganized, leaderless,

diffuse group of digital activists, been able to take on the
world’s most powerful states and corporations? The answer
gives us a window into the new world of disruptive power.
Information technology has radically lowered the bar-
rier for entry into international collective action. As legal
scholar Marvin Ammori argues, the marginal production
and distribution costs are now so low that online partici-
pants are able to overcome the technological and logistical
costs, and organizational barriers, to coordinated political
action. This ability for ad hoc collaboration enables a net-
work of individual participants driven by non-monetary
motivations and leverages their excess labor capacity.24
A divide remains between who has access to this em-
powering technology and who doesn’t. Ultimately, it is
not simply about access (though access remains an issue)
but about what people are able to do with that access.
Most of our technology is designed by the affluent, for the
affluent, which leads to a real bias in who is empowered
by it. Disruptive power also privileges certain forms of
knowledge. Knowing code, being comfortable with mul-
tiple identities, being curious and creative are powerful in
the digital world.

37
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Chapter LVIII
Other voyages and sufferings of father Fray Diego
Aduarte under the direction of his superiors and for
the preaching of the gospel.

[This chapter contains an account of the unsuccessful expedition to

Camboxa undertaken by Don Luis Perez Das Mariñas, as narrated in book i,
chapters xlix and l, of this history. In that narrative, given by father Fray
Diego, he breaks off in the account of his own experience at the point where
he was separated from the rest of the company, having gone to Macan to be
cured of his illness while the others returned to Manila.]

He was not able to remain very long in Macan because many Chinese
mandarins frequently came to that city, and to the convent where father
Fray Diego was, since the city is in China itself; and it did not seem to him
that he was safe from the inspector. As there was no opportunity for him to
make a voyage in any other direction, he set out for Malaca, a city of India
about as far from Manila as Macan is. As we shall see, he went away partly
that that ship and all in it might not perish. They set sail in the middle of
January; and as they were crossing from the gulf of Haynao to the coast of
Cochinchina, Champa, and Camboja, there was a furious storm at the same
place where he had met a storm two years before, and on the same night,
between the eighth and ninth of February. [This stripped the ship of its
rigging, and threw them into great distress; however, as it was strong and
steered well, it soon righted itself and reached Malaca. Here father Fray
Diego remained, and the vessel sailed again for Goa, but came back again
after struggling for forty days with heavy seas and unfavorable winds.
Having lost this opportunity it was obliged to winter there, and departed
with the next monsoon, in the middle of the following December. In it there
went three Portuguese religious of our order, taking with them father Fray
Diego, who, because of his poverty, was not provided with ship-stores.
After they had passed the famous island of Zeilan (i.e., Ceylon), and were
in latitude six, they encountered so heavy a sea that they were driven back
to the equator, under the lee of the Maldive Islands, where a ship never
lands. Caught in that archipelago of reefs and atolls, the Portuguese are long
delayed before they can make their way out. At last they reach the harbor of
Kocchi in India, “after having spent five months in sailing four hundred
leguas;” and, if they had arrived a few hours later, could not have entered
the port over the bar, although they emptied the ship. Father Fray Diego
waited in India for the season when he could voyage to España.] He was not
idle, but was occupied with many devout exercises, which he had continued
even when he was at sea. Yet this was not what he most desired, and not
what was most suitable to his wishes, and to his calling as a religious.
Hence when he found himself in convents of devoted religious, his spirit
was greatly rejoiced; and he strove there to lay up some provision of
devotion for the long voyage, in the service of God and of these new
conversions, which he proposed to undertake to España for preachers. He
visited first the Christians converted by the apostle St. Thomas, whose
Christianity has endured from his time to the present in India, and is now
purged from its errors, which it incurred only for lack of Catholic preachers.
There are in that country matters to arouse great devotion, and anyone who
was so devout as father Fray Diego could not go that way without visiting
them, even at the cost of many days of journey and hardship. This was not
in vain, but brought with it much spiritual reward. He embarked January 15,
1603, in the “San Roque,” a very large ship with four decks and two
quarter-decks. They had favorable weather to the latitude of Cape de Buena
Esperança [i.e., of Good Hope]; and thus a long vacation from hardships
was provided for father Fray Diego, who had been inured to suffering them
in the service of Him who was his comfort in them. [But here they
encountered first calms, and then fearful tempests, which almost wrecked
the ship; and, to save their lives, they were compelled to lighten the ship,
casting into the sea pepper and rich stuffs valued at fifty thousand ducados.
Finally, they passed the Cape of Good Hope on May 12. The rest of the
voyage was peaceful, save that they encountered a storm off the coast of
Portugal; but they escaped from this and landed at Vigo, which is in Galicia,
September 17, after having passed eight months in navigation. They all
went barefoot to church to give thanks to the Lord, who had delivered them
from so many and such great perils; and father Fray Diego went to visit the
church of the apostle of España,64 which is fourteen leguas from there,
because it would not have been proper to miss this devotion on account of
so short a journey.]
Chapter LIX
Other journeys of father Fray Diego in the service of
the Lord, for the advancement of the conversions of
these tribes.

After all these hardships and perils, which were suffered with such great
patience, father Fray Diego went to the court of España—not to gain honor
or wealth, or rent, or any other temporal thing; but because of love of the
Lord, for His glory, the extension of the gospel, and the salvation of these
tribes. Since he had already passed through so many difficulties, divine
Providence did not see fit that he should find them there, where there are
ordinarily so many; and the royal Council immediately gave him
permission and direction to convey a number of religious to this province at
his Majesty’s expense, that they might there carry on the excellent work
which had been begun by the religious of this order, and that they might
continue to draw heathen from the darkness of unbelief to the light of the
gospel. Father Fray Diego was not of a character to regard himself as
exhausted, although he had so many reasons to be so; and therefore, without
more delay, he traversed the [ecclesiastical] provinces of España, Aragon,
and Andalucia, seeking for laborers for this part of the vineyard of the
church, or this new vine in it. [As this was a work of God, He moved the
hearts of many good religious to volunteer to undertake this arduous
enterprise. They were greatly influenced by hearing from father Fray Diego
and others of the great need and lack of religious in this province, to
accomplish the vast work with which it is charged; and of the good done by
our order in these regions, which follows the primitive order in the strict
observance of the rule, and which is like the primitive church in the
conversion of the peoples. This company embarked near the first of July,
1605; and, after suffering the ordinary discomforts of two long voyages
following so closely one after the other, they reached Manila the next year,
six having died in the voyages and journeys. One of these was father Fray
Pedro Valverde, a student in the college of San Gregorio, a son of San Pablo
at Cordova, and a religious of superior virtue. He died as the vessel was just
beginning to come among the islands, and was buried in an Indian hamlet
near the port of Ybalon. Some years afterward, when the father provincial
sent a religious for his bones, he found the body still entire, without a foul
odor or any decay, just as if it had been newly buried; but neither the
Indians nor their encomendero would permit him to take it away, keeping
possession of it as a holy body. The day after they arrived, the superior gave
them their assignments throughout all the province because of the great
need of religious; and many were sent to Nueva Segovia.] Ere long, many
of the religious wrote to him thanking him for having brought them to so
devoted a province, where they had so much opportunity to serve God and
to do good to their fellow-men. In particular, father Fray Matheo de la Villa,
a son of Sant Esteban at Salamanca, wrote to him. He was in a large village,
the whole population of which was composed of heathen who desired to
become Christians. He taught them what they desired much, and he desired
more. He wrote that on Holy Saturday he had been obliged to baptize six
hundred of them in a church which they themselves were making; and that
he now understood the language of the natives sufficiently, though he had
been only six months learning it. In spite of this diligence, they were not
able to attend to this great spiritual harvest, for the laborers were few; and
so, though new and old were apportioned, there were not enough, although
they did all in their power, for many villages of heathen who begged for
them with great urgency. The provincial, grieved by this, and seeing that he
had no answer to make except that he would pray God to bring religious
from España, wrote to father Fray Francisco de Sant Joseph, whom he had
left in Manila as vicar-provincial, and to the other religious, an account of
affairs. In particular he told them that the Indian chiefs from inland had
come to him begging him, on their knees and in tears, to give them a
religious to teach them the way to heaven; and that one of them had offered
to make a village of two thousand inhabitants and the other of nine hundred,
in order that the religious might with greater ease give them Christian
instruction. The Indians in their heathen condition live in farmsteads and
tiny hamlets, where it is very difficult to teach them; and it is impossible
that teaching shall enlighten them, because of the inability of the religious
to care for and attend to so many small villages. Hence, to make good
Christians of them, it is necessary to gather them in larger villages. At the
beginning, there was great difficulty in causing the Indians to leave their
ancient abodes; though by the help of God, and of that spirit of gentleness
and kindness which He gives to His disciples, the religious overcame it.
These heathen Indians were so eager to have teachers that, unlike the rest,
they did not wait to be asked; but, to succeed in obtaining religious,
themselves offered by anticipation to remove this difficulty, which is
generally so great. The provincial wrote, in addition, that if the ministers at
Manila should be reduced somewhat in number he could send someone, or
someone could go, to help in this extreme need, to which he could not give
aid from there. Father Fray Francisco de Sant Joseph called together the
fathers who formed the council; and they, after considering the case, found
only one religious who could go. This was father Fray Jacintho de Sant
Jeronimo. Because of this father Fray Francisco de Sant Joseph—as one
who always thought of himself that he did little, and that he would be little
missed—set out with this religious at the time of his embarcation, without
consulting anyone else. In this he acted as superior, which he then was.
After he had sailed eight leguas, he wrote to the religious of Manila that he
was going to supply this lack, since it seemed to him that he would not be
much missed here. But the father-provincial did not approve, because he
knew that for the Indians about Manila, whose language he understood
admirably, he was a St. Paul. On this account he was called, even by the
religious of other orders, “the apostle of the Indians.” For the Spaniards he
was a second St. John Chrisostom in preaching and life; and hence the
provincial was not slow in sending him back to his former post.
The position of prior of the principal convent in the province of Manila was
vacant, and the religious in it unanimously elected father Fray Diego as
their superior. He declined the position as long as he could, and accepted it
only when he was compelled to do so by the rule of strict obedience. He
filled the position remarkably well, though he did not hold it long; for in the
following year the vessels from Nueva España brought news of the death of
father Fray Domingo de Nieva, who had gone in the preceding year as
procurator of this province in España. He had left the cares of this life to
enjoy the quiet which, because of his great virtue and charity, the Lord had
kept for him in heaven. Since it was very necessary for the province to have
someone in España to send them religious—for without this supply the
province could not be maintained—they immediately arranged to send
another; and no one was found so suitable as father Fray Diego. He was
accordingly asked to return and begin his labors anew by embarking for
España, where he was to act as the procurator of this province in all matters,
and was especially to provide them with religious.... Notwithstanding the
hardships and dangers of that voyage, his love to God and the province, and
his perception of the need which forced them to do this, outweighed these
other considerations; and he immediately prepared himself for the departure
which was at hand. With only three woolen tunics in place of shirts, and the
ship-stores for the first voyage, without a real or anything else for the
remainder of the journey, he embarked in the middle of July, having
remained in Manila not quite a full year. They had good weather until they
reached the latitude of Japon, and from there such furious winds as lifted
the sea up to the sky.... Since they had come from so hot a climate as that of
this country, and had so suddenly entered this other, which was so cold,
they could not fail to suffer from many diseases. Many died on this voyage,
among them the commander and the master of the ship, and a rich merchant
who was a passenger. He, perceiving father Fray Diego’s holy way of life,
his great virtue, poverty, contempt for temporal things, devotion toward
God, and charity toward his fellow-men, gave him all his wealth, which
amounted to seventy thousand pesos, that he alone, at his own pleasure,
without being obliged to render account to anyone, might distribute the
whole of it in pious works. He told him that, though he had no heirs to
whom he was obliged to leave anything, he had some poor relatives in
Portugal (whence he had come), and he charged him to aid them. Father
Fray Diego gave so much attention to the fulfilment of his wish that he
went in person to Portugal solely for this purpose, sought with great care for
the relatives of the deceased, relieved their necessities, and left them all in
good circumstances, considering their estate, and very content. He also
fulfilled the rest of the desires of the testator in accordance with the trust
given him, without applying to himself or to any relative of his more than
the trouble and the reward from God, which would not be small. [Father
Fray Diego went on to España, and thence to Francia, that he might for his
province, and personally, yield obedience to the most reverend general of
the order, at that time Fray Agustin Galamino, a holy man, who as such
took particular delight in hearing what father Fray Diego related as an
eyewitness of the devotion of the province of the Philippinas and of the
great services which it wrought for the Lord in the conversions of these
idolatrous tribes. The pious general gave him all the documents necessary
for taking religious thither; and father Fray Diego was about to return with
the documents, that he might not lose a moment in the execution of his
trust, the great importance of which he perceived. But his superior obliged
him to remain for the general chapter, which was to be held in the middle of
the year in Paris (in which he was a definitor)—to the great regret of father
Fray Diego at losing all this time from the affairs of the province of which
he thought so much. For ten years he filled this office of procurator for the
province in España, setting an admirable example to lay and religious, who
saw him always humble, devout, and in poverty, and putting forward no
claims for himself, either within or without the order. This made him freely
able to express his judgment with holy and religious liberty before the royal
Council and to the president and members of it. They all looked upon him
with special respect. He aided in sending the religious brought to this
province by father Fray Alonso Navarete, who afterward was a holy martyr,
the first one of our order to suffer in Japon, and the one who opened the
door of martyrdom for so many as afterward followed his good example.
He later sent another shipload, with father Fray Jacintho Calvo; and the
same father Fray Diego, after sending these first two, afterward set out to
bring other religious with him. But, when he arrived in Mexico, he received
letters from the provincial of this province, desiring him to return to España
and continue his functions as procurator-general in it. Here he could be of
use only as one man; there he could do the work of many, by sending so
many good religious. He went back to the labor which he had desired to
give up; and abandoning a life of contemplation in a cell, for which he was
eager, he returned to the publicity of tribunals, and the distraction of
journeys, from which he desired to flee. At all times, however, he was
instant in prayer, and in other devout exercises. As a reward for this care, he
received from the Lord success in the business which he undertook, a
successful despatch of it being furthered by his prayer—which, it seemed,
would have taken off his attention from his business and interfered with it.
In spite of all this experience of the pleasure of the Lord in this exercise, he
still desired to retire and to prepare himself for a holy death; and he
constantly begged the superior of this province to send him a successor, that
he might return to it.]

The province sent father Fray Matheo de la Villa, who has several times
been mentioned with praise. Thereupon father Fray Diego, after obtaining
the necessary licenses and decrees, gathered twenty companions and came
to live and die with them in this province—nearly all the members of which
were his sons, whom he had sent or brought from España, as has been
recounted. Hence he was received as the general father of all, and was by
all much beloved for the great good which he had wrought for all of them,
for each one in particular, and for the whole province in general, by means
of many royal decrees and grants which he had obtained at court for
medicine for the sick, wine for the masses, oil for the lamps which burned
before the most holy sacrament, and habits for the religious, which are great
sources of relief in our great poverty. Among these things the provision for
the dress of the religious ought not to be passed over in silence. Neither the
province nor any house within it had any regular source of income; and it
provided for all its expenses entirely with alms received from the faithful.
Since serge for our habits had to be brought from Nueva España, it was a
difficult thing for the province to send every year the money for all the
clothing of the religious, at the price in Mexico. The province provides the
religious with clothing, for no member of it cares for himself, or has any
deposit or anything else of his own, not even with the permission of his
superior. Hence the province sent directions to father Fray Diego to ask his
Majesty to give as alms the clothing for all the religious of the province—
and this not for one year or two, but forever, since the same need and
poverty were to continue forever. Father Fray Diego, who was acquainted
with the heavy demands upon the royal treasury, regarded it as impossible
to obtain this; and he put off asking for it until he felt obliged to send an
answer to the province. Feeling practically certain that it would not be
granted, he asked for it in a memorial of his own, sending in other
memorials in which he asked for things which seemed to him very easy to
grant; and when he looked over the answers he found that the royal Council
had unhesitatingly allowed the grant and gift of the clothing (which he had
regarded as impossible), but had refused everything which he asked for in
the other memorial. From this it was plain that it was God who had in His
hand the heart of the king; and that He had done more than what human
prudence might hope for. This truth was all the more confirmed by the fact
that when the royal decree came to be presented before the royal officials in
Mexico, who were always accustomed to put a thousand difficulties and
contingencies in the way of such grants, they not only did not put any such
in the way of this grant; but, seeing that the religious had from mere
timidity asked much less than they needed, urged them to ask for a
sufficient amount. The matter was immediately settled on this footing, and
has remained so ever since, a plain token that the Lord is pleased that the
religious of this province shall wear the habits which they have always
worn—poor, humble, rough, made of coarse and heavy serge; a penance for
the religious, and a good example for others, as have always been the poor
and rough habits of religious orders. At the first vacancy of the position of
prior in Manila father Fray Diego was a second time elected prior. He filled
the post to the great benefit of the religious and the convent, to the needs
and obligations of which he attended with great care and charity. He was by
nature taciturn and somewhat rigid, but by virtue was so corrected and mild
that he left no necessity unremedied, no afflicted whom he did not strive to
console, no weak or fallen one for whom he did not pray. With all he was
gentle, and to all he desired to do good. While he was in this position, and
very far from thinking of changing his condition, he received in the year
1632 the royal decree appointing him bishop of Nueva Segovia. He
hesitated long before accepting this dignity, presenting many arguments
against his acceptance. But, since all the others were opposed to him in this
matter, he gave up his own opinion and accepted the episcopate, with the
most firm determination not to abandon his character as a friar vowed to
poverty and to observe the manner of living which he had previously
maintained—and even to improve it by far, as the superior station upon
which he entered required of him; and this determination he most perfectly
fulfilled, as will be seen. Someone very much devoted to the order sent him
a diamond cross for a pectoral; and he returned it, saying that it was very
rich for so poor a bishop, for whom a pectoral of wood would be sufficient.
The bulls did not reach him that year; so he waited for them without leaving
the cell in which he had lived in the hospital of the Chinese. He took no
servant, and made no change in his poor manner of living, dress, and
clothing. He went to the choir and performed the other obligations of
religious in this poor habit, and did everything else, whether by day or in
the midst of the night, that he had promised. He was consecrated and went
to his bishopric; and giving himself up wholly to his obligations as bishop
he personally visited all his bishopric, leaving in all parts a lively memory
of his sanctity, devotion, and alms-giving. His common custom was to
spend one hour of prayer before mass, raising his fervor by mental devotion
that he might say it with a greater spiritual elevation. This was in addition to
many other hours of prayer by day and by night. After mass was finished,
he spent another hour in giving thanks to the Lord for what he had received;
and then he went immediately to his study of holy scripture, which likewise
is prayer. He did not rise from his work until something happened which
compelled him to. His expenses were almost nothing, so that the poor
income of his bishopric was wholly spent upon charity and upon the
adornments of his church; for in these two matters he spent as if he were
rich. Hence in the short time during which he governed the bishopric
(which was only a year and a half), he gave it more ornaments and jewels
than others who had been superiors there had given in many years. He was
most humble; and when father Fray Carlos Clemente Gant was vicar of the
convent, the bishop used to go almost daily from his residence to our house
to confess to him. When father Fray Carlos begged him to remain at home,
and said he would go to hear his confession every day, the bishop declined,
saying, “Your Reverence is very busy. I, who am less so, will come,” and on
this footing this matter always continued. He took less food than when he
was in the order, giving up one meal when he accepted the bishopric. He
said that his position brought more obligations; therefore his food ought to
be less. He always ate fish, if necessity did not force him to take something
else. His bed was a piece of felt for a mattress and a blanket for covering,
without any other pillow than the mat used by the poor Chinese, or one of
the native mats—which was given a coat of a sort of varnish, so that the
perspiration might be washed off and the pillow kept clean. In his whole
house he had no other bed-clothes, so that even in his last sickness he had
no mattress nor sheets, nor even a linen pillow upon which to rest his head;
it was therefore necessary to bring that which was kept ready in the poor
infirmary of the convent, for no such comforts were used or were to be
found in the bishop’s house. When he went on visitation, he always took
with him some bundles of cloth to distribute among the poor, and these and
other good works which he did for them constituted the sole profit of his
visitation. He highly esteemed the ministers whom he had in his bishopric,
and was greatly pleased to see that they were practically all religious—not
only of his own order, but also of that of our father St. Augustine. He loved
both tenderly, and always had much good to say of all of them. During his
time another bishop65 (who was a member of an order) put forward a claim
that the royal decrees should be put in execution which provide that the
religious who have charge of Indians shall be subject to the inspection and
visitation of the bishop or his visitors. When this matter was discussed
before the royal Audiencia, our good bishop was present—yielding, so far
as his bishopric was concerned, the favor granted in these royal decrees. He
declared and proved with many strong arguments that, though the execution
of the decrees would greatly increase the dignity and temporal profit of the
bishops, it was to the spiritual and temporal injury of the Indians. Hence, to
avoid these greater injuries, he renounced with a good will these inferior
gains, as a prelate who felt that all his gains were secured by procuring the
proper ministry for those subject to him. The whole income of his bishopric
he collected for the poor, without taking from it more than the labor or
dividing it among the needy; for his own maintenance, he asked alms as one
of the poor. When on any account he was absent from his bishopric, he left
someone in it to distribute alms to the poor, that they might not be injured
by his absence.

The habit which he wore was of serge, and he wore an old frieze cloak
which had served one of the religious on his way from España. His shoes
were old and patched, and his breeches poor and mean, like those used in
this province. He wore no rings, and did not spend a real for them or for a
pectoral, being contented with those which were offered to him as to a
bishop in such a state of poverty. When he entered our convents, he
prostrated himself on the floor to receive the blessing of the superior, as the
other religious do; and he joined the community and took no precedence in
seating himself, just like any of the other brothers. He did not permit them
to give him anything special in the refectory; and he remained in all things
as humble and as perfect in his duties, as a member of the order, as he had
been before becoming a bishop. The happy end of all his many arduous
labors was at hand; and after only three days of sickness he went to receive
the endless reward of his toils, leaving those who were subject to him above
measure sad at the loss of such a superior, father, and common benefactor
of all. But those who displayed the greatest feeling, and with the greatest
reason, were the religious of this province, who had in him an honor, a
defense, and an example, which incited them to all virtue, and to strict
observance of their rules. [His death caused great sorrow, not only in his
diocese but in Manila, where he was beloved by all; and notable honors
were paid to his memory, even by the other orders.]
Chapter LX
The glorious martyrdom of four religious of this
province, and two laymen, their companions, in
Japon.

May 2, 1637, there was elected as provincial father Fray Carlos Clemente
Gant, a native of the famous city of Zaragoça, and a son of the illustrious
convent of Preachers in that city, a person of much virtue and superior
prudence, of which he had given evidence in many offices which he had
filled with great praise. He was elected in this chapter on the first ballot,
and the wisdom of his election was soon shown, the Lord choosing him as a
principal instrument to bring to an end the congregation—which, as has
been narrated, had already begun to be planned, to the great harm of these
conversions.

[This year, which concludes the number of fifty since the foundation of this
province, is closed, as with a precious key, by the marvelous martyrdom of
four religious belonging to the province—father Fray Antonio Gonçalez,
father Fray Guillermo Cortet (who here bore the name of Fray Thomas de
Sancto Domingo), father Fray Miguel de Ozaraza, and father Fray Vicente
de la Cruz. With the martyrdoms (already narrated) of father Fray Jordan de
San Estevan and Fray Thomas de San Jacintho, the Japanese persecutors of
the church had spilled the blood of all the Dominican friars of that
kingdom; yet they had not, as they expected, caused the souls of the
religious to fear, or cooled their fervent desires to go to Japon. Of all those
who asked for permission to go thither, these four only received the desired
license. Two of them were teachers of theology in the college and university
of the province, in the city of Manila; and both of them had lectured on
theology before coming to this province—father Fray Antonio in that of
España, and father Fray Guillermo in his native country of France. Thus the
province has sent its best to Japon. Father Fray Francisco de Morales was
for many years lecturer on theology, and at the time of his mission was prior
of the convent of Manila; and father Fray Jacintho de Esquivel, father Fray
Domingo de Erquicia, father Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto, and father
Fray Diego de Rivera had all been lecturers on theology. There was great
difficulty in sending these four religious to Japon, which was finally
overcome by the determination of the religious. In the year 1634, some
Spaniards had been cast on shore on the islands of the Lequios, which are
subject to Japon. They were examined to see if they were religious or no;
but, as it did not appear that they were, they were set free. Many Japanese
came to them by night, asking them if they were priests to hear their
confessions; and, being assured that they were not, they begged for priests
to come to them. Father Fray Vincente de la Cruz and a Christian Japanese
offered to take the religious whom the province might send and to make
their way from the Lequios Islands to Japon. The governor, learning that the
expedition was about to be equipped, burned the vessel which had been
prepared, and set sentinels at the mouth of the bay to prevent the religious
from setting out. By God’s aid they succeeded in eluding him, and after
meeting with storms made their way to the islands of the Lequios, where
they landed July 10, 1636. No certain reports have been received as to what
occurred in the islands; but the fathers seem to have been arrested as soon
as they revealed themselves, and to have been sent as prisoners to Japon.

On September 13, 1637, fathers Fray Guillermo Cortet, Fray Miguel

Oçaraça and Fray Vicente de la Cruz, dressed in secular clothes, were
brought from Satzuma to Nangasaqui, to be tried for their crime. Father
Fray Antonio Gonçalez was not with them, having sailed in another vessel,
and not having yet arrived. They answered boldly, declaring that they had
had no assistance from any government; and that their very pilot had been a
religious who had known something of seamanship before entering the
order. They were subjected to terrible torture, especially the torture of
water, which they bore bravely. Their tortures were prolonged, and the text
describes them with fulness. On the twenty-first of the same month, father
Fray Antonio Gonçalez, the superior of the religious, arrived in Nangasaqui
in another funea. He was accompanied by two lay companions—one a
mestizo, the son of a Chinese man and an Indian woman; the other a
Japanese, who had been exiled for the faith.66 As soon as father Fray
Antonio set foot on the soil, he made the sign of the cross, in sight of all the
Portuguese trading there and of a great multitude of people. The holy father,
being of noble stature, towered above the company about him like another
Saul. He was taken directly before the judges, confessed who he was, was
cruelly tortured, and subjected to insult. The mestizo at first feared the
torments, but afterward plucked up his courage to endure them. The
Japanese wretchedly fell away from fear. Father Fray Antonio suffered the
torture of water, to which he was subjected when he was very sick of a
fever; and he died in the prison, his body being burnt and the ashes cast into
the sea. On the twenty-seventh of the month the prisoners were taken out to
be martyred, being gagged to prevent their preaching. They were all
suspended by the feet, and while they hung in their pits they chanted praises
to God; and the ministers of justice, in admiration of their courage, caused
them to be taken out from the holes still alive and to be beheaded, that they
might no longer suffer torture. The ashes of the five holy martyrs were cast
into the sea, three leguas from the port of Nangasaqui, on the same day,
September 29, 1637.]
Chapter LXI
The exercises with which the Lord prepared these
saints for martyrdom

[The Lord in general requires a holy life to precede a martyr’s death. Father
Fray Antonio Gonçalez was a native of Leon, bred up for the Lord like
another Samuel. He showed great capacity in his studies, and became the
master of the students in the most religious convent of Piedrahita. Before
his conversion, he was devoted to poetry and such matters, which, though
they do not take away the grace of the Lord, choke the good seed of His
special counsels and the way of perfection. But before long father Fray
Antonio gave up these trifles, which, though they were not grave faults,
were grave impediments to the perfection to which the Lord called him.
Considering how God might best be pleased, it seemed to him that the best
offering he could make was the offering of martyrdom. As a means to attain
this end, he considered that coming to this province offered the best
opportunity for becoming a martyr. He devoted himself to virtuous
company, and was most useful as a minister in España. He begged his way
from door to door, and set out for the Philippinas when he was just
recovering from a severe illness. He was greatly given to works of
mortification, and most patient, kind, and obedient. He was devoted to be
service of the Rosary, and offered a special devotion, among many saints, to
St. Peter Martyr, whom he desired to imitate in life and in death. His
martyrdom had been predicted while he was in España.

Father Fray Guillermo Cortet was a native of Visiers, a city of France. He

was the child of noble and wealthy parents. While still a young layman he
heard of the glory of our holy martyrs in Japon, which made such an
impression upon his heart that he determined to give up all that he had and
might hope for in the world, and to assume the habit of the order which
contained such saints, hoping that he himself might be one of them. He
therefore requested the habit from father Fray Sebastian Michaelis, who at
that time governed the strictest congregation in France. In time he
professed, and became notable for religion, virtue, and learning. So closely
did he observe the rule that, when the famous convent of the order in
Aviñon was to be reformed, father Fray Guillermo was sent there for the
purpose. All this time he was sighing for Japon, and finally set out on foot
for España, making the journey in the winter through rain, cold, and snow.
He was greatly esteemed in the court, but left it to come to the Philippinas
as a member of the congregation. This he abandoned when he heard the
convincing reasons with which the province, though obeying the most
reverend general and his letters, suspended the execution of them until they
could give him information as to the surreptitious manner in which they
were obtained, the many impossibilities which they contained within
themselves, and the harm which would be done to the work of conversion
by the establishment of the congregation. The province directed him to
teach theology in the college of Sancto Thomas at Manila, which he did
obediently, putting aside his desire to go to Japon. That he might have more
time and ease in the holy exercise of prayer, he never undressed at night
during the last twenty years of his life, but slept seated in a chair. This
country is infested with multitudes of annoying mosquitos; but he did not
take advantage of the common means of preventing them, which is a tent,
something permitted to all the religious. He would not accept one, but
offered to the Lord the stings of the gnats, which is no small mortification
and penance. It was no wonder that he paid small attention to the stings of
mosquitos, as he often wore next to his skin a girdle bearing fifteen rosettes
in honor of our Lady of the Rosary and her fifteen mysteries, with points so
sharp that they drew blood when they were touched with the finger. Besides
this he wore an iron chain, which was kept bright by wear and gleamed as if
it were polished; and in addition to all these things he sometimes wore next
his skin a hair shirt, with points of iron so cruel and large that the mere sight
of them shocked some religious who happened to see them, as being the
most severe thing that they had ever seen in their lives. He was most
abstinent, full of devotion for the mass, and above measure humble. He was
also very kind and gentle, especially to repentant sinners. He was scarcely a
year in this province when his ardent desire to go to Japon was finally
gratified.

Father Fray Miguel de Ozaraza was a native of Vizcaya; and because of his
virtues, devotion, and prudence he was much beloved in the convent of
Sancto Thomas at Madrid, where he lived for some years in great quiet,
with all the comfort that a good religious could desire. But as many laymen
have been moved by the desire of worldly riches to leave their comforts in
España and to go to the Indias, so the desire for spiritual profit caused father
Fray Miguel to come to this most distant part of the world. He was very
industrious, and skilful in the management of business; and had much to do
with the management of the affairs of the shipload of religious with which it
was intended to begin the new congregation. When he came to the province,
and more clearly understood the condition of affairs here, he left the
congregation and was incorporated into the province. For this he obtained
the reward of martyrdom for which he sought. No opportunity for him to go
to Japon immediately offering, he was directed to learn an Indian language,
and to minister to the Indians; this he did with humble obedience, not
looking down upon this despised ministry. At the same time he studied the
Japanese language. His fortitude in martyrdom was supernatural and
divine.]

Father Fray Vicente de la Cruz, whose Japanese name was Xivozzuca, was
a native of Japan, the child of devoted Christians of long standing, and was
the youngest of seven brothers. He was offered to God before his birth; for,
while he was still in his mother’s womb, his parents promised that, if they
should have a son, they would offer him like a second Samuel to the service
of the church. They bred him in this way as one dedicated to such a service,
never permitting him to wear any colored clothes like other boys of his
rank, that he might grow up with the sense of being dedicated to God, and
of being bound to serve Him with all care and devotion. At the age of nine
he was given to the fathers of the Society in fulfilment of the vow; and from
that tender age began to be trained in Nangasaqui in the college of the
fathers there—studying grammar, and the other moral teaching given by the
fathers of the Society to those who are to aid them in their preaching. This
Vicente did for many years, up to the persecution which broke out, with the
fury described, in the year 1614. At this time Vicente went to Manila, when
the ministers were exiled, returning soon afterwards to Japon; but like the
dove in the ark, not finding a place whereon to set his foot, because of the
persecution, he returned again to this city, seeking some established way in
which he could serve the Lord as a minister of the church. He suffered great
need, and was tempted by friends and acquaintances to change his plans and
to marry; but he did not consent, preferring to be poor and needy in the
house of the Lord than to live with ease among laymen. The Lord, who
never fails those who put their trust in him, helped him by making him
acquainted with the bishop of Zubu, Don Fray Pedro de Arce, a master of
such virtue that the virtues of Vicente could not fail to advance under him.
Father Fray Luis Sotelo afterwards came to this city with the purpose of
taking preachers to Japon, and Vicente joined him, being prepared for every
good work, even at the expense of the hardship and danger required by the
preaching of the faith in Japon. It was not yet time for this holy man to
suffer, and hence he was prevented by sickness from accompanying the
holy martyr Fray Luis Sotelo when he went to Japon; so he remained in this
country, teaching the language to the religious who were to go to that realm.
In this and in all his actions his conduct was so virtuous that the Christian
Japanese offered him a liberal support, so that he was ordained priest and
gave them his spiritual aid, preaching to them and administering the holy
sacraments. That he might live with great perfection, he followed the rule of
the tertiary Order of the noble St. Francis. The expedition of these holy
martyrs was about to take place, and the superior of it endeavored to have
father Fray Vicente accompany and guide them, as he was a native Japanese
who had had experience in the preaching of the gospel in that realm. He not
only readily agreed to this, but earnestly begged for the habit of the order;
and he wore it—in such manner as he could, since he was going to preach
in Japon—for more than a year; he professed and suffered, as has been
described. May the Lord give us for the merits and intercession of these
glorious martyrs,67 and of all the other holy martyrs and confessors who
have been in this province, something of the divine grace which made them
such as they were. Thus, as up to this time the present members of the
province have not belied the holy beginnings with which it was established,
but rather seem to perfect themselves with each new increase, so may we
not fall off in the future; but may our love toward God and our fellow-men,
and our devotion to the rule of our order, forever preserve the perfection
which has been found hitherto in the sons of the province, to the glory of
the Author of all good, who is the same Lord God to whom belongs all
glory forever and ever. Amen.

After the fifty years of this history were completed, there came the
following letter from his Majesty, which settled the matter which had
disturbed the religious of this province and kept them in affliction. This
letter was received, as has been said in the history, without any
representation from the province having come to the royal ears; hence it is a
most certain proof that it was given by the special providence of the Lord,
and by the aid of our great patroness the Virgin Mother; and that it is
worthy to be placed as a conclusion to this history.
Letter written by his Majesty to the venerable and
devout father provincial of the Order of St. Dominic of
the Philipinas Islands.

(Copied faithfully from the original.)

The King. To the venerable and devout father provincial of the Order of St.
Dominic of the Philipinas Islands. From different reports which I have
received, I have learned of the disturbance and disquiet caused among the
religious of that province by the division of it that was made by virtue of
letters obtained from the general of the order by Fray Diego Collado, and
by the aid given him for the purpose by Don Sebastian Hurtado de
Corcuera, my governor and captain-general of these islands. I desired that
the said briefs should not be executed, since they were not approved by my
royal Council of the Indias; and hence, looking rather to the conformity of
the religious with the rule of the order, and to the quiet of that province, and
perceiving that the said division must cause some relaxation therein, I have
commanded my said governor and captain-general of these islands, and my
royal Audiencia, to suspend the said brief and all other briefs brought by the
said Fray Diego Collado, without permitting them to be executed. And I
have commanded that the division of the provinces which has been made
shall be annulled, and that they shall return to the condition in which they
were before the said division. I accordingly request and direct you to attend
to it, on your part, that these said provinces shall be placed in the state in
which they were before Collado to España immediately. That this may have
effect, I have in a letter of this day commanded my said governor to have
him provided with passage. You will inform me at the first opportunity of
what you shall have done in execution of what I thus request of you. Dated
at Madrid, February first, in the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-
seven.

I the King

By command of our lord the king:

Don Gabriel de Ocaña y Alarcon

1 Notwithstanding this fierce persecution—which, thus begun, culminated in the
massacre of Shimabara (1637), and lasted as long as Christians could be discovered by the
Japanese authorities—a considerable number of Japanese converts maintained their
Christian faith, unknown to their rulers, handing it down from one generation to another
until 1868, when their existence became known to the government, and for a time they
were exiled from their homes, but were restored to them a few years later. This Christian
church was at Urakami, about seven miles north of Nagasaki.
2 Rein states (Japan, p. 306) that there were 22 Franciscans, Dominicans, and
Augustinians (agreeing with Aduarte’s total), 117 Jesuits, and nearly 200 native priests and
catechists; and that these were shipped to Macao. Murdoch and Yamagata say (Hist. Japan,
p. 503) that 63 Jesuits were sent to Macao; and 23 Jesuits, all the Philippine religious, and
several distinguished Japanese exiles, to Manila.
3 Cf. Vol. IX, p. 68, for mention of earliest printing in the islands.
4 See Vol. XII, p. 222.
5 Angelo Orsucci e Ferrer was born in Lucca, Italy, in 1570, also entering there the
Dominican order. Hearing of the Filipinas missions, he went to Valencia, in Spain, to join
them, and arrived at Manila in 1602. He labored successively in the Cagayán and Bataán
missions, and in 1612 went to Mexico to take charge of the Dominican hospice there. In
1615 he returned to Manila, conducting the mission band which Aduarte had brought to
Mexico. He went again to Bataán for a time; but, hearing of the persecutions in Japan,
determined to go thither, reaching that country in August, 1618. In the following December
he was arrested, and imprisoned in Omura. He remained there nearly four years, and was
burned alive on September 10, 1622. He was beatified in 1867.
See Reseña biográfica, i, pp. 211–214.
6 This was Juan de Silva, who died on April 19, 1616 (see Vol. XVII, p. 279).
7 A letter written by the Franciscan Fray Pedro de Alfaro to Fray Juan de Ayora,
commissary in Manila, under date of Canton, October 13, 1579, and existing (in copy) in
Archivo general de Indias (with pressmark, “Simancas-eclesiastico; cartas y expedientes de
personas eclesiasticas vistos en el consejo; años 1570 á 1608; est. 68, caj. 1, leg. 42”), says
of the Ilocos district: “Also it should be noted by your charity and the superiors who shall
come that the province of Ylocos is the destruction and sepulcher of friars; for it is known
how the first who went there returned, while I found the next ones, although they had come
there so short a time before, with very ill-looking, flabby, and colorless countenances, and
brother Fray Sebastian (may he rest in glory), smitten with stomach trouble. His sickness
began there, and there was its ending. In consideration of this, and of the common rumor
and report of all, I do not believe that it is a district where we can live.” The sick friar here
mentioned was Sebastian de Baeza, who, at the time Alfaro wrote, had just died on a ship
in Canton Bay.
8 Melchor Manzano came to Manila in 1606, and ministered in the Cagayán missions
until he was chosen provincial in 1617. In 1621 he was appointed procurator of the
province at Madrid; and he died in Italy, about 1630, as bishop-elect of Nueva Segovia.
9 After the battle of Sekigahara (1600) Iyeyasu had left Hideyori (the infant son of
Hideyoshi), with his mother, in the castle of Osaka. After this child grew to manhood, he
incurred the jealousy of Iyeyasu, which was doubtless aggravated by his intimacy with the
Jesuits, and the shelter given by him to many discontented Japanese, both heathen and
Christian. Armies were raised on both sides, and on June 4, 1615, the castle of Osaka was
carried by assault, and burned, Hideyori and his mother both perishing. See Murdoch and
Yamagata’s full account of this war, its causes, and its immediate results (Hist. Japan, pp.
507–567); cf. Rein’s Japan, p. 306.
10 i.e., “the lord shogun;” it is only a title of honor, not a personal name. It here refers to
Hidetada, who had been associated with his father Iyeyasu in the government.
11 Later (at the beginning of chap. xiiii) Aduarte states that under Safioye were two
officials in charge of the Nagasaki government—Antonio Toan, a Christian; and Feizó, a
renegade Christian. After Safioye’s death, dissensions arose between these two; and finally
the emperor made Feizó and Gonrozu (a nephew of Safioye) joint governors of the city,
who proceeded to persecute the Christians with renewed severity.
12 This sentence may be a later addition by Aduarte himself; but is more probably
written by his editor, Fray Domingo Gonçalez.
13 Among these Korean captives were numerous potters, who were carried to Kiôto,
Hagi, Satsuma, and other towns of Japan, in order to introduce into that country the
ceramic arts of Korea. Descendants of these potters are still living in Tsuboya, a village of
Satsuma, where they still carry on their craft. See Rein’s Japan, pp. 289, 527.
14 Jacinto Calvo came to Manila in 1604, from the convent of Peña de Francia; but he
soon returned to Spain, on business of his order. It is probable that he spent the rest of his
life there, except for some years while he was in charge of the hospice at Mexico; it is not
known when he died.
15 The Babuyan and Batan Islands, groups lying north of Luzón, extend northward to
near the southern end of Formosa. From near the northern end of that island, the Riu-Kiu
Island stretches in a long northeastward curve to the vicinity of Kiushiu Island, in southern
Japan.
16 A vulgar appellation of the fish called rompecandados (“padlock-breaker”), according
to note by Retana and Pastells in their edition of Combés’s Mindanao, col. 770. Taraquito
may possibly be a diminutive form derived from tarascar, meaning “to bite, or tear with
the teeth.”
17 The tribe best known as Mandaya are found in Mindanao; but the same name is
conferred by some Spanish writers on the Apayaos (a head-hunting tribe in northwestern
Cagayán and the adjoining portions of Ilocos Norte and Abra)—with doubtful accuracy,
according to Blumentritt (Native Tribes of Philippines, p. 531). In U.S. Philippine
Commission’s Report, 1900, iii, p. 19, is the following statement: “In the hamlets on the
western side of the river [i.e., Rio Grande de Cagayán], Itaves, Apayao, and Mandayo are
spoken;” but there is no further reference to a Mandaya tribe in Cagayán. See Aduarte’s
mention of Mandayas in later chapters.
18 Juan de San Lorenzo came to Manila with the mission of 1618; he labored in the
Cagayán missions, and died at Lal-ló in 1623.
19 A sort of trousers, generally made of cloth, covering the legs as far as the knees,
buttoned or hooked together on the outside. It has also a dust-guard, which extends to the
shoe. It is mainly used by laborers, carriers, and the like. (Dominguez’s Diccionario
nacional.)
20 See book i of Aduarte’s work, chapters xii–xv (in Vol. XXX of this series).
21 Blumentritt characterizes the Gaddanes as “a Malay head-hunting people, with a
language of their own, settled in the provinces of Isabela and Cagayán.” Landor mentions
them (Gems of the East, p. 478) as having delicately chiseled features, and being now
civilized and christianized.
The bulk of the population of Nueva Vizcaya is made up of converts from two of the
mountain Igorot tribes, the Isinay and the Gaddang or Gaddan. This valley was called Ituy
or Isinay. There are but three or four thousand people in each of these tribes, the rest of the
christianized population of this province being made up of Ilocano immigrants. (U. S.
Census of Philippines, i, pp. 449, 471. 472.)
22 Constantius, second son of Constantine the Great; he reigned from 337 A. D. to 361,
and adopted the Arian doctrine, of which he was a powerful supporter.
23 Pedro de Zúñiga was a native of Sevilla, and a son of Marqués de Villamanrique,
viceroy of Mexico; he entered the Augustinian order at Sevilla, in 1604. He came to Manila
in 1610, and spent several years as a missionary in Pampanga. Fired with zeal for the
Japanese missions, he entered them in 1618, only to be sent back to Manila the next year
with other priests banished from Japan; but, as recounted in our text, Zúñiga returned to
that land to end his life as a martyr (August 19, 1622). He was beatified in 1867. See
Pérez’s Catálogo, p. 82.
24 Probably a reference to the rōnins, men who had left their masters, under the old
feudal system in Japan, and spent their time in low company and in idleness and excesses;
see Griffis’s Mikado’s Empire, p. 278.
25 This brother’s proper name was Mangorochi. The term donado, like the French donné
(in each case meaning, literally, “one who is given”) was applied to devout persons who
voluntarily entered the service of the missions, giving themselves (often for life) to that
cause, and sharing the lot of the missionaries. All the martyrs whose fate Aduarte describes
were afterward beatified.
26 Diego de Rivera came to Manila from Córdoba, in 1615. He ministered in Bataán at
first, but was lecturer in Santo Tomás from 1619 to 1623—in which year he lost his life as
described in our text.
27 Francisco Galvez, a native of Utiel, made his profession in the Franciscan order in
1600, at the age of twenty-six. In 1609 he departed for the Philippines, where for some
time he ministered to the Japanese Christians resident near Manila. He went to Japan in
1612, but was banished thence in 1614; after several vain efforts, he succeeded in returning
to that country in 1618. He was arrested by the Japanese authorities, and after great
sufferings in prison was burned alive at Yendo, December 4, 1623. (See Huerta’s Estado,
pp. 391, 392.)
28 Aparri is a port of entry on the northern coast of Luzón, at the mouth of the Rio
Grande de Cagayán. It is the chief port of coast and ocean trade in that region, and the
starting-point for inland river navigation.
29 Alonso García came from Córdoba to Manila, in 1622; he was sent to the Cagayán
missions, where he died as here related. Onofre Palau was a native of Valencia, but entered
the Dominican order at Manila, in 1620. In the following year he made his profession, and
was sent to Cagayán, where he died with García. (See Reseña biográfica, i, pp. 294, 373.)
30 i.e., “Island of Fishermen,” indicating the occupation of nearly all the 50,000
inhabitants (of Chinese race) of the group known as Pescadores Islands, west of Formosa,
and under the jurisdiction of that island (which has been, since 1895, a possession of
Japan). The location of the Pescadores is such as to make them of strategic importance, and
Japan is now (1905) fortifying them.
31 The Chinese refused to allow the Dutch to trade with them unless the latter would
depart from the Pescadores, but permitted them to occupy Formosa. The Dutch settled
there in 1624, at Tainan (formerly Taiwan) near Anping, remains of old Dutch forts still
existing at both places; and this island was their headquarters for trade with Japan and
China. See Basil H. Chamberlain’s account of Formosa in Murray’s Handbook for
Travelers in Japan (4th ed., New York and London, 1898), pp. 536–542; Davidson’s
historical sketch in Transactions of Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xxiv, pp. 112–136.
32 One of the small islands in the bay of Kelung.
33 Francisco Mola was born in Madrid, and there made his profession as a Dominican, in
1600. He came to the Philippines in 1611, and spent many years in the Cagayán missions;
afterward having charge of the mission in Formosa. After 1643 his name is not mentioned
in the provincial records, as he returned to Spain about that time. (Reseña biográfica, i, p.
339.)
34 Juan García Lacalle entered the Dominican order at Manila, in 1602; he spent many
years in the Cagayán missions.
35 Apparently a misprint for 1611. Sanchez remained in the Cagayán missions until his
death, which must have occurred about 1640. The missionaries brought by him in 1626
numbered sixteen, sketches of whom are given in Reseña biográfica, i, pp. 375–381.
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