Cooperation and Conflict: Encounters Between Europeans and Non-Europeans

本研究将检验合作理论的关键假设，并扩大合作理论的范围。该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。虽然通过博弈论和计算机模拟进行了分析，但该理论的主张很少在自然环境中进行数据测试。这项研究将使用来自期刊的历史数据，描述15至19世纪期间欧洲探险家，商人，征服者和传教士与世界各地土著人民的首次相遇。从280卷的历史收藏中，将对大约20次太平洋航行的交易序列进行内容分析，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来检验。通过研究自然历史背景下合作理论的测试案例，将增强该理论的一般性，以及其对现代社会当代群体之间冲突与合作问题的适用性。

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.