Cooperation and Conflict: Encounters Between Europeans and Non-Europeans

本研究将检验关键假设，拓展合作理论的研究范围。这一理论解释了当没有外部代理人执行交易规则时，两个或多个社会单位之间如何出现合作和冲突。尽管通过博弈论和计算机模拟进行了分析，但该理论的命题很少有在自然环境中进行数据测试的。这项研究将使用期刊中的历史数据，描述15至19世纪欧洲探险家、商人、征服者和传教士与世界各地土著人民的第一次相遇。将对280卷历史收藏中的约20次太平洋航行进行内容分析，以确定交易序列，包括贸易、盗窃、侵略和制裁等行为。当属性和解释变量在遭遇过程中或在探险过程中发生变化时，许多假设可以用前后设计进行检验。通过从自然历史背景考察合作理论的测试案例，该理论的一般性将得到增强，其对现代社会中当代群体之间的冲突与合作问题的适用性也将得到加强。

This research will test key hypotheses and expand the scope of Cooperation Theory. This theory explains how cooperation and conflict emerge between two or more social units when there is no outside agent enforcing transaction rules. Although analyzed via game theory and computer simulations, few of the theory's propositions have been tested against data in natural settings. This research will use historical data from journals describing the first encounters of European explorers, traders, conquerors, and missionaries with indigenous peoples all over the world, during the 15th to 19th centuries. Some 20 Pacific Ocean voyages from a 280 volume historical collection will be content-analyzed for transaction sequences including such behaviors as trade, theft, aggression, and sanctioning. Many hypotheses can be tested with a before-after design when attributes and explanatory variables change in the course of an encounter or during the life of an expedition. By examining test cases for cooperation theory from natural historical settings, the generality of the theory will be enhanced, as will its applicability to issues of conflict and cooperation among contemporary groups in modern society.